The album Ray Davies was convinced would be his “goodbye record”
Rock and roll has always been a young man’s game, and you can never quite tell where the line between up-and-coming young rebel and established elder statesman really lies. Back in the 1960s, while Roger Daltrey was shouting “I hope I die before I get old”, their mod rock brethren The Kinks were seemingly already planning their retirement, according to Ray Davies.
There is no telling where we would be without the trailblazing sounds of The Kinks, who soundtracked the swinging streets of 1960s London like no other. With their litany of short, sharp, era-defining anthems like ‘You Really Got Me’, Ray Davies and company opened the floodgates for the following decades’ worth of punk and alternative rock, as well as inspiring the likes of the aforementioned Who, who specifically poached producer Shel Talmy off the back of ‘You Really Got Me’.
In spite of those iconic anthems and the global attention they brought to the Kinks, Davies always remained a realist. He knew, throughout it all, that the free-spirited peace and love age of the 1960s would come crashing down eventually, and he wasn’t keen to stick around and see its demise.
Ultimately, The Kinks’ ultimate demise didn’t arrive until decades later, during the heady Britpop days of 1997, but during a 2019 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, the songwriter recalled his prediction that they wouldn’t last long enough to see the dawn of 1970. “I write folk songs. Strip them bare, and I’m telling the stories of the people I’ve known and the places I’ve been,” Davies declared. “But Village Green almost exists in a creative bubble.”
Seeing The Kinks enter into the expanding world of concept albums, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society fits among the most profound and yet often underrated albums of the 20th century, tackling the topic of middle England and phoney, outdated views on nationalism.
“When we made the record, in early ’68,” Davies recalled. “I had actually given up hope of ever touring in America again, so it was almost a goodbye record, in many respects, because I didn’t know if we’d make another record probably at that time.”
It is easy to see why Davies might have envisioned Village Green as being the band’s final record. After all, its release was marred by poor sales and poor performance – although, to be fair to them, they did release it the same day as Beggars Banquet and The White Album, so it had some strong competition – and it marked a stark departure from their previous output. “It was just a personal statement,” the songwriter concluded.
Had that woefully underrated 1968 record been The Kinks’ final statement, the band would have certainly bowed out on a high. Despite the poor performance of the album, it features some of Davies’ greatest songwriting efforts and, as opposed to a lot of other late 1960s concept records, it still holds up very strongly to this day.
Still, the band’s decision to carry on did gift the world with many more groundbreaking releases, stretching from the penetrating social commentary of Arthur to their stadium rock rebirth on Sleepwalker, so perhaps it is for the best that the band were convinced to carry on after preserving their village greens.
