Why an under-appreciated British singer deserves to be mentioned in the same reverential whispers as past legends, inter and Outernational.
Billy Mackenzie.
The name alone will bring memories to some of The Associates all to fleeting spell in the spotlight of pop music's history, whilst to others it will be met with a simple shrug of the shoulders and a quizzical "Who?". Dundee's Billy Mackenzie was a singer blessed with an astonishing vocal range and a gift for writing songs that could stab at the most stoic of hearts. His oh-too simplistic history is that with Alan Rankine, Mackenzie created sparkling songs that exploded onto the music scene in the early eighties before their all too inevitable implosion and then not much else. Oh, and he owned whippets.
The enduring myth of Mackenzie sees him painted as a complicated soul, suffering from bouts of insecurity, anxiety and stage fright and further portrayed as a singer whose approach was scatty, unfocused and as being heavily reliant on others to function as an artist. His post-Rankine career with different versions of The Associates and then as a solo artist is seen as a disappointment and the common perception is that he continued to plough an idiosyncratic furrow that bore little by way of glittering prizes.
This is plain wrong.
Listening to Mackenzie today, freed from the historical baggage, freed from the various trends that paralleled his endeavours, and free from his tragic end, the music he left us with illustrates that he was a distinctly under-appreciated and uniquely brilliant singer/songwriter.
A number of modern pop and indie artists are quick to profess their admiration of Scott Walker, knowing that there is a sunglasses shaded aura of cool attached to the reclusive American whose post-Walker Brothers years were belatedly recognised as delivering consistently great art. That 'aura of cool' is absent from any appraisal of the often flamboyantly dressed and garrulous Billy Mackenzie and yet his post The Associates output is at least a match for Walker's, delivered with an astonishing emotional and vocal range that matches and at times surpasses those of his fellow musical explorer. There me be less of a back catalogue (Walker lived for 29 years more than Billy), but if we forget the personalities, the stories, the myths and examine Billy Mackenzie's art solely on his body of work, it can be claimed that his is a back catalogue as sonically rich as the much lauded Walker's. Whilst he may not have tried to, for instance, write from the perspective of an executioner (a la Walker's mesmerising The Electrician) the brooding majesty of his latter work is a match for much of Mr Engel's output. Compilations, 'Best Ofs and 'Greatest Hits' on various labels (now sadly mostly out of circulation - like I said, underappreciated) have also worked against a fair assessment of his development, because some of his most rewarding work could best be described as 'album tracks'. It is for that reason we need to mine the less obvious nooks and crannies of the music Billy Mackenzie created, where the gems to be found are majestic.
The Associates' Logan Time from The Affectionate Punch (what a great title) is one such early gem and a signpost as to the unique direction in which Mackenzie was heading, as it melds pop and post-punk with a vocal delivery that cautiously dabs at the heart. Party Fears Two from the same album contains the ear catching jangle that precursors the delivery that Johnny Marr flew with in The Smiths, and it allows Mackenzie to explore his idiosyncratic range with some admittedly baffling lyrics. It was a quite unique offering in 1980, containing elements of both new wave and conventional pop. With a future of seventeen years yet to come, it is a sad detail that it is the song that most people remember Mackenzie for. Love Hangover from 1982's Sulk begins like fellow Scots Simple Minds' Promised You a Miracle (also 1982) and with stabs of "Don't Need it" that sound like Heaven 17 (members of whom McKenzie would later collaborate with) it positively grooves along on a hi energy dance beat with Billy's vocal soaring in places. Nude Spoons does the same with its intriguingly strange words. Both songs are examples of The Associates tapping into the zeitgeist with the added heavy artillery of Mackenzie's vaulting vocals.
When Alan Rankine and Michael Dempsey left the band, Mackenzie retained The Associates name for what was in essence a solo project. Steve Reid and Howard Hughes now provided the backing for 1985's Perhaps which kept much of The Associates trademark sound whilst betraying a less exuberant, more understated delivery as evidenced with the opening, gorgeously bruised vocal of Those First Impressions, and the single Waiting for the Loveboat. At this point in time, a high energy sound was dominating the charts with the emergence of Liverpool's Frankie Goes to Hollywood, just at a point when McKenzie seemed to be moving away from it and exploring different avenues. Side two opens with a signpost to the future direction that Mackenzie was heading towards with the astonishing jazz inflected vocals and swoon-some strings of Breakfast. At the same time Mackenzie's lyrics were becoming increasingly poetic -"So precious is the jagged crown/Talk to me I'll stay these vagabond nights" and "breakfast skies bring curtains down". Billy had grown up and was starting to move away from his previous incarnation and taking his first steps towards Scott Walker - the solo years territory. The vibrant The Best of You, a duet of sorts with pre-Perfect Edie Reader is a schizophrenic romp that seems to be internally wondering what it wants to be, as if trying to decide between the old and the new. 1985's Take Me to the Girl is reminiscent of The Associates earlier days and is perhaps his last contribution to the The Associates sound of yore. 1988's The Glamour Chase was a patchy affair which might be the reason WEA chose not to release it but when it finally saw the light of day it contained two bona-fide high watermark vocals from Mackenzie. On the Orbison/Blue Velvet hinting Because You Love he reaches a spectacular crescendo of unrequited ardour and The Rhythm Divine, with it's striking Yello assisted arrangement sees Billy attain a vocal peak that it can be argued that Bond movie chanteuse of choice, Shirley Bassey, struggled to match in her own chart version. For the casual listener this is often viewed as McKenzie's last truly great moment and yet there was still so much more to come. For instance You'd Be The One is another creation that would not have been out of place in a James Bond movie without quite capturing the full drama of The Rhythm Divine. Rumours abounded that he would cut up to forty takes of a song such was his insecurity on having to release a song, or could it be that he was simply seeking perfection?
At this juncture it is worth noting that Mackenzie wrote his own songs and arranged many of them, something he really does not get enough credit for. There are contribution from others, but Billy most definitely had an artistic vision and whilst others assisted him in that realisation, it was his vision. From this point in Mackenzie's life he definitively lets his voice do the talking and his output moves into more controlled, sophisticated and rewarding territory.
Just Can't Say Goodbye from the final The Associates album, 1990's Wild and Lonely sparkles with Mackenzie's voice sounding as splendid as ever (the intro sounds very much like that of Morrissey's Life Is A Pigsty - has the Jane Stein theft been forgiven...well, I wonder?) and the evocative Strasbourg Square equally hears Billy stretching for and achieving baleful beauty, but by now The Associates were very much yesterday's heroes as Madchester was flexing its muscles and in the same manner as when punk arrived on the scene, Mackenzie's music was seen as seriously out of step with the prevailing hedonistic output.
Now releasing music under his own name, Mackenzie's Outernational in 1992 sees the Scott Walker comparison making even more sense with a torch-bearing, slow burning approach exemplified in Baby which for the first time hears a crack in his vocals as he strives for the upper echelon. In Windows All restores the natural order with a gorgeous and moving Boris Blank (Yello) orchestrated accompaniment and wonderful contemplative lyrics "When biting winds blow/and you're slowly turning into that wind/That bully of nature/We're all in this swim for lesser or greater".
Sadly, Mackenzie was no longer with us by the release of 1997's Beyond the Sun having tragically taken his own life earlier that year. It is made even sadder by the prospect that he may have finally been about to get the respect he deserved. Highlights of the posthumous release include the menacing Give Me Time which despite it's quality again hints that the voice is not quite the instrument of glory it once was, but that fear is soon put to bed again. The plaintive Winter Academy is astonishing and the dark undercurrents that were always in his sound as far back as The Associates days are laid bare with a vocal that resembles Billie Holiday in places, and it is heartbreakingly magnificent. Similarly, Blue evidences his increasingly mature sound whilst At The Edge of the World has an unsettling hypnotic repetition that keeps the listener rapt. Meanwhile And This She Knows contains lyrics that defiantly claim "They may pass you by/Look straight through your eyes/But you wouldn't change". It has taken the passage of time to prove him correct not to have changed. Nocturne VII closes the album, ending itself with a mind blowing arrangement of celestial, spiralling, heavenly cries.
More releases followed Mackenzie's death but these were not merely cash-ins since they contained some valuable songs delivered with Billy's trademark care and beauty. From 2001's , Eurocentric, The Soul That Sighs contains lyrics that are slight but tragically prescient;
You've silenced me, I hope you change
But fuller kisses have a way that can't explain
So here we are with the soul that sighs
In the soul that lost its words
Who is that stranger in your voice
Who drives unconscious to the sea?
Who is that stranger in your voice?
Is it someone here with me?
You've silenced me..."
From the same album Wild is the Wind is utterly gut wrenching, whilst the vocal on Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth would not be out of place on a Jeff Buckley album.
There is a sense with 2004's Auchtermatic that the final depths of Mackenzie's remaining vocals were being plumbed and yet the cinematic (little surprise with Barry Adamson in tow) Achieved In the Valley of Dolls is a rewarding listen whilst Norma Jean hints at the early gestation of The Rhythm Divine. Finally, Billy's collaboration with Apollo 440, the devastating Pain in Any Language was the last song he ever recorded and hearing his voice sounding so splendid is tragic because it suggests that he would have conjured up many more works of magical splendour for us to get lost in.
There are other recordings out in the ether that are worth tracking down (such as his cover of Randy Newman's Baltimore) and Billy's version of It's Over, but herein lies another tragedy besides the obvious one of Mackenzie's own demise. A lot of Billy Mackenzie's back catalogue is difficult to track down and/or no longer available*, and yet to fully understand Billy Mackenzie the artist his back catalogue needs to be listened to chronologically and only then can the journey of his songwriting, and the development of his unparalleled voice be properly assessed. If the various record companies and individuals could get together and release a box set of his work I don't doubt that Mackenzie's fruitful work would be better understood and he could then take his rightful place as a revered artist in the pop canon. America has Scott Walker, Jeff Buckley and Billie Holiday. We have Billy Mackenzie.
He was that good.
*most of the songs mentioned are on YouTube in various forms as is his 1985 concert at Ronnie Scotts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lw-r7CIqZY
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