Crucial Three was a very short-lived band but notable because of the individual success of the 3 founding members: Ian McCulloch (later of Echo & the Bunnymen), Julian Cope (who went on to join The Teardrop Explodes and then release many albums under his own name) and Pete Wylie (later of many "band names" usually featuring the nonsense exclamation Wah!). McCulloch sang, Cope played bass, and Wylie played guitar. A drummer, Stephen Spence, also joined at some point in their brief life.

The band

The band formed in May 1977 and split in June 1977. Rock journalism's favourite observation about the brevity of this outfit is that all 3 egos were much too large to fit in the same room.

According to Cope the trio met at Erics night club in Liverpool on May 5th 1977 during a gig by The Clash; "By the end of the evening, we were a group. It was all Wylie's trip. He suggested Arthur Hostile & The Crucial Three. Duke [McCulloch] said, 'Sod the bloody Arthur Hostile bit off, it's crap.' So we were The Crucial Three. Wylie went on about how legendary we would be, and Duke and I went along with him, as part of the in-joke."

Although they wrote and rehearsed a number of songs, including "Salomine Shuffle" and "Bloody Sure You're On Dope", the band didn't last long enough to record anything. They rehearsed in a garage with drummer Steve Spence and split up after a month. According to McCulloch, the band were "...just mates - we never did anything. We wrote one crap song."

After the band

Some of their songs have seen the light of day posthumously, most notably the Cope/McCulloch collaboration "Books", which appeared on both The Teardrop Explodes's and Echo & The Bunnymen's respective first albums (although the Bunnymen version is titled "Read It in Books"). "Robert Mitchum", another Cope/McCulloch collaboration appeared on Cope's 1990 album Skellington. The song "Spacehopper" from Cope's solo album Saint Julian was also written during his time in the band, allegedly with some help from McCulloch.

After the Crucial Three, Julian Cope formed The Nova Mob with Pete Wylie, Griff and Dave Pickett. When Penetration pulled out of a gig at Eric's at the last minute, The Nova Mob headlined with the addition of Budgie on drums. When Budgie left to join Big in Japan the band split up. Julian briefly formed a group called The Hungry Types, and then, along with Mac formed Uh?. Mac left after the first gig. Their last band together was A Shallow Madness. A rehearsal recording of "Books" by A Shallow Madness appears on on the 2004 The Teardrop Explodes rarities collection Zoology.

A Shallow Madness featured the original Teardrop Explodes line up of Julian Cope, Paul Simpson, Dave Pickett and Mick Finkler, plus Ian McCulloch. The latter's non-attendance at rehearsals led to Cope taking over vocals and thus The Teardrop Explodes was born.

The well publicized animosity between Cope and McCulloch finally reached a boiling point when Cope fired McCulloch's friend Mick Finkler from The Teardrop Explodes.

References in popular culture

The memory of the Crucial Three was revived in 2004 by BBC Radio 2 DJ Mark Radcliffe whose show featured a nightly quiz of the same name until it ended on 5th April 2007. The quiz was introduced on alternate evenings with recorded announcements by McCulloch and Cope.

References