Alistair McKenzie

Alistair McKenzie, who attended Bangor Grammar School between 1959 and 1966, died suddenly on 26 June 2015. He was 67.

A well-known member of the Bangor music scene in the 1960s, he was the keyboard player with leading local band The High Wall while still at school. An engineering degree at Queen’s University lost out to music and Alistair moved to London. It was there he auditioned successfully for Mickie Most’s RAK Records and was rewarded with a place in a new band being assembled around American singer Suzi Quatro.

Two Number Ones (Can the Can and Devil Gate Drive) and a number of other hit singles followed, along with live tours that took the band around the world. Alistair moved on in the mid- 1970s, joining several more bands in the London area, where he had remained close to younger brother George, another former pupil of Bangor Grammar School.

In the early 1990s Alistair returned to Bangor to care for his elderly parents, living in the family home at Glenburn Park, opposite Ballyholme Primary School which he had attended from the day it opened in 1953.

He resumed his involvement in the Bangor music scene, playing on a regular basis with the popular Flange Band. Alistair also joined the Northern Ireland Civil Service, working for the Social Security Agency, and was still employed there at the time of his death.

Terence Bowman