Crucial Three - After The Band

After The Band

Some of the band's 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 and Pete Wylie formed The Nova Mob, a conceptual band named after a gang mentioned in William Burroughs' novel 'Nova Express'. Recruiting punk friend Pete Griffiths and future Siouxsie and the Banshees's drummer Budgie, the Nova Mob were goaded into headlining at Liverpool's top punk club, Eric's. The show was a disaster according to observers and Budgie left to join Big in Japan, at which point the band split up. Julian Cope briefly formed an experimental group called The Hungry Types, and then formed Uh? with Ian McCulloch and McCulloch's school friend Dave Pickett. McCulloch left after the band's first and only gig. Cope and McCulloch formed their last band A Shallow Madness in early 1978, along with organist Paul Simpson and Dave Pickett, now on drums. A rehearsal recording of "Books" as performed by A Shallow Madness appears 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 Teardrop Explodes's 1981 album, Wilder, features the song "The Culture Bunker", which references Cope's former band with the lines "...waiting for The Crucial Three...wondering what went wrong."

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.

Drummer Steve Spence pursued a career in advertising, and now works as a Creative Director in London.