Andy "Thunderclap" Newman, who has died aged 73, was a jazz pianist and founder member of Thunderclap Newman, a cobbled together session band whose anthemic Something in the Air was the surprise hit of the summer of 1969.

The band, who went by Newman’s school nickname, was formed by Pete Townshend, guitarist with The Who, and the music impresario Kit Lambert to demo tracks written by the singer/drummer John “Speedy” Keen, Townshend’s occasional chauffeur.

Townshend recruited Newman, a pipe-smoking GPO telephone engineer whom he had known at art school, to play keyboards and Jimmy McCulloch, a 15-year-old Glaswegian guitarist, who later played in Paul McCartney’s Wings. Townshend himself played bass, under the name Bijou Drains, on their only album, Hollywood Dream.

Performing in a trilby, spectacles, braces and bow tie, the bearded Newman provided a dapper counterpoint to his younger long-haired bandmates. He looked like a professor taking his students on a class outing. On his barrelhouse piano, however, he delivered a stomping Dixieland bridge for Something in the Air that blended perfectly with his bandmates’ psychedelic rock.

The song, with Keen’s lyrics, chimed with the rebellious mood of the time : “Call out the instigator/ Because there’s something in the air/ We’ve got to get together sooner or later/ Because the revolution’s here ...”

In July 1969 the song went to Number One in the British charts where it remained for three weeks. “To us it was absolute bedlam,” recalled Newman. “People would come up to me as though I was the person who knew how to pull hits out of the stratosphere.”

It was, however, their only successful single and the band split up two years later. Although, as one critic noted, “if you are going to be a one-hit wonder, you might as well be remembered for something as wonderful as Something in the Air.

Andrew Laurence Newman was born on November 21 1942 in Hounslow, west London,  and taught himself the piano by watching his father, a gardener, play at home. At Bulstrode secondary school his classmates nicknamed him Thunderclap. “They thought the rather clumsy style I played on the piano was reminiscent of a lightning bolt,” he recalled.

He met Townshend in the early 1960s at Ealing Art College where there was a vibrant music scene. Newman subsequently joined the GPO.

When Townshend contacted him in 1968 it was initially to create a soundtrack to a proposed film; while that did not happen a band was formed out of the sessions. 

In addition to playing piano on Hollywood Dream, Newman also played saxophone and clarinet and sang lead vocals on the track Wilhelmina. During the record’s production Newman was still working as a telephone engineer. “I have to confess that I did Something in the Air in the firm’s time,” he said. 

Thunderclap Newman toured with Deep Purple and Leon Russell before disbanding in 1971. 

Described by fellow musicians as a quiet, erudite and private man, Newman subsequently released a solo album, Rainbow (1971), and recorded with Roger Ruskin Spear, who had attended Ealing Art College, before joining the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. In later years he worked as an electrician and campaigned on behalf of the housing cooperative in Clapham where he lived.

 Meanwhile, Something in the Air has  been used on numerous television advertisements and film soundtracks and been covered by  many other bands including the Eurythmics.

In 2010 Newman toured with a new Thunderclap Newman line-up including   Pete Townshend’s nephew, Josh Townshend, as the band’s singer.  They  played the Isle of Wight Festival and London’s 100 Club – with Newman still sporting a variety of hats – and released the live album Beyond Hollywood.

Newman is survived by a brother.

Andy “Thunderclap” Newman, born November 21 1942, died March 20 2016