Julian Cope Part 1: The Teardrop Explodes

80s pop magic

Cope, meanwhile, had founded The Teardrop Explodes, an often oblique but attractive pop band that, by his own account, "took ridiculous amounts of drugs. When the Teardrops and the Bunnymen started, Mac and I wanted to be absolute megastars. We wanted to be the biggest cult heroes in the world, to be billionaires, to look brilliant, and to be total bastards.¹

Famously, when Julian Cope arrived in Liverpool in 1976 he quickly joined forces with Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie and became part of the Liverpudlian music scene from that moment on. Calling themselves The Crucial Three they formed a band that never played a note but all went on to greater things.

It was a conversation with Gary Dwyer that gave birth to a band named after a panel in Daredevil #77.

Daredevil Comic (No. 77).

I was a little too young to properly experience The Teardrop Explodes b…