25 minute read
Steve Aungle on Billy MacKenzie Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
Taxi for the Whippets: Steve Aungle on the Life, Loves and Genius of Billy MacKenzie
Interview by Alice Jones-Rodgers.
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Mention the name Billy MacKenzie and if it triggers any reaction at all, many people will generally remember him as the glamorouslyattired (sometimes in a mac and beret, sometimes in full airline pilot garb), uniquely operatic-voiced gentleman standing centre-stage with The Associates on ‘Top of the Pops’ performing their trio of hits from 1982, ‘Party Fears Two’ (UK#9); ‘Club Country’ (UK#13) and ‘18 Carat Love Affair / Love Hangover’ (UK#21). However, The Associates were just a small part of the Billy MacKenzie story, one that began in earnest with the formation of cabaret duo The Ascorbic Ones with fellow Associate, guitarist and keyboardist Alan Rankine in 1976 and was cut tragically short when on 22nd January 1997, he took his own life in the garden shed of his family’s home in Auchterhouse, Angus, Scotland.
Following Rankine’s decision to leave The Associates in 1982, shortly before a tour in support of that year’s second album, ‘Sulk’ (UK#10), MacKenzie continued to write and record as a solo artist under the band’s name until 1990, releasing two further albums, 1985’s ‘Perhaps’ (UK#23) and 1990’s ‘Wild and Lonely’ (UK#71). In between these two albums, in 1988, he recorded ‘The Glamour Chase’, but as would be the fate of much of the vast amount of solo material he committed to tape between 1982 and 1997, it was shelved and would not see the light of day until after his death.
Somebody who had been watching the ups and downs of MacKenzie’s career very closely was one Steve Aunger, who in 1979 had turned down an audition for the post of The Associates’ drummer in favour of working with a cabaret band. Whilst The Associates were riding high on the crest of a wave of critical and commercial success, Aunger was getting to know MacKenzie’s large Catholic family and eventually began
Steve with Billy in 1994
recording with their eldest son in 1986. A version of one of the two songs that the pair worked on during these sessions, ‘Set Me Up’, would later appear on ‘The Glamour Chase’.
Aunger would get to work with MacKenzie much more in the mid-’90s, a time that judging by the 3CD boxset ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’, set for release on 22nd April by Cherry Red Recordings, was an even more prolific time for MacKenzie than the previous decade. Some of the output from this purple patch may have been released on various posthumous albums such as ‘Beyond the Sun’ (1997); Paul Haig collaboration ‘Memory Palace’ (1999); ‘Eurocentric’ (2001); ‘Auchtermatic’ (2005) and ‘Transmission Impossible’ (2005), but ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’, lovingly curated by Aunger, who also provides some of the incisive sleevenotes, shows them up to be the half-baked, record company money-grabbing exercises that they were. Split into three sections (one per disc) entitled ‘Winter Academy’; ‘Consenting Holograms’ and ‘Liberty Lounge’ and beautifully presented with previously unseen photographs of MacKenzie from the relevant period, ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ truly captures the spirit of a bona fide musical maverick who we lost far too soon.
We recently caught up with Aunger at his home in Berlin to delve deeper into this incredible new release and find out just what it was like to be in the presence of the man, the legend that was Billy MacKenzie ... and, of course, his prize whippets!
Firstly, hello Steve and thank you for agreeing to our interview, it is lovely to speak to you. 22nd April this year sees the release of the 3CD boxset ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ on Cherry Red Recordings, which marks the 25th anniversary of MacKenzie’s
The Associates live in 1980
passing. Before we talk more about this release and your involvement in the recordings featured in the set, we believe that your first encounter with MacKenzie was way back in 1979. How did this first meeting come about and what were your impressions of him at this stage of his career?
Right, well, I literally was a young drummer looking for a band and I put an advert in a local paper in Dundee. I was just looking to make money. I wasn’t really interested in joining a band that was looking for a [record] deal or anything, I was just looking for a cabaret band. You know those bands that play at weddings and stuff? I was very young and saving up for a new drum kit and I got two replies, one from Billy MacKenzie, who at that time had a clothes shop in Dundee called The Crypt and he invited me to come down there and I got another phone call from this cabaret band who could offer me kind of regular work, you know, which is what I was really looking for. So, I went down there to
Mackenzie (left) and Alan Rankine, 1981
meet Billy and I had no idea who he was at this time, because, I mean, at that time, they were just sort of putting together The Associates and he said to me, ‘Do you want to come through to Edinburgh? We’re rehearsing through there’ and I just thought ‘oh ...’ Edinburgh to me was like the end of the world and I said, ‘Edinburgh, that’s way too far! No, I can’t get through to Edinburgh’. I didn’t even have a car at that time, so I just sort of turned him down, you know and said, ‘No, sorry, I’m not interested’ and I joined the other band, you know, sort of playing in bingo halls and working men’s clubs and stuff like that, you know. And then I didn’t really put two and two together until later on and I thought, ‘wait a minute, that was Billy MacKenzie!’ Because, then, literally within about a couple of years, they became really successful and I thought ‘oh, right!’ It wasn’t the best decision! So, we literally just sort of met and then I got to know his brother, John. They were quite a large Catholic family, they were sort of half-Scottish, half-gypsies and I got to know his
brother John and John introduced me to the family, got to know the mother, got on really well with her and then John recommended to Billy that he should do some demos with me and that’s when we started sort of doing work together. That was in 1986. So, there was literally sort of a seven year gap and then we got together and it sort of went on from there.
That 1979 audition turned out to have been a chance to join the newly-formed The Associates with MacKenzie and Alan Rankine, who would go on to achieve great success in the ‘80s with the albums ‘The Affectionate Punch’ (1980) and ‘Sulk’ (1982, UK#10), as well as the compilation ‘Fourth Drawer Down’ (1981) and the 1982 singles ‘Party Fears Two’ (UK#9, ‘Sulk’); ‘Club Country’ (UK#13, ‘Sulk’) and ‘18 Carat Love Affair’ / ‘Love Hangover’ (UK#21). You decided against going to that audition in favour of joining the other band that you just mentioned. Is this a decision that you have regretted over the years?
Not at all, I just didn’t think about it, because I mean, the thing is, we ended up working together anyway and I didn’t think about it. For all I know, I might have gone through to Edinburgh and then failed the audition. Do you know what I mean? It’s not as if he said, ‘Oh, please come and join’ and I said ‘No’, it was like an opportunity to audition, so it might not have worked out anyway. I just sort of believe we’re all fated to go a certain way and I just sort of thought about it that way, I didn’t think for a minute ‘oh, I missed my chance!’ ... I don’t know, to be on ‘Top of the Pops’ or something. So, I never really thought about it that way at all. It’s kind of weird that we did meet up at that point and we got on fine, because he asked me ‘What bands are you listening to?’ and I was listening to, you know, sort of Devo and Talking Heads, you know. He said, ‘Oh, that sounds good’ and he asked me if I could play like a drum machine. He said, ‘We’re looking for a human drum machine’ [laughs]. The drummer they got, actually, John Murphy, was basically a human drum machine! So,
anyway, that’s how it went, but I have no regrets about it at all.
Following MacKenzie and Rankine parting company in 1982, MacKenzie went alone whilst still using for The Associates name for another three albums (‘Perhaps’, 1985, UK#23; ‘The Glamour Chase’, recorded in 1988 but unreleased until 2002 and ‘Wild and Lonely’, 1990, UK#71). During this time, you became friendly with MacKenzie’s family, which culminated in your first recording session with him in 1986 and a version of one of the two resulting songs, ‘Set Me Up’ appeared on ‘The Glamour Chase’ album. How did that 1986 recording session come about and what are your memories of recording with Mackenzie for the first time?
He was very demanding. He was like really in your face, you know, like really demanding, impatient and sort of wanting it all to happen and I was sort of a bit overwhelmed at first. Billy had this way about him which was very
The Associates performing ‘Party Fears Two’ on Top of the Pops, March 1982
intense, but he had a certain charm with it, so I just thought it was quite funny and the recording room that I had in my flat then, it used to be a child’s bedroom and it had this sort of weird, really loud ABC wallpaper! It was a tiny room and Billy was sort of looking at it [laughs] and going, ‘This is like an acid chamber!’ So, it was like this old child’s bedroom where I had all my equipment and like I say, he was very kind of in your face, very intense, very impatient, but it was alright, because he just sort of had a way about it where you just took it because he had a natural charm. And then we went and did ... the two tracks that we demoed, we then demoed again in a studio in Edinburgh a few weeks later.
By this point, MacKenzie had obviously found fame during those early days of the ‘80s. What were your impressions of him at this point of time in comparison to your first meetings with him some years earlier? I happened to notice a certain story about a Rolls Royce?
Billy performing live in Dundee, 1985
Oh yeah, Jimmy [MacKenzie’s younger brother] and the Rolls Royce! [Laughs]. Two pounds! He put two pounds of petrol in a Rolls Royce! In ‘86, at the time of our first recording sessions together, he owned a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. Jimmy, his younger brother, often drove the Rolls around Dundee and I had a few rides in it with eighteen-year-old Jimmy at the wheel. He would constantly open and close the electric windows while driving and it could get quite irritating! I remember on one occasion, we stopped at a service station to get petrol and Jimmy put £2 in the Rolls, much to the astonishment of the attendant! Billy loved his cars and he couldn’t drive and said he was really petrified of driving, because he said ‘I would just crash right away! I would just have this urge to crash into a tree or something’, so he didn’t really want to even try it. He had cars and he got other people to sort of drive him around, in a sort of Pop star fashion!
I remember seeing another story about him being at a record company meeting in Kensington, London at some point in the mid-’80s and asking the label boss for a taxi. He then proceeded to travel by taxi all the way back to Dundee, complete with his prize whippets, who had been residing with him in his hotel room!
Yeah, well, he was a top breeder of whippets! Whippets are like the Usain Bolt’s of the dog world and anyway, he used to race his dogs and he had at least a couple of British champions, so he was quite successful with that. He was very keen, he had kennels and I don’t know how many dogs he had, but he had a lot of dogs and in the end, I kind of thought that was something that he could have done. I mean, Billy could have been a vet. He was great with animals and he loved his dogs. Music and dogs were his two passions and I kind of think that maybe he should have just raced his dogs, but at the same time, he had such a talent, you know, for music and he had to follow that as well. I love all dogs, but I fell in love with that breed, whippets. Each
Billy with one of his many whippets
breed has kind of got its own character, hasn’t it? Whippets never bark and they’re really lazy, they just slob around and then when you get them outside, they go mental, you know, they just run everywhere! They’re great to watch, you know, when they’re running around, but indoors, they just slob out on the sofa and don’t do anything! But I’ve never heard a whippet bark! They just do not bark at all, it’s really weird! They’re very quiet. You may just kind of hear a snuffly noise if they want something, but they never bark. Anyway!
Going back to the recordings featured on the new ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ boxset, as evidenced by the 39-tracks featured across the 3CDs, this time spent making music with MacKenzie was quite prolific, but very little of the resulting tracks were used during his lifetime. The release is split into three separate albums (one per disc): ‘Winter Academy’; ‘Consenting Holograms’ and ‘Liberty Lounge’. Could you tell us a bit about this period of working with MacKenzie and talk us through the recording processes of these three sections of this release?
Yeah, well, okay, so, we’ve ended up compiling the tracks in that way because there’s a huge sort of variation in styles. When me and Billy worked together, we did all sorts of different styles. We did sort of piano ballads and Scott Walker-type torch songs, we did Electronic stuff, we did ‘60s Soul, ‘70s Glam Rock and it was all mixed up and so the two posthumous albums, ‘Beyond the Sun’[1997] and ‘Eurocentric’ [2001] were both a bit like that, they were very kind of jumbled up and I really wanted to re-compile them so that you had an album of tracks that kind of hung together stylistically. So, ‘Winter Academy’, the first one, is mostly unplugged. There is an Electronic ballad right at the end, but it’s mostly kind of unplugged torch songs and then the second album [‘Consenting Holograms’] is all the Electronic stuff and the third album has got the band
based sort of stuff and there’s some ‘60s Soul and some ‘70s Glam Rock on there. And so, we really wanted to sort of compile the tracks and obviously bring in all these new tracks as well, because there’s ... I can’t remember how many new tracks there is, there is at least fourteen or fifteen new tracks, so I put them in the right place and just sort of made it so each album would kind of hang together. And the other thing as well was to get some nice artwork because on all the posthumous releases, the artwork was really terrible! Well, what happened was, in 2005, One Little Indian Records [now renamed One Little Independent Records], they tried to do the same, they released two albums [‘Auchtermatic’ and ‘Transmission Impossible’]. They did these two reissues, which I had nothing to do with and I didn’t even know about them until they came out and they were just really badly done and the artwork was terrible, the compilation of the tracks was terrible and the mixes were terrible and I was just very disappointed that was done kind of behind my back, because it was mostly my work that was on there. And so, we wanted to re-address that part of Billy’s catalogue and get it right, sort of get the tracks properly compiled, get good artwork and you know, I think Cherry Red have done a really great job with the artwork and everything. They’re really good at that and that’s one of the reasons that I went to them. So, it’s really just sort of putting the record straight and making sure that that part of Billy’s catalogue was available and presented as it should have been presented in the first place. I think we’ve kind of achieved that. There’s a few rough demos on there, but that’s really for the fans. There’s three or four rough demos on there, but like I say, you’ve got to think of the fans. And I want to give a shout out to Craig Burton, who is the guy who got in touch with me, because this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for him. This guy, Craig Burton, who’s sort of a Billy MacKenzie aficionado, you know, he’s got all the albums and he’s been involved in other sort of reissues with The Associates material, he got in touch with me and said,
‘Look, you need to sort this out’. Because I had just written off the whole thing, I just thought, ‘right, that’s in the past now, I don’t want to do anything more about it’. So, Craig had got in touch with me and got me motivated and this was last year, about last May or June, and he suggested Cherry Red and I got in touch with them and they got straight back to me! Honestly, it was about five or ten minutes after I sent the email! They were unlike any other record label, ever! They were just so quick! They’re super-efficient and super-quick and I’ve just never really dealt with a label like that. They’re really great to deal with and they’re really sort of on the ball and so I think it was a good choice, you know.
As well as curating ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’, you have also written some of the sleevenotes. How did you find the experience of revisiting the recordings featured on this release all these years later?
I think the main thing for me, the main buzz was finding these new tracks. Now, a the beginning of the third CD [‘Liberty Lounge’], there’s three tracks [‘Tomorrow People’; ‘The Mountains That You Climb’ and ‘McArthur’s Son’] which are brand new, they’ve never been heard. They’re kind of like ‘60s Soul type tracks and I had to get back together with these two colleagues of mine, they’re called White Label. I’m not really involved with them so much, but White Label are a kind of remix outfit. I worked with them for three years and we did three remixes for Paul Weller and then they got more involved with him and ended up co-writing with him and that was the point as which I was no longer involved. So, it got back me back working with them again, that was nice. As far as all the old tracks go, I kind of feel a bit neutral about them because I’ve heard them millions of times and it’s just sort of like, you know, trying to figure out running orders and stuff like that. But really, on the new material, digging out old recordings because on some of them, we had to literally build them up from scratch, you know, so we
just had the vocal to work with. So, we basically just had the vocal with a click-track and literally build the whole thing around it. That’s what we did with a few of the newer tracks and the first track on the third album, ‘Tomorrow People’, I think we’re going to try and push for that to be a single hopefully. That turned out really, really well and we built it from scratch, you know. We just had the voice and we had to put the music around it. So, that the main satisfaction for me, getting the new tracks sorted out and especially that one, ‘Tomorrow People’, that’s just great, I’m so pleased with that.
That song has come out really well.
That’s it and it’s got lyrics that are very relevant to what’s going on as well. It’s optimistic, isn’t it and [laughs] you’ve got to be optimistic! So, yeah, the main headache with it was the legal stuff because, at the start, we couldn’t get the clearance from One Little Indian, because they owned the rights on ‘Beyond the Sun’ [posthumous 1997 album]. Well, they thought they did, but their license ran out ages ago and they were claiming that they still owned it. The license that they owned on the album ran out in 2007 and we had the paperwork to prove it, but they kept saying ‘No, no, no, we own it’ and stuff and so, we had to get a lawyer involved and that dragged on for about three or four months back and forth, but we finally got that sorted out. But then, they had the cheek to come at me and say ‘Well, come and work with us, we’ll do it your way and we’ll release it for you’ and I said ‘No chance, you’ve just been absolute bastards about this, I don’t want to work with you! The two releases you did before were an absolute disaster, I’m not going to work with you!’ [Laughs] But anyway, we got all the legalities sorted out and that was a bit of a headache, because the whole process started at the beginning of May last year and now it’s coming out in April, so it’s been a while! I’m sort of pleased to have got it done and hopefully we’ll get some new Billy MacKenzie fans, you know.
It is about time.
Well, hopefully we’ll get some younger people into him, because lots of people who are younger have not even heard the name of course.
It seems strange to us, but you’re right, there must be so many people who have never heard of him, so that is good. Are there any still unheard recordings from those few years that you chose not to include on ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ and do you think they might see the light of day at some point in the future?
I think there will be, because Billy’s sister, Helen, has got a trunk in her house that’s full of old tapes and no one’s ever been through them. There’s old cassettes and all sorts of old stuff. There’s all these cassettes in this trunk and we feel that there’s probably going to be a load of material to be dug out of that. The thing is, there are other albums from the ‘90s that need to be reissued as well, which are very hard to get hold of now. There’s the album called ‘The Glamour Chase’ [recorded in 1988 under the name The Associates, but unreleased until 2002], there’s ‘Outernational’ [1992] and there’s one called ‘Wild and Lonely’ [The Associates, 1990], so Craig’s talking about ... we call him the keeper, because he’s the keeper of the flame ... he’s talking about doing the same idea again where you basically reissue a couple of albums and then add a load of extra tracks, depending on what we can find in this trunk, because there’s all these tapes that have been sitting there all that time. Because even out of the stuff that me and Billy did, there’s still tracks that got lost, because Billy lost tracks all the time. So, what would happen was, we would go and record stuff and I would ask the engineer to give us a safety copy, he [Billy] would take the original master and lose it and then say ‘Can I borrow the safety copy?’ And I would say, ‘Well, Billy, you mustn’t lose this because this is the safety copy’, but then he’d go and lose that! He’d go and leave it in a taxi or something! [Laughs]. And so, there
were tracks that got lost, that I don’t have. I can sort of remember some of them, but I don’t have any versions of them because Billy was always losing the tapes! So, hopefully, some of those tapes will be found in this trunk at his sister’s. That’s the hope anyway. We’ll see and I’m optimistic because he was insanely productive and what he used to do as well is, he would phone people up from a phone box near the house where he lived out in the countryside ... he didn’t have a phone in the house ... and what he used to do is, he used to phone up various friends, if he had an idea for something, and just leave a vocal on their answering machine and he’d use them as means of storing his ideas, because he didn’t have any way of doing it at home. So, you’d go out and you’d come in and there would be a message from Billy and it would just be him singing! He wouldn’t actually say anything, he would just start singing! You would be like ‘What’s this?’ and you would speak to him later and he would be like, ‘Oh, I just needed to get that down!’ [Laughs] So, he just used other people’s answering machines to put his ideas down. So, in the end, I think they will discover some new material in that trunk, I’m pretty optimistic about that. So, we’ll see.
Finally, MacKenzie sadly left us on 22nd January 1997 at the age of just 39 after overdosing on a combination of paracetamol and prescription medication in his father’s garden shed in Auchterhouse, Angus. There have been several posthumous releases, including ‘Beyond The Sun’ (1997); ‘Memory Palace (with Paul Haig, 1999); ‘Eurocentric’ (2001); ‘Auchtermatic’ (2004); ‘Transmission Impossible’ (2005) and obviously, the long awaited release of ‘The Glamour Chase’ in 2002 and now obviously, there is the release of ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’. A quarter of a century after MacKenzie left us, what do you feel his legacy has been thus far?
I think most people concentrate on ... anyone that knows him, they just really know about The Associates’ work and
not so much his later catalogue, so his solo work isn’t really ... even people who are old enough to remember it, there are people who maybe just know about The Associates because that was when he had his hits. I think that his versatility was shown much more as he got older. Because, initially, I know with The Associates stuff, he did that kind of operatic thing, he was like Maria Callas on steroids, but what happened later on was he kind of toned it down and got a lot more delicacy into his voice. He was incredibly versatile and he could do anything with his voice and I think that versatility was more obvious later on his career, you know, with the stuff that we did. So, I think, and I know I’m biased, but I do think he’s one of the most important male vocalists, you know, of the Twentieth Century. His instrument was insane. You know, and he had a rang of about four-and-a-half octaves. Unbelievable. And not only that, but his harmonics and his high range were really rich. Because, normally what happens with the voice is that when it gets up high, it gets thin and nasal, but Billy’s voice was always rich and had rich harmonics in it. So, I just think he’s really up there with anyone you could really think of in terms of male vocalists of the Twentieth Century. I think that he does deserve more recognition just because he was that good. You know, he really was that good. You know, I got spoiled, I used to hear him sing in the same room, but what an incredible instrument he had. Maybe this [‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’] will help.
Thank you for a wonderful interview, it has been lovely to talk to you. We wish you all the best with ‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ and for the future.
‘Billy MacKenzie: Satellite Life Recordings 1995-1996’ is released by Cherry Red Recordings on 22nd April.
