The story of The Kinks

A front room in Fortis Green

The Kinks began in a crowded working class house in Fortis Green, next to Muswell Hill in north London. Frederick and Annie Davies had eight children, six daughters and then two boys. Ray arrived on the twenty first of June 1944, and Dave followed on the third of February 1947. The front room was the heart of the home. On weekends it filled with family parties, with the parents singing old music hall songs round the piano, while the older sisters brought home jazz and early rock and roll. Dave later said the trouble between the brothers started right there, because Ray had been the only boy until Dave arrived and stole the attention. Dave joked that Ray had only been happy for the three and a half years before he was born.[1] [2] [3] [4]

One loss shaped Ray more than any other. His eldest sister Rene had moved to Canada, and she had a weak heart from a childhood illness. In June 1957 she was home on a visit, and on Ray's thirteenth birthday she gave him a cheap Spanish guitar he had been begging for. They played a few songs together, then she went out dancing at the Lyceum ballroom in the Strand. That night she collapsed with a heart attack and died, aged thirty one. Ray later said that a guitar from a sister who died the same day would almost be poetic if it were not so tragic. He believed it fuelled the furious rush of songs that followed, and her memory returns in See My Friends and, decades later, Come Dancing.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At William Grimshaw secondary modern school, Ray and Dave started a band with Ray's classmate Pete Quaife and Pete's friend John Start. They called it the Ray Davies Quartet, or the Pete Quaife Quartet if Pete had booked the gig. Nobody wanted to play bass, so they drew lots, and Pete lost. Their first show was a school dance, and it went well enough that they started playing pubs and youth clubs. The singers came and went. One of them, another Grimshaw pupil named Rod Stewart, sang with the group at least once in early 1962, before forming his own rival band, Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers. Dave, meanwhile, was expelled at fifteen after a truant officer caught him with his girlfriend on Hampstead Heath.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In late 1962 Ray went to Hornsey College of Art, and got his first taste of the professional London scene. When Alexis Korner played the college, Ray asked him for advice and was sent to Giorgio Gomelsky, who put him in the Dave Hunt Band, a jazz and rhythm and blues outfit that briefly had Charlie Watts on drums. Back home, the school band cycled through names like the Ramrods, the Bo Weevils and the Ravens. Two well spoken young men, Robert Wace and Grenville Collins, became their managers, and in late 1963 the former teen idol Larry Page came in as a third. The American producer Shel Talmy took an interest and got them a deal with Pye Records in early 1964. There was one last gap. Their drummer had quit.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The new drummer was Mick Avory, found through an advert he had placed in Melody Maker. He had a jazz background and had even rehearsed twice with a young group in a Soho pub in 1962 who went on to become the Rolling Stones. Around the same time, the band took the name that stuck. The word kinky was fashionable and a little naughty, and the image that came with it involved red hunting jackets and frilly shirts. Who actually came up with the name is still argued about, but the Davies brothers never much liked it. Ray later said he had never really liked the name. With a record deal, a drummer and a slightly scandalous name, the Kinks were ready to make records.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The riff that changed rock

The Kinks' first single, released in February 1964, was a cover of Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, which Pye had more or less ordered. It sank. So did the second, Ray's own You Still Want Me. The contract was for three singles, and the label was ready to drop them. Ray had a song he had worked out on the piano in the front room at Fortis Green, a two note riff inspired partly by jazz records and partly by a girl he had seen dancing at a Dave Hunt Band gig and never saw again. He had imagined it as a laid back jazz tune. Dave heard it and said the riff would be far more powerful on an electric guitar.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That guitar sound came from an act of teenage frustration. Dave had a cheap little green amplifier made by a company called Elpico, and he hated how thin it sounded. He took a razor blade and slashed the speaker cone, then plugged it into a bigger Vox AC30. The result was a jagged, fuzzy crunch that nobody had heard on a hit record. Dave later admitted he had been depressed and angry at the time, after his family had separated him from his pregnant girlfriend, and that he had been fooling around with the blade in a dark mood. Musicologists would later call You Really Got Me the first hit built around power chords.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The first recording of You Really Got Me was slow and drenched in echo, and Ray hated it. Pye refused to pay for another session, since the first two singles had flopped. Ray dug in and said he would not promote the record unless it was redone. In the end managers Wace and Collins paid for the session themselves at an independent studio called IBC, and the band nailed it in July 1964. The session drummer Bobby Graham played drums, with Mick Avory on tambourine. Released on the fourth of August, it hit number one in Britain in September and reached number seven in America. Ray later said he felt he was literally born when that song became a hit.[1] [2] [3]

The hits came quickly after that. The debut album Kinks came out in October 1964 and reached number four. Three weeks later came All Day and All of the Night, another crunching riff, which went to number two in Britain and number seven in the United States. Then Tired of Waiting for You, which Ray said he wrote the music for on a train on the way to the studio and finished the words over coffee during a break. It went to number one in Britain in early 1965 and number six in America, a peak the Kinks would not match there for eighteen years. In the United States, the Reprise label executive Mo Ostin had signed them as his very first rock act.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In early 1965 the Kinks flew out for their first tour of Australia and New Zealand. On a stopover in Bombay, Ray woke early and heard fishermen chanting on the beach as they took their nets out. That drone stayed with him and became See My Friends, released in July 1965, with a guitar tuned and compressed to sound like an Indian instrument. It is often called one of the first Western pop records to borrow the sound of Indian music. Pete Townshend of the Who said Ray had invented something new again. The record stalled at number ten in Britain and did nothing in America, but musicians were paying attention.[1] [2] [3]

Fists, feuds and an American ban

Success did not calm the band down. The Kinks had a reputation for fighting, and the worst of it was between Dave and Mick Avory. On the nineteenth of May 1965, at the Capitol Theatre in Cardiff, the bad blood from a drunken hotel scrap the night before boiled over. After the opening song, Dave insulted Mick and kicked over his drum kit. Mick hit him over the head with a hi hat stand and knocked him out cold. Believing he might have killed his bandmate, Mick fled and hid for days to avoid arrest. Dave needed sixteen stitches in his head. To keep the police happy, Mick claimed it was part of a new act in which the band threw instruments at each other.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A month later the Kinks began their first proper American tour, sixteen concerts in June and July 1965. It went wrong almost immediately. At their first show in New York, the cinema marquee advertised the Kings. In Philadelphia their manager Larry Page was briefly jailed over an unpaid local tax. Some shows were barely promoted and half empty, and promoters tried to avoid paying in full. After a pay dispute, the band played only twenty minutes of a forty minute set in Reno, then refused to play the Cow Palace near San Francisco at all when the promoter offered a cheque instead of cash. On the plus side, Dave lost his guitar in transit and bought a rare Gibson Flying V as a replacement.[1] [2]

The low point came in Hollywood in early July. Before taping Dick Clark's television show Where the Action Is, the band clashed with a man over union paperwork. Ray remembered him sneering that every mop topped limey thought he could come over and have a career because the Beatles had. Ray punched him, and later learned he was a union official. The next day Ray refused to play the Hollywood Bowl until Page arranged for his wife Rasa, at home with their newborn daughter, to be flown out. Page, worn down, flew back to London the following morning without telling Ray. The band decided to fire him, which led to a court battle that dragged on until October 1968.[1] [2] [3]

After the tour, complaints from promoters and union officials reached the American Federation of Musicians, and the Kinks quietly stopped getting work permits. No official reason was ever given. The ban lasted four years, and it came at the height of the British Invasion, when America was the biggest prize in pop. Tours booked for 1965 and 1966 were cancelled, and the band did not even try for the Monterey Pop Festival. Ray later called the causes bad luck, bad management and bad behaviour, and said that deep down he was really hurt. But the ban also turned him inward. Cut off from America, he stopped trying to sound American and started writing about England.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The golden age of English songs

The turn came in the summer of 1965. After the bruising American tour, the managers sent Ray to rest at a smart hotel in Torquay, where wealthy guests tried to draw him into a round of golf. He took an instant dislike to them and wrote A Well Respected Man, a satire of the English upper classes sung in his own London accent. Pye thought it was not raunchy enough for a single, so it came out on an EP called Kwyet Kinks, which went to number one on the EP chart. Then came Dedicated Follower of Fashion, mocking the peacocks of Carnaby Street, which Ray said grew out of a row with a fashion designer. It reached number four and won him an Ivor Novello award.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The pressure was enormous. Touring, writing and constant legal fights took their toll, and in March 1966 Ray suffered a nervous and physical breakdown. While he recovered, he bought a white upright piano, and with his baby daughter crawling on the floor, he wrote the opening of Sunny Afternoon, a lazy song sung by a fallen aristocrat moaning about the taxman. It was released in June 1966 and went to number one in July, becoming the biggest British hit of that summer. Ray was amazed to walk into a pub full of old soldiers all singing along. One of them told him it was the sort of music they could relate to, and Ray thought, this is it, it's the end.[1] [2] [3]

That same June, Pete Quaife was badly injured in a car crash and decided to quit. John Dalton, who had played with the north London band the Mark Four, auditioned on the ninth of June 1966 and was on Top of the Pops with the Kinks that very evening. Pete later said he enjoyed the break because the band were fighting all the time. By November he had changed his mind and came back, and Dalton returned to his day job. Around then the band released Face to Face, their first album of all original songs, and the single Dead End Street, a stark picture of poverty that reached number five. The BBC found its promo film, with the band dressed as undertakers, in bad taste.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In May 1967 came Waterloo Sunset, the song many people consider Ray's masterpiece. It was the first Kinks record he produced himself, after Shel Talmy's contract ran out. The lyric follows a lonely observer watching two lovers called Terry and Julie cross the river near Waterloo station. Ray had first called it Liverpool Sunset, but dropped the idea when the Beatles released Penny Lane. He tied the view to a near death experience at thirteen, when he nearly suffocated during surgery at St Thomas' Hospital and nurses wheeled him out on a balcony above the Thames. It reached number two. The critic Robert Christgau later called it the most beautiful song in the English language.[1] [2] [3]

That summer Dave had a hit of his own. Death of a Clown, which he wrote with Ray about feeling like a performing seal on the endless touring circuit, went to number three in July 1967 as a Dave Davies solo single, though the whole band played on it. Pye hoped for a solo album, but later singles flopped and the record was shelved. The album Something Else by the Kinks sold poorly, but the band rushed out Autumn Almanac, a song Ray said was inspired by a hunchbacked gardener in Muswell Hill, and it reached number three. At this point twelve of their last thirteen singles had made the British top ten. It was the end of a remarkable run.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

From Village Green to Lola

In 1968 the hits dried up. The single Wonderboy stalled at number thirty six, and on a package tour of cinemas the Kinks were no longer big enough to headline alone. They shared the bill with Peter Frampton's band the Herd, and young fans chanted for the Herd. Days, released that June, brought a brief recovery at number twelve. Ray was busy with something more personal, a set of affectionate portraits of English village life. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society came out on the twenty second of November 1968. Critics loved it, but it was the first Kinks album to miss the charts in both Britain and America. Ray estimated it sold only about a hundred thousand copies at first.[1] [2]

Village Green found its audience slowly. America's new underground rock press embraced it, turning the Kinks into a cult band there. Decades later its song Picture Book was used in a Hewlett Packard advert, and Green Day borrowed the riff for their song Warning. The album is now the Kinks' best selling original record in Britain, certified gold in 2018, fifty years after it flopped. It was also the last album by the original four. Pete Quaife, fed up with being treated like a session man, told the others early in 1969 that he was leaving. They did not believe him until a music paper ran a story about his new band, Maple Oak. John Dalton came back on bass.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In April 1969 Ray flew to Los Angeles, partly to produce an album for the Turtles, and while he was there he negotiated an end to the American ban. The union required apologies and silence about the dispute. Back home the band recorded Arthur, subtitled Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, written as the soundtrack to a television play that was never made. Its hero was based on Arthur Anning, the husband of Ray and Dave's sister Rose, who had emigrated to Australia in 1964, a departure that devastated Ray. The album flopped in Britain, but the single Victoria reached the American charts, and in October 1969 the Kinks returned to play the Fillmore East.[1] [2] [3]

In 1970 the band added a keyboard player, John Gosling, whose audition was the recording session for a new song called Lola. It told of a young man in a Soho club falling for someone who walked like a woman but talked like a man. There was one snag. The lyric mentioned Coca Cola, and the BBC would not play songs that named brands. With the band on tour in America, Ray flew back to London on the third of June to sing cherry cola instead, then flew straight back. Lola reached number two in Britain and number nine in America. Ray said he knew it was a hit when his one year old daughter crawled around singing the chorus.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Lola rescued the Kinks. The album around it, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, was a sharp satire of the music business, and it reached the American top forty. The follow up single Apeman, a calypso about escaping the city, went to number five in Britain, though Ray had to fly back again to re record a line where the word fogging sounded rude. It was their last British top ten hit. In the video, the new keyboard player, nicknamed the Baptist, wore an ape suit. The success of Lola let the band sign with RCA for a million dollar advance and build their own studio, Konk, in Hornsey, a mile from where they grew up.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The theatre years and a breakdown

Before leaving their old labels, the Kinks recorded Percy, a soundtrack for a comedy film about a penis transplant. Their American label Reprise refused to release it, which helped end the relationship. Reprise later assembled The Great Lost Kinks Album from unreleased tapes without telling Ray, who only found out after it came out and sued. The first RCA album, Muswell Hillbillies, arrived in November 1971, a warm record full of music hall, country and the working class world of the brothers' childhood. It reached only number one hundred in America, but many fans still call it the last great Kinks album. Its cover photo was actually taken in a pub in Archway, two miles away.[1] [2] [3]

In 1972 came Everybody's in Show Biz, half studio and half live from Carnegie Hall. It held Celluloid Heroes, a gentle song about fading Hollywood stars, and Supersonic Rocket Ship, the band's last British top twenty hit for more than ten years. Then Ray's private life fell apart. In June 1973 his wife Rasa left with their two daughters. That July, on stage at White City Stadium in London, he told the crowd he was sick of the whole thing and was quitting, and the band's publicists cut his microphone before he could announce a split. Soon afterwards he collapsed after a drug overdose and was taken to hospital. For a while, the band discussed Dave taking over as frontman.[1] [2]

Ray recovered, partly nursed back to health in Dave's house, according to Dave. John Dalton later said Ray was never quite the same person again. Ray threw himself into theatre. The Kinks grew into a touring troupe with horns, backing singers and costumed actors, performing rock operas. Preservation Act One came out in 1973 and Act Two in 1974, the first album made at Konk, with Dave playing the villain Mr Black on stage. Critics were unkind to the records, though some found the live shows funny and tight. Ray also remarried in 1974, to Yvonne Gunner, and changed his legal name for a time so the wedding could stay private.[1] [2] [3]

The theatrical run continued with a musical for Granada Television called Starmaker, which became the 1975 album The Kinks Present a Soap Opera, about a rock star who swaps lives with an ordinary man with a nine to five job. Later in 1975 they recorded Schoolboys in Disgrace, the back story of Preservation's anti hero Mr Flash, which reached number forty five in America. By then their popularity had faded badly. From this point almost every Kinks record would be produced by Ray at Konk, a studio that would later host the Stone Roses and Big Audio Dynamite, and give its name to a number one album by the Kooks in 2008.[1] [2]

The American comeback

In 1976 the Kinks moved to Arista Records, run by Clive Davis, who wanted a leaner rock band. The horns and singers went, and the lineup shrank back to five. John Dalton quit during the sessions in November 1976, citing low pay, too little family time and the strain of the road, and Andy Pyle, formerly of Blodwyn Pig, replaced him. Sleepwalker came out in February 1977 and reached number twenty one in America, their first real hit album there in years. That Christmas they released Father Christmas, a snarling single about poor kids mugging a department store Santa and demanding money instead of toys. It has since become a seasonal favourite, with Ray performing it dressed as Father Christmas.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The band nearly fell apart making the next album, Misfits. Andy Pyle clashed with Ray, and he and John Gosling began planning a band of their own. When Ray found out, Gosling said, he gave him a hard time. Dave said the Kinks had practically broken up. Gosling played his last show with them on Christmas Eve 1977, and both men were gone after Misfits came out in 1978. Still, its single A Rock and Roll Fantasy reached number thirty in America. The new bassist was Jim Rodford, formerly of Argent and cousin of the Zombies' Rod Argent. After a short spell with another keyboard player, Ian Gibbons, once a childhood accordion prodigy, joined in 1979.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Something else was helping. A new generation had discovered the old songs. In 1978 Van Halen released You Really Got Me as their first single and took it to number thirty six. The Jam covered David Watts. The Pretenders' very first single, in January 1979, was Stop Your Sobbing, and they later had a top ten hit with I Go to Sleep. The Kinks leaned into hard rock with Low Budget in 1979, recorded partly in New York and full of songs about inflation, strikes and petrol queues. It reached number eleven in America and became their best selling studio album. By 1980 they were headlining Madison Square Garden, and Ray called it a ten year programme of rebuilding.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The live album One for the Road followed in 1980, and in 1981 Give the People What They Want reached number fifteen in America and went gold. The Kinks toured relentlessly, and in 1982 they played the US Festival in California to a crowd of about two hundred and five thousand. Then came the most surprising hit of all. Come Dancing was a warm, nostalgic song about Ray's sisters and the dance halls of the fifties, sung in a thick London voice. Clive Davis doubted Americans would get it, and Ray refused a request to sing it in an American accent. Pushed by a Julien Temple video on MTV, it reached number six in America in 1983.[1] [2]

Come Dancing had flopped in Britain on its first release, but the American success brought it back, and it reached number twelve in 1983, the Kinks' first British top twenty hit in more than a decade. Behind the scenes, things were fraying again. Ray's relationship with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders ended badly. The old war between Dave and Mick Avory flared up until Dave refused to work with him. In 1984 Ray took his best friend out for a very drunken evening in Guildford and let him go. Bob Henrit, another Argent veteran, took over on drums, and Mick stayed in the family, managing Konk Studios for Ray for decades afterwards.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Fading out

Word of Mouth, the last Arista album, came out in November 1984, with Mick Avory on only three tracks. Its single Do It Again reached number forty one in 1985, the band's final appearance on the Billboard Hot 100. The Kinks moved to MCA and London Records, but Think Visual in 1986 only reached number eighty one, and UK Jive in 1989 barely charted at all. MCA dropped them, and for the first time in more than twenty five years the Kinks had no record deal. Ian Gibbons left and was replaced by Mark Haley. In 1990, their first year of eligibility, the original four were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Pete Townshend.[1] [2] [3]

The Hall of Fame did not revive their career. The band signed to Columbia and released Phobia in April 1993, but it spent a single week on the American chart at number one hundred and sixty six, and Columbia dropped them in 1994. They retreated to their own Konk label and made To the Bone, a live and acoustic record partly cut in front of a small invited audience at their studio. Meanwhile former members Mick Avory, John Dalton and John Gosling had formed their own tribute act, the Kast Off Kinks, with singer Dave Clarke. Avory also spent a year working part time as a postal sorter at a Royal Mail centre in west London.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the mid nineties Britpop made the Kinks fashionable again. Blur and Oasis named them as a major influence, and Ray was called the godfather of Britpop, a title he waved away, saying he was more of a concerned uncle. But the brothers were drifting apart. Ray published a memoir called X-Ray, and Dave answered with his own, Kink, which described their relationship in unsparing terms and spoke openly about his bisexuality and his relationships with the singer Long John Baldry and the television producer Michael Aldred. The Kinks played their last public show in the summer of 1996, and then they simply stopped.[1] [2] [3]

The last time the band gathered together was at Dave's fiftieth birthday party in early 1997. As the Kinks historian Doug Hinman noted, it was held at the Clissold Arms, the pub across the road from their childhood home on Fortis Green, where the brothers had played their very first music together. The symbolism was hard to miss. Rumours about that night have circulated ever since, and relations between the brothers stayed cold. Talk of a reunion came and went, including an abandoned studio session with the original four in 1999, but neither brother showed much appetite. The Kinks were over.[1] [2]

Solo roads, violence and loss

Ray went solo. In 1998 he released The Storyteller, a cabaret style mix of songs and memories about the Kinks and his estranged brother, and the idea inspired the television network VH1 to launch its long running Storytellers series. He moved for a while to New Orleans. In January 2004, days after being made a Commander of the British Empire, he was walking with his girlfriend in the French Quarter when a mugger snatched her purse. Ray chased him, and the man shot him in the leg, breaking his thigh bone. One suspect was arrested, but charges were dropped because Ray did not return for the trial. He later admitted he could not explain why he gave chase.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

That same year, on the thirtieth of June 2004, Dave had a stroke as he left a lift at the BBC's Broadcasting House, where he had been promoting his album Bug. It temporarily affected his speech and his ability to play guitar, and he spent almost two months in hospital. Ray looked after him during his recovery. By 2006 he could walk, talk and play again. In November 2005 the Kinks were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and all four original members attended. It turned out to be the last time they were together. Pete Quaife had been on kidney dialysis since 1998, and he had been drawing cartoons about it.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Pete Quaife died of kidney failure on the twenty third of June 2010, aged sixty six. He had spent years in Canada working as a graphic artist, and had moved back to Denmark to live with his partner. Dave said Pete never got the credit he deserved. Four days later Ray played Glastonbury, dedicated his set to Pete and told the crowd he would not be there without him. He was close to tears singing Days. Two years later, in August 2012, Ray sang Waterloo Sunset at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, watched by more than twenty four million people in Britain. The song reentered the charts.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2014 the Kinks' story became a stage musical. Sunny Afternoon, with a script by Joe Penhall, opened at the Hampstead Theatre, moved to the West End and won four Olivier Awards in 2015, including one for Ray. On the eighteenth of December 2015, at Dave's show at the Islington Assembly Hall in London, Ray walked on unannounced and the brothers played You Really Got Me together, their first time on stage together in nearly twenty years. In the 2017 New Year Honours, Ray was knighted for services to the arts, and that year he released Americana, recorded with the American band the Jayhawks. The musical reached Chicago in 2025.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The later years brought more goodbyes. Jim Rodford died on the twentieth of January 2018 after a fall on the stairs at home, days after playing with the Zombies in Florida. Ian Gibbons died on the first of August 2019, aged sixty seven. John Gosling died on the fourth of August 2023, aged seventy five. Larry Page died in Australia in April 2024 at eighty seven, and Shel Talmy died in Los Angeles that November, also at eighty seven. Talk of a reunion kept surfacing. In 2018 Ray said the brothers and Mick Avory were working on new music. But in 2023 Avory said he did not think it was possible, citing health and the old differences between the brothers.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

The legacy

The Kinks' influence runs in several directions at once. The crunch of You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night is often cited as a blueprint for hard rock, heavy metal and punk, and Brian May of Queen credited them with planting the seed of riff based music. Pete Townshend wrote the Who's first single, I Can't Explain, in the Kinks' style, hoping Shel Talmy would produce his band, and he did. Punk and new wave acts like the Ramones, the Clash and the Jam drew on their attitude, the Jam and the Pretenders covered their songs, and the Britpop generation of Blur and Oasis leaned on Ray's eye for everyday English life.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The numbers tell part of the story. The Kinks had seventeen top twenty singles in Britain and five top ten singles in America, and they have sold more than fifty million records. Rolling Stone placed Waterloo Sunset at number fourteen on its 2021 list of the greatest songs of all time, and You Really Got Me went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Yet the band never became a global brand like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and many writers blame the American ban. Their fans have made that underdog status part of the story, a reason the Kinks feel like a band you discover rather than one you are handed.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The brothers' relationship remains the heart of it all. Dave once called Ray vain and egocentric, then added that he would not let anyone else say so, because he loved him to death. He compared them to the Everly Brothers, whose tension you can hear in their harmonies. As of 2026, Sir Ray Davies is eighty two, Dave Davies is seventy nine, Mick Avory is the last surviving member of the classic four besides them, and the songs keep being argued over and loved. In March 2026 the musician Moby told the Guardian he now found the lyrics of Lola unevolved. More than fifty years on, the Kinks can still start a debate.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around The Kinks

Ray Davies and Dave Davies. The two constant members of the Kinks were also its main fault line. Dave believed Ray never forgave him for arriving and taking the family's attention. They fought on stage and in the studio, argued over credit for You Really Got Me and Lola, and wrote bruising memoirs. Yet Dave nursed Ray after his 1973 collapse, Ray cared for Dave after his 2004 stroke, and in 2015 they shared a stage again. Dave has called Ray impossible and in the same breath said he loves him to death.[1] [2] [3]

Dave Davies and Mick Avory. Dave and Mick briefly shared a London flat in early 1965, and Ray believed their problems began there. Weeks later, in Cardiff, Mick knocked Dave out with a hi hat stand after Dave kicked his drums over. They often stopped speaking, and Mick would throw drumsticks at him on stage. By 1984 Dave refused to work with him, and Mick left. They later made peace enough for Mick to drum on Dave's song Rock and Roll Cities.[1] [2] [3]

Ray Davies and Mick Avory. Mick was the quiet, easy going member and Ray's best friend in the band. When Dave demanded he go, Ray took him out drinking cider in Guildford and broke the news, later calling it the saddest day of his time in the Kinks. Mick walked to the station and, as Ray put it, disappeared into the mist. Ray then asked him to manage Konk Studios, a job he held for decades, and Mick kept playing on later records.[1] [2]

Ray Davies and Rasa Davies. Ray married Rasa Didzpetris in 1964, and they had two daughters. She sang backing vocals on the Kinks' albums of the sixties, including Waterloo Sunset, and often acted as a peacemaker in the studio. Ray hated leaving her during the 1965 American tour and refused to play the Hollywood Bowl until she was flown out. In June 1973 she left him and took the children, which helped trigger his breakdown that summer.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Ray Davies and Chrissie Hynde. Chrissie Hynde had always been a Kinks fan, and the Pretenders' first single was Ray's Stop Your Sobbing. She met Ray in a New York club in 1980 and they began a relationship. In 1982 they tried to marry in Guildford, but the registrar took one look at them and suggested they come back another time. They never married, but had a daughter, Natalie, in 1983. The stormy end of the relationship added to the band's tensions, and years later they sang together on Ray's charity single Postcard From London.[1] [2] [3]

The Kinks and Larry Page. Larry Page, a former teen idol known for his oversized glasses, joined as a third manager in late 1963 and helped shape the band's image. He called the Davies brothers the most difficult people he ever worked with. When he walked out during the 1965 American tour, the band fired him, and he sued. The case went through the High Court and the Court of Appeal until October 1968, with Page winning only partial compensation. He went on to manage the Troggs.[1] [2] [3]

The Kinks and Shel Talmy. The American producer Shel Talmy got the Kinks signed to Pye and produced their records until 1967, from You Really Got Me to Sunny Afternoon. He pioneered using a dozen microphones on drums. He and Ray clashed over control, and Ray took over production from Waterloo Sunset onward. Talmy also produced the Who, after Pete Townshend wrote I Can't Explain to sound like the Kinks. Talmy died in November 2024, aged eighty seven.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ray Davies and Pete Quaife. Pete was Ray's schoolfriend and co founder, the band's handsome spokesman and self described ambassador who calmed fights. But he felt shut out of the songwriting, calling Ray a control freak who made him feel like a session man. He called Village Green the only real Kinks album because everyone contributed. After Pete's death in 2010, Ray told a Glastonbury crowd he would not be there without him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Wace and Grenville Collins. The Kinks' first managers were two well off young men, Robert Wace, who had been a singer, and his stockbroker partner Grenville Collins. They paid for the session that produced You Really Got Me when Pye would not, and they led the move to oust Larry Page. Their upper class manners fed straight into A Well Respected Man, and Dave said Wace introduced Ray to Noel Coward. It was Collins who pushed for a keyboard player in 1970.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Dave Davies and Sue Sheehan. Dave's teenage girlfriend Sue Sheehan became pregnant when they were fifteen, and their families forced them apart. Dave said the loss filled him with rage, and he wrote about her in songs like Funny Face and Susannah's Still Alive. Decades later, in the late nineties, he reunited with Sue and came to know their daughter Tracey, a story he tells in his 2022 memoir Living on a Thin Line.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Kinks and Nicky Hopkins. The session pianist Nicky Hopkins first played with the Kinks on The Kink Kontroversy in 1965 and became a hidden member of the golden age band. He played harpsichord and piano on Face to Face, played the plucked piano introduction to Death of a Clown, and estimated he played about seventy per cent of the keyboards on Village Green, though the sleeve credited Ray. He left to join the Jeff Beck Group in 1968.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about The Kinks

• Pete Quaife became the Kinks' bassist because he lost a draw with the Davies brothers. Dave Davies recalled that after the three boys started jamming together, nobody wanted to switch to bass. They drew lots to decide, and Pete lost. He went on to drive the band's sound for most of the sixties.[1] [2]
• A teenage Rod Stewart sang with the band that became the Kinks at least once in early 1962. Rod Stewart went to the same school, William Grimshaw, and briefly fronted the Ray Davies Quartet. He then formed Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, who became local rivals.[1]
• Pete Quaife was born Peter Kinnes, the son of an American serviceman. His mother became pregnant during the war after an affair with an American soldier. After she married Stanley Quaife in 1947, the boy took his stepfather's surname.[1]
• Eric Clapton reportedly invited Pete Quaife to join the band that became Cream. According to the biographer Thomas Kitts, Clapton approached Quaife in early 1966. The Who's John Entwistle also named him as one of his favourite bassists because he drove the Kinks along.[1] [2]
• After leaving music, Pete Quaife published a book of cartoons about kidney dialysis. Diagnosed with kidney failure in 1998, he drew cartoons during his treatment sessions. Other patients loved them, and they were published in 2004 as The Lighter Side of Dialysis.[1] [2]
• Pete Quaife was a keen amateur astronomer and astrophotographer in Canada. Living in Belleville, Ontario, he joined the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and photographed the dark skies around the Bay of Quinte, encouraging others to take up astronomy.[1]
• Dave Davies' famous Gibson Flying V was a replacement for a guitar an airline lost in 1965. His main guitar, a custom Guild originally meant for George Harrison, went missing on a flight to Los Angeles. He bought a 1958 Flying V in a local shop and debuted it on the show Shindig.[1] [2]
• At the Kinks' first American concert, the cinema marquee advertised them as the Kings. The June 1965 show at the Academy of Music in New York got off to a bad start, with a wrong name out front and three acts each promised top billing by the promoter.[1]
• Waterloo Sunset was originally called Liverpool Sunset. Ray Davies scrapped the Liverpool setting after the Beatles released Penny Lane. He moved the song to Waterloo, a place bound up with his own memories of hospital and the Thames.[1]
• Ray Davies nearly died during surgery at thirteen, in a hospital overlooking the Thames. He told NPR he almost suffocated during an operation at St Thomas' Hospital. Nurses later wheeled him onto a balcony above the river, a view he drew on years later for Waterloo Sunset.[1] [2]
• Ray's first wife Rasa sings on Waterloo Sunset and the la la la hook of Death of a Clown. Rasa Davies sang backing vocals on the Kinks' albums through the late sixties, often adding a high falsetto to the band's harmonies.[1] [2] [3]
• The eerie introduction to Death of a Clown was played on the strings of a piano. The session pianist Nicky Hopkins used fingerpicks directly on the piano strings to create the plucked sound that opens Dave Davies' 1967 hit.[1]
• Ray Davies swears he really has tasted champagne that tastes like cola. Asked about the famous Lola line, Ray said he once drank a Californian champagne that tasted just like it, in a tourist trap in Los Angeles.[1]
• Ray had to re record a line in Apeman because fogging sounded like a swear word. Just months after flying home to fix Lola, he had to redo the line about pollution fogging up his eyes before the single came out. The original can still be heard on the album.[1] [2]
• Keyboard player John Gosling was nicknamed the Baptist and wore an ape suit in the Apeman video. Gosling got the nickname from his resemblance to paintings of John the Baptist. Dave Davies joked that he joined thinking he had hit the big time and was quickly brought down to earth.[1] [2]
• The BBC refused to play Plastic Man in 1969 because it contained the word bum. Written as a quick bid for a hit, the single stalled at number thirty one. It was also the last Kinks record with Pete Quaife, who later called it his least favourite.[1]
• Village Green went gold in Britain in 2018, fifty years after it failed to chart. Ray estimated it sold about a hundred thousand copies at first. It is now the Kinks' best selling original album in the UK.[1] [2]
• Reprise released The Great Lost Kinks Album without Ray's knowledge, and he sued. The 1973 compilation of outtakes was assembled after the Kinks had left the label. Ray learned about it only after release, and legal action got it deleted in 1975.[1]
• Pete Quaife recalled Ray setting fire to a tape of failed takes of Dedicated Follower of Fashion. Ray could not get the opening guitar sound he wanted, so he rolled the tape across the floor and burned it. The next day they started again and he settled for the result.[1]
• The real David Watts was a concert promoter who had a crush on Dave Davies. Ray said the promoter lived in Rutland and had brewery connections. Ray joked he tried to marry his brother off to him for a lifetime of free ale.[1]
• Ray produced an album for the Turtles on the same 1969 trip that ended the Kinks' American ban. He flew to Los Angeles in April 1969 to produce Turtle Soup, and while there he negotiated with the musicians' union to let the Kinks tour America again.[1]
• Muswell Hillbillies' cover photo was actually taken in a pub two miles from Muswell Hill. The picture was shot in the Archway Tavern in Archway. The back cover, with a signpost to Muswell Hill, was taken on a traffic island in Highgate.[1]
• Ray Davies once changed his legal name for five years to keep a wedding private. He became Raymond Douglas by deed poll, which let him marry his second wife Yvonne Gunner in 1974 without attracting attention.[1]
• Van Halen rushed out You Really Got Me because another band planned to cover it first. After Van Halen played the demo to a drummer from the band Angel, their producer heard Angel was recording it too. The cover became Van Halen's first single.[1]
• A fan once congratulated Dave Davies on his great cover of the Van Halen song. Dave said the fan meant You Really Got Me. Ray, on the other hand, said Van Halen's version made him laugh.[1]
• Arista's boss Clive Davis did not want Come Dancing released in America. He thought dance halls were too English a subject. The record company also asked Ray to sing it in an American accent, and he refused. It became their joint biggest American hit.[1]
• The dance hall in the Come Dancing video was later demolished for flats, just like in the song. The video was shot at the Ilford Palais in 1982. It was knocked down in 2007 for luxury flats, echoing the lyric about the local Palais being replaced.[1]
• Ray Davies' Storyteller show inspired the VH1 series Storytellers. His 1998 mix of songs and reminiscences about the Kinks and his brother showed the network the format's potential.[1]
• Dave Davies named his first solo album after its own catalogue number. The 1980 album is known as AFL1-3603 because its cover showed Dave as a barcode. He played all the instruments himself.[1] [2]
• In the mid nineties, Kinks drummer Mick Avory spent a year as a part time postal sorter. Between late 1994 and 1995 he worked at a Royal Mail sorting centre in Paddington, west London, while also playing with the Kast Off Kinks.[1]
• Shel Talmy talked his way into Decca with records he had not produced. Arriving in London in 1962, he played acetates of the Beach Boys and Lou Rawls lent by a friend. Decca's Dick Rowe told him to start that day.[1] [2]
• The Kinks were the first rock act Mo Ostin signed to Reprise. Ostin, who later ran Warner Bros Records, signed the Kinks to Frank Sinatra's label, which imported You Really Got Me for America.[1] [2]
• Kinks bassist John Dalton went to school with Cliff Richard. Dalton attended Cheshunt Secondary Modern at the same time as Harry Webb, who became Cliff Richard. Dalton later said he could not play a note when he joined his first band.[1]
• Dave Davies said he took his cue for Death of a Clown from a party vision of himself as a circus clown. He dozed off at a party, woke to a room of decadent people, and felt the band were like performing seals. He went to his mum's out of tune piano and found the tune.[1]
• NBC cut Ray Davies' Olympic performance of Waterloo Sunset from its American broadcast. More than twenty four million viewers saw it in Britain in 2012, but NBC dropped it in favour of a preview of a new sitcom.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.