A Shallow Madness featured the original The Teardrop Explodes line up of Julian Cope, Paul Simpson, Dave Pickett, Mick Finkler plus Ian McCulloch. McCulloch's non-attendance at rehearsals led to Cope taking over vocals and thus The Teardrop Explodes was born; Mac went on to form Echo and the Bunnymen. Prior to this band, Cope and Mac had been members of The Crucial Three with Pete Wylie.

There is a recording of the band performing the song "Books" (included on Zoology anthology) which was co-written by Cope and McCulloch. The song was later recorded by The Teardrop Explodes (the b-side of "Reward"), Echo & the Bunnymen (as "Read It in Books" on the b-side of their first single "The Pictures On My Wall"), and Julian Cope solo (on the "Charlotte Anne" CD single). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.