The Kinks, one of the big three of the early British Invasion, were virtually non-existent on the American singles charts in the late sixties. One rogue music journalist saw to it that the band’s British singles and unreleased gems were made available for hard-core fans
One of the greatest joys in my personal music discovery is finding The Kinks. Specifically, The Kinks from 1966 to 1970. I first began listening to them as a teenager when they were experiencing renewed popularity in the United States. In high school, Van Halen’s cover of “You Really Got Me” blasted from every customized car and lifted truck in the school parking lot almost daily. The kids (including myself) listened to what they now call classic rock, and we bought the latest Kinks albums: Low Budget, Give the People What They Want and State of Confusion. On these records, the band turned up the volume and pushed a big rock sound, mixed with buoyant tracks like “Better Things” and “Come Dancing,” which satisfied old fans. These albums had limited appeal for me. The music I’ve held onto—what I cherish—is The Kinks’ LPs and singles from the second half of the sixties through the early seventies. This is the music fans often refer to when they call The Kinks’ frontman Ray Davies, a songwriting genius. Records and songs created during a turbulent time for the band.
Ray and his brother Dave grew up working-class in Muswell Hill, North London. The siblings are three years apart and they learned guitar as children from their uncle. With a love for R&B, blues and, naturally, rock ‘n’ roll, they started their first band as teenagers and stayed together under various monikers while Ray attended art school. It wasn’t long before they established themselves as a band with a future. “Without thinking about image and style,” Ray wrote in his autobiography X-Ray, “we four musically confused youths from Muswell Hill found ourselves, through no fault of our own, to be in fashion.” As The Ravens, they signed with a management team, and with Denmark Productions for publishing. After changing their name and becoming hit makers, these relationships soured, and Ray would write about it in comical fashion on The Kinks’ 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround. Before releasing that album, The Kinks experienced rock star highs and the lowest of lows that weren’t that hilarious.
“You Really Got Me,” The Kinks’ third single made them world famous. They followed with two more worldwide hits: “All Day and All of the Night” and “Tired of Waiting for You,” establishing themselves as a more-than-one-hit British Invasion band. For a short time in early 1965, competition arose over who was the best British group: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or The Kinks, with no love lost between the members. With growing popularity in American, The Kinks planned a U.S. tour for the end of 1965. It became the event that flipped everything upside down for the band and resulted in The Kinks selling very few records in The States during the second half of the sixties. A tour that Ray described in his book Americana (quoting the band’s drummer) as “a mixture of bad management, bad luck, and bad behavior.”
The group already had a knack for “bad behavior,” so that was probably to be expected. Besides the ongoing sibling rivalry between the brothers, there were fights on and off stage between band members. Just before the ‘65 tour, The Kinks were playing in Wales and a quarrel between Dave and drummer Mick Avory, resulted in Avory hitting Dave in the head with a symbol—thrown frisbee style during the performance—that nearly killed the younger Davies. They brushed it off publicly a few days later, but volatility has always been a part of the band’s makeup. During the US tour, they argued with promoters, declined to sign a union document, refused to follow a producer’s directions for how they should dance during a TV appearance, and, maybe worst of all, they cancelled/missed some scheduled gigs. It also didn’t help when Ray either shoved or hit a TV coordinator who had insulted Ray’s wife. When the tour concluded, The Kinks were banned from performing live or appearing on TV in America for an indefinite time. But wait, there’s more.
Prior to the ‘65 tour, Ray Davies had signed with a new publishing company which resulted in legal action from Denmark Productions. Royalties were frozen as the case dragged through litigation. Then, In March 1966, Ray suffered a breakdown. The story of the collapse is now legendary. He wakes up after a week in bed with a full beard; calls his publicist and quits the band; stuffed money in his sock and runs down to Denmark Street to punch his press agent; then, after being chased by police, ends up in his manager’s office where a psychiatrist is called. The episode, with all its drama and absurdity, sidelined Ray for a short time. A replacement musician filled in when The Kinks toured Belgium that spring. During his sabbatical, Ray developed a different approach to his songwriting. New songs exposed the darkness of his mental breakdown while others took him back to his English childhood—to a time real or imagined that is safe, simple and innocent. Songwriting that seemed more or less like therapy.
Songs were now about things and characters that lived in a vivid British environment. This had already emerged in “A Well Respected Man” and “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” two singles that were both well-received in America. The album Face to Face followed Ray’s return to the band, and it’s their first LP that only includes Ray’s original songs, mostly written during his recovery time. “Sunny Afternoon,” released in June 1966 and included on the album, became The Kinks’ last top-40 hit in America until 1970. During these four difficult years, The Kinks released four stunning albums: Face to Face, Something Else by the Kinks, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). These records sold poorly in the U.S. with Arthur having the best showing at #105 on the album charts. Not only were they ignored in America, they didn’t sell well in England either. But between these album releases, The Kinks still continued to have hit singles in their home country, several that never made their way stateside.
For American Kinks fans, hearing these late-60s British singles proved challenging. Even for a devotee like me, finding out what existed and buying a copy in the early eighties seemed impossible. I garnered some information from a book called Rock Family Trees by Pete Frame, first published in 1979. Frame had started the British publication ZigZag, hand-writing family tree-styled drawings of rock groups and their rotating members, cramming stories with LP and singles lists into every possible available space on the page. The information is overwhelming but invaluable for music addicts who want to learn everything. With The Kinks music, I had vowed to be a completer, so like a homicide detective working a case, I pulled the band’s page out of the book, pinned it on the wall, and underlined each new song I added to my collection. I already owned a double-LP compilation that filled in some of the pre-1966 European singles. Then I found The Kink Kronikles, a 1972 release on Reprise, that included many of the missing tracks. I played this record as much as any of the other Kinks albums.
The double-album Kink Kronikles included several key album tracks mixed with British singles. “Days,” “Berkeley Mews,” “Polly,” “Mr. Pleasant,” “Big Black Smoke,” “Autumn Almanac,” “Wonderboy”—all wonderful songs that weren’t on any other records. I adore “Autumn Almanac.” The song is a joyous treat of musicality and voices, overflowing with spirited images of fall and neighborhood activities. The playful “Wonderboy” is another scrumptious track, rumored to be a favorite of John Lennon, although he may not have ever wanted to admit it publicly. And “Days” is just a beautiful tear-jerker. Not universally loved when first released—Keith Moon called it “pretty dated, like one of the songs Pete (Townshend) keeps under his sink” in Melody Maker—it has earned more appreciation in later years, after Kirsty MacColl scored a hit with it in 1989. Along with these treasures, The Kink Kronikles also includes tracks from the Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround album and from Percy, a soundtrack album that wasn’t originally released in the U.S.
In 1968, Ray had planned to release an American-only record called Four More Respected Gentlemen. When that album got nixed, several of the songs found a home on The Kink Kronikles (others were used for the Village Green album). That same year, record sales had gotten so lackluster for The Kinks that The Village Green Preservation Society didn’t even chart in the States. But “better things” began happening for The Kinks in 1968. They settled their lawsuit, and a year later, the American Federation of Musicians lifted the ban, allowing the band to return to America for a tour in late ‘69. The next summer, “Lola” became the group’s biggest hit in the US since “Tired of Waiting for You.” During the rest of the 1970s, The Kinks continued to sell very few records but on the strength of “Lola” and their early hits, they remained a successful touring group in the U.S. When “Come Dancing” hit heavy rotation on MTV in 1983, they became world-wide stars again. Nothing changes things like a hit song.
The Kink Kronikles made a decent showing on the American album charts in 1972, in spite of the band’s departure from Reprise to RCA a year earlier. Writer John Mendelssohn, employed with Reprise Records at the time, helped select the track list and wrote the album’s liner notes. He had the thankless task of promoting the band for the label, enacting the “God Save the Kinks” campaign for DJs and record stores. Mendelssohn later wrote for Creem in the 1980s, a magazine I gorged on around the same time I obsessed over The Kinks music. And in 1983, Mendelssohn wrote one of the first books about the band, naming it, uh, The Kinks Kronikles. Reprise must have been thrilled with sales from the first record, because they asked Mendelssohn for a sequel a year later.
The Great Lost Kinks Album, another double-disc in 1973, picked up the unreleased and the rare, filling in more gaps, along with some Dave Davies’ songs for a proposed solo album that never quite got off the ground. There were also a few more leftovers from the Four More Respected Gentlemen project. The Great Lost Kinks Album has the hidden jewels and the dreadful throwaways and it wasn’t in print very long. John Mendelssohn later distanced himself from the record, calling it in his book, “that shameful collection of the scraping of the bottom of Reprise’s barrel of unreleased Kinks material.” But where else were you gonna find this music?
Nowadays, both The Kink Kronikles and The Great Lost Kinks Album are about as relevant as AM radio. The bonus, expanded, deluxe and the super deluxe reissues of The Kinks’ sixties albums include all these songs and more. Still, for a sampler of the band’s music during their golden period, The Kink Kronikles comes highly recommended.