Back in 2003, on the 35th anniversary release of seminal 60s album ‘The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society,’ in the booklet accompanying an expanded 3-CD edition, Pete Townshend makes the comment:
‘For me, ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ is Ray’s masterwork. It’s his Sgt. Pepper, it’s what makes him the definitive pop poet laureate.’
Fifteen years on as ‘Village Green‘ turns 50, even now few would contest the ‘poet laureate‘ epithet Townshend bestowed on Ray Davies – although the ‘Sgt. Pepper‘ comparison is worthy of debate.
Both can make justifiable claim to being the best album released in its respective year (‘Sgt Pepper‘ – May 1967 – predating ‘Village Green‘ by 16 months) – but it could be argued neither is the greatest LP in the illustrious canon of either The Kinks or The Beatles.
There is no doubting the extraordinary levels of creativity and imagination on these two astonishing albums, which half a century later are still nigh on impossible to categorise as each blends a dazzling array of themes and styles.
But if this listener were made to choose, The Kinks win by a whisker on the grounds of producing a more coherent work – the singular vision of one great writer edging out the differing approach of three.
Or to twist Pete Townshend’s words, ‘Sgt Pepper‘ is The Beatles ‘Village Green Preservation Society‘.
When dissecting a Kinks album the backstory, as ever, needs attention as it generally frames the canvas on which Ray Davies paints his characters and colours the world they inhabit.
When recording began in earnest for the ‘Village Green‘ album in July 1968, The Kinks were four years into a career that beginning with ‘You Really Got Me‘ in August 1964, had seen them produce a run of incomparable hit singles.
Ray Davies had become the undisputed master of the form as he led The Kinks through a rich terrain that spread from the most edgy guitar rock so far put on record, through a series of power-pop masterpieces containing sharply written observations on the tragi-comic vagaries of everyday life.
The latest, a stunning song entitled ‘Days‘ (June 1968), was continuing proof that nobody could be as compelling in a three minute single as Ray Davies. Nobody at all.
But despite being in the vanguard of English pop creativity, as 1968 dawned all was far from well in Kinkland.
Lawsuits, contractual disputes, management hassles, group in-fighting (primarily between Ray and younger brother/guitar virtuoso Dave) were all creating disunity and disenchantment within The Kinks (completed by bassist Pete Quaife and drummer Mick Avory).
Yet their most debilitating setback had occurred 3,000 miles away from their North London base, the group now into the third of what proved a four-year ban from performing in the United States – this after a series of disputes with promoters on their 1965 tour.
Due to being banned, they could only look on enviously as old London rivals The Who built up a sizeable US following – The Kinks status as a live act also an area of concern as their next UK shows after recording ‘Village Green‘ (the sixth album of their career) were a series of dates at Working Men’s Clubs across the north of England.
The most significant consequence of them not being allowed to perform in America since 1965, was in turning the songwriting muse of Ray Davies into a periscope for observing the current cultural trends.
In satirising contemporary England through 1965 and 1966 with tracks such as ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone?’, ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion‘, ‘Sunny Afternoon‘, ‘Mister Pleasant‘ and ‘A Well Respected Man‘, he was also writing the most original pop songs of the time – Ray capping them all in 1967 with the breathtaking ‘Waterloo Sunset‘.
Beyond the relative peace of his Muswell Hill enclave, Ray Davies saw the planet being torn asunder in 1968 by war, assassinations and riots – but rather than look to the chaos of distant horizons for inspiration, he chose to take a nostalgic glance over his shoulder to a time of childhood friendships, family holidays, steam trains and village greens.
The opening line of brilliant ‘Village Green‘ cut ‘Animal Farm‘ (‘This world is big and wild and half insane‘) lays out why Ray is looking backwards for solace; the past a safer place to be when all around things are going to hell in a handcart.
But this being The Kinks things are never quite what they seem. ‘The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society‘ is a loose concept album with nostalgia and bygone days at its core, yet for all the reassurance to be found in looking back, happy or even blind acceptance for what once was – as Ray is quick to point out – might just be a distorted memory.
At first ‘Picture Book‘ appears to breeze along with references to ‘birthday suits‘, ‘fat old Uncle Charlie‘ and ‘a holiday in August, outside a bed & breakfast in sunny Southend’, but underneath the jollity is a sharp sting of irony:
‘Picture Book, when you were just a baby, those days when you were happy, a long time ago’.
The notion of nostalgia for its own sake is also taken to task in ‘Do You Remember Walter?’ In recalling their friendship as children and plans they made together, Ray realises ‘playing cricket in the thunder and the rain’ is one of the few things they would have in common today so a reunion seems pointless. This wonderfully crafted song takes a final twist with the last line:
‘Yes, people often change, but memories of people can remain’.
In ‘People Take Pictures Of Each Other,’ again it is not what is shown in the photographs that seems important, more the emotions they evoke:
‘Picture of me when I was just three, Sat with my Ma by the old oak tree, How I love things as they used to be, Don’t show me no more please’.
Once more these feelings are conveyed on top of a jaunty folk melody that belies the darker overtones of the lyric. But ‘Village Green‘ is not entirely a journey through the past darkly. ‘Sitting By The Riverside‘ conjures the tranquility of a day spent fishing – the contentment expressed in the words matched by a sympathetic melody where piano and mellotron are to the fore.
For all its condemnation of skyscrapers, the title song that opens the record – ‘The Village Green Preservation Society‘ – is a charming, superbly nuanced piece, where Ray sets out many of the things he feels need preserving; draught beer, strawberry jam, little shops, Desperate Dan, china cups and custard pies among them, not forgetting of course village greens.
In between imposing his preservation orders, Ray and Dave join forces to sing:
‘Preserving the old ways from being abused, Protecting the new ways for me and you, What more can we do?’
Given how The Kinks career was in a state of flux, what more could they have done than produce an album that combines wit and wisdom, pits charm against sadness and mixes mysticism with quiet melancholy?
But on release they found the world had not the slightest interest in what happens to the village green or a sepia photograph evocation of an England that might have once existed.
In the same week it hit the shops, The Beatles (‘White Album‘) and Rolling Stones (‘Beggars Banquet‘) put out monumental albums that referenced revolution and street fighting men, making The Kinks sound quaint, even conservative by comparison.
As a result, ‘Village Green‘ sank without trace, an utter (sadly, there is no other word for it) commercial failure.
Always comfortable with his maverick tag, when Ray sings ‘I’m the last of the good old renegades’, in ‘Last of the Steam Powered Trains‘ he could have been talking about himself rather than describing the final days of a steam engine – but on the back of an album that went to such length in examining the past, endings would soon preoccupy The Kinks themselves.
Those compiling the UK album charts would not be troubled by The Kinks for years to come (‘Village Green‘ the first in a long line of Kinks albums not to chart) while in early 1969 Quaife, tired of being caught in the crossfire of the notorious sibling rivals, quit the group – thus bringing to an end the first chapter of The Kinks story.
Shortly afterwards old pal John Dalton was drafted in on bass which was quickly followed by a lifting of the US ban. But when they returned to the stage, aside from ‘Last of the Steam Powered Trains,’ and an occasional outing for the title track, the songs from ‘Village Green‘ as outstanding as they were, never appeared in the set-list – those two also dropped by the middle of 1971.
Over the years ‘Village Green‘ has become renowned as the greatest album most people have never heard, Ray Davies once labelling it:
‘The most successful failure of all time.’
Failure? That surely lies with those who failed to be smitten at the time. Like the very finest of their works it resonates with subtlety and guile, ‘The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society‘ as reassuring as an old friend we may not see every day, but extremely gratified to know they are there.
Mystified rather than dismayed by the ‘Village Green‘ album being ignored, Ray Davies entered 1969 with the concept nettle firmly grasped – his attention moving to a project he envisaged as a family saga called ‘Arthur‘ that would incorporate the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.
But that, literally, is another story.
THE KINKS ARE THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY (Released November 22 1968);
The Village Green Preservation Society/Do You Remember Walter/Picture Book/Johnny Thunder/Last of the Steam Powered Trains/Big Sky/Sitting by the Riverside/Animal Farm/Village Green/Starstruck/Phenomenal Cat/All of My Friends Were There/Wicked Annabella/Monica/People Take Pictures of Each Other;
This article was originally published on 12/10/2018.
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle Book.
