The songwriter Ray Davies said America was lucky to have: “A beautiful guy”
It’s nearly impossible to describe the kind of wit that Ray Davies has whenever he writes one of his songs.
Although The Kinks were a bit more grizzly than the rest of the British invasion, thanks to Dave Davies’s roaring guitar, a lot of what Ray focused on was making the kind of tunes that no one was really looking to make in the post-Elvis Presley era. He was interested in making character portraits every time he performed, and he felt that the best songwriters were the ones that could tell a story over the course of a few minutes.
Granted, a lot of what Ray was writing about was always going to be an acquired taste. There were plenty of artists from around that time trying to make the nastiest riffs imaginable, thanks to ‘You Really Got Me’, but when you listen to an album like The Village Green Preservation Society, you’re not going to get a ton of roaring guitars. This was the sound of rock and rollers growing up, and that was either going to be their greatest strength or the kiss of death, depending on how the audience reacted to it.
And while a lot of fans may have been confused, it’s hard not to admire the craftsmanship of a song like ‘Waterloo Sunset’. It was all about finding the exact right melody to paint a picture of a version of England that most people never got to see, and even if that idealistic place was slipping away, Ray could still make the whole country sound romantic, even when he was talking about the outsiders of the world.
But he wouldn’t have been there without the other storytellers that came before him. Bob Dylan blew the doors wide open for what pop music could cover on a number of his songs, but if he was making modern parables about the way people should be living their lives, Bruce Springsteen was on the ground floor of America and telling the kind of stories that could have come from someone down the street.
‘The Boss’ may have devoted his life to making the best rock and roll anyone had ever heard, but he knew a thing or two about hardship, and a lot of the characters in his songs could have been plucked directly out of his home in New Jersey. He felt that there was a place on the charts for people who were the world’s underdogs, and Ray felt that his view of America looked a lot brighter with someone like Springsteen to work with.
The Kinks frontman had already seen what Springsteen was capable of for years, but when looking at his track record when working with him on the album Tell My Friends, he felt that the country didn’t know how good they had it with him as a spokesperson, saying, “He’s actually a beautiful guy. Very generous. You’re lucky to have Bruce Springsteen as a great American writer. From Woody Guthrie onwards, you’ve had a great tradition of great writers.”
But what Springsteen was doing was much different from what the likes of Guthrie or even Dylan were doing. Whereas Guthrie could unite people around a common message, Springsteen never claimed to have all the answers when he played. He could only hope to give his own experience, and the fact that he was willing to share his grief, joy, and pain with his audience is all that anyone could have asked for from an artist, no matter how many times people claim that he is a scourge upon society.
Because, regardless of what his critics say, you can’t deny that Springsteen was someone who genuinely believed that rock and roll had the potential to change the world, and he spent the entirety of his career trying to make that a reality. His music wasn’t going to resonate with anyone, but you’re a boldfaced liar if you ever claimed that he was doing it for the money. He would have made these songs for free, but it turned out there were a lot more people who felt the same way he did.
