Ray Davies & The Kinks Page 2

Sadly, Face to Face is simply impossible to come by, leaving a cavernous gap in material between Kontroversy and the extraordinarily quirky albums that followed: Something Else, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, and Arthur (Or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire).

Something Else is the last of the Talmy-produced albums, but it's evident that Ray was already calling most of the shots, writing intensely personal songs based on memories from childhood—like "Harry Rag," a title inspired by his father's slang phrase for cigarettes; "End of the Season," with its recollections of schoolboy rugby games; and the catchy put-down of a twisted gentryman, "David Watts." Then there were songs reflecting ambivalant feelings toward marriage ("Two Sisters," "Situation Vacant"), and more of those witty cameos—like "Afternoon Tea," which turns a distinctively English ritual into a love song; the bossa-nova "No Return"; and the wonderfully evocative "Lazy Old Sun."

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Dave also stepped in with his best compositions to date, particularly "Death of a Clown," which became a kind of trademark song for him. Something Else concludes with one of the best-written songs of the rock era, the chilling, bittersweet "Waterloo Sunset." Initially inspired by the characters played by Terence Stamp and Julie Christie in Far from the Madding Crowd, "Waterloo Sunset" has taken on a life of its own. From the simple, elegant melody to the soaring chorus, this song fires the imagination with a subtle grace few rockers have ever achieved.

Large-Scale Works
At this point Ray Davies produced his own work as the auteur of The Kinks. New Kinks projects were conceived as large-scale works in which the songs and the sound of the band itself were in the service of a larger concept. Ray's first such project, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, was an unabashedly nostalgic look at the world he remembered from his childhood, a world that was now slowly disappearing right before his eyes. It was 1968, and the rock rank and file was calling for revolution, but The Kinks were celebrating the past. In fact, Ray was taking a route dramatically similar to the one Bob Dylan had taken not long before, disengaging himself from the pop world to make a more personal music. Preservation Society parallels the themes of both Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes and The Band's Music from Big Pink—the search for meaning in the past, the attempt to deconstruct the myths of history to find some kind of truth applicable to an increasingly hostile world.

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In the title track and "Village Green," Ray celebrates the central principles of social organization common to old European towns. He finds a kind of pantheistic truth in the countryside, communing with nature and animals in "Big Sky," "Sitting by the Riverside," "Animal Farm," and "Phenomenal Cat."

In "Do You Remember Walter?," "Picture Book," and "People Take Pictures of Each Other," Ray explores the persistence of memory as a spiritual principle in itself, concluding in "Walter" that "People often change, but memories of people still remain." He extends his nostalgia to the personification of a bygone era's symbol of power in "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," and introduces the incorruptible character of "Johnny Thunder"—who is, in Ray's world of ideas, the last of the rockers, and who turns up later in the album and stage versions of Preservation.

While Preservation Society contained several songs that didn't seem to fit its theme, Ray's next project was a full-fledged concept album commissioned to accompany a television show. Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) was a story based on the history of an average middle-class Briton, Arthur Morgan, whose son Derek is about to emigrate to Australia. (The concept was inspired by a relative of Ray's who had done just that.) The events portrayed in the songs occur in the minds of the Morgan family on Derek's last day in England. Davies uses this framework to write a song cycle about English history, beginning with the traditions of the Victorian era buried deep in the psyche of the British middle class ("Victoria"), and continuing with the struggles of World War II ("Yes Sir, No Sir," "Some Mother's Son," "Mr. Churchill Says").

Davies goes on to depict life in post-war England, epitomized by the middle-class homeowner living in his own "Shangri-la." But Arthur's Shangri-la leaves son Derek feeling "Brainwashed" and looking for a new start in "Australia." Davies leaves no doubt about where his sympathies lie on the album-closing title track, which celebrates the protagonist's life-choices with a joyous chorus of "Somebody loves you don't you know it."

Lola & the RCA Years
Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One was the last album record by The Kinks under the band's original recording and management contracts. The band had been ill-served both financially and promotionally, and was eager to sever its business ties. Several of Ray's songs for this record were cynical denunciations of the world of popular music, and his bitterness translated into great rock'n'roll.

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"The Moneygoround" is Ray's fairly straightforward description of where his songwriting royalties disappeared to, using the actual first names of its handlers. In "Denmark Street" Davies heaps scorn on the denizens of London's publishers' row. "Top of the Pops" is a satiric look at the insanity surrounding a pop group's rise up the charts, titled after England's weekly hit-parade television show. Dave's guitar part really burns on this track and on "Powerman," Ray's slap at the mogul who's "got the money and my publishing rights."

"Lola" wasn't part of the satiric song cycle aimed at the record industry. It was written before the rest of the album, after Ray took an enforced rest following a particularly hectic American tour. The song is a witty tale of a naüve boy's nightclub encounter with a transvestite. Ray's deft handling of what would have been a lurid story in the hands of most rock songwriters kept "Lola" on the light side of controversy and enabled it to become a #1 hit single as well as his theme song, despite the fact that Ray was anything but a glam rocker.

Neverthless, RCA records, undoubtedly impressed by the success of "Lola," signed The Kinks to join a roster of sexually ambiguous glam rockers headed up by David Bowie and Lou Reed. But instead of delivering a record like Reed's Transformer or Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, The Kinks began their association with RCA by recording one of the most down-to-earth albums in the band's career, Muswell Hillbillies. The cover shows the group standing at the bar of a cavernous old-fashioned London pub, having a pint with the locals. One of the songs, "Alcohol," offers an ironic tribute to the drinking life. The protagonist is a swell who's fallen from grace and hit the skids, leading Ray to deliver the dramatic homily that went on to become a staple of the group's stage act for years to come: "Sad memories I can't recall / Who thought I would fall / A slave to demon alcohol."

In fact, Muswell Hillbillies became the blueprint for a revamped Kinks sound, returning the group to its foundation in blues and roots rock while changing the lineup to include a new bassist, John Dalton, and keyboardist John Gosling, as well as a New Orleans–style jazz combo, the Mike Cotton Sound. This version of The Kinks was a musically versatile lineup that could rock out with abandon, turn around and play music-hall arrangements for some of Ray's more outrageous stage theatrics, or handle expertly the subtleties of country and folk blues numbers. Dave and Ray had developed a distinctive two-guitar sound over the years, and when Ray put his mind to it, as on "20th Century Man," "Here Come the People in Grey," and "Muswell Hillbilly," the pair could weave a rhythmically ambitious bed of guitar parts.

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Emboldened by his new band's versatility, Ray tried to convince RCA in 1972 to back the group in a series of conceptual album-length stage shows he was developing.

"I wanted to do visual albums over at RCA," said Davies. "I taped the meeting because it was such a ludicrous meeting. I was trying to get them to finance this film I wanted to do of us on tour so I could score the next album based on the film, which ended up as the Everybody's in Show-Biz album. They said they weren't in the film business. But now, they're heavily involved."

Everybody's in Show-Biz was an ambitious record that shows the outline of Ray's plan. Half of it is live concert recordings, mostly of the Muswell Hillbillies material, and the other half is a studio set of songs about life on the road—"Here Comes Yet Another Day," "Unreal Reality," "Hot Potatoes," "Sitting in My Hotel," "Motorway"—and Ray's ultimate fantasy song about stardom, "Celluloid Heroes."

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In defiance of RCA, Davies went ahead with plans to record and stage his masterpiece, Preservation, an epic tale of change and survival. It originally appeared as two seperate albums, the single-disc Act I and double-disc Act II, but seemed more a blueprint of an idea until The Kinks performed it as a triumphant stage show. Years later, Rhino reassembled the project in coherent form, adding a prologue and collecting the two albums' worth of material in a single package.

After the prologue, the piece opens with a beautiful evocation of sunrise in "Morning Song," which makes excellent use of the horn section and a small choir. Ray delivers the classic Kinks love song "Sweet Lady Genevieve" in the person of the Tramp, one of the three main characters he portrays in Preservation. "There's a Change in the Weather" deals with individual reactions to change from different parts of the English class system.

The Tramp also sings "Where Are They Now?," asking the question "I wonder what became of all the rockers and the mods? / I hope they are making it and they've all got steady jobs / Oh but rock and roll still lives on..." As if to prove this last statement, Johnny Thunder, the character from Preservation Society, returns in the next song, "One of the Survivors."

The evil politician Mr. Black (also played by Ray) makes his appearance in "Money and Curruption/I Am Your Man," in which Ray satirizes the self-serving moralizing politician whose idealism is just a con job. Two of the play's most powerful songs, "Here Comes Flash" and "Demolition," usher in Ray's third major character, the real-estate-developer-cum-politician Flash. The Tramp returns to sing "Sitting in the Midday Sun," which sums up the Tramp's answer to the troubles of the world: "I'd rather be a hobo, walking around with nothing / Than a rich man scared of losing all he's got."

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By the time Ray's morality play reaches the open warfare of Act II, the action seethes with a Brechtian life seldom glimpsed by the rock imagination. Mr. Black's people's army and Flash's government clash; "Money Talks" precedes dim views of Flash in "Scum of the Earth," and of Black in "He's Evil." The Tramp returns to condemn it all in "Nobody Gives."

Flash undergoes a transformation in "Flash's Dream," which leads him to confess his sins only to be overthrown by Black, who ushers in the new era of the "Artificial Man." In the finale, "Salvation Road," Ray draws a satiric picture of "The People's Army" singing a Salvation Army–style hymn to their newly sanitized world—not a happy ending, but a powerful one.

Ray lightened up considerably in his next stage project, Soap Opera, designed to accompany a television drama. This was followed by the last of his rock plays, Schoolboys in Disgrace, a prequel to Preservation in which Flash, Mr. Black, and the Tramp are schoolboys in the same English grammar-school class. "I'm in Disgrace" and "The Hard Way" went on to become Kinks classics.

Arista Records
The Kinks resurfaced in the late 1970s on Arista Records, where Ray was persuaded to drop the theatrics and go back to writing individual songs. Sleepwalker and Misfits marked a return to the cameo songwriting style Davies had perfected in the 1960s, and contain several memorable songs.

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On Sleepwalker Ray celebrated the band's continued success on the concert circuit in "Life on the Road," and the transforming power of rock on "Juke Box Music." He explored the nether regions of his psyche on the title track, "Sleepless Night," and "Full Moon." On Misfits, Ray institutionalized the outsider status of both his band and his fans: "They say that even in your day / Somehow you never could quite fit in." Misfits also includes a striking statement of purpose, "Rock'n'Roll Fantasy," written shortly after the death of Elvis Presley and sounding like a plea to the rest of the band to continue on: "Dan is a fan and he lives for our music / It's the only thing that gets him by... / And when he feels the world closing in he turns his stereo way up high / He just spends his life living in a rock'n'roll fantasy."

Though Ray had always kept his songwriter's eye on England, the rise of punk in the mid- and late 1970s made The Kinks passé in their homeland and forced the group to concentrate on its American audience, which was growing quickly as the '70s turned into the '80s. The tough, blues-based Low Budget became one of the group's most popular albums. Once again, The Kinks were playing to packed houses; "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman" became the band's biggest hit since "Lola."

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The group's confidence grew as Kinks riffs were appropriated by half the heavy-metal bands in the business, and young groups of every genre covered songs from the band's catalog—the early-1980s tours featured some of the best Kinks performances ever. This era is well documented on One for the Road, a recording that demonstrates once and for all that Dave Davies is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock history. Give the People What They Want completed the Kinks' renaissance as the band headlined arenas, including Madison Square Garden. State of Confusion featured the huge hit "Come Dancing" and the remarkable "Heart of Gold," Ray's bittersweet sendoff to former lover Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.

The band celebrated its 20th anniversary by re-releasing "You Really Got Me," which once again appeared on the British charts, and Ray reprised the group's career with the great "Do It Again," on Word of Mouth. That album also included one of Dave's best songs, "Living on a Thin Line." Come Dancing—The Best of The Kinks does a fine job of collecting the high points of the Arista era.

The MTV Era
Despite the fact that Ray had anticipated the video revolution by a decade, the advent of the video age in the 1980s spelled doom for The Kinks as record companies looked for fresh faces to fill MTV's power rotation. The band resurfaced on MCA with the release of Think Visual, Ray's thoughtful, rocking take on the video revolution. But turmoil at MCA left The Kinks stranded once again, and though the band followed with another fine live set (The Road) and the quirky UK Jive, its stay at MCA barely registered on rock's Richter scale.

The band's next stop was even worse. In 1993, just as the band was releasing Phobia, its first album for Columbia, a high-level Columbia executive threw a temper tantrum at a company meeting and singled out The Kinks as an example of the label's over-reliance on older acts. Though Bruce Springsteen's pair of solo albums were making the loudest hissing sounds at the time, The Kinks were made the scapegoats.

So it was that Ray Davies found his band staring down the time tunnel toward the millennium without a record contract. Though he'd kept The Kinks together through all the fickle twists of the pop-music industry through three decades of change, he was finally forced to face the seeming inevitability of his band's extinction.

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In 1994 Ray decided to convene the band in their Konk studio in London to record "unplugged" versions of some of his favorite tunes before a small audience of fans and friends. "We wanted to record some of the lesser-known songs that had not been on any of the numerous compilation albums," Ray wrote in the liner note for To the Bone. "The band had been on a long world tour and were a very 'tight' unit and so it was decided that the recordings were good enough to make it onto an album. These recordings have been cut together with some live concerts performed during the same period."

Ray's own performance is a cross between the carefully considered ambience of his confessional one-man show and the freewheeling abandon of The Kinks. Dave is in particularly good form on this material, which includes two new songs recorded in 1996, the title track and "Animal." He shines on "You Really Got Me," opens a slow-tempo version of "Set Me Free" with a marvelous solo, and draws raves from Ray for his work on "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" and "Gallon of Gas."

A document that stretches all the way back to the beginning and touches on every aspect of the band's history, including clever new arrangements of such chestnuts as "Do You Remember Walter?" and "Apeman," To the Bone would have served as an appropriate finale to The Kinks' recording career. But in what may be the greatest irony of a life steeped in that quality, Ray's solo success seems to have whetted the music industry's appetite for The Kinks. Instead of the end the band thought it was, To the Bone now stands as the beginning of a new chapter in the story of The Kinks.

Maybe they'll finally get that happy ending.

ARTICLE CONTENTS

COMMENTS
Shahram's picture

It's sad to say that the Kinks were largely overlooked by the American audience (their ban has a lot to do with it). There is a treasure trove of great, witty, cheeky songs from albums Face to Face to Lola, my favorite period of kinks material (1965-1970).

Thank you for re-posting this excellent write up of one of the greatest bands ever!

Allen Fant's picture

Nice pics! JS

dalethorn's picture

While much Kinks material was probably unavailable in the U.S. way back when, I still remember a string of great singles played on the air. We purchased their LP's from the Kent Community Store near the Kent State campus, from circa 1970 on. Given all of the projects shown in this article though, I'd say that the biggest impediment to the public being able to access much of this material was lack of delivery systems like we have today. Before circa 1990, many musicians would go unheard in most of the country because the distributors didn't want to be bothered by things that didn't have widespread appeal. That especially affected so-called "indie" artists. The original Napster was the Great Equalizer, because it offered something no service has ever offered since: You could search for a music track, and when a list of users who had that track was returned by Napster, you could then directly browse the collections of those users and sample their other tracks. As far as I'm concerned, we are still in the Dark Ages, not being able to browse the music collections of like-minded individuals, and listen to what they listen to.

joshua simons's picture

Pleased to reread this article from way back when. Yes, for many years, many, many compilations form several different record companies we produced and released. But now, between Universal Music and Sony Music Legacy, all of the Kinks albums are in place, the original recordings + additional tracks added to each album release. So boxed set CD's, Vinyl and many more to come are now available to purchase. And even solo albums like "Return to Waterloo" are just being put into place. Then Ray and Dave have new albums this year. Dave is putting out new product about every 15 months. Ray, put four albums out over six years, then now, after 9 years, "Americana" is do on April 21, 2017. There is some new talk about a Residency bookings at three venue in the US for The Kinks considered Reunion. Significant money has been offered. There are truly the only original British Invasion Band that could come back and sell out multiple night at MSG or Staples Center as examples. As the old adage goes, "God Save The Kinks" which he has and they will live on forever.

BDP24's picture

When Clive Davis was trying to sign the ghastly bad Sex Pistols, Johnny Rotten mocked him by laughing that he had just signed The Kinks, saying it was too bad he didn't do so while they still had something to say. I love it that now Johnny is but a forgotten relic of a bygone era, while Ray, Dave, and The Kinks are still very much of interest.

dalethorn's picture

John Lydon is far more famous IMO than Ray Davies. The Pistols are the quintessential punk rock group, having defied Her Majesty with political ridicule, as well as a call for anarchy. The Pistols and Johnny followed on to a famous move by the Beatles, who once suffered a huge radio ban due to the 'Jesus' statement by John Lennon. Where the Beatles got big revenge on the media with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (LSD), rubbing it into the media's faces with absurd denials, Lydon did likewise with the anarchy denials.

The Pistols were so feared when they first arrived that many people thought the world was coming to an end. Sid Vicious carried the anarchist image to new heights, and his rendition of My Way is considered to be one of the greatest punk themes ever. People who are not fans of punk rock wouldn't understand any of this of course, but comparing them to the Kinks is a non-starter. The Pistols defined their genre in a way that only a handful of artists ever could.

BTW, I have the original 'Lola' that says "...tastes just like Coca-Cola".

BDP24's picture

Gee, you make quite a case for The Pistols ;-). Did you read what Cyril Jordan said about the single real Pistols album? Oh sorry, it doesn't matter because Cyril too is less famous than John Lydon. I'm a big fan of Punk, but consider The Pistols vastly over-rated. A re-reading of my post will demonstrate the fact that I made no comparison between The Kinks and The Pistols. That would be silly---it would be like comparing Oasis to The Beatles.

dalethorn's picture

The Pistols are somewhat overrated as musical influences, true. But as original influences in the punk genre, they are no less than gods.

BDP24's picture

My beef is not with The Pistols, but with Rotten's snarky comment about The Kinks. Ray, Dave, and The Kinks have a LOT more bragging rights than does Rotten.

dalethorn's picture

Bragging rights are apples to oranges. While the Kinks certainly have superior bragging rights in overall output, quality of output etc., don't forget that punk doesn't aim for progressive or "high quality" sound of great musical merit. That's why I say that the Sex Pistols stand out as much more dominant in their genre (punk) than the Kinks in whatever genres they are classed in. Besides, I wouldn't want to give up the music tracks I have by either group, since they're unique. Rock-n-Roll, British Invasion, Psychedelia, Glamrock, Progressive Rock, Punk, Disco, Grunge, Shoegaze, GirlRock, Riot Grrrl - all have their respective niches, but the thing they most have in common is originating as music that inspired and entertained the youth who brought them about. When we get older, our tastes (us audiophiles or avid music-lovers) broaden and become more sophisticated, but we also are less connected to the inspiration and energy that we experienced in our youth (our "musical generation"), never mind any connection to the genres that we didn't listen to avidly in our youth.

BDP24's picture

This feature article is about The Kinks, written way back in 1997. My point was that here we are twenty years later, still interested in and discussing them. How many are still interested in John Lydon, let alone The Pistols? My point was, and is, that though JL dismissed The Kinks as hasbeens in 1976 (or was it '77?), it is, ironically, JL that could be viewed as the hasbeen. I mean, this story that we are so interested in is about The Kinks, not JL or The Pistols. God Save The Kinks! If I wanna hear some Punk, there are a lot of records I would play before The Pistols. You may feel differently, that's fine by me. ;-)

dalethorn's picture

Well, it looks like someone here just has to have the last word. What I said about youth and energy and the attachment to different genres based on the crowds one hangs out with in high school etc., followed by the broadening and sophistication with age for most people, is highly relevant. I agreed that the Sex Pistols aren't as musically interesting as the Kinks, but I still feel a similar energy listening to them (the Pistols) and Sid Vicious as I did in the 1970's, because I'm still the same person with the same rebellious attitudes. Maybe you should pull one of those Sex Pistols CDs out of the closet and have another listen - you might be surprised by what you hear. Don't forget that Bach, Beethoven and others walked the streets at times and listened to street musicians, to get new ideas for their work.

BDP24's picture

"I" have to have the last word? Okay, it's all yours.

dalethorn's picture

And thanks for proving my point.

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