Although the Crucial Three lasted for little more than six weeks and disbanded without ever playing in public, all three members eventually went on to lead successful Liverpool post-punk bands—singer Ian McCulloch with Echo & the Bunnymen and guitarist Pete Wylie with the Mighty Wah!.

[6] In 1978, Cope formed the Teardrop Explodes with drummer Gary Dwyer, organist Paul Simpson and guitarist Mick Finkler, with himself as singer, bass player and principal songwriter.

Their second album Wilder experimented with different and darker psychedelic styles, as well as delving deeper into Cope's complicated psyche: it spawned no major hits and sold relatively poorly at the time (despite being critically praised in retrospect).

[3] In 1982 (accompanied by his new American wife Dorian Beslity), Cope moved to the Staffordshire village of Drayton Bassett (close to his childhood home of Tamworth).

Cope's well-documented Teardrops-era LSD excesses, eccentric behaviour and subsequent retreat had led to him being labelled an "acid casualty" in the vein of Syd Barrett and Roky Erikson, an image which took him several years to shake off.

During this period, Cope befriended a teenage Drayton Bassett musician called Donald Ross Skinner, who became his main musical foil for the next twelve years.

Former Teardrops drummer Gary Dwyer, guitarist Steve Lovell and The Dream Academy oboist Kate St John all contributed to the album, which was released on Mercury Records in March 1984.

During a concert at Hammersmith Palais on the subsequent promotional tour, Cope slashed across his bare stomach with a broken microphone stand in an act of frustrated self-mutilation.

[2] World Shut Your Mouth was followed six months later by 1984's Fried album for which Cope was joined by Skinner, Lovell, St John, ex-Waterboys drummer Chris Whitten and Wah!

Notoriously, the sleeve featured a naked Cope crouched on top of the Alvecote Mound slag heap clad only in a large turtle shell.

The commercial failure[8] of Fried led to Polygram dropping Cope; he subsequently engaged a new manager Cally Callomon, and signed a deal with Island Records.

[2] Back in London, and with only the faithful Skinner remaining, Cope enlisted his A&R man Ron Fair as producer and recorded a follow-up album called My Nation Underground.

[2] To comfort himself, Cope spent a single illicit weekend at the end of the My Nation Underground sessions to create a second, lo-fi and unauthorised album called Skellington.

[citation needed] During this period, Cope discovered the book Guitar Army: Rock and Revolution with The MC5 and the White Panther Party by John Sinclair.

Wearing a huge theatrical costume throughout the march, he was later featured on the BBC's Poll Tax documentary, a lone protester walking down Whitehall surrounded by seven lines of mounted police.

[citation needed] These (and other) elements fed into the double album Peggy Suicide, which was released on Island Records in 1991 and was heralded by critics as Cope's best work to date.

Although the album produced another well-received single ("Beautiful Love") the political content of Peggy Suicide caused more friction with Island, who had signed Cope as a marketable hit-making alternative rocker but increasingly found themselves dealing with a latter-day counter-culturalist and revolutionary.

Despite the album reaching the UK Top 20, the label dropped Cope in the same week that his three shows sold out at London's 1,800 capacity Town & Country Club.

label) was a collaboration with Donald Ross Skinner: an album of instrumental jams called Rite, inspired by Krautrock, Sly Stone-styled psychedelic funk and spiritual mysticism.

Continuing to build on the musical approach of Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill but with a greater element of space rock, the album used the automobile as its central metaphor for individual and collective struggles between responsibility and selfishness, along with further stabs at patriarchy.

From 1997, Cope opted for full career independence, launching his Head Heritage organisation as combined record label, website and discussion forum.

This was the garage-rock/heavy metal power trio Brain Donor, which featured Cope on bass, Anthony "Doggen" Foster on guitar and Spiritualized's Kevin "Kevlar" Bales on drums.

Cope's 2007 album, You Gotta Problem With Me, was something of a return to his early solo material: more post-punk styled, and featuring swathes of Mellotron and orchestral percussion.

[23] You Gotta Problem With Me was followed by 2008's Black Sheep, which Cope described as "a musical exploration of what it is to be an outsider in modern Western Culture"[24] and which featured his most outrightly anarchic pronouncements to date.

Dominated by Mellotron, hand drums and acoustic guitars, the album also featured Doggen and McGrail plus new recruits Michael O'Sullivan and Ady "Acoustika" Fletcher.

This sparked renewed interest in the work of Walker (although years later Cope commented that the singer's "Pale White Intellectual" outlook on life no longer held any fascination for him).

Mojo went further, writing: "Brilliantly researched, Krautrocksampler abounds with revelations, and Cope's enthusiasm verges on the lethal ... a sort of lysergic Lester Bangs."

[29] 1998 saw the release of Cope's bestseller The Modern Antiquarian, a large and comprehensive full-colour 448-page work detailing stone circles and other ancient monuments of prehistoric Britain,[30] which sold out of its first edition of 20,000 in its first month of publication and was accompanied by a BBC Two documentary.

In addition to his books on prehistoric monuments, Cope hosts a community-based Modern Antiquarian website that invites contributors to add their own knowledge of the ancient sites of Britain and Ireland.

[35][36] Other musical artists have collaborated with Cope for these releases, also under the book's fictional names, including Stephen O'Malley and Holy McGrail (as drone group Vesuvio) and with Robert Courtney and Donald Ross Skinner (as ravers Dayglo Maradona), amongst others.