His father, Charles, was originally from Birmingham, but moved south to take a student gardeners’ course at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and later became a park superintendent. Newman was born in Isleworth, Middlesex, and grew up in Hounslow. In 1971 they supported Deep Purple again on British and Scandinavian tours, but broke up in April that year. It reached No 163 in the US and made no impression at all in Britain, though is now considered a neglected classic. The group’s sole album, Hollywood Dream, was released in October 1970. However, a second single, Accidents, did not appear until May 1970 and barely made the UK Top 50. The band (augmented by the bass player Jim Pitman-Avory and McCulloch’s elder brother, Jack, on drums) supported Deep Purple on a 1969 British tour. The song has enjoyed immortality thanks to its repeated use in movies that include The Magic Christian (1969), The Strawberry Statement (1970), Kingpin (1996), Almost Famous (2000) and The Girl Next Door (2004), and in commercials for TalkTalk, Coca-Cola and British Airways. “I think there was destiny behind it to some extent.” “It just happened to be the right moment for that particular song,” Newman reflected later. The song rushed to the top of the UK charts and stayed there for three weeks. A gently euphoric anthem to the prevailing mood of social and political change, it somehow found room for Newman’s jazzy piano solo, a mix of honky-tonk and boogie-woogie styles incorporating crafty rhythmic shifts. Something in the Air was released as a single in May 1969.
At the time, Newman was a telephone engineer for the General Post Office, but subsequently quit to be in the group. Thundercap Newman performing Something in the Airĭuring recording sessions at IBC Studios in Portland Place, central London, around Christmas in 1968, with Townshend producing and playing the bass under the pseudonym Bijou Drains, they recorded basic tracks for Something in the Air, Accidents and Wilhelmina.
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