The Dirt
Fiftieth-anniversary exhibition celebrates the group’s masterpiece.
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The 50th-anniversary reissue of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, the sixth studio album from The Kinks, one of the great British bands of the 60s, is being celebrated with an exhibition of the same name. Taking place at Proud Central gallery in central London, it brings together vintage memorabilia, photography from the era and specially commissioned and handsigned artworks by the surviving band members, brothers Ray and Dave Davies and Mick Avory.
Photographs by British photographer Barrie Wentzell, whose work was featured on the album’s original artwork as well as its newly expanded and remastered editions, are among the iconic images in the exhibition, including a now celebrated photo shoot with the Kinks on London’s Hampstead Heath, set against the historic backdrop of Kenwood House.
“That was one of Ray’s favourite places to do photos and interviews, and we’d often chat and have tea and currant buns there,” Wentzell tells Classic Rock. “The shoot that was used for the album sleeve was my last one with the original band, which included [drummer] Pete Quaife. I used that location for several shoots, including another with Elton John.”
As chief photographer for Melody Maker from 1965 until ’75, Wentzell spent a lot of time with
The Kinks.
“I think I first met Ray and Dave playing Sunday football with some others from the magazine’s staff,” he recalls. “I shot them on Top Of The Pops and attended a load of their gigs, though I didn’t always take my camera because quite a few were in pubs. I loved the atmosphere.
“To me, The Kinks were the first punk-ish band. They were raw and dangerous but there was comedy too. And they balanced out the heavy rock’n’roll with songs like [60s hits] Dead End Street and Autumn Almanac.”
Although it might sound unlikely, Wentzell was so flattered that The Kinks used his work on their artwork, he “forgot” to request a fee until the record was reissued.
“I was living opposite the Nellie Dean pub in Dean Street [Soho, London]. And because the Charisma Records office was nearby, Genesis were always in there – like me, they didn’t have any money,” he says. “Everybody was skint. But it wasn’t about the money. We were all helping each other.”
Indeed, back then The Kinks were a very social bunch. “Wherever we were going, Ray would always want to meet in the Archway Tavern,” Wentzell says, laughing. “We were friends and there were a lot of laughs.”
Even so, Wentzell remembers a serious side to Ray: “He was nostalgic. He was interested in steam trains, and noted that a lot of things, such as corner shops, old pubs and even village greens, were disappearing.”
The Who’s Pete Townshend later called The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society album (reviewed on page 89) “Ray’s masterpiece”. But despite a positive critical reception when it was first released in November 1968 it failed to make the British chart.
One thing’s for sure: with the UK at the time poised to join the Common Market (the forerunner of the European Union) five years later, the album’s sentiments were very much ahead of their time in these Brexitobsessed days.
“Re-reading the lyrics all these years later, I cracked up,” says Wentzell. “Those were more innocent times. Before that there was no youth fashion. We had only just come out of the war, rationing wasn’t so long ago. To me, Ray was the poet laureate of that period. He wrote about ordinary people in ordinary situations but made them sound interesting. You don’t hear that any more.”
Wentzell is also excited by the fact that the longfeuding Ray and Dave appear to be talking to one another once more. “The boys have made friends again. This could be the coming together of it all,” he says optimistically. “There are no punch-ups any more.”
All the same, the siblings seem to blow hot and cold on the idea of a Kinks reunion. As recently as June this year, Ray said it was happening, only for Dave to shoot him down. And in this issue’s Q&A (page 24) Dave says that in the autumn he’ll be doing “some stuff with Ray that will result in new music” and that “hopefully it’ll be a new Kinks record”.
So many years down the line, could it really happen? “Of course it can,” Wentzell says. “We never thought that artists would be old-age pensioners and still make music, but it’s happening. The fact that they are talking together is wonderful news.” DL
“The Kinks were raw and dangerous but there
was comedy too.”
Photographer Barrie Wentzell