The artist Pete Townshend called “100 percent perfect”
“100 percent perfect” is a near-impossible feat. Obviously, it’s a deeply subjective discussion, but it’s tough to think of any artist who has pulled off a complete top-to-bottom victory where every song on every album from every year of their career has been nothing but gold. Nevertheless, in the eyes of Pete Townshend, one man managed it.
It is so rare of an accomplishment that many would argue it’s a myth. Bob Dylan got weird in the 1980s and ‘90s. The Beatles would often mar a perfect record with a song like ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road’. Musicians’ attempts to be experimental would sometimes go too far or simply not work out, causing a blip in their discography. Even if the mistake was immediately rectified by the next record, the slip-up lives forever as a black mark by their name, keeping them away from that “100 per cent perfect” goalpost.
It begs the question of whether anything can be perfect without risk. If an artist wasn’t taking chances, trying new things or pushing forward, wouldn’t that be even more of a drawback than a bold chance that didn’t quite work? What’s worse – a boring lack of progress or an interesting misstep that speaks to their passion as a creative? I’d argue the prior, and so would Townshend.
That argument is part of the reason why his love for Ray Davies runs so deep. As the singer and primary songwriter of the Kinks, Davies’ talent led the way for one of the most influential British bands in history. With a career that spanned decades from the ’60s well into the 2010s when he released his latest album Americana, Davies has stuck around through several eras and scenes, and that’s partly why Townshend loves him so much.
“There’s nothing he has done that isn’t 100 per cent perfect in my eyes,” The Who guitarist said in NME in 1982. When discussing the difficult dilemma between an artist attempting to balance experimentation with maintaining their commercial success and the pressure put on musicians to change what they do to chase sales, Townshend sees Davies as the ultimate example of a person who passionately sticks to their vision and is boosted by that.
“Ray doesn’t need to change,” he said, adding, “And if he changed it, I’d personally go and knock on his door and try and persuade him to do otherwise.”
Townshend wouldn’t be the only musician arguing this fact. From the moment Davies emerged with the Kinks, he’s been revered as one of the most essential forces in British music. Not only did his band inspire their peers in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but even long into the ‘90s and ‘00s when the Britpop moment was warming up, Davies was deemed the “Godfather of Britpop” as the band’s melodies and instantly hooking guitar riffs were seen as the basis for bands like Blur, Oasis and the new wave of British guitar acts who dominated music for the first time since Davies and his scene.
Without him, who knows how music would have shaped up and surely that alone should grant him the elusive ultimate gold star.
