“I feel no need to listen to anything”

“I feel no need to listen to anything”

Ray Davies

(Ray Davies is the leader of the Kinks, who are presently enjoying their first commercial success in three years with their tv score, Arthur. But through those three years (since A Well Respected Man) Ray Davies has been sharpening his already acid tongue. He’s one of the last of the true rock iconoclasts and, even if he wasn’t a genius, that alone would validate an interview with him. All of which is by way of explaining that I really thought there were more important things to talk about than merely Arthurish topics. Hopefully, it worked out. -Dave Marsh). CREEM: Can we talk about the rock opera? How you came to do it? How long ago were you approached? DAVIES: About a year and a half ago. It’s a musical really, it’s not a rock opera. It’s like getting a context and making an album out of the context. I suppose this is nearer to what an opera would be because it’s all script. A lot of the sofigs are done as dialogue. And I suppose you could consider it that , to a certain extent. I don’t like to call it an opera; it sounds very pretentious. Some people say to me “oh, you’ve written a rock onera”...

CREEM: And that, of course, leads it to comparison

between Arthur and Tommy. ..

DAVIES: Yeafi, and there is no comparison at all. I

don’t know exactly; I’ve never heard Tommy. CREEM: Never heard Tommy? How did that happen?

DAVIES: I feel no need to listen to anything. I haven’t heard the Beatles new album (Abbey Road was just out-ed.). I’ll hear it, I suppose, on the radio this afternoon or something. Like when I finished Arthur, I found out that the Who had put out their album. You know, it’s like Scott going to the North Pole and finding out that someone had gotten there before him. But I think people remember Scott more, because he was the most glorious failure. It’s just unfortunate.

Anyway, to carry on from where I was, I found out about Tommy so I made a point then, even on the TV shows in the motel, not to listen to anything at all.

CREEM: You made a point of it?

DAVIES: Yeah, I’ll probably like some of it, too. I don’t listen to anything until two years after. I didn’t hear Sergeant Pepper until last year. It’s selfish, I suppose, just interested in what I’m doing. I. don’t think anybody is going to do what I’m going to do anyway. And if I listen to other people, it doesn’t help me much. Which is a bad thing. But it’s the best, the only way to do it as far as I’m concerned.

CREEM: While I really liked Arthur, Village Green Preservation Society was the one Kinks album that really summed up everything you’ve been doing. DAVIES: That’s right. What happened there was that I was doing an album of the Village Green and somebody says to me, “Well, what have you been doing for the last three years or two years?”. And I thought about it and they were exactly right. What you just said. So we wrote the song, Village Green Preservation Society.

CREEM: A lot of your songs, certainly since A Well Respected Man have been really critical of British society.

DAVIES: Any song I’ve written in the last year has been critical of whatever it’s about; I did a series of love songs for TV this year in England. They re all critical of love. Outside of that I’ve done two war songs and they’re critical of war. Well, that’s understandable anyway. I’ve been criticizing a lot in the last year. But I don’t think Village Green is generally critical.

CREEM: Except there are songs like Big Sky, which is supposed to be critical of God, if that was about God.

DAVIES: I think Big Sky wasn’t critical, just...it’s very religious. He was very important and it was about being unimportant. No significance whatsoever. Something else is very big.

CREEM: Village Green was a feeling of small things, a feeling of perserving things. And Arthur, again, it seems to be about the common middle class sort of person being dragged out for insignificant reasons, having his roots torn up...Is that the way you feel about those things?

DAVIES: Yeah, that is the way I felt about Arthur and that’s the way I felt about the Village Green. Because I know the thing that pleased me most, that would have pleased me most is if everyone would have hated Village Green Preservation Society and not cared at all. Because it was about archaic things, outmoded things and these things shouldn’t be around anymore.

Not outmoded things really, just things that aren’t fashionable.That’s the reaction I wanted to get. CREEM: Your response has always come from critics rather than record buyers, anyway.

DAVIES: Yeah especially on the last two albums and especially in America. The records sell well in England, but on a different level, because a record that sells well in England probably with the amount of people that buy records there and buy records here, there’s no comparison.

CREEM: Yet, all the critical acclaim...

DAVIES: There was no critical acclaim when Village Green came out. None whatsoever. I think it came about two months after the record was released...so any critical acclaim we’ve had is on our new album the one that’s just being released.

CREEM: You’ve said you don’t listen to records; do you read what other people say? Are you concious of criticism, do you expose yourself to what these other people have to say about your records?

DAVIES: I did it quite a lot for a time, then I stopped doing it. I don’t need it. I went through a stage of planning my stuff with people, planning stuff with my critics in mind. And, I was manufacturing a lot of crap. Village Green with the exception of about two tracks, that was the beginning of isolation. CREEM: You just decided to isolate yourself? DAVIES: Yeah, especially on that album. On Arthur, it was a little bit different, because I had to work with a TV company. We had to work out scripts; everybody knew about it. I was a bit scared, because everybody knew what it was about, the whole TV company, before I finished it. It’s gonna be all right when it’s finished though.

CREEM: It isn’t finished? The record isn’t the final version?

DAVIES: No.

CREEM: How did you come to be involved with the mixing of the two media?

DAVIES: I’ve always been interested in film. Like a lot of people,) was an art student.

And the film side, the drama side started to take over just before I left college. So I was very interested in it then. I’ve always wanted to do that, to use music to get a cinematic idea. It’s very important, at least to me.

CREEM: Have you seen American television? DAVIES: I’ve seen a bit, but they’re so trite. I haven’t seen any really creative television. The only Detroit television I’ve seen was this morning. I got up this morning very early and watched this show abut a boy and his dog. It was a religious program. It was the most creative thing I’ve seen because it was a religious film made for television and it really worked.

CREEM: I was surprised to see that you had produced the new Turtles album; you only got a tiny credit you know. It’s rather surprising on the Turtles part.

DAVIES: It was surprising to me on my part. I was in the middle of writing. I needed the break anyway and it was fortunate that they’d been phoning me up and sending me letters or I wouldn’t have had the break I wanted..

CREEM: You did the album when?

DAVIES: I started it in February.

CREEM: You seem to be more known for your music than your lyrics. Maybe that’s just the critics, or...? DAVIES: As I said, this critical thing has only begun on the new album.

CREEM: Well there was always Crawdaddyf, there was Paul Williams...

DAVIES: Paul Williams did a thing in Rolling Stone and he was the first to do it. And there was a thing in the Village Voice that wasn’t so much critical acclaim as it was record company criticism. There were a few tracks mentioned but it was mostly just six columns of criticism of distribution and promotion and the like.

I went to see Mo Ostin and the other people at Warner Bros, and I was really surprised that they even knew we existed. I thought we’d been sending tapes to an empty house for the last year.

Reprise is set up in England now, but we’re with a company called Pye in England and Warner Bros, are like their American distributor. But we did sign with Reprise, seperately, a couple of years ago. That’s when we did the Greatest Hits album.

CREEM: Are your songs written with the Kinks in mind^ew of them, except Dandy, have been done by others.

DAVIES: No. I think that our songs are pretty hard to do by other people. In fact, our songs are pretty hard to listen to. It might be a complex I have but it seems that they’re uncomfortable to listen to. For me, but they always have been because I’m close to them. For instance, I can’t listen to them on the radio. Even when we’re in the studio and they’re playing our records and they’re trying to do an interview, and then they play our records back inbetween the interview and I can’t stand it.

CREEM: You produced Arthur but did the Kinks have a producer before?

DAVIES: Yes, until we did ummmm...we had a guy called Shel Talmy.

CREEM: Was there a conscious decision to seperate yourself from the mainstream of pop?

DAVIES: I think we must have thought that since we recorded See My Friends or even You Really Got Me you see it’s like, at that time in England there was really nothing else like it at all. And we had made a couple of records that were connected with other people and similar to other people. But that was different from anything so we might have been cutting ourselves away from conventional things then. Because we went into the studio and did what we wanted to do, which is important ‘cause there had been a couple of records where we had not done what we wanted to.

CREEM: Did you get the freedom to do that after doing some records in the pop mainstream?

DAVIES: No, we had that freedom in the beginning. It wasn’t anything really free because it was...we recorded You Really Got Me I think three times and then they were gonna release the second version and we said to the record company if you release that we’ll never make another record because we’ll give up. Because we might never make a record like this and eventually we made it a third time, cause the second version was like Phil Spector.

CREEM: Was Spector a large influence on you? DAVIES: No, he was a large influence on Shel. Well, Shel was American you see...I think he was from San Erancisco. And I think he made the record as he thought it should sound.

CREEM: Well, the Spector thing is not really rock but orchestrated.

DAVIES:Yeah, in a way very contrived. It’s like mistakes have been contrived. The good thing I remember about certain records is the mistakes they have in them. Like in the early rock and roll records there was a guitar overtone or something that was good. But you don’t seem to get that sort of thing on Phil Spector records. Even though his records are very good. He makes a record every, say, three years which improved his things for those three years, then he makes another one. Like, he did with th Righteous Brothers, then he did the Tina Turner thing, then he’ll do another one.

CREEM: Did Jimmy Page play on the first Kinks records?

DAVIES: I’ll tell you about Jimmy Page. Dave (Davies, Ray’s brother and Kink lead guitarist) is a good guitar player and he played the solos on all our records. Jimmy Page played tambourine on Long Tall Shorty because he came into the studio. There was a thing then like when we made our first lp, that everybody was supposed to be friends and they’d all go into the studio together. And like Phil Spector played maracas on the Rolling Stones record and Gene Pitney played piano on the Rolling Stones records. And Jimmy Page was a friend of Shel’s... CREEM: It’s always been said that Page played the solos on those records...

DAVIES: That’s a mistake because Dave did all those solos. And I don’t mind saying it, but Dave started that sound.

CREEM: The fuzz-tone sound? How did he come up with it?

DAVIES: We used to play through a 30-watt Brooks amplifier, and we used to preamp with a little amplifier which had holes in the speakers and that. distorted and he plugged into the big speaker and that started that sound. The primitive fuzz tone. That’s how that started, really.

Cont. Next Page

But Jimmy Page played tambourine on our first album. It’s very good tambourine; he’s a very good musician. I’d use him if I was producing a record. CREEM: How did^ou start in rock and roll?

DAVIES: Listening to records, like Eddie

Cochran...when I was in art school, I wanted to be a guitar player so I went out and joined an R&B band. Not modern R&B so much more of Muddy Waters, not the Chuck Berry thing. It’s a little bit more sophisticated. And we sort of tried traditional jazz, which I suppose is an influence that has been carried over with me and blues which is basically what we’re doing.

CREEM: Yeah, well, you’ve never quite gotten into the pretentious thing of a 90 piece orchestra.

DAVIES: Well, we couldn’t do that because we’d all piss ourselves laughing. Because we know what we are. We’re not good. I mean, we don’t have any illusions about ourselves. I’d like a ninety piece orchestra. In fact, I’ve done a thing with a sixty piece brass band; it’s on the film.

I don’t think Dave would enjoy it very much because he’d have to play quiet. He’d rather play just with the group. I don’t think Mick and John, the drummer and bass player, would mind at all.

CREEM: Dave has written a few songs right?

DAVIES: Yeah, in fact he’s doing an album right now. He’s letting me produce it and he’s letting the Kinks play on it. It will be like Dave Davies and the Kinks. You know, it’s nice that he’s able to do his own stuff.

About a year before we made our first record, he really developed as a guitar player. Cause I used to be lead guitar player, then I started concentrating on writing songs and forgot about the guitar playing some. And Dave came through. I think Dave has never had the sort of acclaim he should have for his contribution to guitar playing. He’s got more physical attack than most, because he’s not as sophisticated as a lot of players...He’s got genuine soul. I know that’s an overused term but I think he has and on the stuff he sings, you know, he hasn’t got that good a voice, but he’s really got guts which is really the most important thing.

CREEM: The Kinks sound as a whole seems to have retained its guts. It’s been more physical than most. DAVIES: I think it was especially that way in the beginning. I think: on our new album espcially, because we had a specific job to do. It’s restricted in certain ways.

People say, you do nice tunes. I think the lyrics gained more prominence. I think Johnny Thunder is one of my favorite tunes, it’s on Village Green, it’s not a great tune, but its got possibilities. Because there’s a lead tune, then a bass undertune and all sorts of things put together., And it could have been a good record for somebody.

CREEM: Are you trying to get away from the influences you had in the beginning?

DAVIES: No, I don’t try to get away from them. I’m not ashamed to say I liked people like Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Slim Harpo.

CREEM: Did you listen to'more contemporary music more at the beginning than you do now?

DAVIES: No, I know the Beatles said, to Dave or somebody, that whenever a new record comes out, they buy it before it’s released just to keep up with things. I think that’s just keeping up with everything else. It’s not doing anything yourself. You should use that time for writing your own songs. I never understood that attitude. Having to have everything that was new, seeing all the new shows. You know. I didn’t see Bonnie and Clyde until a year after it was out. I was supposed to go to the premiere of Midnight Cowboy but I didn’t go. I gave the tickets to a tramp and he went to see it. Which is true. It was in the newspapers. At the premiere all the police were holding back the crowds and this old tramp turns up and goes into see Midnight Cowboy. I won’t see that for another year or two. I don’t see the point of it. Just because it’s new.

I get the feeling that if I saw Bonnie and Clyde now it would still be a good film. Like, maybe there are other films that are sensational when they come out and then you go to see them nine months later and you find out it was just the trend. It didn’t have the quality to exist.

CREEM: Is that the way you try to write songs? DAVIES: I suppose so. I like to think that the stuff is quality, even though it’s very simple. I think the best way to be complex is to be simple.

It’s like people say our album isn’t surreal, cause surrealist is a very fashionable word now in England but you know, I don’t see just because something is plain that it isn’t surreal or isn’t weird. A lot of the most screwed up people are all very plain people, they’ve got more inside them, than somebody who walks around digging everyone. Cause you know he digs everything and he’s got nothing else, he’s just flat, he’s got two dimensions.

CREEM: Your songs are involved with very simple people. Are you involved with those sort of people?

DAVIES: No, I just think they’re the most interesting people. I’ve always found those sort of people are the sort of strength. To have those people is important. CREEM: Has there been a concerted effort on your part to criticize the English Middle Class? Because that’s the way it comes off.

DAVIES: I know it does. It’s not exactly like that, it’s criticism of a lot of things not just middle class. It’s the people who made middle class really, not the actual people really.

CREEM: Your songs have been characterized by a sort of aloofness.

DAVIES: Yeah, but the thing about that being bitter is that last Christmas I went through an emotional thing and there was another guy and we were both bitter about the same things and after everything was over we sat down and he was bitter, period. I was bitter with a sense of humor about it and I could come back with quick answers -and he broke down. Because he was just bitter and hateful while I was bitter but I could get over it by laughing at things. You know, that’s where I beat him. That’s the thing, if you can control your hate or make it funny.

CREEM: Did you listen to a lot of contemporary music in the beginning?

DAVIES: I love listening. The last two things I played before I came here were Jimmy Reed Live at Carnegie Hall which I don’t think was live and a Swiss Fairground Band playing the Third Man Theme. Harry Lyman did it. I like extremes and I like bad music and good music.

CREEM: What do you call bad music?

DAVIES: Music which is music which is made to be played on instruments, it’s just read. Like session men have gone in and just read the music. Television music, they know all the notes. Yeah, I listen to because I look at it and I say “yeah, that’s bad” and I play it. But the Swiss album is kind of nice. It’s the same thing as Jimmy Reed really because he had that sound.

CREEM: Why did Peter (Quaife) leave?

DAVIES: Basically, and I don’t mean any slants on Pete’s ego, he wasn’t out front as far as he could be and I can understand that. He just didn’t want to be just a bass player and I was hurt when somebody said that was the problem, because Pete never told me what the problem was. If he’d said “I’d like to play somewhere else” I’d understand it but he didn’t give any reason and I’m sure it wasn’t the music. It was just that he wanted to be a star. Which is a drag because there aren’t any stars in our group.

CREEM: You, of course, are the best known. DAVIES: I don’t think so, you know. The fact that you’ve interviewed me, not them now, is because I wrote the new album and I know more about the story but the others are just as qualified as I am to answer the rest of the questions and they’ve got just as much right to.

CREEM: What about the story on the album? DAVIES: It’s the story of this guy’s life and over the top of it is the British Empire and the last stages of the British Empire. I think that the end result of the show, there’s a lot of flashbacks and things but the end result of the show is now. I’m not saying that’s the problem, I’m just saying that’s the story of this man and that’s what happened to him.

There is no solution at the end. This is like, at the end of Psycho when they had to bring in the psychiatrist to say, this is why he had to kill his mother. There’s nothing like that, it just ends. I think the ending of Psycho would have been good with just the car being pulled out of the mud, or without the solution. It’s fairly straightforward, it’s not that involved, though it is visually.

CREEM: How does this relate to what we were talking about before, about things lasting?

DAVIES: Well, I was hoping, what I wanted to do, I just didn’t want it to be a mediocre play, nor a mediocre soundtrack to a mediocre play or two good things that don’t work on their own but they work together. I want it to stand up as a play and stand up as an album, and stand up together. A Tennessee Williams play will stand up because it was done right. I don’t think time has anything to do with things lasting. In fact, not lasting is typical of the era. CREEM: That’s all...?

DAVIES: Like, Hound Dog is a great record and I’m sure if it was released now it would be a hit, though it didn’t sould like rock and roll to me. Or Blue Suede Shoes, it’s still good. Although, timewise...if you want to think of things life, if it didn’t have a fuz guitar on it, what a drag if you think like that, it might seem a bit dated. But if you just pretend it’s now, it’s still good. I don’t think time had that much to do with it.

CREEM: As a consequence did you end up working very closely with the playwright?

DAVIES: The thing is, I wrote the story and everything. So, I was very close to it anyway and so it was just a question of finding somebody and fortunately we found somebody who was very close to it, too, Julian Mitchell and he came in and we worked out the script together. For Granada, which is independent television in Britain.

CREEM: Did they just say they wanted a show with a rock score or what?

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From Page 12

DAVIES: They did suggest the British Empire as a theme. They thought I ought to do it. 1 got away from it by saying, well I’ll do the story of this man with the British Empire. But I think it’s more involved with one man.

CREEM: And the man is summing up....

DAVIES: No, he’s not summing up anything. I think if you saw Arthur, you’d say, “Hey, that’s a great show I saw about you”. He’d say, “Thank you very much”,

CREEM: It’s just reflecting normal, British lifestyles? DAVIES: Yeah. He’s not saying this is bad. You know they said Mr. Churchill was good in the Second World War. Nobody thought of all the mistakes he made, I think it was at a place called Dunkirk, there was a big fuck-up of all the generals and as a result a lot of people got killed, just a mistake. And in Japan, the retreat from Singapore, from the Japs, it was just a copout. They forgot who the causer was. That was a . big mistake, too. There were about 60,000 prisoners and there was gonna be a song about that called We All Make Mistakes in the album, but we didn’t have room for it cause the album lasts nearly 55 minutes and the TV show lasts 50 minutes. So, we’re gonna cut quite a lot^rut.

CREEM: You’re going to cut a lot of the music out? DAVIES: A lot of the filler, yes. But like I said, a lot of the dialogue is gonna be from the music. So it will still be the same really.

CREEM: Are the Kinks gonna play the music themselves?

DAVIES: Well, it’s gonna be filmed and it’s all in a can and we’re gonna use our music. When we get back we’ve got a few things to do, a few variations. In Shangri-La we’re doing a new version and on because they’re interesting. Nearly everyone has a chip on his shoulder.

Australia we’re doing a new version.

CREEM: Is Shangri-La involved with wishing... DAVIES: Well, he’s got it you see and because he’s got it he can’t get any higher and he can’t do anything. He’s happier is what it’s really saying. CREEM: Do you think there are many Arthur-types in this country?

DAVIES: Yea, but not the same. Because nobody could be the same as somebody living in Britain. CREEM: Arthur’s really just an extremely British person?

DAVIES: No. His attitudes aren’t as British. I met somebody in New York and he said that the majority of Arthur is American.

CREEM: Is Arthur satisfied with things?

DAVIES: He’s got to be. People say they are happy but they’re not and he’s one of those people. He says he hasn’t got a chip on his shoulder but he might. I like people with chips on their shoulders You know, he’s an ordinary person but I think he’s so interesting. That sort of person. That’s the sort of person who wouldn’t like me or wouldn’t like you. That’s what I like about him.

CREEM: He wouldn’t like us?

DAVIES: Well, he wouldn’t like me, because I’ve met people like him who didn’t like me. Because they resent my freedom either as an individual, not because I run around and do a lot but because I feel free to do what I want and he doesn’t have that. See the way he’s been conditioned he shouldn’t feel free, that’s the way he feels and he resents and he’s a little bit hurt and all this hiding things gradually builds up into a hate.

DETROIT-Most of the people who’ve seen the new Jack Bruce group were surprised, albeit for various reasons. Bruce, apperaring with Larry Coryell on guitar, Mitch Mitchell on drums, and Mike Mandell on organ, has come up with a new sound, perhaps disappointing to those expecting a new (or rebuilt) Cream or answer to Blind Faith, a vast improvement to whose who have listened to his new album, and in general an interesting synthesis of jazz and rock sound.

The lion’s share of the jazz influence comes from Coryell’s guitar work. Coryell, who formerly played behind Gary Burton and currently has his own album out, is a fairly traditional jazz guitar stylist, and blends his technique well with Burce’s intense rock bass. The organ, which was undermixed on Saturday (to compensate for being overmixed on Friday, so I’m told), Js played by Mike Mandell, (who is totally blind) primarily as backup. Mitchell, late of the Hendrix Experience, lays down

some of the best drum work that I have ever heard

Bruce’s bass is, expectedly, too loud, but otherwise he plays very well and added to, rather than just backed up the group’s sound. His vocals are enough to raise the nipples on all of the teenybop Cream freaks.

Their material was a combination ol old Cream songs, new Jack Bruce songs that sound like old Cream songs, and one jazz instrumental. As supergroups go, they’re pretty good.

Cary Gordon