The attempted murder that cancelled a Kinks concert in 1965: “That could have been the end”
Fittingly, given their reputation as harbingers of youthful rock and roll rebellion back in the 1960s, The Kinks’ tenure as a band was rarely harmonious. Even during the peak of their early success, in fact, the band’s anarchic, impaired, and argumentative tendencies risked killing the band forever, along with its members.
As the history of music has taught us time and time again, having two brothers in the same band is a pretty reliable recipe for disaster. Right back to the early existence of The Kinks, the group was routinely overshadowed by the vicious sibling rivalry between Ray and Dave Davies. Given the constant power struggle, resentment, and petty arguments between the two brothers throughout The Kinks’ existence, it is a wonder that they managed to stay together for as long as they did… The Kinks finally threw in the towel in 1997.
Inevitably, then, that sibling rivalry often boiled over onto the stage, and during the peak of The Kinks’ early successes, their tireless tour schedule certainly didn’t help matters. While the brothers’ ongoing feud derailed a handful of shows, though, it never plunged the band into a situation involving an attempted murder charge or the back of an ambulance.
Ray Davies wasn’t the only person that Dave Davies was feuding with, though. From the mid-1960s onwards, the guitarist also found himself at odds with drummer Mick Avory to an extent that turned bloody during a 1965 trip to Cardiff.
As was typical for The Kinks during that rather busy stage in their existence, fresh from the success of top-ten singles like ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘See My Friends’, their show in Cardiff had an undercurrent of fatigue and rising tensions even before the group had set foot on stage. Impressively, the Davies brothers managed to quell their rivalry for the night, but the same could certainly not be said for the guitarist and Avory.
Reportedly, the night before the gig at the Capitol Theatre in Wales’ capital, Davies and Avory’s differences exploded into a physical fight, which the guitarist lost. Undeterred, though, Davies decided to destroy his bandmate’s drum kit during the band’s performance. In a fury, Avory took one of the now-detached cymbals and launched at Davies, slicing his throat in the process.
Although clearly an accident, albeit one with a certain degree of malice behind it, Davies was quickly rushed to the hospital, where he required 16 stitches on his neck and head. Meanwhile, a rather panicked Avory fled, with Ray Davies later telling Wales On Sunday, “The police wanted to do Mick for attempted murder.”
Luckily for all involved, Davies survived his injuries, and Avory didn’t get charged with attempted murder. In fact, the pair continued to form a core part of The Kinks until Avory’s eventual departure in 1984, by which time the tensions between him and Davies had reached boiling point on multiple occasions.
Still, it didn’t escape Ray Davies’ mind that their show in Cardiff, which lasted all of two songs, might have been their final gig: “That could have been the end of The Kinks right there,” he once shared.
