Perhaps (album)

Background

With the departure of Alan Rankine and Michael Dempsey, The Associates were effectively a Billy Mackenzie solo project for this album. MacKenzie started work with Steve Reid, a guitarist from Dundee and Howard Hughes, an accomplished keyboard player in late 1982 after the departure of Rankine and came up with an album's worth of material.

Recording

The recording sessions were chaotic, and the resulting album was deemed unreleasable by Warner Music Group, who demanded Billy work on it to make it releasable. The master tapes for this version went missing over the Christmas period in 1982 (allegedly Billy hid them due to his own dissatisfaction with the record). The album was restarted from scratch and was finally finished after a further two years in 1985 with four different producers. It cost £250,000 to make, a lot of money for even a major label record in those times.

Release

Perhaps was released on 9 February 1985. The album was a commercial failure, making number 23 in the UK charts but only selling around 40,000 copies, putting Billy in significant debt to Warner Music Group.

For years Perhaps was only available on vinyl and cassette. However, due to the reissue program of Associates material after Billy Mackenzie's death, it was re-released along with the unreleased The Glamour Chase album in a double CD package in 2002. The bonus instrumentals included on the original cassette release were not included.

Reception

Trouser Press wrote "To write it off with a snide 'perhaps not' would be a cheap shot, but more than generous", calling it "undanceable dance music with a few ho-hum twists. The lyrics include strange, gratuitous, incomprehensible non sequiturs; the music is at best uninvolving, even if you listen for sheer sound and ignore the pose."

Personnel