The moment Ray Davies got John Lennon back for a brutal insult: “That’s typical”
It took a couple of years, but Ray Davies, in his own unassuming way, managed to take a revenge swipe at John Lennon in a wholly creative way.
Such duelling was first sparked back in August 1964. At the time, there were three artists leading the way for the British invasion. Dusty Springfield had scored a smash on both sides of the Atlantic with ‘I Only Want to Be with You’, and Eric Burdon’s haunting croon had pushed their cover of ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ to number one on both UK and US charts only the previous month.
However, one little Merseybeat group’s TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show truly unleashed the Anglo-hijack of the Billboard Hot 100.
In the summer of 1964, The Beatles were the biggest band on the planet. Their global conquest was swift. Little over a year since ‘She Loves You’ took the Western pop world by storm, the Fab Four couldn’t stop dropping hit after hit with dizzying pace, pulled from the Liverpool and Hamburg clubs to shows in Hong Kong and Australia, and A Hard Day’s Night was playing out in movie theatres around the world. Any band playing support to such a pop heavyweight would be nervous.
The Kinks were such a group. By August 2nd, the North London beat group only counted two non-charting singles under their belt, with ‘You Really Got Me’ just two days away from release. As far as the rest of the swinging music world was concerned, The Kinks were just another pop group cutting their teeth on the old R&B songbook. Yet, Davies and the lads were booked to open for The Beatles at Bournemouth’s Gaumont Cinema as part of their Summer 1964 UK Tour, inviting a sharp quip from the ever acerbic Lennon while crossing paths backstage.
“Oh, by the way, lads, good luck,” Davies recalled Lennon remarking. “And if you forget your songs, you can borrow some of ours.”
It’s an arrogant and cutting jibe that reeks of Lennon, in all his confidence and insecurity. By all accounts, bad blood had stuck between the two from then, although feelings seemed to be tempered years later when reflecting on the prickly encounter. “Well, yeah, but that’s typical,” he mused in 1996 on The Dini Petty Show.
“Musicians are like that. You know, musicians have got the right to be unkind to one another… And we didn’t mind because our record went to be number one. It knocked their record off the charts.”
Ray Davies
Have that. He bid his time, but July 1966 saw The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’ shove The Beatles’ ‘Paperback Writer’ off the number one spot. To be fair, the Fab Four counted bucketloads of chart toppers at that point and long after, but such small wins must have soothed Davies’ long-standing Gaumont grudge.
The Kinks frontman must have laughed again the following February, when the ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ / ‘Penny Lane’ double A-side was kept from number one by Engelbert Humperdinck’s drippy ‘Release Me’ ballad, cutting their nearly four-year consecutive chart-topping streak.
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