The Kinks cover Ray Davies absolutely hated: “Pretty dire”
Cover versions are a tightrope act between paying homage to the original version of a song and offering a new angle to it. There are some covers which pull off that task flawlessly, but there are many more in which the well-meaning reimagination falls from the tightrope early on, plummeting to its death.
One group that has attracted more cover versions than most is The Kinks, whose sonic diversity and songwriting mastery back in the 1960s spurred on many a young artist to attempt the same feats. Whether it’s The Raincoats’ excellent post-punk rendering of ‘Lola’, Anika’s haunting version of ‘I Go To Sleep’, Jeff Buckley’s pulchritudinous ‘Waterloo Sunset’, or the endless number of garage rock covers of ‘You Really Got Me’, there are more Kinks covers out there in the wild than even Ray Davies could have ever predicted.
The Kinks were no strangers to cover versions themselves, in fact. For their second record, Kinda Kinks, for instance, Davies managed to suck all life from Martha and the Vandellas’ Motown classic ‘Dancing In The Street’, in what must have been one of The Kinks’ lowest creative ebbs. Still, it isn’t as though The Kinks themselves have never been the subject of a godawful cover version.
During one 1998 interview, per Perfect Sound Forever, Davies was asked specifically for his least favourite Kinks cover. Instead of throwing some barbed comments the way of the artists who adored him, though, the songwriter instead chose to give an unexpected insight into the economics of the British music-buying public back in the 1960s.
“The muzak version of ‘Sunny Afternoon’,” he began, citing his least favourite Kinks cover. “When we started making records in the mid-1960s, there was a Woolworth’s in England who had a record label… If a record went on the charts, they’d make their copy of it with an artist and do a Woolworth’s version and sell it for half the price.”
That was a pretty standard practice during the 1960s; recording a series of half-hearted, soulless covers of the hit parade and packing them in a budget LP in an attempt to appeal to the penny-pinchers of the music-buying public. Woolworth’s certainly wasn’t the only offender, but the decision of the shop’s own record labels, Chevron and Embassy Records, to render tracks like ‘Sunny Afternoon’ in a muzak style was particularly odd.
“There were some pretty dire recordings of hits, and in fact anyone who has a collection of these Woolworth’s records really should get it out; they’d make an absolute fortune,” Davies continued. “Someone should do an album of the Woolworth covers. It’s a wonderful piece of antiquity.”
In the many decades since ‘Sunny Afternoon’ was released in 1966, and quickly reimagined for the shoppers of Woolworth’s, that specific cover version has been lost in a cloud of obscurity. Various covers of the track featured on various budget compilations, including Dance To The Top Pops via His Master’s Voice.
In terms of muzak, though, the most likely candidate is Cliff Richard’s drummer, Brian Bennett, who recorded a bizarre easy listening version of the song for his 1967, Columbia-released LP Change Of Direction, which gives some indication of the kind of cover Davies was talking about. To be fair, it is an interesting curio, looking back, but it is also easy to understand why the songwriter detested it.
