The Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in London in 1962. The band's original line-up comprised brothers Ray Davies and Dave Davies, Pete Quaife, and Mick Avory. Emerging during the height of British rhythm and blues and Merseybeat, their breakthrough third single, the Ray Davies-penned "You Really Got Me", became an international hit, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and reaching the Top 10 in the United States. Other early hits included "All Day and All of the Night", "Tired of Waiting for You", "Set Me Free", "See My Friends", and "Till the End of the Day". They were part of the British Invasion of America until several problems during their 1965 American tour led to them being banned from touring there for a number of years.
The Kinks' music drew from a wide range of influences, including American R&B and rock and roll initially, and later adopting British music hall, folk, and country. Beginning with the late 1965 Kwyet Kinks EP, the band gained a reputation for reflecting English culture and lifestyle, fuelled by Ray Davies's observational and satirical lyricism, and made apparent in albums such as Face to Face, Something Else by the Kinks, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur , Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, and Muswell Hillbillies, along with their hit singles during this period, including "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", "Sunny Afternoon", "Dead End Street", "Waterloo Sunset", "Autumn Almanac", "Days", and "Lola". After a fallow period in the mid-1970s, the band experienced a revival with their albums Sleepwalker, Misfits, Low Budget, Give the People What They Want, and State of Confusion, the last of which produced one of the band's most successful US hits, "Come Dancing".
The Davies brothers remained with the band throughout its history. Quaife briefly left the band in 1966 and was replaced by John Dalton, though Quaife returned by the end of that year before leaving permanently in 1969, once again being replaced by Dalton. Keyboardist John Gosling was added in 1970, with this line-up remaining in place until Dalton's 1976 departure. After several changes during the late 1970s, the line-up stabilised in 1979 with the Davies brothers, Avory, bassist Jim Rodford, and keyboardist Ian Gibbons. Avory left in 1984, after which the band underwent a few more personnel changes before giving their last public performance in 1996 and breaking up in 1997 as a result of creative tension between the Davies brothers.
The Kinks are regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s. They have had seventeen Top 20 singles and five Top 10 albums in the UK, and five of their singles reached the Top 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Additionally, nine of their albums charted in the Top 40 of the US Billboard 200. Four Kinks albums have been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, and the band has sold over 50 million records worldwide. Among numerous honours, they received the Ivor Novello Award for "Outstanding Service to British Music". In 1990, the original four members of the Kinks were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In addition, groups such as Van Halen, the Jam, the Knack, the Pretenders, Green Day, Queens of the Stone Age and the Romantics covered their songs, helping to boost the Kinks' record sales. In the 1990s, Britpop acts such as Blur and Oasis cited the band as a major influence.
History
Formation (1962–1963)
The Davies brothers, Ray and Dave, were born in suburban North London on Huntingdon Road, East Finchley, the youngest and the only boys among their family's eight children. Their parents, Frederick and Annie Davies, moved the family to 6Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green, in the neighbouring suburb of Muswell Hill. At home, the brothers were immersed in a world of varied musical styles, from the music hall of their parents' generation to the jazz and early rock and roll their older sisters enjoyed. Both Ray and his brother Dave, younger by almost three years, learnt to play guitar, and they played skiffle and rock and roll together.The brothers attended William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School, where they formed a band, the Ray Davies Quartet, with Ray's friend and classmate Pete Quaife and Quaife's friend John Start. Their debut at a school dance was well received, which encouraged the group to play at local pubs and bars. The band went through a series of lead vocalists, including Rod Stewart, another student at William Grimshaw, who performed with the group at least once in early 1962. He then formed his own group, Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, who became a local rival to the Ray Davies Quartet.
In late 1962, Ray Davies left home to study at Hornsey College of Art. He pursued interests in subjects such as film, sketching, theatre, and music, including jazz and blues. When Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated played at the college in December, he asked advice from Alexis Korner, who recommended Giorgio Gomelsky, the former Yardbirds manager, who put Davies in touch with the Soho-based Dave Hunt Band, a professional group of musicians who played jazz and R&B. A few days after the Ray Davies Quartet supported Cyril Stapleton at the Lyceum Ballroom on New Year's Eve, Davies, while still remaining in the Quartet, joined the Dave Hunt Band, which briefly included Charlie Watts on drums. In February 1963, Davies left Dave Hunt to join the Hamilton King Band, which had Peter Bardens as a pianist. At the end of the spring term, he left Hornsey College with a view to studying film at the Central School of Art and Design. Around this time, the Quartet changed their name to the Ramrods. Davies has referred to a show the fledgling Kinks played at Hornsey Town Hall on Valentine's Day 1963 as their first important gig. In June, the Hamilton King Band broke up. However, the Ramrods kept going, performing under several other names, including the Pete Quaife Band and the Bo-Weevils, before settling on the Ravens. The fledgling group hired two managers, Grenville Collins and Robert Wace. In late 1963, former pop singer Larry Page became their third manager. American record producer Shel Talmy began working with the band, and the Beatles' promoter, Arthur Howes, was retained to schedule the Ravens' live shows. The group unsuccessfully auditioned for various record labels until early 1964, when Talmy secured them a contract with Pye Records. During this period, they had acquired a new drummer, Mickey Willet; however, Willet left the band shortly before they signed to Pye. The Ravens invited Mick Avory to replace him after seeing an advertisement Avory had placed in Melody Maker. Avory had a background in jazz drumming and had played one gig with the fledgling Rolling Stones.
Around this period, the Ravens decided on a new, permanent name: the Kinks. Numerous explanations of the name's genesis have been offered. In Jon Savage's analysis, they "needed a gimmick, some edge to get them attention. Here it was: 'Kinkiness'—something newsy, naughty but just on the borderline of acceptability. In adopting the 'Kinks' as their name at that time, they were participating in a time-honoured pop ritual—fame through outrage." Manager Robert Wace related his side of the story: "I had a friend He thought the group was rather fun. If my memory is correct, he came up with the name just as an idea, as a good way of getting publicity When we went to with the name, they were absolutely horrified. They said, 'We're not going to be called kinky! Ray Davies' account conflicts with Wace's—he recalled that the name was coined by Larry Page and referenced their "kinky" fashion sense. Davies quoted him as saying, "The way you look, and the clothes you wear, you ought to be called the Kinks." "I've never really liked the name", Ray stated.
Early years (1964–1965)
The Kinks' first single was a cover of the Little Richard song "Long Tall Sally". A friend of the band, Bobby Graham, was recruited to play the drums on the recording. Graham would continue to occasionally substitute for Avory in the studio, and he played on several of the Kinks' early singles, including the hits "You Really Got Me", "All Day and All of the Night" and "Tired of Waiting for You". Released in February 1964, "Long Tall Sally" was almost completely ignored, despite the publicity efforts of the band's managers.The Ray Davies song "You Really Got Me", influenced by American blues and the Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie", was recorded on 15June 1964 at Pye Studios with a slower and more produced feel than the final single. Davies, who hated the recording, feeling that the guitar was too buried and the echo too prominent, wanted to re-record the song, but Pye refused to fund another session; Davies was adamant, so Collins and Wace broke the stalemate by underwriting the session themselves. The band used an independent recording studio, IBC, and completed the recording in two takes on 15July. The single was released in August 1964; supported by a performance on the television show Ready Steady Go! and extensive pirate radio coverage, it entered the UK charts on 15August, reaching number one on 19September. Hastily imported by the American label Reprise Records, where the band was signed by executive Mo Ostin, "You Really Got Me" also made the Top 10 in the United States. The loud, distorted guitar riff and solo—played by Dave Davies and achieved by a slice he made in the speaker cone of his Elpico amplifier —helped with the song's signature, gritty guitar sound. "You Really Got Me" has been described as "a blueprint song in the hard rock and heavy metal arsenal" and as an influence on the approach of some American garage rock bands. After its release, the Kinks recorded most of the tracks for their debut LP, simply titled Kinks. Consisting largely of covers and revamped traditional songs, it was released on 2October 1964, reaching number four on the UK chart. "All Day and All of the Night", another Ray Davies hard rock tune, was released three weeks later as the group's fourth single, reaching number two in the UK and number seven in the US. The next three singles, "Tired of Waiting for You", "Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy", and "Set Me Free", were also commercially successful, with the first of the three topping the UK singles chart.
The group opened 1965 with their first tour of Australia and New Zealand, with Manfred Mann and the Honeycombs. An intensive performing schedule saw them headline other package tours throughout the year with acts such as the Yardbirds and Mickey Finn. Tensions began to emerge within the band, expressed in incidents such as the on-stage fight between Avory and Dave Davies at the Capitol Theatre in Cardiff, Wales, on 19May. After finishing the first song, "You Really Got Me", Davies insulted Avory and kicked over his drum set. Avory responded by hitting Davies with his hi-hat stand, rendering him unconscious, before fleeing from the scene, fearing that he had killed his bandmate. Davies was taken to Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where he received 16 stitches to his head. To placate the police, Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at one another.
Following a mid-year tour of the US, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts there for the next four years, effectively cutting them off from the main market for rock music at the height of the British Invasion. Although neither the Kinks nor the union revealed a specific reason for the ban, it was widely attributed to their rowdy on-stage behaviour at the time. It has been reported that the ban was sparked by an incident that happened when the band were taping Dick Clark's TV show Where the Action Is in 1965. Ray Davies recalls in his autobiography, "Some guy who said he worked for the TV company walked up and accused us of being late. Then he started making anti-British comments. Things like 'Just because the Beatles did it, every mop-topped, spotty-faced limey juvenile thinks he can come over here and make a career for himself.. Subsequently, a punch was thrown, and the AFM banned them.
Image:Kinks helmfrid-sofa3.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.9|alt=On a bench in a park sit five men, two seated and three standing behind the bench. Clockwise from left is a man in a black suit with khaki pants; a man in a black suit with black pants; a man wearing a brown coat with khaki pants and raising his arm jokingly as if to stab the sleeping man below him; and a man wearing a grey/light green coat and khaki pants and holding out a hat above the sleeping man's head. The sleeping man is wearing green.|Publicity photo taken during a Swedish tour in 1965
A stopover in Bombay, India, during the band's Australian and Asian tour led to Davies writing the song "See My Friends", which was released as a single in July 1965. This was an early example of crossover music and one of the first pop songs of the period to display the direct influence of traditional music from the Indian subcontinent. Davies had written the song with a raga feel after hearing the early morning chants of local fishermen. Music historian Jonathan Bellman argues that the song was "extremely influential" on Ray Davies's musical peers: "And while much has been made of the Beatles' 'Norwegian Wood' because it was the first pop record to use a sitar, it was recorded well after the Kinks' clearly Indian 'See My Friends' was released." Pete Townshend of the Who was particularly affected by the song: See My Friends' was the next time I pricked up my ears and thought, 'God, he's done it again. He's invented something new.' That was the first reasonable use of the drone—far, far better than anything The Beatles did and far, far earlier. It was a European sound rather than an Eastern sound but with a strong, legitimate Eastern influence which had its roots in European folk music." In a widely quoted statement by Barry Fantoni, himself a 1960s celebrity and friend of the Kinks, the Beatles and the Who, he recalled that it was also an influence on the Beatles: "I remember it vividly and still think it's a remarkable pop song. I was with the Beatles the evening that they actually sat around listening to it on a gramophone, saying 'You know this guitar thing sounds like a sitar. We must get one of those. The song's radical departure from popular music conventions proved unpopular with the band's American following—it hit number 10 in the UK but stalled at number 111 in the US.
The day after the band's return from the Asian tour, recording began promptly on their next project, Kinda Kinks. The LP was completed and released within two weeks, even though 10 of its 12 songs were originals. According to Ray Davies, the band was not completely satisfied with the final cuts, but pressure from the record company meant that no time was available to correct flaws in the mix. Davies later expressed his dissatisfaction with the production, saying, "A bit more care should have been taken with it. I think Shel Talmy went too far in trying to keep in the rough edges. Some of the double tracking on that is appalling. It had better songs on it than the first album, but it wasn't executed in the right way. It was just far too rushed."
A significant stylistic shift in the Kinks' music became evident in late 1965, with the appearance of singles like "A Well Respected Man" and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", as well as the band's third album The Kink Kontroversy, on which Nicky Hopkins made his first appearance as a session musician with the group on keyboards. These recordings exemplified the development of Davies's songwriting style, from hard-driving rock numbers toward songs rich in social commentary, observation and idiosyncratic character study, all with a uniquely English flavour.