Steve Mackey switched smoothly from writing pop hits to curating festivals with music by Stockhausen. Fans remember him as Pulp’s ever-cool bassist.
Pulp played seven times at the height of his fame in our country: at Dour, twice at the Torhout-Werchter double festival, but also in the UK in Molenbeek or the Brielpoort in Deinze.
Singer Jarvis Cocker and bassist Steve Mackey were the two slimmest, and the two best dressed frontmen of the Britpop scene. They also co-starred as The Weird Sisters with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway Harry Potter and the goblet of fire, at the Hogwarts ball. Mackey passed away today; his wife disclosed that he had been hospitalized for three months with an undisclosed illness. He was 56.
Mackey was already Pulp’s eighth bassist when he joined the group in 1989. He had moved to London the year before from Sheffield – the singer-songwriter Richard Hawley was a classmate – to study film at the Royal College of Art. His broad artistic and musical interests helped give Pulp’s doll that touch of quirkiness that lifted it above average. In the mid-90s Pulp was with albums like His ’n’ hers (‘Do you remember the first time?’) en Different class (‘Disco 2000’, ‘Common people’) a bona fide pop group.
Seen here: Pulp at Werchter in 1998. Mackey is the cool bass player behind the big sunglasses
When the group took a hiatus in 2002, Mackey pursued a variety of interests. For five years he was one of the curators of the Frieze International Art Fair, a festival for experimental contemporary music. With his songwriting partner Ross Orton he discovered the young artist Maya Arulpragasam; they wrote with her, among other things, ‘Galang’, and she started her career under the name MIA.
Mackey also wrote several songs for Florence and the Machine’s debut album. He worked as a producer with Kelis, Arcade Fire and The Kills. Or he amused Cocker by making a compilation CD of music from Carl Orff to The Fall – and the BBC’s weather forecast for skippers.
Between 2010 and 2012 he toured with Pulp again, but he fit in for the tour that the band is undertaking this summer.
