Monocled Alchemist

Paul Du Noyer sees the King Captain lead his team to victory in America, and scraping a no-score draw back home.

Article published in NME, 9th January, 1982

“ROCK BANDS WILL come, and rock bands will go. But . . . ROCK AND ROLL WILL GO ON FOR EVER!”

The scene is the San Somewhere-or-other Stadium in sunny California. And Ray Davies, to borrow the title of The Kinks newest LP, is ‘Giving The People What They Want‘. Like slogans they can go “Whoo!” to, or “Awl Raaght!”, punching their fists in the air, shaking their regulation-issue long blond haircuts. And, most of all, like real, rockin’ boogie music.

Times change, but as far as the American rock ‘n’ roll audience is concerned, values never do.

While the West Coast sun is setting over the stadium’s surrounds —balmy hills of pine and white wooden bungalows, the LA evening lights twinkling 50 miles down the freeway — San Somewhere’s tanned and chubby young are passing ’round the six-packs and revelling in another evening of their never-ending rock ‘n’ roll dream, And, to me, it’s just a little bit depressing to watch The Kinks — God, The Kinks of all people — fitting the bill, feeding those fantasies.

Ray Davies | Going For An Away Win

Ray Davies, one of the quirkiest, cleverest, most intriguing songwriters that England’s ever come up with . . . what’s he doing up there, striking crass rock poses, bawling gormless cliches, playing leaden heavy rock and tossing off camp and casual extracts of old hits, sops to the crowd’s nostalgia?

Is this why the record’s called ‘Give The People What They Want’?

Ray Davies and The Kinks do very well for themselves in America these days — far better than they do in England. I followed them round California and watched them hailed in Hollywood’s Palladium, like the stars set into the sidewalk outside, the famous Boulevard that somebody once wrote a sad and tender song about.

Over there, and it really did seem a world away, The Kinks are heroes and bang up-to-date. Some kids even call them noo wave — what with those skinny ties and all . . .

Hollywood Palladium

Back in his homeland, Davies might best be described as a prophet with honour. But in the States, The Kinks can count on profits with their honour — which is undeniably more attractive. The funny thing was, speaking to him backstage after the Hollywood Palladium triumph, Davies was as unassured and uncomplacent as ever:

“Oh God, you always see us at the worst gigs, you NME people. Like tonight, or that poxy open-air place at San Whatsit. The best ones are when we’re all pissed off and there’s no one there. You should have come to see us in Dunstable.”

‘GIVE THE People What They Want’, as it turns out, isn’t really the resigned, cynical cop-out of a title I’d feared when watching The Kinks go through those crowd-pleasing rock ‘n’ roll motions.

Ray Davies | Going For An Away Win

I brought back a copy of the album (it came out months ago in America; UK release is being held up for re-mixing and a different track-listing) and listening to its lyrics, that title-song takes a new twist of meaning. The rest of the record’s no disgrace either — much better, I’d say, than ‘Low Budget’, the last studio album, and therefore the best thing The Kinks have done in about a decade.

I wouldn’t cross the road, let alone the Atlantic, to watch another current Kinks show: live, they’re surprisingly ordinary, a very pedestrian heavy rock act. And I’ve watched Ray do his cute Noel Coward bits, the teased ‘Lola’ intro, the boring “Whey-Oh” routine too many times down the years.

What keeps me hanging on is admiration of Ray Davies’ continuing gifts as a writer. The new songs are funny, sad and sharp. ‘Give The People’ is a pointed account of the savage demands of public taste, from the bloodstained Roman amphitheatres to prime-time TV.

Art Lover

Davies, as ever, is the confused observer, clinging to some notion of everyday decency amid the bewilderment. Other pieces tell other tales, often like micro-novels in their own right.

‘Art Lover’ is maybe the most affecting: the delicately ambiguous lyric is classic. Elsewhere, you get the impression of a perceptive outsider, no longer so adept at peddling wry “social comment”, but more attuned to the life of the emotions, a bruised optimist.

Ray Davies | Going For An Away Win

The Kinks — any orthodox rock act — mightn’t be the ideal context for Ray Davies any more, although he claims an undying loyalty to the group. But he’s still a valuable presence in whatever form, and I’m pleased when he tells me his notebooks are filling with ideas just now, as fast as they ever did.

THE NEXT time I meet Ray Davies is in a very un-Californian backstreet, in Finsbury Park, on a cold, dark mid-winter night. He’s sitting in the back of a big, chauffeur-driven limousine, with a distinctly bloke-ist cloth cap on his head — a scenario rich in symbolic contradictions.

I climb in, and find myself next to Chrissie Hynde; almost entirely hidden by woolly hat and scarf and coat-collar, she’s like something out of a porridge advert, well-wrapped against the chill North London air.

Ray Davies grins — and when that grin comes you shift sidewards in your seat to make room for it — and reflects that it’s the first football match he’s travelled to in such grand style.

Life-long supporter

The scene, a little while later, is the East Stand at Highbury. Ray’s come —rather optimistically, in my view — to see if Arsenal can put Liverpool out of the League Cup. I’ve turned up in expectation of exactly the opposite outcome.

He says there used to be a time when Kinks gigs were cancelled if they clashed with an Arsenal match. He’s a life-long supporter, and points from his expensive stand-seat down to the humble corner-terrace where he stood as a lad.

Now, though, he hasn’t been to a match in three years. And after tonight’s game, he thinks it’ll be three years before he goes again.

A traditionalist at heart, he’s disappointed to see his team decked out (in the modern way) like athletic sandwich-board men, bearing a sponsor’s name across their shirts.

Ray Davies | Going For An Away Win

Ironically, it’s a video company: Davies is keen to bring The Kinks into the video era as pioneers. He’s scripted a complete film around the new songs, and hopes to have it out in video-disc form, no less, as well as on ye olde cassette.

The match, it must be said, is not a great one. “What this game needs,” Ray observes, “is a goal. Or a punch-up.”

We never get the goals, but there’s a sudden commotion on the terrace — swarms of heads converge on a single point, and most spectators forget about the field or play for a while.

Konk Studios

The entertainment is going out of football, he feels. It’s probably more fun for those kids to riot. “It’s no wonder people are going mad in England —there’s nothing to do. You go to a football match, and it’s boring . . . Actually, half of this Arsenal team look like pansies to me.”

Last year’s street confrontations came uncomfortably close for Davies. The police called in at his Konk Studios, in Hornsey, while the group were recording, and told them to board the place up — there was trouble down the road.

So, boards were duly upped, and he thought it would be a neat idea to spray ‘Give The People What They Want’ across them (so providing the album’s cover-shot in the process).

Although Ray Davies will forever be called the “most English” of songwriters, and says his attachment to the place never falters, he’s the first to agree that America offers them a more congenial setting nowadays.

The UK music scene is fluid and challenging, but also treacherously fickle. (“I get people in England telling me I’ve ‘lost it’ — whatever I used to have. But I don’t feel I have.”)

In the States, a band can build a solid career for itself: the place is big enough, the following’s steady enough. Whereas for England: “I’m pissed off because my single isn’t being played. And because I know our album won’t get played.”

Ray Davies | Going For An Away Win

Radio is an abiding sore point of his. Maybe it’s the old business, I suggest, of The Kinks being “an institution” over here, taken for granted — unlike their American success, which is far more recent.

Over here, you’ve got that illustrious past to compete with. But Davies isn’t content with the argument: “We’ve never been as big as people think we are.” As he recalls it, The Kinks have really spent their time as underdogs —well-respected (well, off and on), but never in the same commercial big league as their contemporaries like the Stones.

“All this talk of us being an institution . . . but we’ve never absolutely made it. We always had to achieve. And it’s been a good thing, to be just below that top level, in that it gives you room to experiment . . . Fancy a cuppa?”

With the half-time whistle blown, the Band of the Metropolitan Police are marching over the turf, treating us to a selection from Fiddler On The Roof.

At the kiosk downstairs, Ray is purchasing the beverages when a youth leans over and fixes him an inane smile.

“Harternoon Teeee?” enquires the youth, in a presumably humorous accent.

“Er, yeah,” nods Davies, and turns away quickly. All around the bar, local businessmen-made-good are standing in expensive overcoats, talking loudly.

“It’s all a social occasion for them, really,” says the Kink. “It’s just like the opera. Only opera’s faster than this game.”

Arsenal v Liverpool

Back for the second half, Arsenal v Liverpool grinds towards the inevitable replay, and Ray Davies admits there are times when he feels like packing it all in — the band, that is.

The pressure is bad enough, the pressure from himself as much as anybody else (though it was worse in the days when he was expected to produce hit after hit), but the inertia is irritating too — the times like now when he’s in between the U.S. campaign and starting the UK album promotion.

The match is a disaster as well, and we join the general exodus ten minutes before the end.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he apologises to Chrissie and me, with that bemused grin of his.

What do people want?

“Ha!” the Pretender laughs. “Boy, you sure know how to show a girl a good time . . .”

And she gives him a cuddle as they wait for the limo to come.