Best known for their Top Ten UK single "Reward", the group originated as a key band in the emerging Liverpool post-punk scene of the late 1970s.
His first band was Crucial Three, with two native Liverpudlians – Ian McCulloch (later of Echo & the Bunnymen) and Pete Wylie (who went on to form Wah!)
Cope and McCulloch went on to form a fourth group, A Shallow Madness, retaining Pickett as drummer but recruiting organ player Paul Simpson and part-time guitarist Michael "Mick" Finkler.
Cope and McCulloch's ongoing ego clashes led to the latter leaving the band during rehearsals, ultimately to form Echo and the Bunnymen.
[5][6] Cope, meanwhile, had befriended Liverpool scenester Gary "Rocky" Dwyer and had suggested a new band name to him – The Teardrop Explodes, taken from a panel caption in the Marvel comic strip Daredevil (No. 77).
[6] With Cope taking on the roles of singer and bass guitarist, The Teardrop Explodes was completed by recruiting Simpson and Finkler from the wreck of A Shallow Madness and proved a more hardy gigging proposition than its predecessors, soon establishing itself as a live act.
[5] Simpson's stage presence was now such that he rivalled Cope as the band's onstage focus, and by mutual agreement the two decided that the group wasn't big enough for both of them.
However, co-manager David Balfe had also been lobbying for full Teardrops membership: by July 1979, he had succeeded in ousting Quinn and taking his place as keyboard player.
"[3] Finkler's sacking earned the band a fair amount of ire from the closely linked and competitive Liverpool scene (and from Ian McCulloch in particular) as well as establishing Cope's reputation as something of a tyrant.
[6] As well as broadening the band's sound and outlook, Alan Gill had brought in an all-but-complete new song before his departure, which he and Cope had reworked.
6 on the UK Singles Chart (with the semi-estranged Balfe joining the band to mime trumpet playing during their Top of the Pops appearance).
[5] The band relocated to London to take advantage of their growing success, although by now Cope was retreating into a drugged lifestyle and beginning "a period of unrestrained megalomania.
In March, the band played their first American dates (a time also notable for Cope's meeting with Dorian Beslity, who would later become his second wife).
The tour proved to be a chaotic affair: neither Agius nor Hammer fitted into the group socially and Cope was retreating further into an LSD-fuelled isolation, retaining only Dwyer as trusted companion.
[6] Expectations were high for the band's second album, Wilder, which was recorded in London during November 1981 with a nucleus of Cope, Dwyer, Tate and Balfe.
Creative tensions were high, as Cope wanted to write ballads and quirky pop songs, while Balfe was more interested in recording synth-based music.
Rarely able (or inclined) to add their own contributions, Cope and Dwyer worked off their frustration playing risky, stoned cross-country games with speeding jeeps.
The situation culminated in a notorious (though disputed) event in which an irate Dwyer chased Balfe over the Monmouthshire hillsides with a loaded shotgun.
To Cope's disgust, the band were already committed to a UK tour playing as a guitarless three-piece, with the instrumentation covered mainly by synthesizer and backing tapes.
Cope found the tour "disastrous and demeaning": he performed most of it in a self-destructive sulk, raging at his audience, and quit the group immediately afterwards.
[6][11] In February 1983, Mercury Records released a delayed (and now post-breakup) Teardrop Explodes EP, "You Disappear From View", which included songs salvaged from the aborted third album.
[5] Following the band's dissolution, Julian Cope began a career as a solo artist, writer and cultural commentator which continues to this day.
David Balfe moved into artist management and subsequently set up Food Records, acting as a mentor to bands such as Blur: he quit the music business in 1999.
I'm doing all this stuff to keep myself invigorated every day, hanging out with people I believe are culture heroes, and you think I'm doing all this because it hasn't yet occurred to me to reform The Teardrop Explodes?
The magazine called the band "the great ambassadors of psychedelia in the '80s when the genre was all but dead", and noted their influence on artists such as Blur and Morrissey.
David Balfe, Gary Dwyer and Alan Gill all showed up to accept the award; Julian Cope ultimately refused to attend the ceremony.