Original subtitles

(SOUND OF LEATHER ON WILLOW) No!

(GENTLE CHATTER)

(SOUND OF LEATHER ON WILLOW)

Out!

# We are the Village Green Preservation Society. #

It's an album that you don't want to tell many people about.

I think it's so personal to everyone that hears it.

# Walter, remember when the world was young. #

He was somehow able to fuse together

all these different styles of music

and points of view.

# People take pictures of the summer. #

It's a romance of England that is in the details.

It's not in the big stuff, it's in the little stuff.

That is easily one of the top three albums you have to have.

# Johnny Thunder lives on water

# Feeds on lightning. #

It pretty much encapsulates all that I like about England.

Whether it's the real England or an imagined one,

it doesn't really matter too much because it's art.

We made an album about childhood friends

and characters we knew when we were growing up.

The band have played great and the record

is going down well with everyone who hears it.

The thing is, the record companies want us to be a singles band.

Not one to make a thematic album about lost youth

and innocence on the village green.

So, things don't work out, this could be the last record we ever make.

Time will tell, I guess.

So, we'll have to wait and see what happens, won't we?

# God save the village green. #

# Girl, you really got me going

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing now

# Yeah, you really got me now

# You got me so I can't sleep at night. #

Totally unbelievable really.

It seemed like everything we did was in the newspapers.

It was really... It was like something that caught fire

all of a sudden. We were surrounded by girls.

I was only, like, 16. 15, 16.

Women and girls.

And, um, it was really extraordinary.

We used to do a lot of theatres

and they'd all be sitting there screaming.

Er, but I never thought I'd experience it but I did.

The Kinks! (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

# All Day And All Of The Night

Going to America, I thought this was going to be, like, marvellous,

it's going to be like heaven.

And, um, and I was actually quite disappointed

because the Americans seemed a little bit

out of touch and stuck in the '50s a bit.

I was waiting to hear all the great blues players and where were they?

# Girl, I want to be with you all of the time

# All day and all of the night. #

In those days, it was, like, four singles a year

and an album and two EPs, four-track EPs. So the pressure was always on.

Well, actually, we were a very prolific band

and Ray really started to become a prolific writer.

And, um, it used to be relentless.

Going to the studio and recording a single in a day. Right, next.

You know, I'm uncomfortable being a so-called pop celebrity.

I don't want to play that game.

I just want to write songs about things I care about.

We're a working-class band celebrating being British

and I don't know if America always understands

that aspect of the Kinks.

Also, our managers are in a legal dispute with each other

and it's creating tension within the group.

I've got a distinct feeling something bad is going to happen.

# Well, lived my life and never stopped to worry about a thing

# Opened up and shouted out and never tried to sing...

We went over there. Got thrown in the deep end a bit.

Then things went wrong. Union trouble.

And we did things we weren't supposed to do.

# Won't you tell me

# Where have all the good times gone?

# Where have all the good times gone? #

It all got into a bit...

We had some... A bit of a hot-headed sort of argument.

It got a bit physical at one time.

America cut us off really in our prime in many respects.

Why were you banned?

(SIGHS)

A series of things. Fistfights,

union dispute, badly managed.

There's a side of America that is extremely conservative

and resents anybody else coming over and beating them at their own game,

which is what the British groups were doing.

There were visa problems for a lot of British groups in that period.

The American Musicians' Union was very, very obstructive.

So I'm sure that was probably a major part of it.

America was the source of all my musical inspiration,

so we felt cheated.

It never really bothered me because it was kind of...

I'd rather be at home anyway.

Since we've been banned from touring America,

everyone says we should sing our new songs with American accents

to broaden their appeal but, to me, it wouldn't suit the material.

Don't get me wrong, it was American music that first inspired me

to become a musician but I'm a working-class Londoner

and I can't pretend to be otherwise.

So, from now on, I'm singing about where I come from,

about people that I know and in my own accent.

# Cos he gets up in the morning

# And he goes to work at nine

# And he comes back home at five-thirty...

I think when Ray Davies just decided to, like, stop pursuing

the kind of R&B, the American thing and drop the accent a bit,

they did turn more introspective, more English.

Everybody in the mid-'60s had to sound American. If you didn't

sound American, you weren't dealing in the correct currency.

'Sorry, we don't take Scottish pounds,' or whatever it was.

You weren't... You just couldn't get arrested.

And so everybody had smatterings of R&B

and the blues and rock and roll and that sort of stuff.

But then the Kinks hit this huge seam of Englishness

and wa-hah! It gelled. It just took off.

Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople said, when they asked him,

'Why have you written All The Way To Memphis?'

He said, 'Well, I can hardly write 'All The Way To Walthamstow.'

But, in fact, Ray Davies did write, 'All The Way To Walthamstow.'

And, indeed, Willesden Green and beyond.

# And he's oh, so healthy in his body and his mind

# He's a well-respected man about town

# Doing the best things so conservatively

# And his mother goes to meetings

# While his father pulls the maid

# And she stirs the tea with councillors

# While discussing foreign trade

# And she passes looks...#

Because we were banned from touring America,

I decided to become British and look at where I'm from.

Write songs about the place I grew up.

And nobody was doing that.

You have the first Kinks EP which is, um,

the first of Ray's social-comment songs,

which is A Well Respected Man.

And suddenly, he finds a new, um, avenue,

a very fertile path to go down.

Kind of having a dig at the middle classes, really.

Um...

I thought there was an element of people thought that was, um,

was just very cynical, really, of Ray, you know.

But they were all valid, very valid, er,

points to be made, really, you know.

The old establishment were still there running things.

It might have been swinging and, er...

But the same systems were still in place.

We made a huge impression with our blues invasion over in the States.

But really underneath all of that,

there is, um, Harry Champion,

Noel Coward, Max Miller

and there's this sort of music, these sort of songs.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

If I don't work fast tonight, please forgive me, I'm very tired.

I've been shoplifting.

And some of those shops are very heavy, I'll tell you. (LAUGHTER)

People like Max Miller. All these great wonderful characters.

George Formby.

This interesting, quirky, eccentric Englishness about them.

Wonderful to discover on our own land.

Although I just wanted to grow up being Eddie Cochran,

there was also this background

or a backstory of music that was our own, that was English.

In England, I feel like was really focusing in on a lot of American

sound and the American blues and rhythm and blues

and stuff like that.

You find Ray just kind of going for these, like, almost old-fashioned,

you know, references and songs that parents were listening to.

When you read about their Saturday night parties and all that stuff

around their house and everyone singing and everyone doing a song

on their turn, that's all fed into that music, really.

# It's a great big shame and if she belonged to me

# I'd let her know who's who

# Nagging at a fella who is six-foot three. #

# And her not four-feet two

# They hadn't been married not a month nor more

# When underneath her thumb goes Jim

# Oh, isn't it a pity that the likes of her

# Should put upon the likes of him. #

1966 was the year

when mod began to become rock, began to become psychedelia.

The influence of drugs was beginning to percolate

into mainstream white music.

You're starting to get more complicated, more urgent,

more compressed, a lot of ideas,

still being compressed into a two, three-minute single.

An incredibly fertile time.

In a way, Ray Davies and the Kinks found themselves in the middle of it

because he was able to tap into the various moods

with three extraordinary singles that year.

And they really are among his best work.

Which are Dead End Street, Sunny Afternoon

and Dedicated Follower Of Fashion.

# They seek him here

# They seek him there

# His clothes are loud

# But never square

# It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best

# Because he's a dedicated follower of fashion...

I've known from very early on, the best way to attack somebody

is with humour, or make a statement.

You can't just be angry at things.

Dedicated Follower Of Fashion came out of a falling out with

a clothes designer who accused me of wearing flares.

Anyway, I wasn't, I was wearing tapered trousers.

He said, 'You're going to end up buying flares.'

I said, 'Get out of my house,' at a party.

'It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.'

And I went... Instead of having a fight,

I went straight back to my typewriter

and typed out Dedicated Follower Of Fashion.

Word... Didn't have to change a word.

Humour, the silliest things

that he might think of

that probably to anybody else

was totally unfunny

but he came, 'Oh, yeah! Ha-ha-ha.' Big laugh.

It is that connection that really helped to keep the Kinks moving.

When you're in a band with a family member,

that can be the band's greatest strength

but it's also the band's greatest weakness.

Um, but the thing that brothers have when they're singing together

is there's nothing like two family members singing together.

# And when he pulls his frilly nylon panties right up tight

# He feels a dedicated follower of fashion

# Oh, yes, he is # Oh, yes, he is

# Oh, yes, he is # Oh, yes, he is. #

Every schoolboy sang that. We'd be bellowing it over the playground.

# Oh, yes, he is. # It became a huge catchphrase.

It plugged straight into the English music hall psyche.

You've got a very dangerous sort of precipice of novelty,

you know, it's very easy to fall into novelty.

But to walk that line is a really marvellous thing.

Everyone's talking about Swinging London

but, as far as I'm concerned, it's a diversion, a form of escape.

I can't help feeling that something, a time,

is coming to an end.

There are more important things going on in the world.

So I've decided to stay home, sing for my fans.

Get the message across through the music.

(CHEERING)

Sport was my only way, before songwriting,

of associating with the world.

When we got Germany in the final, it brought in the old rivalry again.

It was amazing because we didn't really think

we had the team to win, really.

Racing to beat the whistle, Geoff Hurst saw an opening in the defence

and achieved a hat-trick. (CHEERING)

I wanted everything to end then

because it doesn't get any better than that

England winning the World Cup. I learnt a lot from football.

And Ray was good at football also.

It helps with music as well because, you know,

you can't just play all the way through,

you know. When you're in a team, it's the give and take and emphasis.

Then you've got to cover things in a different way.

Music is often about when and not to do things.

We're a team. Everything, all that rivalry is cast aside

because that was our common denominator.

And it was just magical, really.

We were touring, recording

and living together,

fighting together,

love and hate. All the emotions were there

and it just came through. Playing was the good part.

# The tax man's taken all my dough

# And left me in my stately home

# Lazing on a sunny afternoon...

To actually get a number one and the British football team

winning the World Cup, that was wonderful.

Sunny Afternoon was... I remember Ray phoning me up

and say, 'Come and have a listen.'

And he started this dissenting line with a piano.

And it's incredible. You hear that and you get those vibes,

those moments, a positive feeling.

You know you're doing something right.

It makes me think of Philip Larkin, it makes me think

of John Betjeman, some of those very well-established English poets.

But I also think it's a very underrated craft, you know.

It's easier almost to write abstraction

than it is to write rhyming couplets that tell a story.

That more often than not end up being with, you know,

er... you know, it's me as well, you know what I mean.

It's not like I'm slagging you off.

# Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty...

I loved his cynicism and I loved his kind of wry sense of humour

but, at the same time, there was this earnestness.

And there was this dichotomy that always seemed to be going on

in his voice.

# Help me, help me, help me sail away. #

He influenced a lot of people in pop music at that time,

especially English bands.

Certainly, the Rolling Stones did.

The Rolling Stones did at least two or three songs

that were overtly Kinks-like.

Mother's Little Helper, that's like ersatz Kinks.

The Kinks' influence went everywhere.

I have a feeling that underneath all the fashion and glamour,

society seems to be struggling.

But I wouldn't exactly say it's falling apart

but there's poverty, unemployment, homelessness,

just like my dad used to tell me about the Great Depression.

But the world keeps on rocking regardless.

So I'm going to keep writing songs about it.

# There's a crack up in the ceiling

# And the kitchen sink is leaking

# Out of work and got no money

# A Sunday joint of bread and honey...

From celebrating the boom with Dedicated Follower Of Fashion,

in a kind of ironic way, to catching the down turn

with Sunny Afternoon. With Dead End Street,

you actually have this empathy for the poor

and the downtrodden. # We don't understand

# Dead end! # Why we should be in dead end street?

# Dead end! # People are living in dead end street # Dead end! #

His gift of melody and, um,

and the subject matter he was writing about,

no-one else was really covering that, you know. With something like

Dead End Street, no-one was really writing about that.

That other side of England. Everything was swinging, you know,

apparently, Swinging London.

But there was still, you know, there was still many, many poor people.

England won the World Cup, everyone was ebullient, jumping around,

waving their flags and quite rightly so, it was a great time.

But underneath it, there was this hard Labour government

and decisions were being made.

# There's a crack up in the ceiling, The kitchen sink...#

It's kind of metaphorical in many respects.

# Dirty old river, must you keep rolling,

# Rolling into the night?

# People so busy, make me feel dizzy

# Taxi light shines so bright

# But I don't...#

It was called Liverpool Sunset

and it was about the demise of Mersey Beat.

But Waterloo has always been an important place.

I still get a buzz when I go down there.

It's totally and utterly human.

It's a small observation of a big scene.

I'd say Waterloo Sunset's my favourite pop song of all time.

Bar none.

It's a hugely romantic song, isn't it, you know,

Waterloo Sunset? It's got everything.

It gives me this feeling of, um,

comfort in an alienating world.

I do believe Ray Davies is a musical genius.

I think, to be of such a young age and to write

consistently brilliant singles, as he did,

er, for a good old stretch as well, for a long time as well,

from, like, '64 up until, for me anyway, up until, like, '71,

kind of, um... I don't know if it gets too much better than that

in terms of songwriting anyway.

Many a time I've been writing songs

and got the Kinks on for a bit of inspiration

and just put the pen down and gone, 'Fuck it!'

There's no point. (LAUGHS) It's already been done.

Yeah, I'm still writing popular songs

but everything else is turning upside down.

If we lose this court case, we could become bankrupt.

My family is breaking apart too.

My older sister Rosie is emigrating to Australia.

And other members of the family are moving out of London.

I need an emotional refuge.

A place to escape.

Somewhere I can keep my memories intact.

# From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar

# When the dawn begins to crack

# It's all part of my autumn almanac

# Breeze blows leaves off a musty-coloured yellow

# So I sweep them in my sack

# Yes, yes, yes, it's my autumn almanac

# Friday evenings...

I have spent my entire career chasing

that song, trying to write

a song as good

as Autumn Almanac.

Something that had these little miniature movements,

like a little tiny symphony,

little parts of a clock that interconnected and...

Oh! I've chased it since then.

How does one write a song as perfect as that?

One of the high points, I think, in terms of its complexity, yeah,

and yet, its simplicity.

And you think about writing a song about Sunday roast and football

and all that could sound so cliched and, um,

and, er, sentimental. But it just isn't

because it always has that kind of, er,

melancholic kind of undertone.

# I like my football on a Saturday

# Roast beef on Sundays, all right

# I go to Blackpool for my holidays

# Sit in the open sunlight. #

Ray doesn't just sit down with a guitar and sing it.

He's got different parts he's working on.

And he doesn't really tell you what it's all about at all.

Then the vocal goes on and then it comes alive

and you think, 'Oh, that's how it sounds.' (LAUGHS)

The Kinks did get off the radar in America.

It's unfortunate that people missed out in America

on this great music. I feel like it became more British sounding,

so, you know, it was a very particular sound palette

that maybe America wasn't used to hearing.

1968 was the year when it all comes down,

in that there's, you know, the Czech Spring,

there's increased demonstrations against Vietnam in America,

there's Grosvenor Square demo in London

that the Rolling Stones wrote Street Fighting Man about.

So suddenly into an even more polarised time.

And musically the same.

The trends of '67 continue and now there's almost a complete split

between chart music and underground music.

And underground music moves from

psychedelia into hard rock, the start of country rock.

Suddenly, it all becomes a bit dour.

So it's a very, very serious year.

In the parlance of the time, it's very heavy.

The world seems so chaotic.

I want to make an album about things that matter to me.

This church is just down the road from where I used to live.

I want to celebrate where I grew up and my parents' generation.

Write something they could sing in a church or down the pub.

I long for a more innocent time.

My school choir sang in this church.

All my sisters got married here.

Sometimes, I think hymns have been replaced by pop songs.

It was always my ambition to write a song for the school assembly.

Set aside the anger and the bitterness of the time.

Create my own dreamscape.

My own village green.

# Out in the country

# Far from all the soot and noise of the city

# There's a village green

# It's been a long time

# Since I last set eyes on the church with the steeple

# Down by the village green...

Village Green is about innocence,

a time when things could have been different.

That pivotal moment in your life when you went on to become an adult.

Village Green is a perfect example of Ray conjuring up

these new characters that are based on real people.

It's, er...

Which is a wonderful thing to be able to do. It's like painting.

Village Green is special for everybody.

Everybody's got their own version of it, I think.

# I miss the village green

# And all the simple people

# I miss the village green

# The church, the clock, the steeple

# I miss the morning dew

# Fresh air and Sunday school

# And I will return there

# And I'll see Daisy and we'll sip tea, laugh

# And talk about the village green

# La la-la-la la

# We will laugh and talk about

# The village green. #

It's not often that an album works as a collection of tracks

just on their own and then as an album as well.

They're rare those records.

Love the production on it, the songs, the melodies, Ray's voice.

I love the fact that it wasn't overblown.

It's intimate. It's beautiful. There's a sadness to it all.

It pretty much encapsulates all that I like about England.

I was brought up in London. I feel myself as a Londoner.

I find it very difficult to grasp what England really means.

So I would suggest, if I had to,

that album would be what I feel England means.

It's a great snapshot of England.

Um, whether it's the real England or an imagined one,

it doesn't really matter too much

because it's art and you can make of it whatever you want.

I think it's the same place that George Orwell talks about

when he talks about the air is different in England

when you arrive back here. The coins are heavier.

The beer is bitterer.

Um, it's a romance of England.

It's a romance of England that is in the details.

It's not in the... It's not in the big stuff,

it's in the little stuff, it's in the little collection box

shaped like a lifeboat in the pub.

Ray started to carve these lovely, er,

this lovely poetry, really,

about these people that we knew but didn't know.

You know, I love that mystery.

That reminds me of so-and-so, you know.

I think that's when it kind of hit home

what a beautiful romantic concept it was.

The village was in the city.

And the community was important,

although I didn't think so at the time.

You know, you've got the church, opposite you've got the cinema,

which used to be called the Odeon.

Opposite there's a dance hall, which is now a Sainsbury's.

So, within that roundabout, was all our cultural experience.

Ray's writing is drawn from real people that we knew or knew of.

And a lot of these characters, I think,

became characters in songs.

The countryside symbolised the freedom from the city.

So the countryside represented the adventures

we didn't speak about in London.

The secret world, the secret people.

# Picture yourself when you're getting old...

Picture Book is really important for many reasons.

That family unity thing. Me and Ray always worked best

when we did the octave vocal thing.

# Picture book, pictures of your mama

# Taken by your papa a long time ago

# Picture book, of people with each other

# To prove they loved each other a long time ago

# Na na na na na-na...

Mick Avory is playing the drums and the snare drum has no snare.

The snares are not on, so you hear this kind of thud on the snare drum,

then mixed with the 12-string guitars.

It's a sound I really haven't heard on any other record.

It gives it a different sound.

It seemed to work on that number, I don't know why.

Mick Avory's drumming on the whole album, I think,

he's, like, my favourite drummer.

He's just got the, you know, whether he knows it or not,

he's just got such a great flair for

and feeling for the drum rolls, you know.

And, er, I know it's a muso thing but it's really important

within the sound and the songs of the Kinks.

I think Mick Avory is brilliant on that album.

# Picture book, a holiday in August

# Outside a bed and breakfast in sunny Southend...

And then you have this really interesting

sort of circle fifths kind of thing going on with the chords,

which is going up a fourth and then a fourth and then it sort of

very cleverly kind of brings you back to the beginning again.

# Picture book

# Picture book

# Picture book

# Picture book, oh, na-na-na-na...

The picture book that my family had hasn't changed since

1975. Yeah.

And it's full of these faded photographs

of parties and yellow shirts, the collars are far too big.

Me dressed as a cowboy. My sister with her first acoustic guitar,

which I nicked when I was 13.

# ..a long time ago.

# A long time ago. #

A lot of the Kinks was, 'Let's get away from modern life.

'Let's do all those dumpy things.

'Let's sit in a deckchair.'

You know, 'Let's have a hanky on our head at the seafront at Brighton.'

My favourite on that album is Do You Remember Walter?

What a tune. What a shiver that gives you.

# Walter, remember when the world was young

# And all the girls knew Walter's name?

Every time I hear it, I think of an old fella with a pipe

and he's thinking about his best pal at the time, Walter.

# Do you remember Walter playing cricket

# In the thunder and the rain?

# Do you remember Walter smoking cigarettes

# Behind your garden gate?

He's somebody I pass almost every day in the street

and I'm sure he was my best friend when I was about seven or eight.

But I cannot pluck up the courage to say to him,

'Didn't you used to be...?' You know.

I'm kind of afraid of what he might say.

Well, he'll only say no. If he says yes,

it'll be like, 'Why didn't you say something every time we pass?'

You know, it's... It...

Do You Remember Walter digs up a very personal

common trope for everybody.

# Walter

# Remember when the world was young

# And all the girls knew Walter's name?

# Walter

# Isn't it a shame the way

# Our little world has changed?

The song is modulating all over the place.

the chords, you know, the key centre is changing all the time.

Then you have this very sort of memorable melody on top

that's almost like a nursery rhyme. It's just tying it together.

The first verse of the song, you have in C, you have...

We're now in the key of B-flat.

E-flat being the four of B-flat.

Now in the five of B-flat, which is F.

And so we're here, now we modulate it.

Now we go to E-flat.

Now we modulate to G.

Still on G. Now we go to E-flat.

And then back to C. Very cleverly done.

With Walter, I always felt really sad when we did it

because it reminded me of, like,

guys that you'd got best friends at school

and, all of a sudden, they're not there.

His guitar playing is great on that album.

In stuff like, Do You Remember Walter?

It's, er... He's playing... He's playing the song, isn't he?

Because the songs have changed, the songwriting changed.

But he's still got a great sound. He's really melodic.

And it comes through.

I think his guitar playing is really underrated, Dave Davies.

# We'd save up all our money

# And we'd buy a boat and sail away to sea

# But it was not to be...

All those memories about people you loved

and played with at school

and who are they? Where did they go?

# Walter

# You are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago

# Walter

# If you saw me now, you wouldn't even know my name

# I bet you're fat and married

# And you're always home in bed and tucked up safe

# And if I talked about the old times, you'd just get bored

# And you'd have nothing left to say

# Yes, people often change

# But memories of people can remain. #

'We said we'd fight the world so we'd be free.'

You know, point.

Oh-oh!

Oh, shit. Oh!

Sometimes I have trouble communicating my ideas.

that's why I express myself better through songs.

I find it easier to do that.

Songs allow me to say something serious in a funny way.

Speak from inside myself so that

you can feel happy and sad in the same moment.

Living reality and fantasy, the past and the present at the same time.

No, it's not nostalgia.

It's more like time travel.

# Under a lamp light

# Monica stands at midnight

# And every guy thinks he can buy her love

# But money can't buy sweet loving from Monica...

You can imagine Monica. You can have your own relationship with her.

There is something lovely and romantic about..

..about the Village Green and the characters

and, um, the foreboding... You know, the age-old thing

of don't go into the woods, you know.

And, um,

and weird fat cats in trees.

And then

beautiful but aloof girls.

# You take the sunshine

# I'll take the nightly shadows

# Because everyone knows that Monica glows at night

# She'll do something wrong and prove to you she is right

# I, I shall die, I, I shall die

# If I should lose Monica Oh, Monica, my love...

Monica was a real person.

Unlike the way she's depicted by many people as glamorous,

you know, stockings, she was quite a modest girl.

In fact, we walked just over there one night.

Just over by that tennis court, whatever it is.

So they're all real people.

I was aware of litigation even in those days,

so I changed them into different people.

That's why I like to paint the way I do

because I feel like

I'm expressing a lot of what's going on in our subconscious.

Because it's just as important, probably more important

than our conscious, physical reality

because that's where a lot of this weird shit comes from.

And I decided to do a Monica,

which is a more abstract surrealist thing.

I love the rhythm of that song, that kind of Latin vibe of it.

And did her with a stuck-up nose

and looking down on all these guys that adore her

and pay a few bob for. (LAUGHS)

# Monica knows every line

# Don't ever propose because Monica knows, you know

# She'll turn up her nose and say what a fool you are

# Monica. #

I'd like to add that I walked with Monica but nothing happened.

Phenomenal Cat is one of the tracks

on the record that really stood out to me,

I'm a big fan of the Mellotron and this is the perfect Mellotron song.

# A long, long time ago

# In the land of idiot boys

# There lived a cat, a phenomenal cat

# Who loved to wallow all day...

The artists I find most compelling are those that can create a world.

He was somehow able to fuse together all these different styles

of music and points of view.

Literary devices. Whether it was first person

or creating characters and having them interact.

# Though he was big and fat

# All the world was good to him...

The voice that is, like, the fa-la-la-la-la voice

in Phenomenal Cat, it sounds like it's been speeded up slightly

Almost like some strange sort of little person from a circus

or another sort of elfish character there.

# Fum, fum, diddle-um di

# La la la la, la-la la la

# La la la la, la-la la la la. #

His production on it, to me, is great because it's very honest.

it's not really production that gets in the way.

And, as a producer, that's, to me, you know, one of the goals.

I always loved Wicked Annabella.

That's kind of the most scariest and rock and roll of the lot,

with the buzzing guitars and that incredible

drum sound at the beginning.

The subject matter has always fascinated me.

That's why I did that painting.

It's a painting of Wicked Annabella.

In the end, I was looking for somebody who was really quite

alone and sad and angry.

# Wicked Annabella mixes a brew

# That no one's ever seen...

Of course, I love it because I sing it.

And it's quite a raunchy song to sing.

I always particularly liked singing bridge

and when I do it live, I put two bridges on it

because it seems like... I think that bridge is so...

..cool, it should have been twice.

# I, I've seen her hair

# I've seen her face

# Look towards mine

# I, I've felt her eyes

# Burning my soul

# Twisting my mind...

It's the most impudent album.

Dangerous isn't the right word.

I just knew it was risky putting it out.

# Little children who are good

# Should always go to sleep at night

# Because Wicked Annabella

# Is up in the sky

# Hoping they will open their eyes. #

# Don't go...

It's just a really dark-sounding track.

Which, again, I think is the skills of Dave Davies,

you know, to, um, to create that...

the aura of that track.

The great artist Ray is,

I'm sure I should be paying him that compliment,

and, er, it's like painting.

You know, these people appear out of the invisible.

I heard a band from America called The Turtles.

Their big hit was Happy Together.

They phoned me up where I was living

and they said, 'We want you to produce our next album.'

I sad, 'Why?' 'Because you produced Village Green.'

I said, 'Yeah, but you just had a big success

'and I can only offer you failure.'

They said, 'We want that danger and, other than that, risk taking.'

We took risks.

I think, more than anything else, that's important.

Big Sky, Big Sky is such a great song.

I love the whole magic of Big Sky

and the way Ray sings it.

Quite, like, scared.

Scared of the universe almost.

I think Big Sky is really futuristic.

And, er, I think, if it was written today,

I think it's, um, I think it's a really great lyric,

delivered in, you know, just the speech.

It's the first song I'd ever heard that had no singing in it

but it was just talking.

There was just this monologue about

people looking up at the Big Sky and the Big Sky looks at the people.

I just though, 'What?' You know, you couldn't sing along to it.

You know, it was this... It was like...

I don't know what the musical term is for that thing

but Damon did it in Parklife.

Er, Ian Dury used to do it all the time.

# Big Sky looked down on all the people looking up at the Big Sky

# Everybody's pushing one another around

# Big Sky feels sad when he sees the children scream and cry

# But the Big Sky's too big to let it get him down...

He's sort of addressing it almost like a vicar.

Big Sky, da-da-da-da.

It's got that kind of tone going on in the, you know...

Big Sky, we're all talking to you now, Big Sky.

I suppose it's Ray writing about God. I don't know.

I guess, anyway, that's what I always assumed.

Looking down on all these little people

and, um, not really giving a fuck and not really helping them.

Er, that's what I got from it anyway.

Big Sky was about an imaginary preacher.

Playing it today, sounds like all the Bible-bashers on TV,

it sounds very contemporary.

But then there's the bridge.

I always loved the, 'One day we'll be free.'

We sing the harmonies together

and it sounds like... It feels like,

we can get there somehow and be free and happy.

Free from work, free from religion,

free from anything that drives you insane.

# One day we'll be free

# We won't care, just you see

# Till that day can be

# Don't let it get you down...

The middle eight of Big Sky, the guitar plucking,

it's a really beautiful part of it.

And then it's sort of like a dreamscape

and then it goes back into the main talking section.

# I think of the Big Sky

# And nothing matters much to me

# Big Sky looked down on all the people who think they got problems

# They get depressed and they hold their heads in their hands

# And they cry

# People lift up their hands and they look up to the Big Sky

# But the Big Sky is too big to sympathise. #

I got the feeling that it was our last album.

That's why I said, 'This will be about friendship and magic times.'

Time for reflection. Hm! And some funny dodgy characters

and some angry characters, Johnny Thunder.

# Johnny Thunder

# Lives on water

# Feeds on lightning

# Ba ba-ba ba ba-ba ba Ba ba-ba ba ba-ba ba

# Johnny Thunder

# Don't need no-one

# Don't want money. #

He's a character I'd like to be. He's kind of Neal Cassady/Kerouac.

He's a great character, the person in the song, you know.

Likes the highways, doesn't care what anyone else thinks.

The imagery in the lyrics are just, wow, fuck! Amazing.

He reminded me of someone I knew in Muswell Hill.

A biker and he was kind of like... I forget his name.

But he was, er...

..out on his own, just riding his bike.

Yeah, there were a couple... It was based on a couple of guys,

a couple of heroes.

Always got the girl on the back of the bike.

The fact that Johnny Thunders from New York Dolls

must have got his name for it.

Johnny Thunder is just an amazing sound.

Ray's voice is, er...

It's hard to put into words. Just the way he sings it.

The melody of it is amazing. Nick Avory's drum rolls

into the bridge part of it is just beautiful, you know.

Johnny Thunder, in particular, was always a big favourite of mine.

Um, so it's a very varied record.

You've got Smokestack Lightnin' again coming up

with Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains.

# Like the last of the good old puffer trains

# I'm the last of the blood and sweat brigade...

It's a celebration of the music that inspired me.

It's tipping your hat to Smokestack Lightnin' by Howlin' Wolf.

It's a different metre and different chords.

I'm going to keep rolling. It's about an old rocker who won't give up.

I'm gong to keep on rolling until my dying day.

So there is a sense that it's the most rebellious song on the record.

# Steam-powered trains...

All those great riffs that we kind of borrowed

or tried to copy and fucked them up.

Because that's how I learned to improvise

because I wasn't very good at copying.

It sounded like something else. I thought, 'Do it anyway.'

It sounded really live. It sounded like

you could just walk in to a room and the music was happening.

At the time, I was listening to a lot of bands from England,

like Roxy Music and I loved David Bowie.

And those records seemed a little more pristine,

especially the Roxy Music records.

And, um, the Kinks records just seemed very live and sloppy and...

Dave, you know, you could get a better guitarist

to come in and do an overdub and that.

But it wouldn't... It wouldn't have the right feel

or the right attitude that Dave had.

Because he knows instinctively what to play.

He's just a great guitar player as in that he plays the song.

I think that especially at a time when everyone's getting, like,

groups around like Cream and all.

You know, I really didn't care for them and their...

He's just holding it down over his brother's songs,

which, I would imagine, would have been tricky, you know,

knowing what we all do of their relationship.

And he's just doing it very humbly

and, er, very melodically. And I love him for that.

Dave is...

I cannot stress enough what a guitarist that guy is.

And Ray as a songwriter.

Um...

So for them to create that sound between the two of them,

without even thinking about it,

it must say something about their genetic make-up.

# Like the last of the good old choo-choo trains. #

He's an incredible, memorable guitar player.

Especially for people like me who didn't want to spend ages,

who wanted to just be raw and just play and emote

and be expressive,

Dave Davies was the man really.

He was doing it, he didn't play like Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton

or Hendrix, but they were already doing that, so what's the point?

Whether Ray was metaphorically writing about the Kinks at that time

because they were being very much marginalised by that time,

critically and also in terms of success and stuff.

And, um, and obviously not having the recognition from America,

which all of his contemporaries were having.

Village Green felt like it was the last record we'd ever make.

In fact, it was the last record of the original band.

Pete Quaife left at the end of it.

And that shot of us standing on Hampstead Heath

is one of the last photographs taken together.

# We are the Village Green Preservation Society

# God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety

# We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society

# God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties

# Preserving the old ways from being abused

# Protecting the new ways for me and for you

# What more can we do?

I love the quintessential Britishness of that song,

The Village Green Preservation Society.

I learned the song about 40 years ago

but when I learned it I didn't know what Ray was referring to.

Over the years, I've figured out what a George Cross is

and, um, Moriarty

and Mrs Mopp and Mrs Mopp and, er...

Of course, china cups and virginity,

I could figure out on my own. (LAUGHS)

But I love,

yes, the Englishness of it all.

It makes you feel nostalgic,

um, but, by the same token,

it still sounds so fresh,

even though it was about nostalgia and preserving the past.

The opening track, to me,

lyrically is staggering.

I've listened to it, um,

you know, from time to time

and to get all those images to rhyme in that song...

(LAUGHS) ..it's absurd.

# We are the Sherlock Holmes English-speaking Vernacular

# God save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula

# We are the Office Block Persecution Affinity

# God save the little shops, china cups and virginity. #

Ray just always looked at the subject of what was around him

and was deconstructing it but he was also saying,

'This is progress. Everyone's talking about moving forward.'

I don't think that's a context of what America meant at that time.

And he's saying, 'Just before we go, let's just kind of register

'what is going on around us, even if it's not all perfect.'

You know, in The Village Green Preservation Society, what is it?

'Protecting the old ways from being abused.'

You know, 'Protecting the new ways, for me and for you.'

I think that really sums the whole thing up.

Although it's not a concept record, as such,

it has a certain sort of theme to it, I suppose.

Er, a longing and a loss of, um...

things that might not have even really existed, you know.

He was... He was looking back. He was...

But, in a way, that's kind of

revolutionary in itself.

It... It... It's not necessarily

what teens wanted.

Um, and it probably

annoyed some of them and all the better for it, you know.

If you can't annoy a teenager, who can you annoy?

# Thank you for the days

# Those endless days, those sacred days you gave me

# I'm thinking of the days

# I won't forget a single day...

I think because they wanted it as a single,

I was a bit of an upstart, I said, 'If it's a single,

'I want Village Green not to have any singles on it.'

Silly thing because business sense says put the single on.

So it was a bad choice on my part.

Perfect songwriting, you know, it's like every section,

to me, sounds like it's a chorus, you know,

just when you think it's peaked, you kind of get into the next section

and then it's almost like that even peaks even more.

I feel like it's sort of moves you through the song.

# I wish today could be tomorrow

# The night is dark

# It just brings sorrow anyway

# Thank you for the days...

It would have made the album even stronger.

The yearning in that song, the yearning

and that semitone climb, you know, that ratchets up.

And ah! The release. Great piece of musicianship.

# Days. #

It's just an amazing tune and such beautiful words as well.

And, er, yeah, that's it. It's a classic.

Great words, great melody. That's it. That's a great song.

Village Green is an album for friends, a personal record

and to hell with airplay and sales.

Maybe it wasn't their time. Some things don't click,

do they, at the time? Which, you know, is kind of shocking

looking back and seeing how great it still is as an album.

If you look at the context of when it came out,

yeah, and everyone's going really wild and freaking out and, yeah.

You know R&B is turning into heavy metal,

Led Zeppelin and, you know, people are throwing their clothes off.

You know, and then Ray turns up dressed as Max Miller. (LAUGHS)

The Kinks were out of whack with British tastes.

Er, in '68, we did want to look to America.

I felt more akin to the Kinks'

British music hall sense... sensibility.

The Kinks were not forthcoming as characters.

If you look back on YouTube and look at their interviews,

they don't want to be doing interviews.

They don't want to be having their picture taken.

They don't want to be talking to anyone.

You see the Beatles, they're loving it.

OK, so the record didn't manage to find an audience.

But, who knows, perhaps one day it will end up connecting with someone.

I'm just glad we stood our ground,

celebrated this somewhat eccentric land.

And, as for the village green and all those great characters...

..they're here in the songs.

# People take pictures of the summer

# Just in case someone thought they had missed it

# And to prove that it really existed

# Fathers take pictures of the mothers

# And the sisters take pictures of brothers. #

The Kinks were an uncool band, we still are very uncool.

And, um... Which saved us in the end.

If you make a records for an audience,

there's always a chance that it will start to lose its lustre.

If you make a record that is deeply personal to yourself,

then, you know, there's a resonance,

there's something genuine in that piece of music.

It's kind of created its own time, really.

It doesn't sound psychedelic.

It doesn't really sound like the late '60s.

It doesn't sound like anything else that was going on around that time.

And, um, therefore, I feel it's timeless, really.

It's a cult album.

And, thankfully, lots of people like it, are fond of it.

Well, the Village Green album is one of those records

that ahs just got this incredible reputation now.

And it's deserved because,

um, it is an extraordinary collection of songs.

It's the best Kinks album, the Village Green album is, I think.

And, er, it's the, um... And the Kinks are one of the best bands,

you know, that England have ever produced.

It's as an important record as Sgt Pepper's,

which, on a global scale, of course, is Sgt Pepper's

and, you know, we all know that meant, um, and still means.

But, um, Village Green is...

It's, for me anyway, it's equal.

That's one of the albums that I'll go back to.

You know, when I'm working with different artists,

sometimes I'll kind of listen to stuff just to kind of,

you know, get inspired. And, you know,

the Kinks is absolutely, you know... Village Green Preservation Society

is one of the ones that is definitely to go to.

Some of the subjects he was writing about,

things that would be of no concern to most people

and yet all the beautiful little details that he's spotted

and put in some song.

So that would be a definite influence on my writing.

It's so obvious how many musicians love it

because you see it in other songs.

It appears in so many other songs.

There's a bit in Johnny Thunder that appears in In The Crowd by the Jam.

And there's the beginning of Do you Remember Walter?

which, whenever I hear Mr Blue Sky,

I go, 'Ooh, they've updated this.'

And then, 'Of course, it's Mr Blue Sky.'

So, um... And that is people paying homage.

The first one that springs to mind is Blur.

Not sure Damon would have a career without Ray Davies.

You can see the Kinks... The thread went forward through us.

I think it went forward through people like Blur.

Um, and I think you can detect it in a lot of other bands.

Um, the Franz Ferdinands, the Kaiser Chiefs.

You can see the Kinks thread going on there.

Er, I think any band that doesn't try too hard

to be American and/or international

and just allows themself, if they're from Britain,

allows themself to be British.

You can't help but tip your hat in a big way toward the Kinks.

It goes into Ian Dury, it goes into us,

it goes into Blur, Lily Allen, a number of other people.

You know, black comedy but with a bit of kind of going.

# He lives in a house, a very big house in the country

# Watching afternoon repeats and the food he eats in the country...

They were very similar to Blur in a lot of ways.

Well, Blur were very similar to the Kinks, I should say.

They had an incredibly hard-working kind of songwriter.

A kind of nutcase on guitar,

who invented everything on his instrument.

Um, kind of down-to-earth drummer

and a sort of groovy stylish bass player, you know. (LAUGHS)

# Heard the neighbour slam his car door

# Don't he realise this is respectable street

# What do you think he bought that car for?

# Because he realised this is respectable street. #

Possible the most Kinks thing we ever did was Respectable Street,

which is totally and utterly

what I saw out of my window and what... The neighbours

were banging on the wall every time I put the record player on.

Or I'd look at the caravans that people would buy as status symbols

and just leave them in their gardens all-year long

and then, for one week, they'd disappear for the holiday.

And, to me, I knew at the time, Uncle Ray would approve of this.

# Our house, in the middle of our street

# Our house, in the middle of our

# Our house, it has a crowd

# There's always something happening. #

For me, I equate it to my own career.

It'll be Our House, that, for us, was exactly the same.

It was a kind of mythical idea

of what house we all would've lived in.

Our Rise & Fall album is very similar in that sense

because it's set around part of Primrose Hill

and it's set around all the characters that we grew up with.

I know that the Kinks influenced Weller greatly and the Jam.

And the Jam influenced us...

..greatly. So there's a kind of linear thing there.

It lived with us a long time that record

and it still is one of our favourite albums of all time.

And so it, you know... We would go straight from our flats the next day

to go recording and it would rub off definitely.

The thing with those bands is

they're not ashamed of sounding British,

singing in their own accent,

write about subject matters that could happen where they grew up.

Village Green Preservation Society. Er, one, two...

Er, one, two, three, four.

# We are the Village Green Preservation Society

# God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and variety

# We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society

# God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties

# Preserving the old ways from being abused

# Protecting the new ways, for me and for you

# What more can we do?

I love the man, you know. I love his work

and what he's given me and influenced me

and, um, and so many other people as well.

Hs work lives on and always will do.

The Kinks have always been sort of an influence on me, you know.

I always was drawn to this juxtaposition of this very dark

lyric over something that could be sort of very old-fashioned.

He became a character in my life.

And I listened to him quite a bit.

So, um, I'm sure he kind of infused me with his style of writing

and I'm sure it was in there somewhere

when I started writing my own songs shortly afterwards.

One of the greatest things that I learnt from Ray

was that, yeah, just observing what's going on around you

and deconstructing it a bit

but still, you know, loving it,

you know what I mean, even though it may not be perfect.

I wouldn't be a songwriter if it weren't for the Kinks.

Paul McCartney and Ray Davies are our greatest songwriters.

He has possibly written songs on his own

that are better... Uurrgghh!

I'm sorry about this. I'm committing heresy.

..that are better than Lennon and McCartney.

I don't think Lennon and McCartney have ever come up with something

as poignant as Waterloo Sunset.

I don't think they've ever come up with a little symphony

like Autumn Almanac or Shangri-La.

I don't think they've ever some up with

quite the social commentary of Sunny Afternoon.

Or the romance of Days.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry but it's got to be said.

I love being within a band.

It wasn't the greatest band in the world

but we had moments when nobody could beat us.

# God save the village green! #

(APPLAUSE) Hallelujah!

So who knows what the future holds for us or the Village Green.

And all the characters we sung about?

All I can say is,

people often change

but memories of people can remain.

# One day we'll be free

# We won't care, just you see

# Till that day can be

# Don't let it get you Don't let it get you down

# And when I feel

# That the world's too much for me

# I think of the Big Sky

# And nothing matters much to me

# One day we'll be free

# We won't care, just you wait and see

# Till that day can be

# Don't let it get you

# Don't let it get you down. #

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