Ray Davies

For other people named Raymond Davies, see Raymond Davies (disambiguation).

Ray Davies

Ray Davies, CBE (born Raymond Douglas Davies, 21 June 1944, Fortis Green, London) is an English rock musician, best known as lead singer and 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 as a singer-songwriter.

Biography

Ray Davies (pronounced day-vees) 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. 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.

He was quoted in 1967: "If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done."

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. The shooting came less than a week after Davies was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

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 (the topic of the Pretenders song "The Adultress"). 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.

Work

Main article: The Kinks

Davies' compositions over his lengthy career have been an astonishing study in contrasts, from the influential protopunk, 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", "Apeman", "Celluloid Heroes"); celebrations of traditional English culture and living ("Autumn Almanac", "Victoria"); true Music Hall-style vaudeville (songs like "Dandy", "End of the Season", "All of My Friends Were There", "Wonder Boy" 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 humorously 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. Other People's Lives was his first top 40 hit in UK since the 1960s, when he worked with the Kinks.

The release of Working Man's Café was followed on 28 October 2007 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 1.5 million 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.

Ray Davies at Bluesfest 2008 in Ottawa

Davies published his "unauthorized autobiography", X-Ray, in 1994. 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.

Musicals

In 1981 Davies collaborated with Barrie Keefe to write his first stage musical, Chorus Girls, which opened at the Theater Royal Stratford East, London starring Marc Sinden and also had a supporting cast of Michael Elphick, Anita Dobson, Kate Williams and Charlotte Cornwell. Directed by Adrian Shergold, the choreography was by Charles Augins and Jim Rodford played bass with the theaters 'house band'. Sinden only accepted the role on the condition that he did not have to sing a solo, however Davies wrote the reggae-style song "Everybody's Slagging Off England" specifically for him and gave it to him with two days to go before the First Night. Sinden did sing it and later recorded it with Davies.

Davies wrote songs for a musical version of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days; the show, 80 Days, had a book by playwright Snoo Wilson. It was directed by Des McAnuff and ran at the Mandell Weiss Theatre in San Diego from August 23 to October 9, 1988. The musical received mixed responses from the critics. Davies's multi-faceted music, McAnuff's directing, and the acting, however, were well received, with the show winning the "Best Musical" award from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.

Davies' latest musical Come Dancing, based partly on his 1983 hit single with twenty new songs, opened at the Theater Royal Stratford East, London in September - November 2008. The play was awarded The MOBIUS Best Off-West End Production in February 2009.

Awards

• On 17 March 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for "Services to Music."

• 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.

• On 3 October 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award.

• On 15 February 2009, The MOBIUS Best Off-West End Production in the UK for the musical Come Dancing.

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)

Chart singles written by Davies

The following is a list of Ray Davies compositions that were chart hits for artists other than The Kinks. (See The Kinks discography for hits by The Kinks.)

Year	Title	Artist	Chart Positions
			UK Singles Chart	Canada	U.S. Hot 100
1965	"This Strange Effect"	Dave Berry	#37
	"Something Better Beginning"	The Honeycombs	#39
1966	"A House in the Country"	The Pretty Things	#50
	"Dandy"	Herman's Hermits		#1	#5
1978	"You Really Got Me"	Van Halen		#49	#36
	"David Watts"	The Jam	#25
1979	"Stop Your Sobbing"	The Pretenders	#34		#65
1981	"I Go To Sleep"	The Pretenders	#7
1988	"All Day and All of the Night"	The Stranglers	#7
	"Victoria"	The Fall	#35
1989	"Days"	Kirsty MacColl	#12
1997	"Waterloo Sunset"	Cathy Dennis	#11

References

• Polito, Robert, "Bits of Me Scattered Everywhere: Ray Davies and the Kinks", p. 119–144 in Eric Weisbard, ed., This is Pop, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01321-2 (cloth), ISBN 0-674-01344-1 (paper).
• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Kitts, Thomas, Ray Davies, Not Like Everybody Else, 302 p., Routledge Pub., 2008. ISBN 0-415-97769-X (paper).

See also

• List of honorific titles in popular music

External links

• Ray Davies's Official Web Site
• The Official Ray Davies Forum - "The Old Grey Board"
• The Official Ray Davies Forum on YouTube
• Fresh Air interview at National Public Radio website
• Ray Davies Kicks off Fall 2008 tour in Tampa