Mackenzie was born and grew up in Dundee. As a youngster, he lived in Park Avenue in the Stobswell area and attended St Mary's Forebank Primary School and St Michael's Secondary School. He led a peripatetic lifestyle, decamping to New Zealand at the age of 16, and travelling across America aged 17. Here he married Chloe Dummar, the sister-in-law of his Aunt Veronica. While Mackenzie was quoted as saying the marriage was made to stave off deportation so that he could sing with the New Orleans Gospel Choir - calling his wife a 'Dolly Parton type' - Dummar still believes the pair were in love.[1]He left her after 3 months of marriage and returned to Dundee, and the two never had contact again. Chloe Dummar filed for divorce in 1980, and Mackenzie did not contest the filing. Chloe's brother, Melvin Dummar, claimed to be the "one sixteenth" beneficiary of the estate of Howard Hughes, until the case was thrown out in 1978