The record Ray Davies didn’t consider a proper Kinks album
For such an acclaimed entry in The Kinks‘ vast discography, singer and principal songwriter Ray Davies has a rather blithe relationship with 1966’s Face to Face LP.
When reflecting on his work some years ago, he told Uncut: “Face To Face is a collection of songs, not an album. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ had been a hit, so the heat was off. The label didn’t get that one. I said, ‘Please. I was right with all the others – just put this out in five weeks, the sun’s coming out.’ Pop should be an immediate response to the world.”
Face to Face sits at a strange intersection in Davies’ creative evolution, sonically moved on from the raunchy beat of ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘All Day and All of the Night’, yet not quite realising his conceptual ambitions on subsequent records The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). While embracing the quintessential Kinks obsessions of English culture, class, and satirical barbs at the music industry, it’s the closest The Kinks went in reflecting the psychedelia of the era, albeit indulged in a quaintly charming way.
‘Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home’ is classic Kinks: a dreamy stroll of baroque keys and folk-rock guitar that hides darker themes, the painful absence of his beloved sister after having moved abroad with her husband. As revealed in 2007’s Not Like Everybody Else, Thomas M Kitts writes, “On the day that they moved, Ray Davies broke down on the beach after a gig. ‘I started screaming. A part of my family had left, possibly forever. … I collapsed in a heap on the sandy beach and wept like a pathetic child,’ Davies said of the incident. Dave Davies added, ‘All of a sudden, the fact that they were really leaving finally hit Ray. He ran to the sea screaming and crying’.”
The top-down label pressure for a hit compounded this breakdown that clouds the writing and recording of Face to Face. “I went through a lot of emotional problems that year, because of the constant pressure from managers and the label, and myself, to keep the hits coming,” Davies added. “I became washed out and drained, and a bumbling fool. I needed a good sleep, and that’s basically what my ‘breakdown’ was”.
Perhaps the subtle cynicism that pervades the record’s biggest hit has wrought a cooler feeling toward the album from Davies. ‘Sunny Afternoon’ hides behind a thoroughly unlikeable aristocratic protagonist bemoaning his idle luxury as a vehicle to express Davies’ displeasure at the Harold Wilson Labour government’s taxation policies. “The only way I could interpret how I felt was through a dusty, fallen aristocrat who had come from old money as opposed to the wealth I had created for myself”. ‘Peace and love’ this was not.
With all the emotional turmoil that hung in the air, coupled with Davies’ acerbic lyrical observations, it’s likely that Davies’ lack of regard for Face to Face has a rather more banal explanation, “I was 22, and writing about adult concerns – mortgages in ‘Most Exclusive Residence For Sale’, taxes in ‘Sunny Afternoon’. It was my first experience of being a grown-up.”
Whatever his reasoning, it’s astonishing to think that such an essential album could be met with such deprecating irreverence. No matter, Face to Face is a classic record regardless of what Davies thinks.
