Information about Ray Davies

Raymond Douglas Davies, CBE (born June 21, 1944 at Fortis Green, London) is an influential English rock musician, best known as lead singer-songwriter for The Kinks - one of the most influential, 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 critically successful solo career. His February 2006 release Other People's Lives was his first top 30 hit in UK since the 1960s, when he worked with the Kinks. He is preparing his next solo release Working Man's Café for October 2007.

Biography

Ray Davies (pronounced DAY-vizz ^[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. 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."

In 1983, Davies had a daughter, Natalie Rae, with then girlfriend Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders).

On January 4, 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.

Relationship with Chrissie Hynde

Ray's three and a half year love affair with Pretenders singer, Chrissie Hynde came at the expense of his marriage to his first wife, Rasa, who named Chrissie as the other woman in the divorce papers. It was one fuelled by intense passion between the pair. Not always harmonious, they were involved in a number of bust ups, the most infamous being when they were due to get married but after having such a ferocious argument between them, the registrar refused to marry them. In 1982, Chrissie fell pregnant with Ray's third child and the nine months that followed were said to have been the calmer period of their relationship as Chrissie mourned the death of her bandmate James Honeymoon Scott while awaiting the birth of her first child. In January, Natalie Rae Hynde was born and within a year, Chrissie had taken the baby with her on a world tour, which led to the breakdown of the Hynde-Davies relationship in 1984.

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, compassionate songs ("Waterloo Sunset", "Shangri-La", "Big Sky"); and still later by anthems ("Lola", "Celluloid Heroes"); neo-Romantic pastiches of English culture ("Autumn Almanac"); true Music Hall-style musical theatre (the Preservation albums); and commercial rock which combined elements of all of these ("Come Dancing", "Do it Again").

Davies' songwriting has often been acclaimed as more mature, sophisticated, and subtle than that of many of his peers among American and British rock musicians and he has been called the "greatest humanist in rock". While his lyrics were often deceptively simple, focused on time-honoured rock themes such as love, sexual attraction and partying, they often contained elements of satire, examples including "A Well-Respected Man", which ridiculed conservative suburban values, and "Dandy", which mocked the superficiality of the mod subculture. In addition, his later work showed signs of social conscience, examples being "God's Children" and songs on the album Muswell Hillbillies, which denounced commercialism in favour of living simply, and "Dead End Street", which portrayed pockets of poverty in the thriving British economy of the mid 1960s.

Davies' songs on the 1968 Kinks album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society embraced nostalgia and preservation as themes long before they became fashionable. Many of his best songs focus on the small-scale, poignant dramas of everyday people ("Waterloo Sunset", "Two Sisters", "Till Death Us Do Part"), commonly told as wistful mini-stories.

His work has an idiosyncratic quality that has appealed greatly to the Kinks' large cult following over the years. Throughout his career, he has also been considered the most singularly "English" of all major songwriters of his generation. He has consistently used an English (sometimes Cockney) accent, as opposed to the faux-American accent of some of his contemporaries.

Aside from the lengthy Kinks discography, Davies has released three solo albums, the 1985 release Return to Waterloo (which accompanied a television film he wrote and directed), the 1998 release The Storyteller, and Other People's Lives in early 2006. Since the Kinks ceased performing in 1996, Davies has toured independently (such as the Storyteller tours), and more recently with a backing band. 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, 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 his tour companion, Gene Pitney, 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.

The V2 record label's website states Davies will release his new album, entitled Working Man's Café, in Europe on 29 October 2007. The release is preceded on 28 October with a performance at the BBC's Electric Proms series, at The Roundhouse, Camden.

An edited version of Working Man's Café, excluding two bonus tracks and liner notes, is to be given away with the Sunday Times on 21 October.

Awards

• On March 17, 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for "Services to Music."
• On June 22, 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 October 3, 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award

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)

Notes

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

External links

• Dave Emlen's Unofficial Kinks Web Site
• Reviews and articles regarding Other People's Lives
• Fresh Air interview at National Public Radio website
• Ray Davies at BBC 6 Music
• Ray Davies Live at the Royal Albert Hall, photography by dz studios

The Kinks
Ray Davies – Dave Davies – Mick Avory
Pete Quaife – John Gosling – John Dalton – Ian Gibbons – Jim Rodford – Bob Henrit – Andy Pyle – Gordon Edwards
Discography
Albums: The Kinks (1964) - Kinda Kinks (1965) - The Kink Kontroversy (1965) - Face to Face (1966) - Something Else by the Kinks (1967) - The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969) - Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970) - Muswell Hillbillies (1971) - Everybody's in Show-Biz (1972) - (1973) - (1974) - Soap Opera (1975) - Schoolboys in Disgrace (1976) - Sleepwalker (1977) - Misfits (1978) - Low Budget (1979) - Give the People What They Want (1981) - State of Confusion (1983) - Word of Mouth (1984) - Think Visual (1986) - UK Jive (1989) - Phobia (1993)
E.P.s: Kinksize Session (1964) - Kinksize Hits (1965) - Kwyet Kinks (1965) - Dedicated Kinks (1966) - The Kinks (1968 ep) (1968)
Songs: "You Really Got Me" – "Waterloo Sunset" – "Sunny Afternoon" – "Lola" – "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" – "All Day and All of the Night" – "Celluloid Heroes"
Related: British Invasion - Argent