Happy birthday to Ray Davies, born 80 years ago today in London. Unlike many other British Invasion musicians, Davies—whether fronting The Kinks or soloing—never really became relegated to a novelty act.
Part of the reason why comes from the venturesome spirit indicated by the above quote, but the rest comes from a character that, to use one word, is “complicated”—and, to use more, might be “shy,” “insecure,” “troubled,” and “turbulent.”
All those terms apply equally to how he has been viewed by his romantic partners (including fellow singer-songwriter Chrissy Hynde) and younger brother and Kinks bandmate Dave Davies.
But an equally useful word for him might be “engaged”: engaged with “the now,” and with the past—including the working-class environment in which he grew up, and its discomfort with and alienation from a rapidly changing culture.
Davies fans have their own favorites among the tunes from the musician’s long career. Mine might belong to, for want of a better term, the middle phase of The Kinks’ career—“Celluloid Heroes,” “Misfits,” and “Better Things."
They spring from a sensitivity and sense of hope that, despite a personality that he described, in a 2011 Guardian interview, as “easy to love…but impossible to live with,” remains rooted in an abiding interest in other characters.
(Unlike Colin Gawel’s August 2014 post on the “Pencil Storm” blog, I would not go so far as to
say, “Ray Davies Is the Best Songwriter.” But I thank him for bringing to my
attention the 1986 song “Working at the Factory,” in which Davies yokes his
youthful angst with his later rage against “the corporations and big combines”
who “turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines.”)
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