Musically involved from a young age, he first started playing the accordion before taking up the piano. In his early youth, Mandić's family moved to the capital Belgrade where he pursued a career of a pianist after getting accepted at highly reputable Kornelije Stanković musical high school. However, despite a lot of promise, he left school in 1969 to try to branch out into pop music. Towards the end of 1971 he started playing in a jazz-rock band Oliver with members of Pop Mašina along with Dušan Prelević on vocal.

Read more about Oliver Mandic on Last.fm.