Ray Davies: a dedicated chronicler of fashions

Ray Davies is to curate next year's Meltdown festival. Jon Savage salutes a national treasure

In late 1965, Ray Davies threw a party. One of his guests was a clothes designer, and as Davies recalled: "I got pissed off with him always going on about fashion. I had a fight with him, a terrible brawl and I kicked him. It was awful. There was blood. The next day I said, 'Forget this, this has got to stop, take it out in your work' and I wrote that song, typed it up straight off."

"That song" was "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", one of four top five singles that, between March 1966 and June 1967, inaugurated the Kinks' second, most creative phase and enshrined Ray Davies as the most insightful, astringent and empathetic chronicler of a country and a youth culture in the process of rapid change.

If "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" mercilessly skewered "the Carnabetian army", then "Sunny Afternoon" – No 1 in July 1966 – caught an atmosphere of languorous, almost delicious decay as the mid-60s boom hit the rails. Autumn's "Dead End Street" returned the Davies brothers to their working-class roots with its defiant fanfare for the underdog.

The fourth hit was "Waterloo Sunset", written from Davies's archetypal standpoint: that of an observer from on high and apart, yet aching for the basic human contact that he can observe and that, for some reason, he is barred from – like Peter Pan. It also remains the most beautiful song ever written about London. When he wrote it, Ray Davies was only 22.

Nearly four and a half decades later, he remains an enigmatic character. As he wrote in one of his most exquisite songs, "Fancy": "No one can penetrate me/They only see what's in their own fancy". On the one hand he is one of rock's elder statesmen, a pillar of today's pop music, on the other he remains isolated, testy, as ever contra mundum.

This ambiguity stretches to the Kinks' reputation. Unlike the Beatles, they did not break up in 1970 but carried on right through that decade and beyond: through a series of high-concept musicals to mainstream success in America – with records such as Low Budget – and a final flourish in the UK, with 1983's nostalgic top 20 hit "Come Dancing".

A quick scan through their catalogue reveals that the Kinks have recorded nigh on 100 great songs, with a dozen or so absolute classics – imperishable slices of popular art at its very height. They could do it all: the hard rock of "You Really Got Me", the ahead-of-the-curve eastern drones of "See My Friends", the sly gender-bending of "Lola", their last huge hit.

The Kinks have never had the heavyweight reputation of the Who or the Rolling Stones, although they frequently surpass both in range and spirit. Some of this is due to their gimmicky name – a very 1964 in-joke – and the hunting uniforms, sourced from a theatrical costumier, that formed their first band uniform. They never took themselves that seriously, nor did they have a dynamic manager, an Andrew Loog Oldham or a Kit Lambert, to wind up the press.

But mostly it's down to Ray Davies, who saw what was coming in early 1965, when the group had had two number ones and a number two in under six months. The Kinks were on the roller-coaster. They were about to become as big as the Beatles and the Stones, but Davies baulked: "I didn't want it."

The Kinks' subsequent career was marked by spectacular on-stage fights, a disastrous tour of America that saw them barred from the continent for four years, regular bouts of nervous exhaustion, and continuing tensions between Ray and his brother Dave – the group's other pole. (The two communicate only by email at present.)

Davies has referred to "the herculean" pace of 60s pop, where you released a single every two months. He rebelled against this assembly-line process by withdrawing and planning for the day when he could take control of his art and his business. He did so by the mid-70s, by which time the delicacy and precision of the 60s Kinks had disappeared.

In some ways, Ray Davies is testament to the cruelty of music being yoked to youth marketing. He is an extremely articulate musician who continues to write and perform. A recent solo album, Working Man's Café, was well-received, while his current collaboration, See My Friends, serves as a reminder of his extraordinary back catalogue.

At the age of 66, Davies remains a prickly, almost confused outsider, a state not lessened by a recent brush with mortality, when he was shot in New Orleans. It is who he is, and the source of his art. As announced last week, next June, he will curate the Meltdown festival at the Southbank in London – a reminder of his work ethic and restless curiosity, as well as his status as a national treasure.

Contributor

Jon Savage

The GuardianTramp

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