Alan Rankine, one half of the famous Scottish indie band The Associates, has died aged 64. The news was confirmed on Tuesday by his sons, Callum and Hamish, who wrote on Facebook that their father “passed away peacefully at home shortly after spending Christmas with his family”, describing him as “a beautiful, kind and loving man who will be greatly missed.”
Born in Stirlingshire in 1958, Rankine formed The Associates in 1979 with singer Billy Mackenzie, having first recorded with him under the name Mental Torture. Rankine and Mackenzie initially broke through with a cover of David Bowie’s Boys Keep Swinging, which had been a hit in the UK just weeks earlier. The attention the pair received from the cover led to a record deal with Fiction, and a year later they released The Affectionate Punch, their debut album. Two years later, they followed up with Sulk, a surprise hit that spent 20 weeks in the UK Albums Chart.
Shortly after the release of Sulk, Rankine left the Associates and began working as a producer and session musician, collaborating with the influential no wave musician Anna Domino on her albums East & West and Anna Domino, and producing the Cocteau Twins EP Peppermint Pig from 1983. During the second half of the 1980s, he also released three solo albums: 1986’s The World Begins to Look Her Age, 1987’s She Loves Me Not and 1989’s The Big Picture Sucks .
In his lifetime, Rankine had a huge influence on indie music in Scotland and beyond: the wide-ranging, experimental sound of the Associates, as well as the acts Rankine later produced, proved hugely influential, with Björk citing Sulk as one of her formative influences. He also helped set up Electric Honey, an in-house label at Stow College in Glasgow, which released records by Belle and Sebastian and Snow Patrol, among others.