The Associates
The Associates - Billy MacKenzie (most words and all vocals,
eventually everything) and Alan Rankine (most music and all
instruments except drums) - once attempted brilliance, but later
settled for playing at being clever. The Affectionate Punch
boldly tried to stake a claim for some of the no-man's land between Bowie's theatrical, tuneful rock and
Talking Heads' semi-abstract,
intellectual dance approach, with a slight flavoring of the pair's
native Scottish traditional music. Not fully mature, and sometimes
almost burying its own best points, the band seemed a promise of
riches to come.
Unfortunately, the Edinburgh-based duo veered off in a more
art-conscious (at times willfully obscure) direction, with harsh
musical textures often dominating the melodies. Fourth Drawer Down,
a compilation of singles, gave the somewhat redeeming impression of
determined experimentation that was lessened by the exclusion of
certain B-sides in favor of later tracks which revealed MacKenzie's
growing preference for pose over accomplishment.
By Sulk, the talent seemed strained under the weight of
MacKenzie's self-consciousness. Rankine's emphasis on keyboards over
guitar was symptomatic of the defection away from rock and towards a
sort of neo-pop, but the melodies were hindered by tinny sound,
arrangements that muddled rather than clarified and vocal excesses
that made Bowie's worst sound tame. The US edition subtracted three
cuts, inserting instead a pair from Fourth Drawer Down and two
subsequent singles. On the eve of its first major British tour, the
band splintered.
Mackenzie then completed an album with Martin Rushent that WEA
rejected in 1983; some of it emerged two years later on Perhaps,
which sounded like Heaven 17 or The Human League making undanceable
dance music. A surprisingly strong new single, Take Me to the Girl,
emerged later in the year, and (shortly after it flopped) was
re-released on a five-track 10-inch, combined with a remix of
Perhaps and three live cuts recorded in London that found
Mackenzie crooning heartfelt if histrionic versions of songs like
God Bless the Child and The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot.
Four years and another rejected LP (The Glamour Chase)
later, MacKenzie re-emerged with a non-LP EP and, the following year,
a garish Eurodisco album, Wild and Lonely. The five-track
Peel Sessions EP (from April 1981) contained rougher,
rock-oriented versions of 1981-1982 material and would be highly
recommended if it actually included Me, Myself and the Tragic Story
(which was listed) instead of the far inferior Arrogance Gave Him
Up (which wasn't).
Popera compiled nearly all of the essential material
(including a track from The Glamour Chase and a song recorded
with Yello) from The Associates' seemingly deliberate anti-career,
resulting in the group's most satisfying and wildly schizoid release
ever. Upon leaving the band in 1982, Alan Rankine moved to Brussels,
working extensively with Paul Haig and releasing solo albums. She
Loves Me Not, the only one of his efforts to be issued outside of
Belgium, offered clever dance-pop and impressively sung balladry, a
smooth and appealing concoction akin to mid-period Thompson Twins but
dolled up with a bit of continental suaveness.
MacKenzie reconvened The Associates in 1984, but achieved very low
chart entries and a relatively poorly-selling album, Perhaps. A
fifth album - The Glamour Chase - remained unreleased and
MacKenzie was dropped from WEA in 1988. An abortive reunion took place
in 1993, after which MacKenzie retired from the music business for
several years to concentrate on breeding dogs. In 1996 he signed to
the Nude label and made demo's of new material written in
collaboration with Steve Aungle.
Following a bout of depression after his mother's death, Mackenzie
was found dead at his parents' home in January 1997. The
posthumously-released Beyond The Sun contained the new
recordings he had been working on shortly before his death.
| The
Band |
Billy MacKenzie
Vocals |
Alan Rankine
Keyboards, guitar, bass |
|
|
