The 1965 Kinks album that left Ray Davies disappointed: “Just too rushed”
It was a hectic time for The Kinks in 1965. After breaking through into the mainstream with ‘You Really Got Me’ the year before, Mick Avory, Pete Quaife, and the Davies brothers entered into a non-stop cycle of touring, promotional appearances, and recording commitments.
The band were expected to crank out material at a manic pace, and none of the members had enough sway in the industry to allow for more care or attention to be paid to their recordings.
The pace was hardly unique to The Kinks. Throughout the British beat boom, successful groups were often expected to release multiple singles, EPs and albums every year while maintaining relentless touring schedules. Recording sessions were squeezed into whatever gaps remained, leaving little opportunity for experimentation or painstaking refinement.
For a songwriter like Ray Davies, whose ambitions were already beginning to outgrow the limitations of straightforward rock and roll, that conveyor belt approach increasingly felt restrictive. Even at this early stage, he was beginning to think less like a chart-chasing bandleader and more like an album artist.
Although it had only been less than six months since the band’s self-titled debut LP was released, Kinda Kinks still showed a notable progression in the band’s songwriting and performances. With the garage rock stylings of ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’ taking a backseat to folk, beat, and R&B influences, The Kinks sought to diversify their sound through tracks like ‘Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight’ and ‘Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout that Girl’.
The end result was another top-five album in the UK. Like most LPs at the time, Kinda Kinks was resequenced for its US release, removing the single ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ and the album tracks ‘Naggin’ Woman’ and ‘Come on Now’ in favour of the tracks ‘Set Me Free’ and ‘Ev’rybody’s Gonna Be Happy’. It would be one of two albums the band released in 1965, but Ray Davies wasn’t completely happy with the end result.
“A bit more care should have been taken with it,” Davies later said about the LP, as quoted in John Mendelssohn’s book The Kinks Kronikles. “I think Shel Talmy went too far in trying to keep in the rough edges. Some of the double tracking on that is appalling. It had better songs on it than the first album, but it wasn’t executed in the right way. It was just far too rushed.”
Those frustrations would become a recurring theme throughout Davies’ career. While many fans have come to appreciate the rawness of Kinda Kinks as part of its charm, Davies always measured the record against what he believed it could have been under different circumstances.
Rather than criticising the songwriting, he was lamenting the lack of time afforded to it. The ideas were already pointing towards the more observational, distinctly British style that would define The Kinks over the next few years, but the recording process had not yet caught up with his expanding creative vision.
Despite his reservations, ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ went to number one on the UK Singles Chart. The Kinks were still red hot, even if the Davies were already looking to get more time and attention paid to their songs. The band’s follow-up, The Kink Kontroversy, would be another step forward, but it wouldn’t be until 1966’s Face to Face that The Kinks first got a taste of what the studio could do for them.
Check out ‘Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout that Girl’ down below.
