The Pop Corporation

While many of their contemporaries were simply yearning for love or regretting the loss of it, The Kinks were more than just a band a pop band. Trusting their peers and listeners to understand broader ideas, they looked at the class system, the minutiae of British life, nostalgia, the rise and fall of empires and society, lampooned the middle and upper classes, created kitchen sink dramas, reflected on quieter moments and served savage visceral rock ‘n’ roll, and sometimes just had a knees up down the working man’s club – and all the while not necessarily participating but instead, curious onlookers and trying to make some sense of a country that was in the throes of a teenage revolution, striving and pushing forward, but also, fearful of losing some of it’s unique, pastoral history.

The Kinks – they’re not just any old group.

Fact is, The Kinks are probably your favourite songwriters favourite band. You wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were your favourite movie director’s band too. Or playwright, poet, actor, painter, whatever – there’s something about the images created by The Kinks that no other band get even close to.

While there’s a lot of songwriters that are held up as shining examples of the craft, the plainness of Ray Davies is what makes it all so poetic and heart wrenching.

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago
If you saw me now you wouldn’t even know my name
I bet you’re fat and married and
You’re always home in bed by half-past eight
And if I talked about the old times
You’d get bored and you’ll have nothing more to say
Yes people often change, but memories of people can remain

‘Do YOU REMEMBER WALTER / village green preservation society’

There’s nothing flowery about the prose of ‘Do You Remember, Walter?’ but it’s a message that hits you in the chest whether you’re knocking on a bit, or you’re worried about what will become of your friendship when you get older. A lot of Ray Davies’ enduring lyrics were written in his 20s, watching the ’60s and ’70s unfurl at a rapid rate, with modernism and consumerism casting huge shadows before trampling a lot of a more gentle England/Europe that Ray didn’t think was quite so bad. Never perfect, never not looking forward, but in Ray & Dave’s world, there’s room for both and binary thinking holds no sway.

Sylvilla looked into the wardrobe
Percilla looked into the frying pan
And the bacon and eggs
And the breakfast is served
She was so jealous of her sister
And her way of life, and her luxury flat
She was so jealous of her sister

‘TWO SISTERs’/’SOMETHING ELSE’

From more famous reflections like ‘Days’ and ‘Waterloo Sunset’ to the slightly more obscure numbers like ‘Two Sisters’, ‘Autumn Almanac’ and ‘End Of The Season’, we see how curious a place England is, sweeping up leaves, the pleasures of small things and lives, to third person narratives, it’s never not masterful, and pertinently, never too cynical.

It’s little wonder that David Bowie said: “The Kinks have come to stand for some of the most enduring and heart-clutching pop of all time. They are in the gut of every British song-writer who followed them and are indisputably a cornerstone of everything pop and rock.” He’s not wrong. The fact that some bad behaviour saw them not invited to Woodstock (would they have gone anyway?) and banned from touring The States for a period is one of the reasons that the world doesn’t talk about them in more hushed tones, left to heritage glossy music mags to heap as much praise as they can in the wake.

And maybe it’s something to do with the band’s – especially Ray’s – reluctance to hobnob with the glitterati that kept him so curious, but also, so separate. On his acquaintance with other rock stars: “I don’t keep in touch with anybody, anymore. I guess I feel that I can’t live up to expectations – we didn’t meet the way great scientists did in Europe to have discussions around the coffee table.”

Even in these small, candid, throwaway moments, Ray captures a snapshot and creates a whole picture of great minds thrashing it out in smoke clouds and strong smelling books – all the while, Davies at home, yearning for something else. Their words are in full panorama. Annie Lennox took to writing on her own blog, simply because she wanted to heap praise on The Kinks and nothing more, said: “They brought all the colour and texture into a world of grey.. and turned it on it’s head. I carry them all around in my head and heart wherever I go.”

No harm to the Dave Clarke Five, but no-one is saying that about any of the other groups from the period, save for maybe The Beatles who continually get their praise.

And it’s not because they weren’t innovative. You could argue that they invented garage punk and the power chord (‘You Really Got Me’), showed the world what a concept LP might look like (‘Arthur’), gave us criticism and satire over simple love songs (‘Well Respected Man’) and got in with sexual ambiguity before glam rock was even thought of (‘Lola’). And it isn’t just the beatified ’60s and ’70s stuff either – they carried it on until the ’90s. ’83’s ‘Come Dancing’, Ray was still at it.

They put a parking lot on a piece of land
When the supermarket used to stand
Before that they put up a bowling alley
On the site that used to be the local pally
That’s where the big bands used to come and play
My sister went there on a Saturday

‘COME DANCING’/STATE OF CONFUSION

And Ray’s savage criticism of how shoddily the working classes were treated in ‘Dead End Street’ belies the peace and love LSD is the answer for everything middle class swingers hanging around the Indica art gallery fine tailors and boutiques that was so promoted by many of the counter culture figures of the ’60s.

What are we living for?
Two-roomed apartment on the second floor
No chance to emigrate
I’m deep in debt and now it’s much too late

‘DEAD END STREET’

https://youtu.be/i0WPC-N3UYE

What would have happened if the States’ federal government had ignored the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists wish to ban them from their shores? One thing might be true is that we would have ended up losing all that unique English or Europeanness that we love so much now. Would we have seen Davies writing about head-boy David Watts and his withering ‘pure and noble breed’ aside? And in turn, we would have lost so many English bands who could feel comfortable looking at their own country and writing about it, without sounding like horrible Little Englanders. Bands like Blur, Madness, The Specials, The Jam, Kenickie, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Sleeper, and The Fall where able to create character-based music, without losing site of the pop and the cold climate.

Many have called them great, but always with a caveat – best of the British invasion or best of the ’60s – but the fact is, they’re just one of the best. Julian Temple directed a documentary called ‘Imaginary Man’, which follows Ray around his London, and is a perfect vignette of a man who enjoys both the magnitude and small details of capital life.

You can watch the whole thing here or save it for another time – it’s a magical piece of filmmaking.

Some of us have always cherished The Kinks. Some of us may need an introduction (here’s a playlist to do exactly that). What’s probably more true is that, like the dancehalls and single-mothers of their world, we’ve taken them for granted and maybe forgotten to check in on them.

Remind yourself. God save The Kinks.