Pete Wylie

Pete Wylie
Wylie in the audience at Brady's Club, Liverpool, early 1980s
Background information
Birth name	Peter James Wylie
Born	(1958-03-22) 22 March 1958 (age 58) Liverpool, England, UK
Genres	Post-punk, alternative rock, new wave
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist
Instruments	Guitar
Years active	1977–present
Associated acts	Crucial Three, The Spitfire Boys, Crash Course, Wah! Heat, Wah!, The Mighty Wah!, Shambeko! Say Wah!, Big Hard Excellent Fish, The KLF, The Farm Josie Jones (died 2015)

Peter James "Pete" Wylie (born 22 March 1958) is a British singer/songwriter and guitarist, best known as the leader of the band variously known as Wah!, Wah! Heat, Shambeko! Say Wah!, JF Wah!, The Mighty Wah! and Wah! The Mongrel. He was credited by Melody Maker with coining "rockism".

Wylie was born in Liverpool. He began his career in 1977 with lead vocalist Ian McCulloch and bassist Julian Cope, with whom he formed the band Crucial Three, which lasted from May to June the same year. In September, he and Cope formed a short-lived band alongside Pete Burns, The Mystery Girls.

In December 1977, he joined The Spitfire Boys, who dissolved the same month. Wylie and two of the band, Pete Griffiths and Peter Clarke, formed the same month, The Nova Mob, alongside Julian Cope. The band lasted until May 1978. In August, he joined established local band Crash Course (December 1977 – January 1979) after seeing them supporting Big in Japan at the matinee of their farewell show in Eric's club on the 26th. The revised Crash Course made their first live appearance at Manchester University on 13th October.

On 22nd December 1978, a professional recording of the band performing at Eric's was made for a live EP, to be released on the club's own label, and to follow the Pink Military EP which had also been recorded there. Crash Course disbanded in January 1979 and the record wasn't pressed (the tape subsequently lost). Earlier in December 1978 the band had recorded three tracks at Liverpool's Open Eye demo studios: 'Someone Different' (with which The Glass Torpedoes had a minor hit in mid 1979), 'Tears of a Clown' (the Smokey Robinson song), and 'Look Now'. Shortly after the band's demise the three Open Eye demo tracks were broadcast, in their unmixed form, on BBC radio. One of the last compositions to be rehearsed by Crash Course was the semi instrumental 'Heart Surgery'. A version of this later appeared on the Glass Torpedoes EP.

Active from 1979, Wylie and company garnered critical acclaim throughout 1980 for the singles "Better Scream" and "Seven Minutes to Midnight" (both as Wah! Heat), the latter being single of the week in the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker during spring 1980, and the 1981 Warner Bros. album Nah = Poo! – The Art of Bluff (as Wah!). Their biggest hit single was "The Story of the Blues", which was released in late 1982, and reached number 3 in the UK Singles Chart.