Alastair 'Ali' Donaldson

An Appreciation

A talented and passionate musician, Ali Donaldson brought intellectual depth to punk band the Rezillos' gloriously garish music. He also played with Mike Scott's Waterboys and folk rock innovators Silly Wizard, but remains best known for the biggest band to come out of Edinburgh College of Art.

He was only at the college as an architecture student from Heriot-Watt University, but he was rubbing shoulders with the art school types and forging a rhythm section with his name sake, Alastair "Angel" Paterson.

Ali cut a louche long-haired figure on stage, alongside his colourful bandmates prancing and preening out front. He never lingered long in the band, ducking out before recoiling back in, when they devolved into the Revillos.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1955 (his father was an accountant, his mother a college lecturer) and brought up in Currie. At George Watson's College in Edinburgh he excelled in music but decided to study architecture. Before finishing his degree, music had taken over.

He played flute and organ on Silly Wizard's first album Transatlantic Xtra before joining the Rezillos in 1976. He began as a saxophone player before joining as a bassist to replace Dr DK Smythe. Joining the band permanently meant adopting one of the strange pseudonyms for which the band were known. Ali's was William Mysterious.

This was how he was credited on the Rezillos' first and only album, Can't Stand The Rezillos. Ali had left his architecture degree to do this, but by 1978 had enough and left the band. The rest of the band split a few months later.

Ali loved bar-room chat about his musical exploits, and would casually place himself at the centre of a scenario. The Waterboys, for example, would never have enjoyed such success without his input. If it all got a bit too Walter Mitty, there was a steely statement of intent in his eyes.

In the early 1980s I presented a late-night show on Radio Forth. We knew each other, and Ali frequently came into the station unannounced. On one occasion he wanted me to play the great Bobby "Blue" Bland singing Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City. The request was compelling, so it was granted. It was not his only request but the one which demanded the most urgent attention.

Essentially, an eternally peripheral figure, there was no doubt that, dealt a different hand, there could have been a more positive outcome.

Laterally he promoted open mic nights in Edinburgh. He also finished his training as an architect and worked with Broad and Hughes.

He is survived by elder sister Jean, his first wife, Janice, their 23-year old daughter Ailsa, and second wife Ksenija Horvat, mother of his seven-year-old son, Johnny.