Crucial Three - The Band

The Band

The band formed in May 1977 and split in June 1977.

According to Cope, the three friends first talked about forming a band on McCulloch's 18th birthday, 5 May 1977, during The Clash's White Riot tour date at Eric's; "By the end of the evening, we were a group. It was all Wylie's trip. He suggested Arthur Hostile & The Crucial Three. Duke 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 (Wylie claims they had four songs), including "Salomine Shuffle" (which was performed by Wylie in an abbreviated form at The Zanzibar in Liverpool in September 2007) 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 but some other accounts mention rehearsing in Wylie's mum's front room. According to McCulloch, the band were "...just mates - we never did anything. We wrote one crap song."