Crucial Three
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Crucial Three was a very short-lived band but notable because of the individual success of the three 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!). A less notable personage, drummer Stephen Spence, also joined at some point in their brief life.
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 three egos were much too large to fit in the same room.
Although they wrote and rehearsed a number of songs, they weren't a band long enough to record anything. Some of their songs have seen the light of day posthumously, most notably the Cope/McCulloch collaboration Books, which appeared on both Echo & The Bunnymen's and The Teardrop Explodes's respective first albums. 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. [1] (http://cobwebtheatre.com/html/life_begins_at_the_hop_2.html)
The memory of the Crucial Three was revived in 2004 by BBC Radio 2 DJ Mark Radcliffe whose show features a nightly quiz of the same name. The quiz is introduced on alternate evenings with recorded announcements by McCulloch and Cope. Wylie has yet to contribute.