The most insecure man in rock ‘n’ roll, according to Ray Davies
Ray Davies is far from your typical rock star. The Kinks are far from your typical band. In an era where fame and all of its trappings were chased after rather than feared, Ray Davies and his brethren were an island adrift. When his contemporaries sang of groupies and flew the planet in private jets, Davies holed himself up in old pubs and sang of village greens.
He would even concede, “Those English themes became a way of cocooning myself from everything”. As he squabbled with his brother, buried his nose in booze, and became beset by bad luck, he drifted into art of a more isolated and lowly ilk. His masterpieces captured the sentiment of a reluctant star, rallying against the capitalist engine that pop culture was becoming. He was withdrawn more so than he was conservative.
He had gone from a working-class house in Muswell Hill to the new promise to rival the bombastic Beatles. And he didn’t want any of that. “I’m not like everybody else,” he sang with marked disdain. But beyond that disdain, there was also a sense of stark vulnerability. He had back pain to contend with, a young family to attend to, and a revolution to be part of. It is only natural that he put his guard up somewhat.
But above all, he wasn’t quite made for the gaudy world of rock ‘n’ roll in its current guise. “I hated the lifestyle of Paul McCartney,” he said in 1981. “I didn’t want to be like Elton John or Rod Stewart,” he added. And he knew Stewart well as the young Faces star was in the year below him at William Grimshaw Secondary School. He revolted against these figures in his own withdrawn way while simultaneously mingling with them.
At least he didn’t have it quite as bad as another of his peers. As he said himself, “There’s only one person who’s more insecure than I am, and his name is Pete Townshend”. The problem poor Pete faced was that he was in a band that didn’t sing about cuppas and county cricket. The Who were the hard-nosed antagonists of rock ‘n’ roll with cherry bombs in their drum kits and manic appearances to keep up. But all along, Townshend, like Ray Davies, was just a young, shy outsider who was also ‘not like anybody else’.
This made life tough for the pair of decidedly un-rock ‘n’ roll rock ‘n’ rollers. Their kinship was apparent without even discussing it. “There is a mutual telepathy,” Davies told the New Statesmen regarding Townshend. “I think we listen to one another’s work. When I did have a meaningful chat with Pete, he said, ‘We never talk.’ And I said, ‘Why start now?’”
Even that pithy joke is a mark of their witty withdrawal. It’s a guardedness against the openness of a famous lifestyle even after all of these years. But it is also this very insecurity and vulnerability that made The Kinks so brilliant. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ gorgeously exemplifies the virtue of finding your own easy contentment in life. Lazing on a Sunday was more of a life of luxury for Davies than the gold and glam rockstars were told to strive for back then.
That makes The Kinks a beautiful, honest band. Meanwhile, the insecurity that underscores the rebellion of The Who adds wonderfully meaningful jeopardy to their anarchic sound, proving that the questioning art is often the one who offers the most assured works.
