‘Dead End Street’: The pioneering Kinks concept banned by the BBC
Innovation was the name of the game when it came to the music of the 1960s. Artists everywhere were desperately searching to create the next new sound, pushing the art form forward and leading to countless discoveries which have since been vital for music’s development. Among those artists, Ray Davies and The Kinks were always on the cutting edge. Not only did the group pioneer the use of guitar distortion, but they also played an undeniable role in the history of the music video.
Davies and the gang were always looking for ways to develop The Kinks into something more profound and artistically driven. In doing so, the group created a wealth of truly incredible, timeless music, including one of the greatest-ever concept albums, Village Green Preservation Society. Nevertheless, the band was also searching for innovations outside of their actual recorded material.
This desire for innovation, coupled with a fatigue of all the admin that comes with being a successful rock and roll band, eventually led The Kinks to construct a pioneering music video. Given their incredible chart success, the band were often invited to perform on the BBC’s weekly chart music programme Top of the Pops. Famously, the show broadcast lip-synced performances of that week’s biggest hits, but they often required the artists to be in the studio to give a pseudo-performance.
Bored with travelling to the BBC studio to deliver one of these phoney gigs week after week, The Kinks had the pioneering idea for the broadcaster to show a film accompaniment to their music rather than a live performance. Of course, The Kinks were not the first people to ever create a music video, but they were one of the first groups to establish the format of music videos as we know them today. What’s more, the band created their video for ‘Dead End Street’ decades prior to the popularisation of music videos, which arrived with MTV in 1981.
For their 1966 single, the band shot a film to reflect the dark yet hopeful content of the song itself. Focusing on a young couple left destitute after travelling to Australia as part of the ‘Ten Pound Poms’ scheme, ‘Dead End Street’ is a fantastic encapsulation of Davies’ social realist style of songwriting. As you might expect, however, the accompanying video was not all sunshine and rainbows.
Depicting the band as pallbearers, the video features shots of caskets, widows, and overarching themes of poverty. As such, the BBC deemed the video to be too distasteful to broadcast on Top of the Pops, as was originally intended. “It showed slums and poverty and so they wouldn’t run it,” Davies later recalled. “I guess they prefer films about running around in parks, jumping over chairs.”
Thankfully, the video for ‘Dead End Street’ survived the BBC’s disdain and, unlike many of those early episodes of Top of the Pops, is still viewable today. Upon viewing, it is surprising to see how adept The Kinks were at channelling the narrative of their song into an engaging promotional film during a time in which most promotional music films simply consisted of groups performing in front of an audience. The video predicts the construction and themes of various future music videos that will not arrive until decades later.
Few other bands would have dared to upset the BBC at that time, and even fewer would have gone to the effort of shooting an entire promotional film for their single. However, The Kinks were always different from most other bands. The ‘Dead End Street’ music video reflects the innovative nature of Davies’ group, which never waned throughout their time together.
