Accidents with Thunderclap Newman

‘One hit wonders...'

...are an interesting aspect of pop and rock music and Wikipedia has a very informative entry on the subject here.

However, in some cases, it’s not the success that such acts achieved that’s musically significant and of lasting merit, but their failures.

Thunderclap Newman - the subject of this screed – are best known for their hit ‘Something in the Air’.

This was a so-so piece of hippy revolution fluff that dominated the UK charts in the summer of 1969 and reached #1.

The band was probably more interesting than their big hit suggested, based as it was around trad jazzer Andrew ‘Thunderclap’ Newman on piano, John ‘Speedy’ Keen on vocals, guitar and drums and Jimmy McCullough (who was only 15 at the time - and looked it!) on lead guitar.

With the aid of a powerful friend – no less than Pete Townshend of the Who – Newman and McCullough were brought in to help Keen record the hit. The original idea was for Townshend to mentor each of the three and help with their own individual projects. However, to save time, one project only emerged – the band named after the oddball pianist Thunderclap Newman.

So, ‘Something in the Air’ came and went and the inevitable album was released on the back of the hit – ‘Hollywood Dream’.

Now, ‘Dream’ is an OK album, but it contains one diamond in the rough – a sprawling 9 minute track called ‘Accidents’.

This was totally rejigged, re-recorded, issued as a 4 minute single and promoted as the follow-up to ‘Something in the Air’. It peaked at a disappointing #46 in the UK.

I say disappointing because the single version is one of my favourite songs ever and a small and perfect but woefully neglected gem.

Dealing as it does with children disappearing through accidents, it was described thusly by critic Nathan Morley:

One would have to listen to Wagner in a funeral parlour for something even more morbid than Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Accidents’...

However, Morley shares my love for the song:

…which chronicles the deaths of various hapless children who all meet a very nasty end – Poor Mary falls in a river whilst waiting for the Queen to sail by and little Johnny is killed by a speeding car. That said – the song, orchestration and performance are simply brilliant. It is captivating and without doubt their best recording.

However, set against a somewhat jaunty backdrop with some nice guitar from McCullough and some well-scored brass, woodwind and strings, drumming that sounds like Paul McCartney to me and some remarkably effective acoustic rhythm guitar, its somewhat depressing but poignant message is somehow leavened by the almost singalong and upbeat sound.

It’s one of those pop songs that are quintessentially English – like the Kinks’ ‘Autumn Almanac’ – and, like Ray Davies’ creation, is almost like a little operetta with various movements all leading to a full-blown coda.

I think another thing that makes ‘Accidents’ very special to me is that I can remember exactly when and where I was when I first heard it.

Somehow, I’d blagged a gardening job for my English teacher during the winter and early spring of 1969/70, in my last year at school before I took my ‘A’ Levels.

It was a Saturday morning and I was re-digging a flower border (a tedious and unpleasant job, as he owned a very big and very smelly dog which used to shit all over the garden like an incontinent elephant) and I had my transistor radio tuned to the Kenny Everett Show.

Everett always had great taste – especially for good melodic pop stuff – and he really raved about the track before he played it.

Well, it knocked my socks right off and I tried to buy it as soon as I could, but with no luck.

It wasn’t until very much later that I heard it again, when a friend lent me a CD reissue of ‘Hollywood Dream’ and I was able to hear the single version of ‘Accidents’ once more (a bonus track on the CD reissue) and also the 9 minute album version.

You’d have thought that maybe such a long wait - several decades - could have ended in disappointment.but it didn’t and the track has become very precious to me.

So, what happened to the band?

Well, Andrew Newman kept on gigging with the band as the only original member until he passed in 2016, surviving the younger Speedy Keen by 14 years, and Jimmy McCullough died of a heart attack way back in 1979, following a heroin overdose just after he left Wings – yes, that Wings.

What's more, Kenny Everett’s dead and my old English teacher and his smelly dog are too.

Plus we've still got children disappearing.

Perhaps Morley was right about the track reaching peak morbid after all...

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