Ray Davies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ray Davies
Ray Davies in Brussels, 1985
Ray Davies in Brussels, 1985
Background information
Birth name Raymond Douglas Davies
Born 21 June 1944 (1944-06-21) (age 63)
Origin Fortis Green, London England
Genre(s) Rock
Occupation(s) Singer-songwriter
Years active 1963 - present
Associated acts The Kinks

Ray Davies, CBE (born Raymond Douglas Davies, 21 June 1944, Fortis Green, London) is an English rock musician, best known as lead singer-songwriter for The Kinks - one of the most 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 solo career. His February 2006 release Other People's Lives was his first top 40 hit in UK since the 1960s, when he worked with the Kinks. His second solo album, Working Man's Café was released in October 2007.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Ray Davies (pronounced DAY-viss [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]

Davies in the Netherlands, 2006
Davies in the Netherlands, 2006

On 4 January 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.

[edit] Relationship with Chrissie Hynde

Davies' relationship with Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde came at the expense of his marriage to his second wife, Yvonne, who named Hynde as the other woman in the divorce papers. Davies and Hynde were involved in a number of bust ups, the most infamous being when they were due to get married but the registrar refused to marry them. In January 1983, Hynde gave birth to Natalie Rae Hynde, her first child and Davies' third. Within a year, Chrissie had taken the baby with her on a world tour. The relationship ended in 1984.

[edit] Work

Main article: The Kinks

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, introspective songs ("Too Much on My Mind", "Waterloo Sunset"); and still later by anthems championing individualistic lifestyles and personalities ("Lola", "Celluloid Heroes"); celebrations of traditional English culture and living ("Autumn Almanac", "Victoria"); true Music Hall-style vaudeville (songs like "Mister Pleasant", "All of My Friends Were There" and "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina's" and the Preservation albums); and commercial rock which combined elements of all of these ("Come Dancing", "Do It Again").

Davies' songwriting has often been called more mature, sophisticated, and subtle than that of many of his peers among American and British rock musicians. His lyrics often contained elements of satire and social commentary about the aspirations and frustrations of British middle-class life — examples including songs like "A Well Respected Man" and "Shangri-La", which observed the class-bred insecurity and desperation underlying the materialistic values and conservative protocols of middle-class respectability; "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", which mocked the superficiality and self-indulgence of the mod subculture; and "David Watts", which poignantly expressed the wounded feelings of a plain schoolboy who envies the grace and social privileges enjoyed by a charismatic upperclass student.

His songs also showed signs of social conscience — examples being "God's Children" and songs on the albums, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society and Muswell Hillbillies, which denounced industrialization and commercialism in favour of simple pastoral living. Mid-period songs like "Dead End Street" and "Big Black Smoke" offered grim, neo-Dickensian portraits of the desperate poverty that existed amidst the thriving metropolitan British economy of the 1960s.

In particular, Davies' songs on the 1968 Kinks album The Village Green Preservation Society embraced "Merry England" nostalgia and preservation as themes long before they became fashionable in pop music. Many of his best songs focus on the small-scale, poignant dramas of everyday people (e.g., "Waterloo Sunset", "Two Sisters", "Did You See His Name?"), commonly told as wistful mini-stories.

Aside from the lengthy Kinks discography, Davies has released four solo albums, the 1985 release Return to Waterloo (which accompanied a television film he wrote and directed), the 1998 release The Storyteller, Other People's Lives in early 2006, and Working Man's Café in October 2007. The release of Working Man's Café was followed on 28 October with a performance at the BBC's Electric Proms series, at The Roundhouse, Camden. The concert was broadcast the same evening on BBC Two. An edited version of Working Man's Café, excluding two bonus tracks and liner notes, was given away with 1.5million copies of the Sunday Times on 21 October.

Since the Kinks ceased performing in 1996, Davies has toured independently (such as the mainly acoustic Storyteller tours with guitarist Pete Mathison), and more recently with a live band consisting of Toby Baron - drums, Dick Nolan - bass, Gunnar Frick - keyboards and Michael "Milton" McDonald - guitar (who replaced Mark Johns in 2007). 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 for Other People's Lives, 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 he 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.

[edit] Awards

  • On 22 June 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.

[edit] Solo discography

For Kinks discography see The Kinks discography
  1. Return to Waterloo (1985)
  2. The Storyteller (1998)
  3. Other People's Lives (2006)
  4. Working Man's Café (2007)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ A Solo Ray Davies Peers into 'Other People's Lives'. All Things Considered, April 3, 2006. Retrieved on 2007-05-24.
  2. ^ Kinks star shot in New Orleans. CNN.com, January 5, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-05-24.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

v • d • e
The Kinks
Mick Avory · Dave Davies · Ray Davies
John Dalton · Gordon Edwards · Ian Gibbons · John Gosling · Bob Henrit · Andy Pyle · Pete Quaife · Jim Rodford
Albums
EPs
Kinksize Session · Kinksize Hits · Kwyet Kinks · Dedicated Kinks · The Kinks
Compilations
Songs
Related articles