“I’M COMPLICATED”
“I wouldn’t call our early career a concept, more emotional surgery” RAY DAVIES
This year, THE KINKS celebrated their 60th anniversary. Now RAY DAVIES looks back on a typically unusual 2023 – from reappraising their music, to the passing of a former bandmate and the enduring significance of his wonderful creations. And what’s next? “A folk-rock musical about musical families,” he reveals to the band’s biographer Nick Hasted
“THE Kinks are still alive in my head,” Ray Davies tells Uncut. Although dormant since 1996, lately, it transpires, his old band have been in his thoughts a great deal. 2023 marked 60 years since Ray, his brother Dave and bassist Pete Quaife’s played their first fledgling gigs, before adopting the name of The Kinks and recruiting drummer Mick Avory in 1964.
This year, two compilations have been released spanning The Kinks’ first decade of wondrously tender, hilarious and heartbreaking songs: The Journey – Part 1 and this month’s Part 2. With input from Dave and Mick, Ray has typically shunned the usual greatest-hits comp, instead reassembling their career as the time-spanning saga of an alter ego he calls the Journeyman.
This new framing emphasises the conceptual work Davies favoured on albums like Schoolboys In Disgrace (1975) and in particular Preservation Act 1 (1973) and its double-album sequel Preservation Act 2 (1974). Act 2 was among Davies’ most challenging work, where the forces of progress concreted over his beloved Village Green in a dystopia of Orwellian conformity and dodgy music hall dictators. With typical ambition, Ray has effectively spent 2023 turning The Kinks’ whole early career into a concept album.
“I wouldn’t call it a concept,” Davies demurs. “More like emotional surgery…”
Something similar is planned for The Kinks’ prolific past 20 years of UK obscurity and huge US success. “It’s in discussion at the moment – we have to sort out various things,” Davies reveals. “I’d like to do something weird and wonderful with it. I’ll have to run it past marketing…”
The treadmill of tours and solo albums are, Davies implicitly concedes when we talk, over. His last one-off gig was a valedictory triumph with orchestra and choir in London’s Hyde Park on September 9, 2017, his last, brief tour in 2015. Theatrical projects like his blockbuster Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon (2014) and more modest, hand-crafted shows glimpsed lately in North London pub upper rooms and theatres occupy his time instead.
He’s no longer really competing in the pop game, either. As Davies informed Uncut a decade ago, “I don’t have to write another song for the rest of my life, I’ve got a backlog to finish,” and in 2023, a trove of perhaps 70 incomplete Kinks songs preoccupies him at Konk.
There are still ambitious new projects to ponder – “A folk-rock musical about musical families!” Davies promises us. This year, though, he has looked back like never before. The Village Green Preservation Society’s founder member is now preserving The Kinks’ music, for me and for you. What more can he do?
UNCUT: How has 2023 been for you, Ray?
DAVIES: I created a oneman play for the launch of The Journey – Part 1, which was performed by Ben Norris with soundbites and music at the Gatehouse Theatre in North London. It was a lot of work. It left me with not enough time to write other stuff, which was very sad. We only had one day of rehearsal, and had to remember lots of stuff, but it was stimulating – great crowd reaction!
Compiling the two Journey albums has taken up a lot of your year? Yeah. It was a major project. The Journey – Part 2 continues the theme of what I call the Journeyman’s story and how the Kinks songs came to be, not necessarily in the order of release, but to provide an emotional narrative. This is countered by Dave and Mick’s comments about the actual music in the liner notes. It was fun putting it together. I have written a play for The Journey – Part 2 as well, which I’d like to do as a stage show at a later date, with some other surprises to come.
Making all these different connections between your songs, did you see them in a new light? Yeah. It only became stimulating when I finished it. I could see the potential in it then. I discovered I didn’t know anything about myself. And sometimes the song out of the original context made me realise my personality.
What did you learn about yourself?
That I’m complicated!
The tracklisting makes interesting pairings. What connects “Lola” and “Sunny Afternoon”?
How I became a record company puppet. “Lola” is partly about betrayal.
You follow “Dedicated Follower Of Fashion” with “Where Are They Now?” [from 1973’s Preservation Act 1], a song where those fashionable figures of the ’60s have come a cropper.
Yeah, that set-up worked quite well.
I’m particularly fond of “Where Are They Now?” It’s poignant wondering where [Saturday Night And Sunday Morning’s working-class antihero] Arthur Seaton is now – and Charlie Bubbles, who was played by the same actor. Where would the Arthur Seaton fans be now – and the Albert Finney fans?
The four studio tracks you’ve remixed for The Journey – Part 2 are all from the two Preservation albums. That work’s always been very close to your heart, hasn’t it?
Yeah, it’s followed me all my life. Preservation provided an insight into the creative mind, which expands the writer’s inner world as well as making a record. It’s a cry from the inner depths of the writer’s soul.
When I was writing a song for it, I was writing more than that. It was a personal hell to make. A marriage on the verge of breaking up, as usual. It was quite a triumph to get it finished.
Is it something you’d still like to get its due?
Yeah, I’d like it to be complete. I wanted to turn it into a show of some sort. I tried to turn it into an animated feature in the ’80s and ’90s. There was a script. Timewise, it’s the next anniversary record [Preservation Act 2 turns 50 in 2024]. I need the right people to help me do it.
Do its themes seem even more pertinent now than they did in 1974?
Yeah. Preservation is something I want to continue to develop, because it parallels the current political world climate. It predicted the money and corruption. All the characters in it have their own spin on the world, and at the end the Tramp, broadly me, goes through it all and observes it.
The albums feature two dictators, Mr Black and Mr Flash. Do you see resonances with other political figures today?
Yeah, it’s definitely in the air. Mr Flash, a dictator who was a second-hand car spiv, and Mr Black, who
promised the people everything but gave them nothing. They’re all part of me as well.
So many of your songs have reflected our country. What do you think of it lately?
What, England? I was watching a documentary at the weekend about the late 1950s in Liverpool and West Hartlepool, and you could have been reading about today. In Liverpool the working class – the really working class – was almost an underclass. The film finished about a year before The Beatles came along. The Beatles changed more than music.
It’s like after you performed at the Olympics in 2012, when you told me seeing the state of East London on the way scared you more than anything.
I remember saying after the celebration when we got the Olympics, “They’re all laughing now, but they won’t be able to afford to live here.”
Have you written anything lately about what you see around you?
There’s always been that fear in my work, in me, of that 1984 thing – that fear of Big Brother. You can see that now, certainly with mobile phones. How many apps do you need? It’s all very dark at the moment. So I’m looking through my archive for something fun instead.
Did you watch the Coronation?
I did. As usual, it was well stage-managed. We do pomp better than anybody else. Was it meaningful? Well, it’s always been outdated, but that’s some of what’s best about it. Also the Queen’s funeral was a tough act to follow. He’s doing OK.
Yeah. He rather liked the Union Jack suit I wore!
It’s The Kinks’ 60th anniversary. Do those first days of the band seem more distant with passing time – or do some things still seem like yesterday?
When I lose my temper with my brother, it’s very, very present. And the same with him. Obviously the photographs of us are black-and-white, and there’s a tendency to look at the past. But the present is quite exciting.
You’re now in your 80th year. Do you have a keen sense of the future?
If the acts are left on their own to develop, there’s hope for new bands. That’s why I started Konk Studios, because otherwise everything we did would be what the record company want. And we wanted freedom.
Do you still go into Konk?
I still do all my projects there – in lockdown, I worked mostly from Konk. Creatively, that was a good time for me. When the big lockdown was happening, we were looking through the album Lola Versus
Powerman, and we found the song “Anytime” in the vaults and brought it to life. We added a newly written narrative spoken by Karen Eyo to run in parallel with the song. I developed “Anytime” for a group called The Follower, who added another insight into it. It was fun to put together. Maybe we could do a whole album like that.
“Songwriting forces ideas. Always have a song in your head” RAY DAVIES
With Sunny Afternoon and these one-man plays for The Journey, do you find theatrical formats a better way of working now than going from one solo album to the next?
The scope is better. I did two radio plays, too, based on Arthur and Lola Versus Powerman, both performed on BBC Radio 4. When I left art school to join a band, the teacher said everything you do now will get you down the line. Theatre was different then, though…
Are you and Dave getting on these days?
Yeah. We know where not to tread.
And are you still searching for the right collaborators to replace The Kinks, to help you realise your work?
Have I been looking for that since The Kinks? Well, yeah. I know I’m known as the writer, but it’s a team effort. With anything creative, no-one’s any good without a reaction from another human being. When The Kinks were making a record for Arista after Mick Avory had left, we got Mick to manage the studio. I wanted him on the floor, to keep me company. The staff at Konk do that now – and I enjoyed working with The Jayhawks on my Americana albums. When they could do a track just playing it once, without overdubs, I said, “We have a team.”
Are you working on an album now?
I’m presently going through my archive of unfinished songs and finishing them for a new record.
Is the weight of your music now with that past work – a legacy that needs to be completed?
Working towards it, yeah. I find myself getting up in the morning and one of the songs comes into my head and I’d like to finish it. But I’ve been distracted by doing a lot of admin work, sharing files. I’ve started writing and I definitely want to finish those songs. There are some happy surprises in there I’m pleased with.
There was some thought of getting Dave and Mick involved with this, for a sort of newold Kinks album?
Thought about it. Depends whether they’re up to it or not. The Konk studio staff are helping me bring it to fruition. I’m involving Mick. Dave when he’s here. I’ve played it to him and asked for comments. He’s listened.
Do new songs still regularly come to you?
Yeah. I like to try to put myself in a situation where I have nothing to sing about. It’s to do with my nerves. Then I have to find something every day. People say to me, “You look unhappy.” I realise it’s because I’m not writing. I tell them, “I’m working on it.” Nobody taught me how to be a songwriter, so I had to make my own methods. Songwriting forces ideas. Always have a song in your head.
You told me once that you always have songs running through your head, even while talking with people. Does that still happen?
Yeah, it does. It certainly happened while I was making The Journey.
Part of The Kinks’ anniversary celebrations involved walking tours around your old haunts in North London. Does it seem odd that your band and the place you grew up are seen as historic now, like Dickens?
No, because those streets are still the same in many ways, though different in others. I walked round there again recently, because I’m an insomniac.
What have you been listening to this year?
Bruce Springsteen… and no-one in particular.
What movies and books have impressed you?
Well, Netflix. But I don’t sit watching one thing, I just jump to the next. Peaky Blinders is a favourite. I’m finding myself going back to archive books. I’m interested in Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. There’s a navy book called The Fatal Shore. But like everyone, I don’t read so many books, as I’m on the internet.
Much like The Journey, your solo gigs showed how your best songs fitted together, and were vital in establishing you after The Kinks. Do you miss performing on stage?
I do, and I don’t. Because performing on stage is a way of getting people to react to new music.
What new music are you working on?
A folkrock musical about singing families. It’s a project I started developing four or five years ago about siblings and the way you can’t break them up. I need to fit it down into a format. It will take place in Smithfield Market. I’ve done my research. I’m interested in my parents’ generation. My dad worked there as a porter. I’ve written a lot of songs, I’ve just got to put the book together. I had a dramaturge, but it’s finding the right person.
So it’s going back to your and Dave’s roots?
It wouldn’t be The Kinks’ story – and it’s definitely not my family. It would be about the characters that were around in those days, and how people made a living. The way people used to go to the prison for the hanging, for a day out!
Smithfield is closing down. The meat traders are leaving one by one…
Like doctors. Where’s Smithfield Market going?
Dagenham.
How appropriate…
You’ve said you always had an older person’s personality. You imagined a 70-year-old version of yourself named RD in your autobiography, X-ray. Is there anything you weren’t prepared for now you’re 79?
I wasn’t prepared, but 50’s the hardest. For some reason, being 50 was horrible. So I’ve been through the worst of it? Yeah, it’s only uphill from here! Going back to X-ray, at the end, RD leaves his archives to the boy who’s interviewing him. I’m trying to rewrite that scene, so I can do it myself. I’ve got an incredible archive of songs.
Do you still have ambitions left?
We’ll see how this musical shapes up. But I’m just interested in finishing the work I started and making people happy.
The Journey – Part 2 is released by BMG on November 17