WELCOME
It’s a much overused adjective, but I can’t think of a better way to describe Billy Mackenzie than ‘inimitable’. A bracingly unique vocalist, who else has fused the influences of Dusty Springfield, Billie Holiday and post-punk to come up with avant-garde pop?
In our expansive cover feature this issue we meet those who worked with Mackenzie down the years to tell the story of The Associates – both before and after they dropped the definite article – and in particular go behind the scenes of their game-changing Sulk album. We speak to Billy’s right-hand man Alan Rankine, bandmate Michael Dempsey and producer Mike Hedges, the latter pithily summing up Mackenzie’s forward-thinking brilliance: “Bill was fanatical about avoiding any well-trodden path.”