While they would not reflect on 1972 as being a vintage 12 months, during that time The Kinks had managed to grow their U.S. following by virtue of extensive Stateside touring. The year also brought the likeable ‘Everybody’s in Showbiz‘ double-album (one disc new material, the other live performances), this proving a record enjoyed rather than exalted by the critics while making little commercial headway.
Their second release on RCA since switching from Pye, for whom they had recorded a succession of monumental singles and albums since scoring their first hit with ‘You Really Got Me‘ in 1964, the studio tracks of ‘Showbiz‘ were, for the most part, impressionism of being on tour as a major rock band eight years into their career. The best of these were pithy, at times poignant compositions, offering reminder of why guitarist and principal songwriter Ray Davies remained among the most celebrated of lyricists.
Since leading The Kinks from proto hard-rock in their early days (The Kinks originally consisting of Davies, younger brother lead guitarist Dave, drummer Mick Avory and bass player Pete Quaife – the current line-up now made up of bassist John Dalton and keyboard man John Gosling along with the three remaining founder members), Ray had written a sequence of magnificent 45s before moving on to create a series of brilliantly conceived thematic albums – ‘The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society‘ (1968), ‘Arthur – or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire‘ (1969) and ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ (1971) – each one distinctive in their accomplishment, while unified by a distinct lack of chart success.
As 1972 drew to a close it was toward the first named of these inspired if largely ignored recordings Davies returned, the themes and overall concept of ‘Village Green‘, namely the passage of a sepia-tinged past into the realms of clinical modernity, once more fueling his muse.
So quickly did his ambitions for a revised presentation of the record reach gargantuan proportion, Davies expanded the scope to that of a linear narrative incorporating songs from their back catalogue, into which tracks from ‘Village Green‘ would be sequenced. Room would also be made to include purposely written new pieces designed at carrying the band into the next stage of their career.
But Davies was not content just to work within the constraints of a single or double album format. For him there were more lofty aspirations to contemplate which quickly led to a much grander perspective, setting an aim of presenting the work as a theatrical production involving actors, dialogue and additional musicians.
Despite previously not being able to deliver the ‘Arthur‘ album with the proposed accompanying television drama (the result of financial restraint from the commissioning production company rather than any fault of The Kinks), there was no shortage of enthusiasm behind bringing these latest plans to fruition. Amidst another extensive round of touring through the closing weeks of 1972, Davies worked tirelessly in giving shape to his creation, word going out so far in regard to what he was cooking up that it was commissioned as part of the Fanfare for Europe celebrations, commemorating the entry of Great Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC).
In no time a definitive date for the unveiling came into view – The Kinks booked to present this extravaganza, somewhat fittingly given the theatrical dimension, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London on January 14 1973.
In the event the machinations of pulling everything together proved too much. While some of the multi-media apparatus (stage design, changing backdrops, video clips) were utilized and The Kinks drew rave reviews for their performance, the 21-song set list contained only three tracks composed for the proposed opus, the night a celebration of their history rather than pointer toward the future.
While gratified by positive notices arising from the Drury Lane concert, within The Kinks inner-circle there remained frustration at failing to deliver the show in its intended form. But this disappointment would soon be supplanted by far more worrying concerns relating to the emotional condition of their central figure.
As 1973 unfolded Ray would separate from his wife, losing contact with two young daughters in the process, make an alleged suicide attempt and publicly announce his intention to retire. Yet for all the tribulation surrounding the elder Davies brother The Kinks soldiered on, Ray finding impetus to continue from taking the nostalgic connotations of ‘Village Green‘ and placing them in more foreboding times.
Yet more than the allegorical ambitions contained in the album The Kinks worked on at various times during the year, the most resonant songs to feature on ‘PRESERVATION ACT 1‘ (November 1973) were clearly inspired by travails affecting the life of their writer.
The plaudits from the Theatre Royal gig had barely ceased when Ray moved to scale back his aspirations. ‘In the end I didn’t want to tamper with the original ‘Village Green’ record,’ he later reflected, ‘because it worked well in its own right. That’s why I went on to write ‘Preservation.’
Not that references to the 1968 masterpiece would be far from his mind when The Kinks began cutting some fresh tracks at Morgan Studios, London in the spring of 1973, sessions taking place between more extensive touring commitments. But on returning from a run of U.S. concerts in early summer, Ray discovered his wife and children had moved out of the North London family home, the finality of the situation accentuated by the subsequent arrival of divorce papers.
While matters were disconcerting enough inside in his own four walls, there was an air of disenchantment to contend with from within the environs of the band. Brother Dave, for one, had become increasingly resentful as he and the others began resembling a collection of hired sidemen, expected to immerse themselves in whatever creative adventure their mercurial leader pursued next.
All the pessimistic portents came to a head at an open air festival held at White City Stadium in West London on July 15th 1973. At the end of their set Ray declared his retirement to the audience, although most of what he said went unheard by many due to pre-recorded music being played by the P.A.
In the hours that followed Davies was admitted to a London hospital for suspected amphetamine poisoning – later revealing he had taken a dosage of life-threatening degree.
By way of bizarre irony, The Kinks currently had a new single out, ‘Sitting in the Midday Sun‘, a witty ode to living life in relaxed, unhurried fashion. Utterly charming, it barely sold a copy. While some heard it as the song that should have restored them to the charts (where they had not be seen for over 12 months), for Ray it was part of an altogether more elaborate entity.
In dealing with his personal woes Davies channeled his energies into a composing a sprawling rock drama assigned the title ‘Preservation‘ – and with their nearly opened Konk Studios in North London ready to use, tracks were cut on a round the clock basis.
With fresh wind in his sails, Davies decided to scrap most of what had been recorded at Morgan earlier in the year and start again from scratch. Through the late summer and and autumn of 1973, enough songs for a double album were committed to tape and with the ‘Preservation‘ concept taking shape, at least to Ray, 11 cuts were selected for the ‘Act 1‘ release of late 1973 – the rest held back to be supplemented with others yet to be written, for ‘Act 2‘ that would see the light of day sometime in 1974.
The story, broadly speaking, that Davies was consumed by depicted society at war with itself, a land where capitalism had become all pervasive, the means of living a sedate existence fast disappearing amidst authoritarianism and rampant consumerism. Of the 32 pieces that would eventually constitute ‘Preservation‘ (‘Act 2‘ a 21-track double album that appeared in July of the following year), the first installment has the superior songs – including a number that stand as excellent Kinks efforts irrespective of the conceptual thread – while ‘Act 2‘ has a more coherent story line.
Yet with Ray writing, producing and in most instances singing everything that appears, it does create the overriding notion ‘Preservation‘ is his own odyssey, the rest of The Kinks merely passengers along for the ride. Not that it would deter him – the next four Kinks albums would embrace concepts entirely of his volition.
Their 12th studio album, ‘Act 1‘ opens with ‘Morning Song‘ which serves as an evocative fanfare, the tranquility of the countryside easy to conjure as the sun rises over rolling fields and distant woodland. Offering first indication of the musical theatre aspect, second track ‘Daylight‘ while sung by Ray is credited to ‘Chorus‘. While the stage direction inference is something new, the opening lyric of the album immediately evokes a bygone Kinks era, the cynicism that has since affected them and the country as a whole, for the moment kept out of frame:
‘Daylight over the Village Green/Early in the morning/Daylight over the hills and valleys/Heralding the morning/Daylight over the mountains/Daylight on the old Village Green/Daylight over the fields and the factories/Another night has gone away and here comes yet another day.’
For this amiable, mid-tempo piece The Kinks are augmented (as they had been on their previous two albums and live shows of the past 18 months) by a brass section of Laurie Brown, John Beecham and Alan Holmes. The horn players are particularly resonant through two vividly drawn verses that revealed Ray had lost none of his mastery for conveying snapshots of everyday life, ‘Middle-aged bankers crack their backs and wish they were young and in their teens/Lonely spinsters dream of dating Roger Moore or Steve McQueen.’
While the line may have simply been used for emphasis in the chorus, after his recent tribulations it was still gratifying to hear him sing, ‘I feel the sunlight on my pillow/And it stops my yawning/I thank God that I’m still around to/See another dawn in.’
Describing Ray as a ‘megalomaniac‘ during this period in his ‘Living On A Thin Line‘ biography (2022), Dave makes no secret of the fact he felt ‘Preservation‘ would have been better suited to a theatre production or film rather than made as a Kinks album, also asserting his brother copied the guitar chords of ‘Daylight‘ from a song he was working on. Yet for all his misgivings the younger Davies sibling contributes no shortage of accomplished guitar work – the brothers heard to superb effect on the shuffling folk-rock gem ‘Sweet Lady Genevieve‘.
With its breezy harmonica and meshing acoustic and electric guitars, there are distinct overtones of The Beatles ‘I Should Have Known Better’, Ray delivering an engaging lyric over uplifting melodicism.
Sung from the standpoint of a character named ‘The Tramp‘, the heartfelt sentiments have no bearing on the dystopian visions of the overall premise, but stand instead as a reconciliatory plea to estranged wife Rasa – Ray stating his remorse in a pertinent, poetic way:
‘Now I’ve come back to see Sweet Lady Genevieve/This time I’ll give you some security/And I will make promises I can keep/So will you come back to me/Sweet Lady Genevieve?’
Long since regarded, with some justification, as a buried treasure within The Kinks trove, it is not hard to imagine Rod Stewart in all his rasping glory taking this to number one in 1973. Yet so far were they into a commercial slump it barely caused a ripple when issued as a single – a fate that had also befallen ‘Sitting in the Midday Sun‘, one of the two other ‘Preservation‘ numbers sung by The Tramp.
With acoustic guitars again prominent, the lush, lilting melody belies all sense of the writer being gripped by melancholy (‘Everybody thinks I’m crazy/And everybody says I’m dumb/But when I see the people shouting at each other/I’d rather be an out of work bum‘), the gentle sensibilities far closer to those of ‘Sitting by the Riverside‘ from ‘Village Green‘ than the political themes of ‘Preservation‘.
The other song coming forth from The Tramp is ‘Where Are They Now?’ a whimsical trawl through recent history that ruminates on the fleeting nature of fame and fashion trends, ‘Where have all the Swinging Londoners gone?/Ossie Clark and Mary Quant/And what of Christine Keeler/John Stephen and Alvaro/Where on earth did they all go?’
Built upon excellent keyboard work from Gosling, the ambience is one of wistful nostalgia, (‘I wonder what became of all the Rockers and the Mods/I hope they are making it, and they’ve all got steady jobs‘).
The three tracks with The Tramp as their source are the most affecting Davies would write through the concept-album era, songs of this quality scarce on ‘Preservation Act 2‘ (1974) and ‘Soap Opera‘ (1975) – ‘Schoolboys in Disgrace‘ (1975) containing a couple of worthy efforts without being so plentiful in terms of panache.
With that trio at the core, along with ‘Morning Song‘ and ‘Daylight‘ there is the framework of a sequel to ‘Village Green‘ into which ‘Cricket‘ and ‘One of the Survivors‘ would also fit – the latter updating the story of a Ray Davies character creation from five years before.
The only track to survive almost intact from the sessions at Morgan earlier in the year, the key figure in ‘One of the Survivors‘ is ‘Johnny Thunder‘ who now bears traits of time passing (‘Old Johnny Thunder looks a little overweight/And his sideburns are turning grey‘).
Carried along by the pounding piano of Gosling, it celebrates a time now gone while acknowledging the determination of its hero not to let such days be forgotten, ‘See Johnny Thunder sitting on his motorbike/Riding along the highway/Rock and roll songs from the 1950’s/Buzzing around in his brain.’ Despite failing to chart when released as a 45 six months before, it quite likely made an impression on Elton John and Bernie Taupin who drew two songs from the same well (‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting‘ and ‘Your Sister Can’t Twist ‘ (But She Can Rock ‘n’ Roll) for their October 1973 double-set collection ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.’
In contrast ‘Cricket‘ (what else could be more evocative of an English village green), is sung by the local vicar who uses the game as an analogy for the struggle between good and evil, ‘Now the Devil has a player and he’s called the Demon Bowler/He’s shrewd, he’s rude, he’s wicked/He is sent by Sinful Satan, and he’s out to take your wicket/And you know that that’s not cricket.’
Written in the style of a Noel Coward vignette, through an easy going melody Davies revels in the metaphors on offer (‘And remember that God is on your side/So keep old Satan in your sights/And play the straight and narrow line’) – the vicar in his sermon urging caution among his female parishioners, the devil having been known to ‘bowl a maiden over.’
The first inkling that Davies has grander designs in mind than more movements around the maypole arrives toward the end of side one ‘There’s A Change in the Weather‘, a Gilbert & Sullivan pastiche shot through with foreboding.
With the first three verses sung in turn by a man of the working class, middle and upper class, the song appears a musical attempt (only with increased antagonism) at recreating a famous U.K. television sketch of the 1960s, when from the top downward John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, represent established levels of the British class system.
But unlike the actors who make wry observations about society, those narrating the song are burdened by fear and unease, Davies perhaps overstating the case, (‘See the holocaust risin’ over the horizon/Gonna see a manifestation/Total chaos, devastation‘), in going for dramatic effect.
One of the two main protagonists who essentially drive the ‘Preservation‘ plot (particularly in ‘Act 2‘), Mr. Black makes his first appearance in ‘Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man‘ – the other, ‘Flash’, comes to the fore in the next track, their presence in ‘Act 1‘ amounting to introductory sketches for the greater visibility they will have on the subsequent double-album.
Sung by the Chorus and Mr. Black, over folk stylings fattened up with input from the horn players the consternation of the masses ring as true in the story as they do in the present day climate:
‘We are sick and tired of being promised this and that/We work all day, we sweat and we slave, to keep the wealthy fat/They fill our heads with promises, and bamboozle us with facts/Then they put on false sincerity/Then they laugh behind our backs.’
Aiming to assuage their despair is Mr. Black, a vain, popularist politician, who through his ‘I Am Your Man‘ segment proclaims ‘I am your man/I’ll work out a five-year plan/So vote for me, brothers/And I will save this land.’ But he has a rival for power, ‘Here Comes Flash‘ introducing his archly capitalist opponent. Amid the strains of blaring horns and urgent playing from group, the Chorus and Scared Housewives express their concerns about what could befall them in explicit detail:
‘He will smile at you/Be a friend to you/Then he’s gonna screw you just like that/He is going to use you/His heavies will abuse you/And then he’s gonna lean on you, here comes Flash.’
Taking on the inflections of a soul revue by fully incorporating the horns, closing track ‘Demolition‘ serves as an effective link between the origins of the story and how it will unfold in ‘Act 2‘ – Flash and his cronies in their den, speculating on the wealth and power they aspire to:
‘We’ll buy up all the cottages/And every house and every street/Until we’ve got everything we need/Every town in the vicinity/Every farm and village green/We’re gonna buy up everything/Then it’s Demolition/Demolition/Demolition.’
When he ruminated on how communities were at the mercy of architects and planners with great eloquence on ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ (the true nature of community under threat as a result), Davies had done so through the voice of those being displaced. But now the financiers and fly-by-nights are being given their moment – progress measured in the relentless swing of the wrecking ball and size of corporate bank accounts:
‘Nothing’s permanent and nothing lasts/We’ve sold all the houses so put ’em up fast/We’re gonna buy up this town/And pull it all down/How I love to hear the demolition sound/Of concrete crashing to the ground.’
In the absence of the ‘Preservation‘ title track, that needless to say sank without trace when put out as a single (then, just to increase the confusion, it was omitted from the album), ‘Demolition‘ does most to explain the gist of what Davies is trying to convey. Yet even then the absence of the song, from which the whole shooting match takes its name, remains inexplicable.
Sequenced at the beginning of the 1998 CD reissue, lines such as ‘When money is evil/And power is corrupt/The devil moves in and takes over’ offer insight as a preamble not present on the original album. In truth, ‘Act 2‘ would have also benefitted from its inclusion, the continuity just about holding together in its absence.
Suffice to say, ‘Preservation Act 1‘ was greeted by a mixture of confusion and general apathy. Melody Maker compared it unfavourably to ‘Tommy‘ by The Who and pretty much left it at that. The New Musical Express, however, were far more damning in their assessment, taking Davies to task for ‘A drawn out sequence of socio-political platitudes couched in the tritest lyrical formats, supported by music of little overall cohesion and no individuality whatsoever.’
Through the stellar ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ Ray sounded fed up with the 1970s and they were only 18 months old. By similar reckoning, The Kinks were just one album into their thematic album run and already the critics were unimpressed.
Despite containing some undeniably fine music, for ‘Act 1‘ it was mainly negative reviews and negligible sales (no U.K. chart placing/U.S. 177). Yet the concept avenue was one Ray would not be deterred from repeatedly visiting, irrespective of dissenting voices (his younger brother among them) shouting cul-de-sac from the pavement.
Through a combination of artistic commitment and sheer willfulness, it was a voyage Ray, given the traumas he had just gone through, needed to see through until the end.
Perhaps for his own self-preservation.
THE KINKS – PRESERVATION ACT 1 (Released November 16 1973):
Morning Song/Daylight/Sweet Lady Genevieve/There’s A Change in the Weather/Where Are They Now?/One of the Survivors/Cricket/Money and Corruption, I Am Your Man/Here Comes Flash/Sitting in the Midday Sun/Demolition;
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