Billy Mackenzie - Biography

Biography

Mackenzie was born and grew up in Dundee. As a youngster, he lived in Park Avenue in the Stobswell area and attended St Mary's Forebank Primary School and St Michael's Secondary School. He led a peripatetic lifestyle, decamping to New Zealand at the age of 16, and travelling across America aged 17. Here he married Chloe Dummar. While some say the marriage was made to stave off deportation, Ms. Dummar states the marriage was made for love. Her brother, Melvin Dummar, claimed to be the "one sixteenth" beneficiary of the estate of Howard Hughes, until the case was thrown out in 1978.

He returned to Scotland where he met Alan Rankine and in 1976 formed the Ascorbic Ones. They changed the name to Mental Torture and finally Associates in 1979. Rankine left The Associates in 1982, but Mackenzie continued to work under the name for several years until he began releasing material under his own name in the 1990s. Mackenzie also collaborated with many other artists during his career, including contributions to Swiss duo Yello's One Second album in 1987. Mackenzie provided vocals and wrote lyrics for two tracks on that release, and one of them, "The Rhythm Divine", became a European single when Shirley Bassey was recruited for vocals (Mackenzie's original vocal track was released on the cassette and CD versions of the Associates Popera compilation). He also collaborated with B.E.F. (British Electric Foundation) for their two albums Music of Quality and Distinction Volume I (1982) & Volume II (1991).

Morrissey of The Smiths was said to have written the song William, It Was Really Nothing about Mackenzie, after a brief friendship together.

On 22 January 1997, depression and the death of his mother are believed to have contributed to Mackenzie's suicide. He overdosed on a combination of paracetamol and prescription medication in the garden shed of his father's house in Auchterhouse. He was 39 years old. Now a significant cult figure, much of his musical legacy has been released in the past few years. He was the subject of a biography by Tom Doyle, The Glamour Chase, in 1998.

The Cure song "Cut Here" written by Robert Smith, a friend of Mackenzie, is about the regret Robert felt about seeing MacKenzie a few weeks before his death backstage at a Cure concert and not giving him any of his 'precious time' and fobbing him off. Siouxsie Sioux wrote the song "Say", revealing in the lyrics that they were going to meet just before his death. The song was released as a single in 1999 and charted in the UK Top 75. For her Medúlla album, Björk considered singing a beyond the grave duet with Mackenzie using recordings given to her by his father, but eventually decided against it.

Between 9–27 June 2009, a play entitled Balgay Hill about the story of Mackenzie's life was showing at Dundee Repertory Theatre, in Mackenzie's home town. It tells the story of his life through the eyes of four fictional characters, and the title of the play derives from the name of the Dundee cemetery where the singer was buried.