The album Ray Davies called “a deathwish”
If you find success early on as a band, diverging from the sound or style that birthed it can feel scary. Some bands get boxed in by their first few releases, and it’s easy to see why. Why take a risk and try something new when you’ve already found something that works? Why jeopardise the loyal following you’ve built up in favour of sonic experimentation? Well, because you just might create one of the most influential records of your career, as proven by Ray Davies and The Kinks.
The Kinks released their debut album in 1964, which situated them somewhere between pop and rock and roll. Their early hits included the raw rock of ‘You Really Got Me’, the gorgeous ‘A Well Respected Man’ and the truly iconic ‘Waterloo Sunset’, each led by guitars and Davies’ songwriting talents. But as their success grew, the frontman began to doubt the direction they had set out for themselves.
“I think every band goes through a phase where they sit back and think about what their future’s going to be,” Davies once explained during a conversation with Uncut, “A crossroads record”. For Davies, and for The Kinks, that crossroad record came in 1968 with The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
The record saw Davies and his bandmates pushing their sound far beyond the rockers that had earned them commercial success in their early years. They pulled in elements of baroque pop and psychedelia in a series of depictions of British life, from the welcoming and warm opener ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’ to the charming ‘Picture Book’.
It was an intriguing change of direction, but it didn’t win audiences over straight away, a reaction that Davies had anticipated. “Maybe it’s an artistic death wish,” he shrugged, “To put something out like that. But you had underground music starting, with the West Coast explosion in America, and our management were sending us to play working men’s clubs up north.”
Davies could have written another record full of hits, but he decided not to. “I was angry,” Davies remembered, “And I repressed the competitive instincts that had made me write hit singles.”
“‘I’m deliberately not going to be successful this time,’” he remembered thinking, “’I’m not going to make ‘You Really Got Me, Part III’.”
Instead, The Kinks created a record they knew wouldn’t produce hits, but that reflected their interests and position at the time, pulling their Englishness into the sound and lyrics of the record. None of the songs on the record would become quite as iconic or as successful as ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but it didn’t matter.
The record flowed seamlessly, almost as a concept album, and proved that the band weren’t simply going to give into what audiences and labels wanted from them. They didn’t follow musical trends, they set them. This is further evidenced in the legacy of the record, with the likes of Oasis’ Noel Gallagher praising its storytelling abilities.
“We knew it wouldn’t be successful, but in a sense, it did everything I wanted it to do,” Davies concluded, “When people think about The Kinks, they still think about that album. And most of them have never heard it.” Even though the record was fuelled by anger and produced no major hits, it still takes up an important space in their identity and their legacy as a band.
