The 1968 masterpiece that Ray Davies called The Kinks “death wish”
The Kinks are underrated. That’s not to say they weren’t successful, but they’re not recognised as being one of the most influential bands in rock.
They set the blueprint for rock on ‘You Really Got Me’, not just how it should sound, but how bands should be playing it. That A chord, which opens the track up, may well be one of the best A chords in the world, as it’s hit in a punishing fashion that laid the stall out for what would become the romanticism of rock ‘n’ roll.
Steve Van Zandt has always said the track was genre-defining and puts that definition down to the song itself, how it was played, and the production that went into it. “That was a radical-sounding record,” he said. “When this came on the Top 30 radio, it was completely new to us. It went very high, as did ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. It was radical, and you have to give [producer] Shel Tamy credit for that.”
Ray Davies was well aware of just how good his music was. In 1967, when The Beatles released Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, everyone was talking about the Fab Four and this new approach to concept albums that they seemed to have created. It was incredibly exciting for a lot of people, as they were seeing the power of what a record could be in a brand new light. Bands didn’t just have to sing songs, but they could tell fully fledged stories.
Despite everyone talking about The Beatles that year, though, Ray Davies was still confident that he had written the best song in the past 12 months, ‘Waterloo Sunset’. “The Summer of Love didn’t bother me too much,” he said, “I remember my first entry to Sgt Pepper was in Belfast, in Van Morrison’s flat. I didn’t listen to all of it. I knew I’d put out the best song of the year, so it didn’t matter to me.”
While Davies might not have been too phased by Sgt Pepper’s, The Kinks still went on to make their own concept album the year after with The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. You could argue that what they did with this album was take the formula that The Beatles laid out in Sgt Pepper’s but a lot more heightened. The themes that ran through this album felt a lot stronger, and the band seemed to have a stronger sense of identity.
A lot of listeners who like The Kinks call this one of their best albums; however, it’s one that Ray Davies seems to have mixed emotions about. It came during a period where the band were struggling somewhat with their identity and the changing shape of music. When considering how they wanted to be remembered and staring their future dead in the face, they wound up coming up with this album. You can tell Davies likes the record, but he also appreciates the risk that came with making it.
“I think every band goes through a phase where they sit back and think about what their future’s going to be, a crossroads record,” said Davies, “Wilco did it with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. …Village Green was ours. Maybe it’s an artistic death wish, to put something out like that.”
He continued, “But you had underground music starting, with the West Coast explosion in America, and our management were sending us to play working-men’s clubs up north.”
