Today pitchfork.com has reported that the co-founder of the Scottish band The Associates, Alan Rankine, has died at the age of 64. The cause of death has not been revealed. Rankine met Billy Mackenzie in the 1970s where they formed a duo called the Ascorbic Ones but they changed their group name to Mental Torture before settling on the Associates. Their 1979 debut single was a cover of David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging.”
The song helped The Associates get a contract with Fiction Records, which issued the band’s 1980 debut, The Affectionate Punch; where the Cure’s Robert Smith sang backing vocals on the LP/ Then the group followed its debut with the singles compilation, Fourth Drawer Down, in 1981 and a sophomore effort, Sulk, in 1982. Sulk was a critical and commercial success and happened to be Rankine’s last album with The Associates. Rankine quickly left the band when the record’s got released.
When Rankine left The Associates, he produced music for Cocteau Twins, Paul Haig, Anna Domino, and many others. Rankine released the first of his three solo studio albums, The World Begins to Look Her Age, in 1986 and eventually, he taught at Stow College in Glasgow.
While teaching at Stow Rankine helped launch Electric Honey which is a label that is meant to teach students about releasing and promoting their own music. The label’s first success was Belle and Sebastian’s Tigermilk. Soon enough Electric Honey would go on to issue music by Biffy Clyro, Snow Patrol and more.
Without Rankine, The Associates recorded two more albums, 1985’s Perhaps and 1990’s Wild and Lonely. The Associates broke up after their final album but in 1993 Rankine and Mackenzie joined forces to record new material. The reunion was short-lived and Mackenzie died in 1997. Demos of the reunion tracks were included on the Associates’s 2000 compilation, Double Hipness.
Rankine has been memorialized by BMX Bandits’ Duglas T. Stewart, electronic musician Robin Rimbaud, Scottish indie band Trashcan Sinatras, and more.
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