The guitarist Ray Davies thought was the best at being bad: “Incredible bum notes”
As the leader of The Kinks, Ray Davies is inextricable from the story of British music and the broader popular culture of this tiny island.
Writing songs such as ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, and even ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, the frontman has a long list of cherished efforts that bring to life the surreal idiosyncrasies of his home nation. He put the ‘British’ in ‘British Invasion’.
Ironically, despite being such a vital part of the development of British popular music, however, Ray Davies is greatly indebted to the sounds of America. Like most of his peers, it was rock ‘n’ roll on the radio, being piped over from the other side of the pond, that first moved him. The pulsating sonics and often taboo-busting rock ‘n’ roll that America delivered in the 1950s galvanised most creatives of his generation, setting a precedent for the cultural explosion of the following decade.
The revolutionary sounds of post-war America so inspired The Kinks leader that his book, Americana, explores what the country means to him. Not finished with this psycho-historical exploration, in 2017, Davies released a solo album of the same name. It continued analysing his longstanding fascination with the music and culture of the country, as well as his experiences touring and living there.
Above all, it was perhaps the devil-may-care sonic approach of his US peers that he found most precious, and one man in particular stands out on that front.
Chuck Berry was one man whose pioneering sound particularly impacted Davies and the rest of The Kinks with his attitude and gritty guitar playing. When speaking to WNYC radio in 2017, in light of his new album, he discussed the American songs that meant the most to him, with one of them being Berry’s 1958 single ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’. After recalling how he first came across the song in the documentary Jazz on a Summer’s Day, Davies explained what made Berry’s guitar-playing so important, calling him the master of “bum notes”.
An impassioned Davies explained the importance of his glamorous imperfection when he recalled how he first encountered the song, “I first saw it on a theatre film called Jazz on a Summer’s Day; I think I was about 13. It was about the Newport Jazz Festival, and Chuck Berry was like a radical guest to have on.”
With glossy eyes, he continued, “He was playing with the Louis Armstrong band as the backup band. And you could tell that a lot of the players, the jazz players, were saying, ‘What is this? What is this guy?’ (They were) Kind of parodying what he was doing and slyly smiling at one another, but he kept dancing across the stage in his own way, playing incredible bum notes, which I found fascinating.”
This was not some prim and proper performer who honed their talents at the fanciest school – that much was apparent to Davies even then. And that was vital for a few reasons. First of all, it made him realise that being a professional musician was possible. In a proto-punk way, Berry made it clear that having something to say was more important than how you said it.
Secondly, the imperfection actually imbues Berry’s music with a certain visceral magic. It wasn’t humdrum and neatly ordered. It was hopping across the stage in a whirlwind of such fun and frenzied expression that all notion of order went out of the window in myriad mystical ways. Davies was head over heels.
As the Kinks man concluded, “A bum note is a bad note, wrong note, whatever. But, I think it’s one of the essences of rock ‘n’ roll; they were on the verge of being out of tune, but he kept it going. He was a beautiful player; I’m not saying he was an untidy player, but he just wasn’t afraid to push the limits with bending the strings, all for the groove, some great stuff.”
Ritchie Blackmore would firmly agree – if a guitarist is never found reaching, then they’re simply playing too far within themselves. Berry made damn sure he never fell foul of that!
