Review: 'God Save The Kinks: A Biography'

Despite their position at the forefront of British pop, The Kinks have never gotten as much ink as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or The Who. There have been a few slim biographies by Jon Savage, John Mendelssohn (both published way back in the eighties), and Neville Martin & Jeffrey Hudson, one exhaustive day-by-day guide by Doug Hinman, and perhaps most significant of all, landmark autobiographies by Ray and Dave Davies. That’s about it. Recognizing the void, Mojo writer and kultist Rob Jovanovic got to work on his own biography five years ago in an effort to bring The Kink kronikles up to date. It’s likely Jovanovic did not realize that at the same time, his fellow writer Nick Hasted was working on his own Kinks biography with input from Ray, Dave, and drummer Mick Avory and that You Really Got Me: The Story of The Kinks would beat his book to the shelves by two years. That must have been frustrating, especially since both books cover a lot of the same ground (they even come in at almost the same page count) with the major added bonus of those new interviews with the brothers Davies.

Here’s why God Save The Kinks: A Biography remains a relevant read for Kinks fans: more so than Hasted, Jovanovic looks beyond the core members of the band to explore the experiences of those not named Davies. Naturally, Ray and Dave remain the key players, as they should, and like Hasted, Jovanovic also gets quotes from Avory and bassist Pete Quaife’s brother David. However, we also get primary perspectives from bassist John Dalton, keyboardist John Gosling, and back-up singers Debi Doss and Shirlie Roden, whose contemporary remembrances and period journal entries commandeer the storytelling during The Kinks’ mid-seventies theatrical phase. The rest of the book is good too—a well-written, reasonably thorough blow-by-blow of the Davies’s activities and accomplishments alone and together up to the present day—but it is the expansion of the orbit from the brothers to their extended musical family that makes God Save The Kinks an essential companion volume to You Really Got Me.

Track by Track: 'Something Else by The Kinks'

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, I’ve been taking a close look at albums of the classic, underrated, and flawed variety, and assessing them Track by Track.

Welcome to Daviesland, a kurious little nook of England where The Kinks secreted themselves some two years after being unofficially banned from touring the United States. Since that unfortunate event, in which Ray socked an insult-spewing musician’s union representative, the boys enjoyed a steady string of top ten hits in their homeland, but only managed to sneak into the U.S. top twenty twice with “A Well Respected Man” and “Sunny Afternoon”. 

20 Things You May Not Have Known about 'Exile on Main St.'

On May 12, 1972, The Rolling Stones dropped an A-bomb on the Rock & Roll scene and the dust still hasn’t settled four decades later. Exile on Main St. may be the band’s most celebrated album, but some of the details swirling around its chaotic creation, epic four-sides, and endless legacy may still be unfamiliar to you. Here are 20 things you may not have known about Exile on Main St.…

1. Before it was rechristened Exile on Main St., The Stones’ 1972 album was provisionally titled Tropical Diseases.

2. Although The Rolling Stones have sometimes been criticized for fleeing England as tax exiles in 1971, Keith insists they weren’t entirely to blame for shirking their fiscal responsibilities in his autobiography Life. He says manager Allen Klein regularly loaned the guys money on which he had not paid the 83% tax that was the going rate for those in The Stones’ bracket. Staying in England would have left the band bankrupt.

3. The “Main St.” in the album’s title refers to the Riviera Strip where The Stones spent a lot of time hanging out while living in the south of France.

4. Several future Exile tracks—“All Down the Line”, “Loving Cup” (as “Give Me a Drink”), and “Tumbling Dice” (as “Good Time Women”)—were first attempted at much earlier sessions. The earliest versions of “Line” and “Cup” date all the way back to 1969.

5. Keith’s smack addiction was partially responsible for the weird hours the band kept while cutting Exile. The guitarist would call a session for 6PM, but by the time he was finished “putting his son Marlon to bed” (i.e.: shooting up and coming down), it would be 1am. The schedule became known as “Keith Time”.

Review: ‘You Really Got Me: The Story of The Kinks’

Power chord cro-magnons who grind out scrap-metal like “You Really Got Me” and “Destroyer” or sensitive fops who float out autumnal delicacies like “Days” and “Waterloo Sunset”? The Kinks’ career is a heap of contradictions both fascinating and disheartening. How could the soft-voiced soul famous for his empathy and his loyalty to tradition be so callous to his own brother? How could that beatific brother devoted to matters spiritual be so free with his fists? Listen closely to even the most fragile Kinks songs. Undercurrents of rage, regret, envy, and deep sadness are usually detectable. Perhaps that complexity is what so fascinates we Kinks fans.

Review: Kinks Deluxe Editions

Let’s just get right to it: The Kinks’ early work has never sounded as good as it does on Sanctuary/UME’s new deluxe editions. Until now, most of the band’s ‘60s records have sounded lousy on CD. First released on Castle Records in the late ‘80s when CD technology was still wetting the bed, The Kinks’ Pye catalog wasn’t subjected to a major remastering until 1998 when Castle put out its muddy mono mixes. Then in 2004, The Kinks finally received the care they deserve. Well, at least their best album did when Sanctuary released a sumptuous triple-disc edition of Village Green Preservation Society with a mastering job that couldn’t be beat. After a seven year wait, Sanctuary is giving The Kinks’ other albums similar treatment. Like that now out-of-print deluxe Village Green, these double-disc editions of Kinks, Kinda Kinks, and The Kink Kontroversy sound great; not unnecessarily loud, but louder, warmer, more detailed, and more fully dimensional than any previous versions. Stand back as Ray Davies’s harmonica slashes through the speakers like a straight razor on “Long Tall Shorty”. Listen to Dave Davies’s fingertips pulling off his acoustic strings on “Nothin’ in This World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl”. Get knocked out by the mighty thwack of Clem Cattini’s drum kit on “The World Keeps Goin’ ‘Round” (Mick Avory sat out Kontroversy).

Andrew Sandoval and Dan Hersch put a lot of care and consideration into their remastering job. The proper albums and singles are pristine, yet the guys allow a bit of noise to crackle beneath some of the bonus outtakes rather than compress the life out of them. Compare the rich sound of “Time Will Tell” on the deluxe Kontroversy to the brittle master on the Picture Book box set. Clearly Sandoval and Hersch made the right decision to favor 3-D sound over overly compressed cleanliness. Few of the bonus outtakes on these discs were previously unreleased, but they sound so good here that you’ll believe you’re hearing them for the first time.

As for the albums themselves, Kinks may be the weakest debut album by a major British band of the ‘60s, but it is delivered with plenty of punk energy and includes the monumental “You Really Got Me” and the pretty “Stop Your Sobbing”. Kinda Kinks leaves the R&B covers by the wayside to make way for Ray’s songwriting, which blossoms on Kontroversy. These are not The Kinks' greatest albums (you’ll have to wait until June for those), but the latter two are very, very good ones. The bonus disc of Kinda is a real rarity in that it’s actually better than the album it augments. That disc includes such wonderful singles as “Set Me Free”, “I Need You”, and “See My Friends”; the marvelous, acoustic Kwyet Kinks E.P.; and a superb selection of “How did these end up as outtakes?” outtakes.

August 4, 2009: The Kinks A-Z

Today is the 45th anniversary of “You Really Got Me”, a revolutionary single that not only made the Kinks’ career (sorry… kareer) but also pioneered heavy metal, power-chord rock, heavy guitar distortion, and probably half-a-million other good things. In celebration of this milestone, I bring you…

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