SPREAD THE word: talking about rock n roll is the new rock n roll. Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins, Julian Cope, Nick Cave, Ray Manzarek, Lydia Lunch and now Ray Davies . . . sometimes those who can do, also teach. And while The Kinks leader is not the first rocker ever to hit the talk show circuit (Bruce Springsteen s epic on-stage monologues probably earned him that title 20 years ago) his status as a published author and master songwriter more than qualifies him for the job.
I think the show itself evolves from my book X Ray which is a novel/autobiography, he explains, pulling his car over to the side of the road in order to take Hot Press call. I was doing readings in the UK, upstairs in little book shops to about a hundred people, and they all sold out. And I used to get to a chapter and I d say to myself, It d be nice to have a song here just to elaborate on it a bit . While I was writing the book, I didn t do much research because I realised all my history was in the songs, in the lyrics. The show I ll be doing in HQ in Ireland will be the story of how The Kinks were formed; my childhood, my upbringing, basically how we came to make our first hit record.
Like so many other British pop figures (Barrett, Bowie, Ferry, Eno) Ray Davies came from a 60s art college background, as much a fan of William Blake or Frangois Truffaut as The Beatles and Elvis. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of swinging London was that it represented something of a germ-cultural petri dish a social experiment where artists and aristocrats, crooks and kooks could mix freely, often pooling ideas, resulting in a golden age for British music, film and pop-art. It s an era the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn recreated somewhat self-consciously in the mid 90s Cool Britannia climate, chiefly through flirtations with events like the Poetry Olympics and artists such as Damien Hirst. Furthermore, Davies was namechecked as an influence on Blur s kitchen sink dramas (which themselves evoked Guy Peellaert s portrait of the chief Kink as a pram-pushing young father in Rock Dreams).
It was a very odd phenomenon because I liked Blur and Oasis before they started to actually cite me as an influence, Davies avers. The whole nonsense about The Godfather Of Britpop was an embarrassing tag, not because I don t like the music, but because I felt they tried to make me feel responsible for it. I remember I gave Oasis the best new band award at the Q awards and they cited me on stage as being their biggest influence and I said to a journalist afterwards, What have I done?!! It s a mixture of being genuinely happy with it all, and on the other hand being like Frankenstein looking at his monster.
That said, Ray s influence could also be detected in the likes of Neil Hannon, whose quasi-Alfie persona circa 1996 might ve walked straight out of a Kinks composition. The two share an appreciation of The Craft You Really Got Me notwithstanding, Davies was always less a noisenik (a la Townsend) than a writerly figure in the vein of Cole Porter or Noel Coward.
For the most part, rock people like me are meant to have come from nowhere, with no particular connection to anything that went before, the singer reflects. But later on, we realised there is a connection with English poetry and music hall.
Certainly, as a youngster this writer remembers being surprised by his old man singing along to Dedicated Follower Of Fashion on the radio, perhaps the ultimate proof of Davies grasp of the popular standard.
I did write my early songs for my parents to sing, he admits. I used to play my records for my Dad when I first made them, I remember playing that to him and he said it would be a hit, and Sunny Afternoon and Dead End Street . In a sense I did it to gain parental approval, which is kind of anti what a rock person should be. Dedicated Follower in many respects was kind of a square song for a 22-year-old to write.
Rather less square was the evergreen Lola , whose transsexual subject matter still manages to raise hackles when introduced into the realms of soap opera (Coronation Street) or cinema (Boys Don t Cry, The Crying Game).
The joke was that the BBC banned the record initially because I use the words coca-cola on it, Davies chuckles. And when I changed the word coca to cherry , they started playing it, but they missed the whole point it was about a transvestite! They ll ban something for the most ridiculous, obscure reason!
An Evening With Ray Davies takes place at HQ on Abbey St in Dublin on Sun 21st, Mon 22nd and Tues. 23rd May.