[1] In May 2001, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, named "Wide Open Road" by The Triffids – written by McComb – as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time.

His parents were both doctors, his father, Harold McComb, a plastic surgeon[2][3] and his mother, Athel Hockey (AO), a paediatrician and later the head of the Genetics Department at the University of West Australia.

[5] All the boys attended Christ Church Grammar School in Claremont, Western Australia, with David winning prizes in English Literature and Divinity.

While still at high school, partly in response to the emergence of punk rock, McComb and Alan "Alsy" MacDonald formed Dalsy (a multimedia project, producing music, books and photographic work, and its output reflected his early interests, in Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, the Velvet Underground and Patti Smith), in 1976.

McComb and MacDonald wrote and performed songs with Phil Kakulas (later in Blackeyed Susans), Andrew McGowan, Julian Douglas-Smith, and later Byron Sinclair, Will Akers and Margaret Gillard.

[10] In 1985, The Triffids moved to London, with the addition of 'Evil' Graham Lee on pedal steel guitar, recorded their second album, Born Sandy Devotional in 1986, and Wide Open Road EP.

In 1986, with delays in releasing Born Sandy Devotional, the Triffids returned to Western Australia where they built an eight-track machine inside a shearing shed on the McComb family's farming property and recorded their third album In The Pines.

In 1987 armed with the considerable budget of £125,000, and the production skills of Gil Norton, David McComb and a new recruit, Adam Peters, concocted the lush orchestrations of the poignant "Bury Me Deep in Love" and the melancholic wide-screen atmosphere of the subsequent Calenture album.

The line-up consisted of McComb and Peters along with Nick Allum of Fatima Mansions, who also had played drums on Calenture, Gary Sanford of Aztec Camera, and Martyn P. Casey.

In June 1993 three former members of The Triffids: McComb, Robert and Lee; as well as Charlie Owen and Chris Wilson guested on Acuff's Rose's debut studio album, Never Comin' Down.

"[1] His ashes were spread under the pine trees at the family farm (Woodstock) at Jerdacuttup, approximately 22 kilometres (14 mi) north of Hopetoun, Western Australia.

[15] In 2001 the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, named his 1986 composition "Wide Open Road" as one of the thirty greatest Australian songs of all time.

The band also played four consecutive nights in Sydney in January 2008 with many guest singers and musicians, including Mick Harvey, Rob Snarski and Melanie Oxley.

In late 2009, a live tribute album entitled Deep in a Dream: An Evening with the Songs of David McComb, featuring The Blackeyed Susans and other Melbourne-based acts, was issued by the filmmakers to help fund the ongoing production of the documentary, which was released theatrically and then to disc and streaming formats in 2021/22 via Label Distribution.