Towards the end of the BBC Four documentary ‘THE KINKS AT THE BBC’ Dave Davies says of elder brother Ray:
‘Many times I’ve played the elder brother and he’s been the irresponsible younger brother. And one of my petty grievances – and it is a petty grievance – is that I’ve never felt he’s allowed me the same creative space that I’ve allowed him and whenever that’s boiled up we’ve had problems.’
To say Dave and Ray had a relationship closer to angry and simmering rather than of amiable siblings, is doing the antipathy that existed between them through thirty two years in The Kinks a disservice – their dislike of each other reigning long enough to keep the group apart since 1996.
After Dave delivers his sharp appraisal, the programme inadvertently reinforces his point by closing with three clips of Ray performing Kinks songs as a latter day solo act – as if there is not enough film of The Kinks to complete the documentary.
Surely it would have better to have Kinks footage than Ray performing as a soloist or with The Crouch End Festival Chorus, who he should never have come within a Muswell Hill mile of The Kinks repertoire.
The preceding fifty minutes of the programme provides ample proof of The Kinks being a consistently brilliant singles band – with evidence aplenty nobody could match Ray Davies for irony and poetic turn of phrase.
From black and white (1964) footage of ‘You Really Got Me,’ where Dave’s thunder and lightning guitar riffs turn popular music into rock, through the sharply satirical observations of ‘A Well Respected Man‘ and ‘Sunny Afternoon‘ they are evocative and original in a way that none of their rivals can match.
As the 60s come to a close and a new decade dawns so the footage turns to colour, but songs with the purpose and panache of ‘Days‘ and ‘Lola‘ bring no let-up in this extraordinary run of hits.
In front of the camera at least, there is no sign of loathing between Dave and Ray, who at certain points still manage to exchange a wry smile or knowing look. But by the time of a 1972 ‘Old Grey Whistle Test‘ performance of ‘Have A Cuppa Tea,’ The Kinks have begun to look a group apart – and by that is meant the glitter suits and platform boots of glam were never for them.
Taken from the monumental ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ album of the previous year, the song is indicative of the North London folk songs Ray had written for the LP – acutely observed vignettes about his grandmother, sisters and displacement of family friends from their old neighbourhood, where tower blocks are replacing terraced houses.
At a time when David Bowie was singing about ‘Life On Mars?’ never has there been such a pointed difference between aliens and alienation.
The documentary covers the rest of the 70s by showing contemporary renditions of 60s hits. From a North London concert at the Rainbow Theatre (1972) is a lively working of ‘Till The End of the Day‘ where in his white suit Ray cavorts like an Islington Elvis.
Another live show before the cameras yields ‘Waterloo Sunset‘ and ‘Village Green Preservation Society,’ two songs of such profound beauty they do not require fattening up with the accompanying brass section. From Christmas Eve 1977 and a performance broadcast live on the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test‘, comes a brief medley of ‘A Well Respected Man,’ and ‘Death of a Clown‘ – the latter at last providing Dave with a lead vocal opportunity.
When Dave was referring to ‘creative space‘ his inference might well have been the 1973-76 era, a period when Ray wrote for The Kinks a series of conceptual albums that were grandly ambitious, but short on cohesion, records in which only their devout followers showed the slightest interest.
When the 80s dawned they had long since disappeared from British TV screens and the UK Charts, but in America constant touring finally paid dividends with ‘Low Budget‘ (1979) and ‘Give The People What They Want’ (1981), reaching American top ten chart positions Kinks albums had never before attained.
Those of us lamenting how force had replaced finesse on this pair of blustering albums had, by now, largely given up on hearing The Kinks produce work worthy of their distant history. But with ‘Come Dancing‘ Ray not only comes up with his most charming song in years, it also contains enough hooks for them to dent the UK singles charts for the first time since 1972.
Performing the song on a 1983 edition of ‘Top of the Pops‘ The Kinks are still a band apart, but Ray is now a man apart within the group.
He delivers the song in a smart blue pin-striped suit while Dave, original drummer Mick Avory (entering his final few months as a Kink before leaving the following year), bass player Jim Rodford, who sadly passed away a week before the showing of the programme in January 2018 and keyboardist Ian Gibbons (now sadly also deceased), are dressed in white tuxedo jackets and bow ties – the void between the front man and rest of the band never more apparent.
The success of ‘Come Dancing‘ (taken from the accomplished ‘State of Confusion‘ LP) proved to be fleeting and only two unconvincing albums were forthcoming before the 80s turned into the 90s.
Yet the final performances in the documentary show The Kinks working more buoyantly than they had in years. ‘Scattered‘ (performed on ‘The Late Show‘) is a superb song with a nice line in pithy lyrics and gorgeous harmonies between Ray and Dave – with a wonderful performance of ‘The Informer‘ on ‘Later with Jools Holland‘ hiding the accelerating disintegration in relations between the brothers.
(It would be exacerbated in the next couple of years by autobiographies, solo shows and antagonism on a number of levels – the Chuckle Brothers they certainly were not).
Mark Haley, Jim Rodford, Bob Henrit;
Their loggerheads stance has continued by and large ever since (accepting their 2005 nomination into the UK Music Hall of Fame they circle one another like hungry tigers) and while Ray admits in an interview contained within the documentary to being ‘difficult to work with‘ the last word on The Kinks career as a whole is left, in the interests of balance, to Dave:
‘We managed to draw off so many different influences. Sometimes it’s worked sometimes it hasn’t but we tried to express ourselves in a way that nobody else has touched on. That’s why we never reached the great success of The Who or the Stones. Alot of the time record companies didn’t know what to do with The Kinks. One song would be light and folky then the next would be hard edged and aggressive – we were nothing like anybody else.’
Not like anybody else – The Kinks to a tee.
This article was first published on 5/3/2018.
NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE’ – an acclaimed thriller now available as an Amazon Kindle Book.