Raymond Douglas Davies, CBE (born June
21, 1944 at Fortis Green, London) is an influential English rock musician, best known as lead singer-songwriter for The Kinks - one of the most influential,
prolific and long-lived British Invasion bands - which he led
with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for
theatre and television.
Since the demise of the Kinks in the mid-90s Ray Davies has embarked on a critically successful solo career. His
February 2006 release Other People's
Lives was his first top 30 hit in UK since the 1960s, when he worked with the Kinks. He is preparing his next solo
release Working Man's Café for October
2007.
Biography
Ray Davies (pronounced DAY-vizz [1]) was born and raised
in the North London area of Muswell Hill. He is the seventh of eight children, including
six older sisters and his younger brother, Dave. He has been married three times, and has
four daughters - Louisa, Victoria, Natalie Rae and Eva.
The musically-inclined Davies was an art student at Hornsey College of Art in
London in 1962–1963, when the Kinks developed into a professional performing band. After the Kinks obtained a recording contract
in early 1964, Davies emerged as the chief songwriter and de facto leader of the band, especially after the band's
breakthrough success with his composition "You Really Got Me." Davies led the Kinks
through a period of musical experimentation between 1966 and 1976, with notable artistic achievements and commercial success.
Between 1977 and their breakup in 1996, Davies and the group reverted to their earlier mainstream rock format and enjoyed a
second peak of success.
In 1990, Davies was inducted, with the Kinks, into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame and, in 2005, into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Davies has performed
solo since the mid 1990s.
Davies has had a tempestuous, 'love-hate' relationship with younger brother and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies that dominated the Kinks' career as a band. His compositions and talent as a performer are
universally hailed within the music industry, but he has maintained a career-long reputation for being fiercely independent and
iconoclastic, resulting in a decades-long pattern of conflict and alienation within the industry.[citation needed] In 1973, a fed-up Ray attempted to
announce the breakup of the band onstage (the microphone had been turned off though) and then attempted suicide by gobbling down
handfuls of prescription drugs and washing them down with liquor.[citation needed]
He was quoted in 1967: "If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done."[citation needed]
In 1983, Davies had a daughter, Natalie Rae, with then girlfriend Chrissie Hynde (of
The Pretenders).
On January 4, 2004, Davies was wounded when he was shot in the leg while chasing thieves, who
had snatched the purse of his companion as they walked in the French Quarter of
New Orleans, Louisiana.[2] The shooting came less than a week after Davies was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
Relationship with Chrissie Hynde
Ray's three and a half year love affair with Pretenders singer, Chrissie Hynde came at the expense of his marriage to his first wife, Rasa, who named Chrissie as the
other woman in the divorce papers. It was one fuelled by intense passion between the pair. Not always harmonious, they were
involved in a number of bust ups, the most infamous being when they were due to get married but after having such a ferocious
argument between them, the registrar refused to marry them. In 1982, Chrissie fell pregnant
with Ray's third child and the nine months that followed were said to have been the calmer period of their relationship as
Chrissie mourned the death of her bandmate James Honeymoon Scott while awaiting the birth of her
first child. In January, Natalie Rae Hynde was born and within a year, Chrissie had taken the baby with her on a world tour,
which led to the breakdown of the Hynde-Davies relationship in 1984.
Work
-
Davies' compositions over his lengthy career have been an astonishing study in contrasts, from the influential
proto-punk, powerchord rock and roll of the early Kinks
hits in 1964–1966 (most prominently "You Really Got Me" and " All Day and All of the Night"); followed a few years later by more sensitive, compassionate
songs ("Waterloo Sunset", "Shangri-La",
"Big Sky"); and still later by anthems ("Lola",
"Celluloid Heroes"); neo-Romantic
pastiches of English culture ("Autumn Almanac"); true Music Hall-style musical theatre (the Preservation
albums); and commercial rock which combined elements of all of these ("Come Dancing", "Do
it Again").
Davies' songwriting has often been acclaimed as more mature, sophisticated, and subtle than that of many of his peers among
American and British rock musicians and he has been called the "greatest humanist in rock". While his lyrics were often deceptively simple, focused on time-honoured rock themes such as love, sexual attraction and partying, they often contained elements of
satire, examples including "A Well-Respected Man", which ridiculed conservative suburban values, and "Dandy", which mocked the superficiality of the mod
subculture. In addition, his later work showed signs of social conscience, examples being
"God's Children" and songs on the album Muswell Hillbillies, which denounced
commercialism in favour of living simply, and "Dead End Street", which portrayed pockets
of poverty in the thriving British economy of the mid 1960s.
Davies' songs on the 1968 Kinks album The Kinks Are
the Village Green Preservation Society embraced nostalgia and preservation as themes long before they became
fashionable. Many of his best songs focus on the small-scale, poignant dramas of everyday people ("Waterloo Sunset", "Two Sisters", "Till Death Us Do Part"), commonly told as wistful mini-stories.
His work has an idiosyncratic quality that has appealed greatly to the Kinks' large cult following over the years. Throughout
his career, he has also been considered the most singularly "English" of all major songwriters of his generation. He has
consistently used an English (sometimes Cockney) accent, as opposed to the faux-American accent of some of his
contemporaries.
Aside from the lengthy Kinks discography, Davies has released three solo albums, the 1985 release Return to Waterloo
(which accompanied a television film he wrote and directed),
the 1998 release The Storyteller, and Other People's Lives in early
2006. Since the Kinks ceased performing in 1996, Davies has toured independently (such as the Storyteller tours), and more
recently with a backing band. In 2005, Davies released a four-song EP in the
UK called The Tourist, and a five-song EP in the U.S. entitled Thanksgiving Day. In the liner notes, Davies confesses he still does not know who he
is and where his roots are. In the sing-along "Next Door Neighbour", he seems to be suggesting he is all three characters. The
printed lyrics sheet contains some fascinating insights into the songwriting process.
Davies published his 'unauthorized autobiography',
X-Ray, in 1994, a romp through the Swinging Sixties,
which settles burning issues ranging from which band produced the first concept album (not The
Who), to whether or not his tour companion, Gene Pitney, had an affair with
Marianne Faithfull. In 1997, he published a book of short stories entitled Waterloo Sunset, described as 'a
concept album set on paper'. He has made two films, Return to Waterloo in 1985 and Weird Nightmare in 1991, a
documentary about Charles Mingus.
The V2 record label's website states Davies will release his new album, entitled Working Man's
Café, in Europe on 29 October 2007. The release is preceded on 28 October with a performance at the BBC's
Electric Proms series, at The Roundhouse,
Camden.
An edited version of Working Man's Café, excluding two bonus tracks and liner
notes, is to be given away with the Sunday Times on 21
October.
Awards
- On March 17, 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for "Services to Music."
- On June 22, 2004, Davies won the Mojo Songwriter Award, which recognises "An
artist whose career has been defined by their ability to pen classic material on a consistent basis."
- Davies and the Kinks were the third British band (along with The Who) to be inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, at which Davies was called "almost
indisputably rock's most literate, witty and insightful songwriter." They were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
- On October 3, 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award
Solo discography
- For Kinks discography see The Kinks discography
- Return to Waterloo (1985)
- The Storyteller (1998)
- Other People's Lives (2006)
- Working Man's Café (2007)
Notes
References
- Polito, Robert, "Bits of Me Scattered Everywhere: Ray Davies and the Kinks", p. 119–144 in Eric Weisbard, ed., This is
Pop, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01321-2 (cloth), ISBN 0-674-01344-1 (paper).
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
External links
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