When I was a jailbait I had a dream about Ray Davies. He was walking by himself forth Bleecker Artery in Greenwich Village, area I lived at the time, and I went up and started speaking with him. It was one of those dreams that was both absurd and altogether ordinary. Nobody sprouted wings and flew aloft the city. Nobody adapted into a monster or annihilation else. Instead, Davies was artlessly affable and gracious. He arrive me to accompany him at a coffeeshop, and he talked to me about songwriting, and about autograph in general.
Walking up to Ray Davies and starting a chat is annihilation I anytime would accept done as a kid in absolute activity -- even today, afterwards accepting done hundreds, maybe even thousands, of interviews, I still acquisition it harder to acquaint myself to a artisan I admire. Living in the Village if I was growing up, I acclimated to see musicians on the artery adequately generally -- several times a week, for example, I would canyon Frank Zappa on his way to rehearse at the Garrick Theater (which was aswell on Bleecker Street) as I absolved home from top school. Apart from maybe comatose hello, I never said anything.
I can see now that the dream meant abounding altered things, decidedly about my admiration to become a biographer and my accepting no abstraction about how you were declared to go about accomplishing that. But it's cogent that it's Ray Davies in the dream -- not Mick Jagger, not John Lennon, not even Pete Townshend. That's because even aback in the Sixties if the Kinks could attempt with the Beatles or the Stones on the archive -- and were far bigger accepted than the Who -- they still seemed approachable. They never seemed like gods, admitting I'm abiding that abounding times they longed for the Olympian ability of their bedrock rivals.
These thoughts are occasioned by the absolution of This Is Area I Belong: The Songs of Ray Davies and the Kinks, an acutely ambrosial anthology on which artists like Fountains of Wayne, Steve Forbert, Jonathan Richman, Queens of the Stone Age, Fastball and Ron Sexsmith pay accolade to one of their heroes. But Davies is a hero who walks on the arena like the blow of us. He's awash millions of annal and accounting abounding hit songs, but, like abounding of the artists on This Is Area I Belong, he's still a bandage figure.
The anthology aswell brought to apperception an account I did with Davies in 1989 if the Kinks were about to absolution UK Jive. In archetypal Kinks fashion, the anthology died an actual bartering death, and the account never ran. In a way that's never happened afore or since, I got a alarm anon afterwards the account was done from Davies' publicist, who had been present if we spoke. It seems that Davies had gone aback to his accommodation and started arrant afterwards we'd finished. For the activity of me, I had no abstraction why, but I was so abashed that I never listened to the bandage again. Until now.
After thirteen years, the interview, which took abode at an Italian restaurant on the high West Side of Manhattan, seemed abundant as I had remembered. In addition one-time-only event, Davies had handed me a "statement" he had accounting that he capital me to apprehend afore we started talking. "It's absolutely personal," he told me. I angry the bandage recorder off while I apprehend it, and afresh we started in. He seemed far added accessible than about any added artisan I've anytime announced to, admitting he seemed altogether able to antic about that aspect of himself. As he talked about how abundant the Kinks were angry during the authoritative of UK Jive -- what abroad is new? -- he lamented the role he had to play as peacemaker. "Hey, I'm an artist, too," he said, with a contemplative smile. "I wish to accept some tantrums, and I wasn't accustomed to accept any."
But that was hardly the a lot of answerable accountable he raised. In the mid-Eighties, he said, "a claimed accord bankrupt up that larboard me a bit devastated." He was apropos to Chrissie Hynde, with whom he had had a child. "I was larboard captivation the baby," he said.
"I had administration that anticipation I was finished," he continued. "I had a almanac aggregation that anticipation we'd peaked. I had an ex-girlfriend that anticipation I would top myself. But they were wrong. They underestimated me. I anticipate I've assuredly appear through all that. Nobody treats me the way those humans advised me and gets abroad with it. I may assume to be a acute guy -- and I am a actual acute guy -- but I accept everybody gets endemic eventually, one way or another."
He aswell declared the Kinks aboriginal drummer, Mick Avery, abrogation the band. "That's aswell if Mick left," he said of that aeon in the mid-Eighties. "My brother fabricated me blaze him. Mick and I went out to a pub in the country area they advertise absolutely able cider, and we got drunk. Mick had been banned from driving, so we went on bicycles to this pub in the average of nowhere. He said that he'd had enough. He couldn't angle the fights."
Avery afresh helped to run the Kinks' studio, Konk. "I generally admiration about him if we're call in the capital studio, and if you're admiral you can apprehend the bandage playing," Davies said. "I admiration what he thinks about. Unfortunately, the endure gig Mick played with us was not happy, because of what I was traveling through with Chris. Mick was consistently my touchstone. We aggregate a allowance together, and we confided in anniversary added a lot." He paused for a moment. "I just achievement Mick doesn't alluvion into ordinariness."
As for the Kinks themselves, Davies declared them, in a masterpiece of understatement, as "underrated." He explained further. "Because of the way we are, we do not capitalize if acceptable things are happening," he said. "Our timing is appealing bad. We were unlucky. We were advised the third stringers of the British Invasion -- the Beatles, the Stones and the Kinks . . . I accept no explanations and no solutions for how my career has gone."
Still, Davies was about to acknowledgment to England "to see if I've got a band, because I wish to play. I don't apperceive what action they're traveling to be in." He hoped that the Kinks would anon be "out there touring." The old aggressive instincts accordingly began to emerge, as well. "With the old Stones out there, you don't wish to go out and attending like a clown, because they're traveling to be great," he said, apropos to the actuality that the Rolling Stones were about to do their aboriginal bout in eight years. "It's traveling to be admirable to see the old boys out there again. They've gotten bigger as they've gotten older. But whatever they are, they'll be arena Shea Stadium, and we'll be advantageous to advertise out Radio City-limits Music Hall."
I absolutely don't beggarly to accomplish Davies out to be a affecting case. He's gone on to do an arrangement of assorted projects aback them, and the man is one of the giants of bedrock & roll. "I've got big ambitions for a little guy," he said, and he's accomplished abounding of them. Nor was he consistently the world's gentlest person. I interviewed him one added time in 1995 if he was accomplishing his Storyteller tour, which aggressive the alternation on VH1. During that account he was remote, detached, above and bedrock star-ish. Of course, in accurate Kinks fashion, that account never ran either.
But Davies has consistently accustomed himself to be seen, faults and all, by his admirers and anybody else, and that altruism is why he and the Kinks accept aggressive such devotion. As we were talking in the restaurant that day, I kept aflame aback to my dream. Suddenly, a woman absolved over to Davies, and said, "Aren't you in the Kinks? Are you Ray Davies? I can't accept it."
Davies laughed, his eyes twinkled, and he said, "Neither can I."
And, all these years later, I can't either.
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