Billy MacKenzie

Background to Auchtermatic and Transmission Impossible

To begin with an understatement, Billy’s family and closest friends were far from happy with Beyond the Sun. It bore Billy’s name, but there was nothing of the real Billy Mackenzie in its grooves. Covered in the fingerprints of people who didn’t know him, who knew nothing at all about what made him tick, we felt that it failed him, and that, ultimately, to let it stand as a last grey word on his dazzlingly colourful legacy would be to do him an unforgivable injustice. The truth can at last be told; that the people whose opinions mattered, of whom there were never very many in the first place, were completely sidelined by the record company. Of course, the fans still loved it, grateful that someone at least saw fit to give air to Billy’s parting shots. But it’s reflective demeanour belied a lack of vision, and stood only to impair the true, uncontrolled greatness of the golden boy inside.

Eurocentric was a much more loving effort, one to be embraced for its attempts to obey the fizzy eccentricity of its creator. But it also lacked overall vision, chiefly because a lot of essential material had already been creamed off for Beyond the Sun.

We always knew the situation had to be and would be corrected. We had to give the music back to Billy, and represent it to the fans as close as we could to how he’d been envisioning it. For starters, we always knew he was thinking about the electronica and the ballads as entirely separate projects.

In the case of Auchtermatic, although the material had been recorded with a variety of collaborators, I had several tapes, some of which Billy had given me himself, which clearly indicated how he saw the material working as a singlular concept. The only real change was the inclusion of “Pain in any Language”, which deserved it’s place on the record as his final statement, as well as one of his greatest performances, and because we were sure that if he’d been around he’d have stood by that track. There was never any question about using anything other than Peter Ashworth’s last photo session on the cover. Peter had worked with Billy since the Associates days (he did the classic sleeve for Sulk). I remember being with Billy at his flat in Holland Road when he was looking at the contact sheet of this Ashworth session in August 1996. He was delighted with them, and full of praise for Peter. With that in mind, there couldn’t be any real debate about the sleeve for Auchtermatic.

Transmission Impossible was a harder proposition, because Billy didn’t leave many clues about the context or running order. I had to kind of invite him in for that one. When I was working on it I could almost hear him over my shoulder, saying give it the Van Morrison with a bit of Syd Barrett meets Julie London. When I related this to others who knew him, it was received with unanimous approval. It did indeed feel like he was having the final say.

Haig/Mackenzie - "Memory Palace"

24bit digital remaster, new artwork, with 4 remixes/bonus tracks

Billy Mackenzie - "Transmission Impossible"

Previously unreleased original mixes of the acoustic tracks etc, 13
tracks, including 1 never released track.

Billy Mackenzie - "Auchtermatic"

The electronica album, several unreleased tracks, 10 tracks