Hollywood Dream, the Thunderclap Newman Story: Pete Townshend, a Band of Outsiders, and the Birth of British Indie Music

"We were the best worst band. We died but we died in style." — Speedy Keane. Thunderclap Newman's debut single rocketed to number one in the U.K. charts in the summer of 1969, displacing The Beatles and holding Elvis Presley from reaching the top spot. ‘Something In The Air’, number one during the moon landing, was a generation-defining hit, selling a million copies by the end of 1969. It was featured in the soundtrack of films The Magic Christian, The Strawberry Statement, Kingpin and Almost Famous among many others, and has been covered dozens of times, including by such luminaries as Eurythmics and Tom Petty. Thunderclap Newman was the brainchild of Pete Townshend, who not only assembled the group but played bass, engineered and produced their recordings in his tiny home studio, the first non-demo recordings to be made there. About the band and the session, Townshend said, “Thunderclap Newman were my invention and my most enjoyable recording session, better than any Who session for me, and as far as I know my only genuine Number One in any role at all in the business.”  Townshend provided a wealth of information for the book and wrote the foreword.

Hollywood Dream, The Thunderclap Newman Story is the unlikely story of how a lanky, tightly wound ex-convict hippie truck driver/drummer, a tiny 15-year-old Scottish wunderkind guitarist and an eccentric, bearded, bespectacled telephone engineer / ragtime jazz pianist somehow joined forces under the watchful eye of The Who’s Pete Townshend to create a smash hit back in the summer of 1969 which continues to resonate to this day. Thunderclap Newman was a group of three strikingly dissimilar individuals which had every reason to fail spectacularly; and in short order, it did. But first, the members of Thunderclap Newman somehow formed a tenuous musical bond out of which burst a top selling, iconic single and a  memorable album: Hollywood Dream, a collection of songs of love, wonder and breathless yearning which Rolling Stone called “unremittingly delightful”.