Is Ray Davies In Disgrace?

Tales of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, sitting in the midday sun

Is Ray Davies In Disgrace?

by

Patrick Goldstein

The only disappointment stemming from my talk-fest with Ray Davies concerns his hotel room. It looks just like mine—only messier and perhaps a wee bit more expensive (the view is a helluva lot better but why quibble over details). The 18th floor suite is decorated with a layer of newspapers, magazines and theatre guides, discarded clothes, tapes, a host of empty Coke bottles (has Paul Nelson been here before me?) and white roses are strewn across the premises.

"The story about Dave trying to stab me is true. He aimed for my hand."

The only liquor in sight is in the form of Boy Howdy beer cans, survivors of a tumultuous photo session that has left Mr. Davies in a state of considerable agitation: “Please don’t make me out to be a total drunkard,” he admonished CREEM’s phototrix. “I’ve barely succeeded in living down last year’s tales of dissipation.”

Ray looks none worse for the wear, outfitted in beige corduroys, a rumpled red sweater and sporting his trademark crooked grin. It is teatime and we’ve decided to try a parlor of Davies’ own choosing. Alas, brisk exits are not his forte. Like Mr. Wilde’s creation, Algernon Moncrieff, Davies gets great mileage out of sheer sheepishness, so I find it hard to complain when our imminent departure is delayed by a flurry of phone calls, several trips to the loo and an arduous search for a suitable pair of matching gloves.

“I’m ready, I’m willing,” Ray croons as he putters around the adjoining bedroom. “Do you think I should wear a scarf? Or do you think not?”

Your correspondent busies himself with errands of his own, whiling away the time concocting* hopelessly complicated social arrangements for the coming evening; there are calls to be made, reservations to be procured. As an inveterate theatregoer Ray offers some astute tips, including recommendations for The Comedians: “Marvelous second act, starts slow.” Equus: “Yes, the horses are not to be missed.” Albert’s Bridge: “I give it three stars.. .if only I could have written a few songs for it...”

I don’t know whether to credit it to the surfeit of thespian gossip or the Boy Howdy brew, but just as I comfortably settled down on the couch for a quick snooze (Ray still on his scarf safari) there is a noisy rustling at the window, followed by the rather spectacular entrance—after all, it isthe'ISth floor— of an elderly gent dressed in a white tux and a pink carnation. Without the slightest hesitation, he makes for the suite’s mini-bar, where he expertly mixes a huge dry martini. Once I see the drink in his hand, the face looks more familiar. It’s Noel Coward. Here, for clarity’s sake, I’m afraid I must lapse into dialogue.

CREEM: What the hell are you doing here?

COWARD: Now, nothing to get excited about. I’m in town for a spot of theatre and thought it would be pleasant to look in on one of my favorite proteges. Perhaps the critics have treated him better than they did me. Of course, if I cared about good press notices, I would have shot myself in the ’20s.

CREEM You like the Kinks?

COWARD: Most certainly Everybody’s In Show Biz is one of the great aural documents of our time. Aided, I might add, by the inclusion of one of my songs as well as the thinly disguised theft of several others.”

At this point our repartee is interrupted by Mr. Davies. He gives me a queer look (after all, as far as he could tell, I was chatting with the ceiling fix^ ture) and suggested we adjourn to the St: Moritz’s supper-room, Rumplemeyers, for same tea and sustenance. I have a sinking suspicion that Lord Coward will tag along. He does.

There is no more abused term in the rock lexicon than “theatrical.” Bowie, Jagger, Alice Cooper, Genesis, Yes, Kiss, The Tubes.. .the list drags on endlessly ...all have at one time or another been graced with the monniker. Burdened would be a better word, since none of the aforementioned batontwirlers advance beyond the Tommy Sands Beach Blanket Method School. Most rock band’s attempts at sugarcoating ramalama fa-fa-fa with greasepaint have reached embarrassing heights of kitsch, self-parody and unintentionally cretinous comedy. Leading the list should be the Coop’s “Nightmare” package, in which dven Vincenfr Price was ashamed to be seen, and The Tubes’ blundering stabs at low-brow campus hijinks.

As any fool should know, rock ’n’troll creates its own theatre. The smoke bombs, war-paint and costume changes (and yes, the Stones’ mechanical schlong) simply detract from the real spectacle. Pete Townshend, who’s contributed perhaps the most lasting piece, of rock operatics, grasped this early in the game. Unlike later collaborators, he never weighted the original stage version of Tommy down with baked-bean floods and other such cinematic drivel. It triumphed on performance alone, buoyed by a believable narrative facade and a richly evocative dramatic set—the rock stage.

After a disastrous flirtation with a pair of amateuristic multi-media slide shows on the Kinks’ most recent tours, Ray Davies has apparently learned his lesson as well. His current road roster boasts only the Kinks’ power quintet. The horn section, sequined Ray-ettes and Super-8 home movies have been relegated to Davies’ dusty attic steamer-trunk, joining Pete Quaife and the band’s vaguely Edwardian maroon vel-1 vet jackets.

As we stroll down Fifth Avenue, Davies confesses to having already penned a potential stage triumph. The inspiration came during a lengthy stay at The Hollywood Hawaiian, a $12 a ' night motel in downtown LA where Davies wrote much of Everybody’s In Show'Biz (“They couldn’t even muster up room service,” Ray sniffed).

“It was a play about a thoroughly inept soccer team,” he explains, “much like the *one I watched from my Hawaiian window. I actually began writing it on the plane going back to London—even though I’m deathly in fear of flying [as if to emphasize his phobia, Ray sneaks a quick glance at the sky, perhaps on the look-out for stray biplanes]. By the time I arrived in London it was only half done. s “Rather than lose the inspiration, ,1 simply boarded the next plane for LA so I could finish it.” Ray snickers. “That was during my period of temporary insanity.”

One can hardly imagine Davies abandoning his theatrical ambitions entirely—who else could claim ten consecutive “concepf” albums, stretching from the elegiac, understated charm of Village Green Preservation Society, to the mischievious nostalgia of Schoolboys In Disgrace— but our conversation betrayed a mounting dissatisfaction with the limitations of the “concept” genre.

“I may have taken it as far as it goes,” Ray says as we order tea. “But you have to remember that songwriting is a development of an art form. My lyrics just lend themselves to stories and themes. I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner.” Ray at this point launches into an old show tune that closes each chorus with ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’. He has this tendency to ramble. “Good enough for Mel Brooks, do you think?” Someone (nudges my elbow.

COWARD: There he goes again, stealing from my old revues. Simply shocking!

"Idon’t feel a part of , London anymore. I think we’ve both changed— for the worse."

CREEM: Aw Noel, shut up.

DAVIES: What? .

CREEM: Not you, Ray, I was, uh, talking to the waitress.

To placate my elderly nemesis, I tell Ray he reminds me of Noel Coward. “Definitely,” he i says, munching on some pastry. “I admire his discipline. He’s so very witty yet his humor always fits the mood of his songs.”

COWARD; Now, that’s much better. Nothing like acknowledging an old Master.

CREEM: Noel, please.

DAVIES: Cream?

CRE£M: Ah, no thanks. I’m just testing the tape (pretty lame, huh?).

These constant apologies were really unnerving me so I opted to go on the offensive. “Of course, Coward did tend to become superficial at times,” I ventured, adding with a withering glare, “especially as he grew older and more feeble-minded.”

“Nonsense,”Ray rejoindered. “That was part of his charm. When you’re being bombed by Hitler you need someone to make you laugh.” COWARD: Here, here! Good lad.

“Have you read his autobiographies?” Ray asked. “They’re indespensable. Absolutely charming. They read like the diary of a roving ambassador... saw Marlene at The Copa.; had dinner with Maugham at the Savoy...I remember one great line where an actress lose is her temper at Coward during rehearsal and actually shouts at him and then sits down...”

COWARD: It was Gertrude Lawrence, of course, “...and Coward says, ‘Darling, you can shout if you must but ndver sit on a line like that. It kills it stone dead.’ ”

^ Davies shakes with laughter.

COWARD: Truly an inspired reading. £ Gertrude was simply monstrous—a 3 high-hat dame if I ever saw one. She’d high-hat her own father, if she knew who he was.

^ By this time Coward’s malicious chatter had so enraged your reporter that if he thought it would have had any effect, he would have gladly stabbed the meddling apparition with the nearest toast knife. The odds of successful homicide, though, seemed poor. This reverie reminded me of Ray’s much publicized sibling rivalry with brother Dave. Do they still feud? “Yes, we argue incessantly,” he says cheerily. “Sometimes I feel like kicking out the lot of them. It’s quite healthy, you know.

“The story about Dave trying to stab me is true. He aimed for my hand. I suspect it was intended as a joke, just to scare me, but he came very close to debilitating my left hand. Of course, I was stealing one of his chips so I suppose it would’ve been justifiable homicide.”

Ray giggles. “Do you call them chips or fries over here?’v

For the most part Davies’ reputation rests on his uncanny abilities as a rock essayist. British satirists from Alexander Pope to Evelyn Waugh have found England’s rigid class structure an appealing target for pointed literary barbs. Davies’ brilliance lies in his adeptness at lampooning all strata, oe they the snotty, pseudo-hip young twits? \yho populate songs like “Dandy” and “David Watts” or the poop workingclass stiffs who’ve been fooled into striving for the gilded coffin of respectability pictured in masterworks like “Shangri La” and “Arthur”.

“Berkeley Mews”, a sprightly rocker that details an obviously distasteful encounter with a bogus intellectual, represents Davies’ most venomous attack on upper-crust decadence and sloth (though the casual cruelty of “When I Turn Off The Living Room Light” surely ranks a close second).

TURN TO PAGE 67.

RAY DAVIES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 34.

“The incident that was so subtly portrayed in the song,” Ray explains, (no doubt referring to the tune’s insidious opening line “I staggered through your shitty dining room”), “took place several miles away from Berkeley Mews. It concerned somebody from whom I escaped with my life,” he giggles again, “and my virginity. I usually change the names to protect the innocent. In this one, I changed the place to protect the guilty.”

COWARD: I had the same trouble with Maugham. Always after young boys. Tut. Tut.

CREEM: Oh so you’re awake again. DAVIES: Do I look peaked?

CREEM: Sorry, not you. Just trying to capture the waitress’ attention. I think she’s deaf.

COWARD: Maugham once bowed out of a party, apologizing “I must get to bed if I am to keep my youth.” I of course suggested that he bring him along too.

Originally Davies was concerned that American audiences wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what all this' talk of “Waterloo Sunset” and “Lavender Hill” meant. Judging by the Kinks’ ' complete lack of American chart success between “Sunny Afternoon” (1966) and “Lola” (1970), he wasn’t far wrong.

Actually Davies is equally fascinated with stateside cultural artifacts, with country music leading the list. Asked if as a teenager he scarfed up Little Richard records like the Stones and the Beatles did, Ray laughed. “No, I saved my pocket money. Dave bought all the albums. Then we’d fight over them. Actually I idolized Hank Williams. He was the only white American singer I listened to.

“When I was in the States in the early ’70s I used to go to lots of C&W bars, like the Palomino in LA. Especially to talent night on Thursdays, where they’d give the winner some odd prize. They play lots of C&W in English pubs now. I suppose that’s how Muswell Hillbillies came about. We were going ~ to hire a steel guitarist but John Gosling [the Kinks’ pianist] turned up at an audition and we hired him instead. Ray’s crooked grin appears once again. “He was recommended, as I recalT, by somebody’s vicar because he played the church organ.”

Muswell Hillbillies , the Kinks’ first RCA album that’s title so deftly weds the band’s English working class allegiance with the USA’s rural equivalent, exhibits the nadir of Davies’ relations with the 20th century, a millenia he has never completely adjusted to. His characters are denied the most fundamental privileges of privacy and liberty, turning instead to prostitution, fad diets, demon alcohol, mental collapse and arid fantasies of celluloid heroes to obliterate their growing depression and paranoia. Even their treasured holidays are a bust. “The sea’s an open sewer but I really couldn’t care,” Ray sings with deceptive music-hall cheer, “I’m breathing through my mouth so I don’t have to sniff the air.”

The song’s bitter irony posits Davies closer to the Angry Young Man generation than Noel Coward’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek vaudeville revues. Like his musical contemporaries, Davies soaked up the strident message of such working class epics like Look Back In Anger, This Sporting Life and Room At The Top. His heroes don’t don tuxedos and escape by yacht for the Riviera or the Lido— they’re trapped in the dank coptines of Waterloo Station and the squalid back-alleys of “Dead End Street”, dreaming from the waist of fraudulent paradises like “Australia” and “Waikiki”, where even the grass skirts are fake.

Davies and Coward are equally adept at the clever turn of the phrase. Only Ray’s puns cut closer to the bone. Noel asks why mad dogs and Englishmen sit in the midday sun, but to Davies the question is far more elemental. “If life’s worth living,” he wonders, “what’s living for?”

COWARD: Now look here, I refuse to submit to any more of this pompous impertinence from the pair of you tipsy, blasphemous louts. Such unpleasantr ness— particularly from Mr. Davies, who still dresses like a most disorderly footman.

CREEM: Come on Noel, don’t be mad. I was just playing critic for a while. They expect that stuff.

COWARD: Pish! I believe I shall retire from this dreary menage a trois before your frivolous, positively scrofulous chit-chat aggravates my ulcer. Oh, la fatigue du Nord...(trailing off as his specter grows fainter).. .such toadies... DAVIES: Hullo. Are you ill?

CREEM: Uh, no. I just haven’t slept in a couple of days, so I’m sorta subject to hallucinations. They’ll pass... DAVIES: Have a spot more tea, with lots of milk. It’ll give you some color.

Aside from his trips to the States, Davies drew much of his inspiration for Muswell Hillbillies from his nightly attendance at a local London pub which featured a spirited Irish C&W group. One evening they mounted the stage waving a huge Union Jack, which they promptly burned to a crisp (for those of you unfamiliar with the British respect for flag and crown, this gesture is roughly akin to the Cleveland punkrock claque that brought a lawnmower on stage and ground a young cockerspaniel into Alpo).

“Everybody cheered madly,” Ray recalled, “and I got a bit chilled by the whole affair. It was right at the height of the IRA prpblems and it was the first time I realised that what I watched on the TV was really happening in real life. I’d been a regular, everybody knew me, but after that night, I never went again. I just stopped cold.”

/ That may seem like pure hooliganism today, but if my addled memory glands serve me well, the Union Jack fared little better during the Who’s formative years. In fact, many of England’s elder rock statesmen cut their teeth desecrating flags, stage props, guitars, drums and amps (Ray, as you Fillmore vets may recall, is no slouch when it comes to destroying a bank of amps in a single drunken loon).

' After a last bash at tear Ray and I head off down sixth Avenue, windowshopping and trading favorite Cary Grant anecdotes. Lord Coward is nowhere in sight. Davies reminisces about the Kinks’ fledgling career appearances at stuffy debutante balls. It’s obvious that be still feels a great kinship with London’s “swinging sixties”.

“There was a great burst of energy,” he says. “It was like coming back from the ashes. We all came of age simultaneously. People had suddenly become classless—like Arthur Seaton. In the ’40s the working class types always got their just deserves, like Hollywood gangsters...Cagney and George Raft always got the electric chair in the end, but after Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, you could express yourself, be in a rock band, not be trapped by all those outmoded show-biz traditions.

“British music had been a closed shop, like the House of Lords. It was only a matter of time before everybody rebelled against the stupid union rules and managers. What was exciting was that you knew exactly what people would become famous. I saw the Yardbirds arid the Stones very early on and knew they’d make it. I knew in time that we would too.

“Without the ’60s l couldn’t have written Muswell Hillbillies anymore than without Sgt. Pepper there couldn’t have been a Tommy. [Acdording to an old chum of Davies’, there could’ve easily been an Arthur Without Sgt. Pepper. Ray, who still doesn’t own a stereo that works properly, never heard Sgt. Pepper until after his 1969 American tour—so much for checking out the competition.]

The Kinks’ ’60s^ contemporaries were far more intrigued by Davies’ revolutionary musical vocabulary, particularly his “Louie Louie” power chord riffs. “Very early on, even before we had a hit record,” Ray said, “I remember John Lennon and Brian Jones and those sorts coming down to see us play; It was only later that I noticed certain similarities between chord changes of mine and songs that came out later in the year by other bands. I figured [here we are graced by a hint of a crooked grin] it was the price of success.”

Since most British bands of that era traveled in monstrous package tours, it was inevitable that a certain amount of musical lend-leasing took place. As for Davies, he thoroughly enjoyed the show-biz side of these forays through the English countryside.

“It was just like vaudeville,” he explained cheerily. “Everybody did 20 minutes each. The Yardbirds would start, followed by us pr the Who, apd after an intermission, the Stones or the Beatles. They could do half an hour. It was quite strict, really. I was thrown out of one theatre for eating fish and chips backstage. It wasn’t allowed.

“No one took the shows too seriously. One night Lennon came by obviously quite pissed and said, ‘We’ve lost our song list lads, can we borrow yours?’ I remember Dave telling me that he ran into McCartney about the same time—in a pub, of course—and Paul kidded him that ‘Tired of Waiting’ sounded too much like a Beatles tune. He said we should’ve let them record it first.

“There ' were all sorts of strange characters in those days. Whenever we played the North we were booked by some terribly fat promoter whc( Was a raving closet queen. I think he particularly enjoyed our outfits, because we’d come off the stage all soaking wet from the heat and they’d be clinging to us. He insisted on hugging us—one and all.”

Davies is one of the few remaining British rock luminaries who still resides in London, yet he has few kind words for the stately old metropolis. His description of city life is remarkably similar to the vision offered by “Here Come The People In Grey”, whose characters are deluged by dim-witted government officials armed with tedious forms and rates cards.

“I don’t feel a part of London anymore,” he says, as we near our hotel. “I’m alienated. I think we’ve both changed—for the worse.” Ray’s laugh carries over the early evening theatre traffic. “Seriously, the old fun places like Carnaby and King’s Road look like movie sets. Everybody’s assumed some silly role to act out.

“What’s really sad is that people have become resigned to being part of a poor, second-rate country. London today is very dowdy. Only Piccadilly Circus is still exciting at night and of course, the view from Waterloo Bridge is still the best in the world. You can see St. Paul’s and Big Ben—at least till they build another office block, which I hear someone is trying to stop.

“They’re trying to repopulate London, youknowv It’s a great idea. Maybe it’d bring back some life/’ Ray ambled off toward the front desk to check for messages. Someone tapped my shoulder.

COWARD: They’ve been saying that for yedrs about London. Don’t get your hopes up, dear.

CREEM: Well, look who’s back again. The old degenerate himself.

COWARD: Now, now, try to control your libido, my meaty little boy. Why don’t you go clatter about the lobby. And stop sniggering.

CREEM: Don’t be rude. Why don’t you go bugger a bell boy.

COWARD: Now that’s the first intelligent suggestion you’ve made all day. Alas, I have a more pressing appointment...

I was about to offer a snappy rejoinder when Ray reappeared. “I know you won’t believe this,” he said elatedly, “but I’ve just received the most extraordinary communication. You’ll never guess who it claims is waiting to receive me in my suite.”

I smirked triumphantly. “Oh, I suppose it’s Noel Coward.” Ray’s eyes widened. “Why, how’d you know?” he demanded. “The chap’s been dead for ten years.”

I escorted my favorite Kink into the elevator. “Dead, maybe,” I replied, “but not buriedHe’s been turning up everywhere these days.” Ray was humttiing “A Room With A View” as the doors swept shut.