17 Facts About Billy Mackenzie

William MacArthur Mackenzie was a Scottish singer and songwriter, known for his distinctive high tenor voice.

Billy Mackenzie was the co-founder and lead vocalist of post-punk and new wave band the Associates.

Billy Mackenzie had a brief solo career releasing his debut studio album, Outernational, in 1992, his only solo album released during his lifetime.

William MacArthur Billy Mackenzie was born on 27 March 1957 in Dundee, Scotland.

Billy Mackenzie attended St Mary's Forebank Primary School and St Michael's Secondary School.

Billy Mackenzie led a peripatetic lifestyle, decamping to New Zealand at the age of 16, and travelling across America aged 17.

Billy Mackenzie left her after three months of marriage and returned to Dundee, and the two never had contact again.

Billy Mackenzie had a fruitful partnership with Paul Haig of Josef K, the result being low key dates in Glasgow and Edinburgh during the mid-1980s, which mixed their own best known songs with covers of songs such as Sly and the Family Stone's "Runnin' Away" and Yoko Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice".

Billy Mackenzie's final recording was the song "Pain in Any Language", with electronic music group Apollo 440.

On 22 January 1997, Billy Mackenzie killed himself by overdosing on a combination of paracetamol and prescription medication in the garden shed of his father's house in Auchterhouse, Angus.

Billy Mackenzie was the subject of a biography by Tom Doyle, The Glamour Chase, in 1998.

Siouxsie Sioux, a friend of Billy Mackenzie, wrote the song "Say", revealing in the lyrics that they were going to meet just before his death.

The Cure song "Cut Here" in 2001, written by Robert Smith, a friend of Billy Mackenzie, is about the regret Smith felt about seeing Billy Mackenzie a few weeks before his death backstage at a Cure concert, and not giving him any of his "precious time" and fobbing him off.

Between 9 and 27 June 2009, a play entitled Balgay Hill about the story of Billy Mackenzie's life was showing at Dundee Repertory Theatre, in Billy Mackenzie's home town.

Billy Mackenzie's death affected me in a way that Ian Curtis's didn't.

Billy Mackenzie should have outgrown his gloom and become an eccentric old man.

Billy Mackenzie could be a character from one of my books.