Billy MacKenzie
Billy MacKenzie was a renowned Scottish singer best remembered for being the singer of The Associates as well as for his distinctive operatic voice. Mackenzie, along with guitarist Alan Rankine, started The Associates in 1979 and went on to make a name for themselves with a number of popular songs, including Club Country and Party Fears Two. On January 22nd, 1997, at the age of 39, Mackenzie committed suicide from a drug overdose.
Singer Billy MacKenzie performing live in Dundee in 1985. Source: Wikimedia: Author: Bl4h.bl4h.bl4h.bl4h.
Facts about Billy MacKenzie
- In his teens, MacKenzie traveled to the United States, where he got married to his aunt’s American sister-in-law named Chloe Dummar. The marriage produced no children and ended in divorce. According to him, he married Dummar because he wanted to avoid being deported from America.
- It is widely believed that The Smiths’ singer Morrissey wrote the song William, It Was Really Nothing about MacKenzie, who was a friend of his. Almost a decade later, in 1993, MacKenzie himself responded to William, It Was Really Nothing with the song Stephen, You’re Really Something.
- MacKenzie’s suicide was believed to have been caused by his battle with severe depression and the death of his mother Lily the previous year.
- The 2001 song Cut Here by The Cure is about MacKenzie. According to one of the song’s writer Robert Smith (lead singer of The Cure), the song is about his regret of not having time for Mackenzie whom he met just few weeks before his tragic death.
- In 2001, MacKenzie’s brother Jimmy died at the age of 32 after overdosing.
- In 2010, nine years after MacKenzie’s death, another of his brothers Johnny lost his life in the same flat Mackenzie died.
- In 2013, MacKenzie’s sister Lizzie McIntosh fell to her death from the second-floor of a building in Dundee. Her death made it the sixth tragedy to befall MacKenzie’s family in a period of 15 years.
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[…] believe that Morrissey wrote the song about his Scottish friend Billy MacKenzie of The Associates fame. In 1993, Billy MacKenzie and The Associates released a song titled Stephen, […]