The Greatness of Thunderclap Newman

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Thunderclap Newman, the band, intrigued me even before I heard their music. I must have seen a picture of them before or during the release of their single Something in the Air, and it was the visual contrast between the members of this band. One looks like a pub rocker, the other a teen idol, and then there is the crazed Uncle who is into the jazzy 1950s-era London but with a grandfatherly touch. In my experience of buying and listening to music, when you see a picture of a band that reeks of eccentricity, the music itself has to be as weird as its visuals. Pop music works well in that formula when announcing specific acts, in that the visuals rarely lie to its audience. Thunderclap Newman is that band.

It is a band consisting of the songwriter, a cockney-wide boy, a driver for Pete Townshend, a teenage and underaged Scottish guitarist, and a piano and horn player who didn’t go beyond 1930s Jazz. When you hear his piano solo, you think Fred Astaire would pop in out of the blue. Speedy Keen, Jimmy McCulloch, and the secret weapon, Andy Newman, AKA Thunderclap Newman, is the combination that made the most eccentric version of pop in the last year of the 1960s and the year 1970. Relistening the album now, it does remind me a bit of the first Roxy Music album. The music is not alike, but the grand pilot Bryan Ferry makes the songs in Roxy unique. Still, each member of Roxy added their element to the soup, and Thunderclap Newman is a band (of sorts) that makes a sound that all contributes to Speedy Keen’s catchy but heartfelt songs.

The amazing hit song worldwide is Something in the Air, which is fantastic, but it goes into genius overload when Andy does his piano solo, which takes the song to another level. Their only album, Hollywood Dream, is the sound of this trio in a small studio owned and engineered/produced by The Who’s Pete Townshend. The unusual instrumentation by Andy reminds me of Brian Jones in the classic Rolling Stones lineup, who brought exotic instruments to the mix. Or, back to Roxy Music, Eno added very individualistic touches to the sound of the band, which is what Andy Newman does for Thunderclap Newman. One of Andy’s extraordinary contributions to the band is not even on the album but is the B-side to Something in the Air, called Wilhelmina, a piece of music from the 1930s written by  Mark Strong and Cumberland Clark and initially recorded by Rossini’s Accordion Band in the United Kingdom.

Mark Ian Wilerson’s biography of the band The Hollywood Dream: The Thunderclap Newman Story (Third Man Books) is a sad book. Then again, all books on artists tend to be on the tragic side because the struggle to get heard or make something is constantly pushing the rock up the hill. There is not a limitless amount of choices an artist can make; they usually have that one shot, and the timing has to be perfect. But still, there are so many factors and elements in place that failure is hinted at around the hidden corner. Failure can mug you when you least unexpected such an action.

These three worked in a weird bubble, where Townshend was their benefactor and producer, and one of the pleasures of listening to these artists is that they are in their small container of the world. Although there are traces of the outside life, it is filtered through the lens of a romantic (Speedy) who has to overcome obstacles blocking a massive success, such as the Sixties version of Revolution, getting it together in the country. Still, there is something slightly off about it all. That is the magic element that is the essence of this band: their eccentricity. Rock is either about being part of a larger grouping or you are an outsider—the Who is very much about community, such as the Mod movement in their early existence. Thunderclap Newman is all about the individual making heads or tails of a hostile landscape.

Something in the Air is an odd juxtaposition between a violent revolution and Andy’s pre-modern pop piano solo that harkens to an earlier time in British culture. The song Accidents is all about children’s death by misfortune, and it’s funny, but there is something sad and serious about it. There are two recordings of this song. One that is nine minutes long, and a re-recording (to my ears) and mix for a 45 rpm single. This is a children's song with touches of the dark aspects of fairytales by such perverse minds as the Grimm Brothers.

After the band broke up, Speedy did two solo albums, and Jimmy joined Paul McCartney’s Wings. Andy made a very strange solo album. Rainbow is when he plays all the instruments, such as various horns, piano, and, of course, the Kazoo. My favorite parts of Thunderclap Newman are when Andy has his solo or his coloring of Speedy’s songs. Still, here it is like Thunderclap Newman, but without Speedy or Jimmy, and therefore hardcore Andy—music from another era, but filtered through Newman’s sensibility, which, in spirit, is timeless. His take on the music of yesterday is modernistic, and it’s not about going to the good old days; it's more like Charlie Parker covering a tune from the great American songbook. A total re-examination of a music piece and making it true to Andy’s aesthetic and thought.

Rainbow, in parts, reminds me (in theory at least) of Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay’s solo album In Search of Eddie Riff and Beach Boys’ Smile, but only that they float in the same universe. Andy Newman is (or was) a unique figure who couldn’t help but make something original in the Thunderclap Newman landscape or his solo world. It’s not a journey for everyone, but for those who dwell in the murkiness of the British Pop world and to the cracks that widen, where stories and individuals fell through - there is plenty of Gold to dig up.