“Wrong”: Why Ray Davies hated The Kinks’ final album ‘Phobia’
It is impossible to cite The Kinks as an underrated or overlooked outfit; with Ray Davies at the helm, they played an essential role in soundtracking the swinging sixties, and continue to influence the rock landscape over half a century later. Still, when the legacy of The Kinks is discussed, the conversation is usually limited to their golden period, centred around era-defining tracks like ‘You Really Got Me’, or the profound artistry at the heart of the concept album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Their late-period material rarely gets a look in.
For all their revolutionary power back in the 1960s, The Kinks struggled to adapt to the changing landscape of music during the 1970s and beyond. While some of their contemporaries, The Who, for instance, changed and developed their output to become more inventive, expansive, and reflective of the new decade, Davies’ clan attempted to stick to the same kind of sounds and songwriting that earned them hit singles during their early years. Inevitably, songs like ‘You Really Got Me’ begin to lose their appeal when performed by a rapidly ageing outfit.
Following on from the triumph of Lola Versus Powerman at the beginning of the 1970s, The Kinks recorded a vast series of overlooked, forgotten, and typically poor records, with only a handful of notable exceptions. Despite their fleeting successes and the intense sibling rivalry which plagued Ray and Dave Davies, The Kinks managed to stay together throughout it all. Bizarrely, the band were still going by the time Britpop began to raise its head in the 1990s.
Ironically, The Kinks were a major influence on the Britpop landscape, with outfits like Blur and Oasis taking multiple cues from the youthful rock rebellion of the mid-1960s discography. The band itself, however, could not compete with this new wave of British music, and their 1993 album, Phobia, is among their worst.
Reflecting the band’s gradual fall from grace over the years, Phobia was widely ignored upon its release and, even in the years since, rarely gets discussed at all. Ultimately, though, ignoring the album is probably for the best. Aside from half-decent efforts like ‘Scattered’, there is very little of note on this record, feeling very much like another repackaged version of their 1960s heyday without any of the relatability or innovation.
In case you think I’m being too harsh on circa-1993 The Kinks, Ray Davies himself has largely disowned the record in the decades since its release. “I hated Phobia, the album we did for Sony, because now I see the tempo of all the songs was wrong,” the songwriter declared in a 2001 interview with Hot Press. The album’s tempo cannot be blamed for all its faults, but, in fairness, it was The Kinks’ only studio album not to feature drummer Mick Avory at all, which might explain its tempo-based issues.
Aside from its tempo, Phobia suffered from burying one or two half-decent tracks within a largely dull, uninteresting, and outdated album. Within the culturally-rich musical landscape of the early 1990s, dominated by grunge, indie, acid house, and the emerging sounds of Britpop, there was simply no place for a group of ageing 1960s rockers who still seemed to be rooted in the past.
Barring a live album and a couple of greatest hits compilations, Phobia ended up being The Kinks’ final album before officially parting ways in 1997. Thankfully, their enduring reputation among Britain’s defining rock outfits has remained largely unmarred by their late-period failures, like Phobia, and they remain an often-cited source of inspiration for rebellious rock outfits everywhere
