The Kinks’ Dave Davies talks on ‘Village Green’
“When we got back from America, we became a much more introverted band.”
Dave Davies knew his brother Ray had come up with a special sort of masterpiece in the character-driven “The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society.”
A bittersweet song cycle driven by nostalgic longing for a simpler time, it failed spectacularly when it hit the streets of 1968 with its odes to “preserving the old ways from being abused” but would go on to be the Kinks’ most celebrated album.
“Like all great art, it lasts because it keeps pulling you back,” Davies says.
“And you learn something new about yourself and about the world, hopefully. It’s about reminding us of what we’ve lost spiritually or emotionally. There a longing for the past, but the real challenge is to adjust to the change that is in front of us.”
Were Davies and his bandmates disappointed that album did so badly at the time?
“I try not to look at things like that,” he says, “because the impetus you need to go on is finding success in the fact that you finished something worthwhile. Otherwise you tend to become some kind of weird egotist where everything I do has got to be successful. I mean, obviously, we all need money. But the real reward is in the content. How is it changing my life?”
The album was written and recorded in the middle of a four-year ban from touring in the States, which effectively crushed the momentum the British Invaders been building since “You Really Got Me” hit the charts in 1964. Davies says he wasn’t bothered by the ban.
“I quite liked it in a way that we weren’t able to go to America,” he says. “I thought that we could get back into sharing things as a family. It helped galvanize us as people, I thought. The Kinks have always been inspired by the family. We’ve often drawn from it, when you think ‘Arthur’ or ‘Muswell Hillbillies.’ It’s all about a part of our lives.”
A lot of the characters who populate “The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society” grew out of people in their neighborhood as they were growing up.
“The fact is when we got back from America, we became a much more introverted band,” he says. “I know Ray was writing more internal things. And I loved it. I fell right into it because Ray and I were close at the time. We were getting on well. Our families were living near each other. You’d go meet for a drink after working and we’d talk about the people we knew and ‘Oh, remember so and so.’”
The tone of Davies’ musings on the value of tradition, as embodied by lines as nostalgic as “God save little shops, china cups, and virginity,” could not have been more out-of-step with the prevailing values of rock culture at the time.
That may be why the album’s lyrics feel so timeless now.
“Ray was writing about that sort of thing way before people started to think about things like that,” Davies says. “’But as the ‘80s wore on and the ‘90s came, people started to realize the common sense of ‘We’ve got to keep some of this stuff. We can preserve the old things and values or ideas that work and integrate them with the new.’ So in a way the Kinks were ahead of the curve on that point.”
The album also marked the end of an era for the Kinks, their last release to feature founding bassist Pete Quaife.
“I think he’d been disillusioned for a while and wanted to do his own thing,” Davies says. “So that was a big event, when he left. And our managers left. It felt like we started all over again. But you know, you pick up the pieces and carry on as best you can.”
The 50th anniversary of the landmark album is being celebrated with the release of adeluxe box set that features 174 tracks spread across two vinyl LPs, 5 CDs and three singles; a 52-page hardback book whose highlights include a loving essay by the Who’s Pete Townshend and assorted memorabilia.
It also features a collection Davies did of six artistic representation of the songs, which are also on display in a newly opened “Village Green” exhibit at Proud Galleries in London through Nov. 19.
“That was a very rewarding thing to do,” he says. “It’s like a new project again.”