THE MISSING KINK
Andrew Lynch talks to Dave Davies, co-founder with his brother Ray of
legendary pop group the Kinks.
How must it feel to be one of the greatest guitarists of the age but to
have spent your life in the shadow of your equally talented brother? Dave
Davies founded the Kinks with his brother Ray in Muswell Hill in London in
1963 and the group has enjoyed almost legendary status over the course of a
still continuing career. But thepublic face of the Kinks has always been
Ray, one of the most sensitive and idiosyncratic songwriters of his
generation.
In conversation Dave is engagingly good-humoured. It's only when Ray's name
is mentioned that his voice takes on a sombre tone.
"I've seen grown men cry with all the mind games that have gone on between
me and Ray. I love him as my brother but as a person I can't relate to him
at all."
Dave has just published his autobiography 'Kink', soon after Ray's own
account X-Ray. Was his book written as a response?
"No. To be honest with you I didn't read Ray's book from cover to cover. It
was very good but I couldn't get into it. I got the impression that he
didn't want to write a straight account but just felt he had to write
something.
No, I wrote this partly because the history of the Kinks has always ben so
hazy and I wanted to put the record straight. I mean, I read a biography of
us once which was based on the recollections of road managers who'd only
been with us six months!
Also I wanted to get my own confused feelings down on paper. Writing this
was definitely a form of catharsis."
Dave has earned the reputation of the wild boy of rock. At times Kink reads
like a catalogue of all the women and drugs Davies has enjoyed through the
years. But in fact, he claims, he was in constant pain, suffering from an
original wound. At the age of 15 he had made his girlfriend Sue pregnant
and had wanted to marry her but the pair were forced to separate.
"I was in love and it was taken away from me. I was very young and
emotionally very immature. That pain remained with me throughout my life. I
mean take John Lennon - I didn't know him very well but I could relate to
him because I knew he was in pain as well."
It wasn't until a couple of years ago that Davies finally met up with Sue
again and met his lost daughter Tracy. By his own account they thrashed it
out and were able to put it all behind them. He describes his own mental
health as better than it's ever been.
But does he now wish that he'd been a little bit older and more mature when
starting out?
"Well..." For a moment he sounds genuinely unsure then says, "I have no
regrets. You can always wish that things had been different but it does you
no good at the end of the day. And anyway I think that some of our early
music was great precisely because it was so raw and spontaneous. In those
days we didn't have the studio time to constantly re-do things so most of
the rough edges were left in. And I really love that kind of raw,
uncompromising sound we created in, say, 'You Really Got Me'."
Indeed it was Dave's famously raucous guitar riff in that, the Kinks' first
hit which gave it its special quality. In the climate of 1964 it was a
revelation with its overtly sexual energy. The record made no. 1 and
launched the Kinks on a high-profile career which has lasted right up to
the present day. In fact they are the world's second oldest band, junior by
a year only to the Rolling Stones. Of the original line-up only Ray and
Dave remain. They have been described as the Kray twins of rock and roll
and in fact were even approached to play the East End gangsters in Peter
Medak's film. When people describe Ray the word most commonly used is
'genius'. His whimsical, melancholy style of songwriting has had the power
to move millions and has prompted his fans to overlook his eccentric
behaviour and erratic mood swings.
How do you ask Dave Davies about their relationship without seeming
voyeuristic? To start off I mention that I had the pleasure of meeting Ray
at a book signing about a year ago and he had been charming and courteous
with time for anyone who wanted to talk to him. The response: "Yeah, Ray
knows how to work an audience all right."
It's hard to reconcile his public behaviour with some of the things you
write about in...
"Look," Dave cuts in. "I've just completed the soundtrack to a John
Carpenter film and in the liner notes he's written a lovely piece to thank
me. Ray has never done anything that considerate for me, ever. And he has
hurt me so much with his childish behaviour and jealousy over the years.
Ours is a relationship built on abuse. Let me be perfectly straight, I
think Ray is a genius and he deserves to go down in history as one of the
greatest songwriters ever. But he's never come to terms with the fact that
I'm integral to the success of the band. He hates it but there's no way he
could ever let me go because in a way, he's frightened of his own identity.
I mean, come on, you're obviously a Kinks fan, you know what you're talking
about, don't you think that I'm an important part of the band?"
I certainly do. But like most Kinks fans I can't help feeling sorry that
the Davies brothers still feel the need to discuss their relationship
through books rather than with each other.
In fact Dave himself came close to breaking away from the Kinks in the late
sixties when he had solo success with songs such as 'Death Of A Clown' and
'Susannah's Still Alive'. But his then projected solo album never got made.
"I just got discouraged with the logistics of it all and maybe at the back
of my mind I didn't think I was good enough to branch out on my own."
Most critics agree that the musical legacy of the Kinks is one of the
greatest in pop history. Classics such as 'Lola', 'Days' and 'Sunny
Afternoon' which are endlessly recycled on Greatest Hits packages do not
even begin to convey the sheer depth of the Davies brothers songwriting and
the wealth of half-forgotten material on over thirty studio albums. Yet
sadly the band has been as famous for the personal rivalry between the
brothers and the appalling rows with other band members. Most famous of all
is an incident at a gig in Cardiff in the sixties involving long-suffering
drummer Mick Avory. Dave gives a frank description in his book:
"By the following night [after a punch-up], after we'd both had time to
stew, our feelings were running very high as we took to the stage. A couple
of songs into the show I looked at Mick and shouted at him, calling him a
useless cunt. I said his drumming was shit and that they'd sound better if
he played them with his cock. I sneered at him and kicked his drums all
over the stage, then moved over to the mike and acted nonchalant. The next
thing I knew I was lying flat on my back in the dressing room with blood
trickling down the back of my neck. Turns out Mick had lost it and hit me
over the head with one of his cymbal stands."
In fact Avory, in a fit of panic, thought he had killed Davies and ran out
on to the streets of Cardiff convinced he was on the run from the police.
Incidents such as these have consolidated Dave's reputation as an obnoxious
egotist - does he regret this?
"I do," he sighs. "We've all got our dark side, don't we? I've never
pretended to be a saint. But I'm honestly sorry that I've hurt people in
the past. I just didn't have the maturity to handle it."
It was behaviour such as this that caused the Kinks to be bannned from the
United States by the American Federation of Musicians during the crucial
years of 1965-69.
"But you know I think that was a blessing in disguise. The Who and the
Stones went to America and made it really big but their music stayed very
much the same, whereas we stayed at home and Ray wrote albums such as the
Village Green Preservation Society which have that uniquely English sound
and are now recognised as some of our best work."
Midway through the interview Davies started to talk about his spiritual
beliefs. He claims to have been visited by 'intelligences' in 1982, an
experience which changed his life forever.
"It was as real to me as talking to you is now. They showed me a new way of
thinking, a new way of receiving information and inter-relating with the
world."
Does he have a name for these intelligences?
"I have names for two of them but it's not in the public interest to give
out that information at the moment," he says rather mysteriously. "But I
know more and more people will turn to this. The conventional political
solutions to our problems are hardly working, are they?"
Clearly Davies' mind is a lot more complex than rock mythology would have
us believe. But his philosophy is not one the interviewer can take
half-way. His tone brooks little dissent and I am not sorry when we finally
leave the subject behind and move on to more conventional topics.
One of the most interesting revelations in Dave's book is that he had
sexual relations with several men in his time. But he does not consider
himself to be a closet homosexual.
"You know, one of the few times when Ray mentions me in his book it's to
call me a queer! But you've got to understand, the sixties was an
outrageous time. You could get away with anything if you had the
self-confidence to carry it off. It was in that spirit that I experimented
sexually. But honestly I wouldn't describe myself as bisexual. I was just
young and I wanted to try anything and everything, you understand?"
The Kinks have rarely been trendier than they are today with such
fashionable groups as Blur citing them as an influence. Is Dave enjoying
this newly-focused attention on the Kinks' output?
"Well, yeah, obviously. But you know, we've always been told, from people
like Paul Weller and Bruce Springsteen that we're an influence on them,
that's nothing new to us. And I'm still interested in creating more of our
own stuff."
Davies plans a new single 'Fortis Green' later this year to help publicise
the book before a new Kinks studio album next year. He believes that the
passage of time will dissipate all the 'personal stuff' which has clouded
the Kinks' careers.
"And what will remain is the music. That's permanent and that's what I'd
like to be judged by."
'Kink' is published by Boxtree.
