New Wave Complex

 

 

 

The Associates

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The Book Launch


Glasgow Waterstones bookshop, 31 July 1998, was the setting for both the launch of Tom Doyle's biography of Billy MacKenzie and a semi-formal panel based discussion of The Associates' Sulk. BBC Radio 5 were there to record it [I don't yet know if they have or will air it]. On the panel were: journalists Simon Frith and Tom Doyle, Allan Campbell [The Associates' promoter from the early days] and last, but most certainly not least, Alan Rankine and Mike Dempsey. I'm just going to outline a few points that came up which might be of interest, and haven't surfaced elsewhere like in the book. I've left what is probably the best news till last.

There was a fairly mixed crowd in terms of gender, nationality, age, distance travelled to be there and there were quite a lot of people - at least 50 - which surprised Alan and Mike, given the nature of the event. The two basically carried the whole thing between them although Simon Frith was nominally chairing.

There was quite a lot of audience participation in terms of questions and comments, generally along the lines of what you might expect, such as reissues, 'is Sulk a millstone around your neck?', no really nasty hecklers though [we may be mad but at least we're fairly polite!]. There are also some things included here that were discussed later at the bar!

Were there any high jinks? Well, nobody thought to bring any whippets with them, so we couldn't enjoy the destruction of Waterstones, and apart from a fashionably late arrival by the panel, nothing odd happened, apart from at the bar afterwards which found Mike Dempsey defending Status Quo [don't ask] and Alan Rankine saying that their cover of Boys Keep Swinging was "Pants!" then trying to sell us a copy....he said that the launch would never have worked/happened if Billy had been there as he'd just have wanted to take the piss.

On Sulk

Simon Frith began proceedings by reading his own, positive, Sunday Times review from 1982, a recent comment by Paul Lester on how terrible it is that you can't get a copy of Sulk on CD and comparing that with the [alleged] 'US view' of the group as exemplified by the Trouserpress Guide [with it's pretty harsh 'shallow, callow poseur' / 'music for emotional infants' motif] he said it was reassuring that the Americans didn't 'get it'. It was more or less pointed out that due to the split the group had never really got to the stage of being launched in the US, in any case, Seymour Stein from Warners in the US had seen fit to offer them a $2m US deal and he had been successful in launching many groups there.

The influence of Sulk was addressed by Alan, briefly, in response to a question from the floor. He said that Hedges had used a lot of the same techniques on 'The Sound of McAlmont & Butler'. He was asked if they had ever played the Sulk material live and how many copies of it had been sold. He had been quoted sales of 100,000 in respect of the album and in respect of live playing, the 1980 tour comprised mostly Sulk songs, played by the foursome. They said [to paraphrase] in response to questions that they weren't particularly worried about not going farther with The Associates, or unhappy about people focusing on Sulk, they'd managed to get their albums out whereas a lot of bands never even get that far.

One opinion from the floor was that the standard of lyrics dropped between Punch and Sulk due to them being more oblique [what about Lewis Carrol: "Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and jimble in the wabe.." etc. - was he a crap poet/author? -ed] but the two pointed out that those songs were written at what was essentially the same time. Someone on the panel mentioned that 'Breathless beauxillous griffin' was about Sean Connery. They were asked if any videos were made to promote Sulk, Alan said that the nearest they got to such a thing was French TV filming them walking some of Billy's whippets on a rooftop.

More technical aspects were discussed; the group had no access to samplers as a group might today, so they would programme the drum machine for a 5 minute stint and layer more sounds on top of that in real time, for instance, the coughing on Q Quarters [according to Mike D this was simply because it suited the rhythm of the song], they did everything to make the music sound as unusual as possible, including soaking a block of marble in water and bouncing a beach ball off it. Billy and Alan disliked tom-toms, so John Murphy would find himself with a set up consisting solely of snare drums, so that however hard or in whatever direction he hit, he'd never get that kind of sound. Another set up they'd tried was a hi-hat with three cymbals underneath. Mike Dempsey was asked if he found the bassline to Club Country difficult to play, as it happened the bass part was partly played by Mike and partly by Alan. Alan Rankine - "One of the best things was the vocal to Love Hangover, we had two mics one for Billy and one

They said that when they were on TOTP, which was every second week as you weren't allowed on two weeks in a row, you'd see the same bands 'Oh there's Depeche Mode again' yet the bands didn't talk to one another. There was no clear explanation for this, Alan said 'I met Martin Fry last year and he was OK'.

WEA's changing attitude to Billy was discussed: people in the record industry are always looking out for the next promotion and are constantly moving on/up and being replaced, so that musicians can find themselves isolated in the way that Billy did, and out of favour with the new boss. Mike said he heard Perhaps at an early stage when it was orchestrally arranged and sounded great. AR's favourite track from Perhaps is the title track followed by 'The Best of You'. Mike said he was currently writing music for cartoons on Nickelodeon.

Alan's solo career: "Somehow I managed to convince some record companies that I could sing!" People on the floor thought he might have gone on a Barry Adamson route [surely he did?!]. Later on we asked Alan about his general career moves - It sounded like he'd produced every obscure person in the book, currently though he was writing songs with boy bands including 911 - "Pure pop, totally different from the Associates", he said that priorities change from when you're 20 "A song he'd written, 'Don't make me wait' appeared on about 20 compilation albums in 97.

On Fourth Drawer Down

The school of thought that prefers Fourth Drawer Down voiced itself from the floor. AR said something to the effect that the tracks sounded like they did because they were being recorded at 5am. There was no lyric sheet, not because they wanted to frustrate us all, but because they'd have lost royalties by incurring the cost.

On The Affectionate Punch

The sleeve was in almost-monochrome to stop costs eating into royalties, but the blue lettering did this anyway. According to Alan, Fiction say they have lost the masters of the original version of The Affectionate Punch. A bunch of us discussed the CD reissue with Alan after the event proper. It appears that the CD was supposed to be the remix but Fiction appear to have put in '82 out-takes instead of some of the versions that actually came out in '82, presumably due to losing them.

Mike Dempsey on the change from being in The Cure to being in The Associates: "It was like going from the British army in 1945 to the US army: you had better uniforms and more fun." Who is the third person on the Radio One Sessions Sleeve? "It's me!" MD

Whatever happened to John Murphy? They thought he might be working in Melbourne, possibly for Australian radio.

The Glamour Chase [Book]

Tom said that it had sold 1600 in the 1st week, reviews have been very good overall with only the Times on Saturday breaking the trend [So he needn't worry, as no-one will have read it except the cuttings agencies! - ed] The Scotsman's Saturday magazine published lengthy extracts and put a picture of Billy with whippets on the front.

On Craig Burton's fanzine operations:

Be patient! and if anybody hasn't got in touch yet, do, with SAE. If you've any opinions on price, format, content etc., voice them to him, given the circumstances, he reckons it ought to be done properly. He doesn't favour the cheapo photocopy solution. [It's not easy getting this kind of thing together, so chill. Remember that if you're not in the UK that you can send a couple of International Reply Coupons which cost the equivalent of 60 pence sterling each and can be exchanged for air mail stamps at a post office in any country.]

On reissues

Alan says that since they own the relevant rights [due to the reversion clause in the Beggars Banquet/ WEA contract which brought the rights in the recording etc. back to the musicians after a period of years] they and presumably Billy's family, made an agreement with V2 that night after the book launch and, subject to contract, at least the Associates' albums he was involved with will be reissued before the end of the year. There are also ideas in the pipeline about putting out unissued material from all periods & possibly remixes.

Thank yous to: Darren Keeping [the man who got an ex member of The Cure to defend Status Quo], Lynsey [photos and B&B;], Graeme 'Memory man' Melville and to my pen and paper for finding their way into my bag before I went to the launch.

 



Introduction

Discography


The other Associates site.



A Billy Mackenzie site


Billy MacKenzie Nude Site


New Wave Complex

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The Associates
Created: 16/10/96
Modified: 14/2/00
Maintained by:
Ashley Fletcher