The sorry story of The Kinks’ worst gig: “Carried off stage”
While The Kinks were a highly competent and active live band for much of their career, any live band is certain to face challenges that they’re unable to prepare themselves for, and are bound to experience hiccups along the way.
Being a great studio band, of course, does not always equal being a proficient live act, but The Kinks were certainly fortunate to have been blessed with both of these things, impressing audiences at home with their knack for creating high-energy performances that did justice to their ambitious studio recordings.
Despite having amassed a decent following at home in the UK, although admittedly only in their early career, they never really managed to crack the US market, partially due to how their music was so quintessentially British in its presentation. The more they tapped into this urge to create more conceptual works that zoomed in on aspects of British culture, the more they alienated foreign audiences and struggled to captivate listeners who weren’t familiar with the themes they explored.
What also didn’t help was the fact that they were banned from entering the US for four years, owing to a tumultuous tour in 1965 that was characterised by poor tempers boiling over and dreadful management. The band ended up having their work permits revoked, and wouldn’t be allowed to tour in the country again until 1969.
When the ban was finally lifted, they’d missed the boat to a degree, with the British invasion having come and gone, so ever returning there would have provided many concerns of its own. There would have been growing uncertainty about whether they’d be able to ever win over their American fanbase at all, given how the biggest opportunity to crack the market in the States was in the mid-1960s, and it gave them an uphill battle to contend with.
What certainly wouldn’t have helped their case was that when they were finally allowed back, they ended up performing one of their most notoriously messy shows ever, and when asked by Rolling Stone in 2006 what he thought the sloppiest Kinks show ever was, frontman Ray Davies was quick to assert that one show in particular wound up being a disaster.
Speaking about a performance in Virginia in the early 1970s, Davies proclaimed that his desire to put on an exceptional show immediately backfired. “It was on a revolving stage, and during the first song I jumped in the air, fell on my head and knocked myself out, and was carried offstage,” he explained, before outlining even more complicating factors, adding:
“My brother was drunk, so he had to sit down for the set. The moment my brother could have taken over the band, he was too out of it!”
While the band could have cut their set short due to its calamitous opening, Davies’ determination to make things work began to get even more in the way of them delivering a show to the best of their ability. “Mike Cotton, our harmonica player, took over centre stage and began doing ‘You Really Got Me’,” he added, “I had to fight the ambulance crew to let me back onstage, because they sounded terrible without me. I did the rest of the set with my head bandaged up.”
The show couldn’t have possibly gone worse, but at the same time, it makes you wonder whether the band were ultimately cursed and destined to not have the audience in the US that they managed to garner on home soil.
