Music From A Universe That Remains Undiscovered

I’ve always wanted to write something substantial about music in the late 70s/ early 80s. About the music I grew up with through my adolescence and early adult life. About what made it great and about some defined events that changed the way that music sounded and developed. Societal factors. The arrival of digital technology. Drugs. Things that killed off the music I loved and altered the creative process.

In an alternate reality I take the time and effort to hone out my thesis. I interview the musicians and producers that were there when this all happened. It makes for an interesting book and maybe Penguin or Faber or some such marque publisher agrees to publish it.

But this is not that reality. I am not that person. And all the key people from that era keep dying, until eventually there will be no one left to talk to. I’ve already written on here about Echo & The Bunnymen. And I’ve written about Mark Hollis and Talk Talk. Now I’m going to write some words about The Associates, one of the single most important bands for me. And eventually I will tie all these pieces (and more I still need to write) together and make some attempt at explaining my thesis. It’s the best I can do, but it’s better than nothing.

And there probably never was a book in it. And I was never going to write it, I was always just going to imagine how I would write it. So you take what you can, while you’re still able to.

But that’s more than enough intro. Let’s get to the heart of the matter.

The Associates are two guys. Billy Mackenzie and Alan Rankine. They’re from Scotland. Billy has an amazing voice. Alan is a talented guitarist, but he can play pretty much any instrument he picks up. There’s an origin story and all the detailed biographic stuff which you can go read elsewhere.

The first record The Associates release is a cover version of a David Bowie song. Boys Keep Swinging. It’s only just been a hit for Bowie himself, so it seems like a bold (or stupid) idea for a completely unknown band to be putting this out as their first release. But it gets them noticed. And The Associates turn out to be a band that once you notice them, they stay noticed. Billy is a larger than life character. And he has that amazing voice.

They get signed to an indie label. They make an album. The album is fine, but it’s nothing special. We do not need to pick the bones of this album for now.

Where The Associates become important is after this. They’re looking for a better record deal. They’ve left Scotland and they’re in London now. Rival record companies are offering money to sign them. They use this money to buy cheap studio time (overnight) and start to record a series of singles. This is 1981. The original plan is to record and release 10 singles in six months. In the end this turns out to be only six.

These singles are astonishing. Fuelled by the late hours, a shed load of stimulants and a rampant desire to experiment with whatever equipment came to hand, The Associates moved up several gears from that debut album. You can find these songs, plus a couple of the B sides on the second Associates album – Fourth Drawer Down. I won’t describe those singles, because as we know, trying to describe music with words doesn’t really work.

The Associates eventually sign to WEA. Now they are in the big time. Backed by a budget and a top name producer (Mike Hedges) they make their masterpiece. Sulk comes wrapped in an opulent cover sleeve. Billy and Alan look amazing. The record is amazing. It doesn’t sound like anything else. Of course there’s a hint of Bowie – that’s always been there from that original cover that launched them to the world. And Billy’s voice has some similarities in its range to that of Russell Mael from Sparks – another band that the Associates owe some debt to (and are more than happy to acknowledge).

But Sulk is something else. The lyrics are dense, strange, surreal, often irreverent. Cheeky. The music rushes out like something that’s impossible to contain. It’s like they’ve found an extra dimension that no one else knew about and now it’s seeping out from your speakers. Sulk is alien. It felt like it came from some mad future, some faraway place where all the colours were different and so much brighter. In 1982 it sounded like the future. Listen to it now, nearly 45 years later, and it still sounds like the future.

*

In 1982 I’d turned 16. I was old enough to get my first Saturday job, shelving books at the library in Leigh-on-Sea. I had a moderate disposable income. It was now that I began to start building my nascent record collection. That job funded many purchases. Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo. Pornography by The Cure. The first New Order album. And Sulk. Sulk was one of those early albums I was able to buy because I’d reached an age where I could work a job outside of school hours.

I loved Sulk. From Sulk I worked backwards to Fourth Drawer Down. Their first album was also re-released off the back of the success of Sulk, hastily re-recorded to what in retrospect was mostly an inferior version of the original. But that’s a minor point in the story.

Sulk contained two hit singles. Of those Party Fears Two was the big one. (Club Country was the better one, btw). Its tumbling piano part and Billy’s soaring, operatic vocal allowed it to stand out from everything else that was in the charts at the time. The Associates were everything in 1982. But it was all about to end in dramatic fashion. There was one more hit – a cover of the Diana Ross single Love Hangover – which was perfectly fine but nothing to take your breath away.

On the back of all their success Alan Rankine wanted to tour the world. Billy MacKenzie had a fear of flying and a dislike of performing live. Their interests were pulling them in opposite directions. Inevitably they split soon after.

The Associates continued as a band under Billy’s leadership. They made several more albums and had several more minor hits. The albums became steadily less interesting. None of them captured the supernova shimmer of Sulk. The follow up – Perhaps – had a few moments that reminded you of what had come before, a sort of photocopied representation of something fantastic, where the ink has faded and blurred  out too much of the detail. After Perhaps there were just ordinary songs that a thousand other bands could’ve produced, seasoned by Billy’s exceptional voice, but little else.

Alan Rankine made some records of his own before disappearing into music production and then to a job supporting emerging young Scottish bands. His records – without that astonishing voice of Billy Mackenzie – didn’t go anywhere. He produced an early single for The Cocteau Twins. The band didn’t like it and chose to produce all their own music from that point onward. He can claim some responsibility for helping Belle & Sebastian to get their career up and running.

Many years later, Alan and Billy were finally reconciled and reunited. They recorded a handful of new songs together. These songs were fine, but age and other factors had dimmed that original spark. Billy Mackenzie’s life ended in suicide a few years later. Alan Rankine died in 2023.

I loved The Associates. I knew from the first moment I heard it how amazing Sulk was. And shortly afterwards I learnt just how great the run of singles that comprised Fourth Drawer Down had been. But it took time and perspective to shift Sulk to that all important top spot in my list of all-time favourite albums. Back in  2009 when I was doing a weekly music podcast, I did a rundown of my 10 favourite albums. This was for episode 33 (the rpm speed of the traditional vinyl LP). Crocodiles by Echo & The Bunnymen was firmly fixed at number one. Kraftwerk and Leonard Cohen and Misty in Roots were in there too. But as far as I recall Sulk didn’t even make the list. It might’ve been in a written list of numbers 11-20 that accompanied the podcast. It had fallen somehow off my radar.

But I rediscovered it eventually, fell in love with its hedonistic rush all over again and marvelled at how futuristic it still sounded. It takes the crown for me and I’m not sure that anything will or can ever displace it.