KEYS TO THE KINKDOM

KEYS TO THE KINKDOM

FEATURES

Your Reporter’s Just A Cutpurse Parson In A Low Budget Land

by

Richard Riegel

Ray Davies isn’t talking to the press on this Kinks tour of America, and even though I’m nominally representing the fourth estate myself, I don’t blame him a bit. My editor apologized to me for our lack of an exclusive on the Kinks, saying that the band’s recent, unprecedented string of chart hits—“Superman." “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” and “A Gallon Of Gas,” all from the goldmine LP Low Budget, which has allowed the Kinks their greatest incursion of American radio since the similarly flukey success of “Lola” in 1970—had apparently “gone to Ray’s head.” I couldn’t have been more sympathetic to Davies’ wishes.

As a kommitted Kinks fan since I first heard the slambang chords of “You Really Got Me” over a car radio in late 1964, I’ve been around for all of the fifteen years— and all of the twenty-odd memorable albums and the several hundred excellent songs—the Kinks have expended trying to become something more to America than merely its most popular cult act of all time. After years of that unequal exchange rate, it’s surprising that things haven’t gone to Ray Davies’ amazing head long before now. As late as last year, after creating all those songs, more self-explanatory in their lucidity and humanity than we ever should have demanded from any rock ’n’ roller—Davies was still humble enough to patiently, painstakingly answer those eternal “Who are you?” and “Why the Kinks?” queries for nearly every cub reporter who happened by, as though the Kinks were aspiring unknowns brand new to the rock ’n’ roll grind.

Ray Davies has long since earned whatever simple privacy he requests now. Anybody who still insists upon extracting all the “facts” from Davies should probably sit down, with cassette machine or note pad poised, and quietly interview Muswell Hillbillies (or Something Else) (or Misfits) (or Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround) just one more time—the Kinks’ inimitable essence is still brightly contained in each of those albums, as I discovered while I was preparing for this article.

Still, for all their proven legend-in-theirown-time qualities, the Kinks also happen to be one of the biggest pop music phenomenons of 1979 America, with a cluster of chart entries sfc> unexpected and so predominant that they might have come from the latest Brit beat group just off the plane. The Kinks have wrapped up the U.S. with topical subjects and styles even we faithful fans couldn’t have predicted: disco (the thumping “Superman),‘ softcore energy protest (non-driver Ray Davies’ timely “Gallon Of Gas”), even Davies’ plea for the suddenly-beleaguered U.S. A. that had never completely accepted his musichall nostalgia for his own declining England (“Catch Me Now I’m Falling”). $

Undoubtedly these varied styles will recruit a whole new generation of Kinks fans, who don’t know “Sunny Afternoon” from “Waterloo Sunset,” and who couldn’t care less, as long as they get to hear the global village anthem of the 80’s, “Superman,” throb through their speakers one more electric time. Which is what “You Really Got Me” arid “All Day and All of the Night” always have meant to my 1964 Kinks generation, after all.

I won’t get to meet Ray Davies and the other Kinks face to face tonight, but they’ve nevertheless accomodated me otherwise, by including my home base of Cincinnati on the second or third cross-country leg of the Low Budget tour. The prospect of going just a few miles downtown is balm indeed for my own gallons-of-gas-restrained low budget.

As a matter of fact, each of my three encounters with the live Kinks over the fifteen years of our respective rock ’n’ roll careers has occurred right here in Cincinnati, a veritable village green preservation society of a city, as Midwestern metropolises go. I saw the Kinks play the legendary Ludlow Garage in 1969, on the Arthur tour, when the Kinks’ headliner status was still shaky enough that they squabbled with the cocky young Humble Pie a good two hours of equipment-shuffling blank stage time, over just which Brit rockstar was going on last (the Kinks finally won the coveted headliner slot, but just by a china teacup or two).

1 saw the Kinks at Music Hall in 1972, on the Muswell Hillbillies tour, when the Davies brothers rather sloppily self-parodied their presumed sibling rivalry on stage, while Ray poured beer on those of us in the front rows in Kinks-kultist baptism. I somehow managed to miss the Kinks’ Preservation Act stop here in ’74, but the ever-forgiving Kinks have come back to me once again, here in the heart of the 1979 rock recession, at that.

As we approach Music Hall, that centuryold seat of burgher kultur, I’m pleased to note that the converging crowd of Kinks fanciers is not only large but widely-varied. There are the expected multitudes of 60’s veterans, both resurrected Mods (count me in) and leftover hippies, odd in their ragged hair and funky clothes, as eccentric as characters in old Kinks’ songs. But there are also plenty of legitimate teenagers (many dressed as Annie Hall) in attendance, and interestingly enough, quite a few black Kinks fans (didn’t they read all those reviews citing Davies’ supposed race-crankiness in “Black Messiah” last year?).

Within Music Hall, opening act John Cougar is undertaking Mod resurrections of his own, by running through a nice, tough set of rock ’n’ roll that owes less to Bruce Springsteen than to Cougar’s own Hoosier origins. I’m hungry for more of Cougar’s Eddie-Cochran-meets-Lou-Christie r’n’r exertions, but John himself is eager to get off the stage and make way for the legendin-his-own-lifetime Kinks.

During the intermission, as I’m tuning up my notebook for the night’s work, I’m distracted by a (non-erotic) blast of hot breath into my ear, from behind. I turn around to discover a phalanx of teenage girls exuberantly curious over my notetaking, which they’ve already suspected as having some connection with the realrockstar events about to transpire here. I attempt to explain my night’s mission, with a minimum of pomposity, and at once they want to verify my beautiful-people quotient: “Are you going to talk to the Kinks?” “No.” “Do you know ‘Mick?” “No.” “Do you know Elvis Costello?” “No.” “Who do you know?” “Well, I met Cheap Trick this year.” “Cheap Trick! Do you know jhe one with wavy blond hair?” “Robin Zander? Sure, I met all of ’em,” I say confidently, hoping to prove to these girls that I do get around with at least a few swoonables.

He has the best ahhess in rock 'n' roll! --a rather sroned young lady.

TURN TO PAGE 62

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33

I’m just about ready to interview this human generation gap breathing down my neck (I figure their median age as slightly younger than the copyright on “You Really Got Me”), to find out what brought them out for these old guys in the Kinks, when the house lights suddenly go down on my situational sociology.

The new stage backdrop turns out to be a simple slide of the Low Budget logo-stencilled-on-pavement back cover, projected onto a screen ripped and patched in best 1977-punk style. So far so good, I think, no swollen egos evident in the set, the show should be new-wave functional, especially when contrasted to the late-glitter theatrics of the Preservation Act and Schoolboys in Disgrace outings. But those kidder-Kinks have tripped me up again, I realize, as my eyes go blind from the exploding flashpots ringing the stage; Ray Davies must dream of flying like KISS on off-days from the Superman fantasies.

The Kinks rush onto the stage amid the smoky confusion, and it takes me a moment to tote up the latest configuration. There are six Kinks this time around: Ray Davies, Dave Davies, and Mick Avory, the originals, still on vocals, lead guitar, and drums, respectively; Jim Rodford is the latest-in-a-long-line-of Kinks bassists; and Gordon Edwards and Nick Newall flesh out the British Invasion basics with their respective keyboards and sax.

I note immediately that Kaptain Kink Ray Davies is well-streamlined for action, in a contemporary power-pop getup: his hair is much shorter than even in 1964, butch in its severe, Bowie-like sweepback, and he’s wearing a gray sports jacket, white shirt with bow tie, slim trousers, and white gym shoes. Ray has an electric guitar slung from his neck in classic rockabilly fashion, and as he grabs the microphone and begins bounding about the stage to the rhythmic chum of “Sleepwalker,” visions of Nick Lowe and of both Elvises slip in and out ot my image of Davies. This maybe 1979, but ;it sure looks like 1964, and 1956, and all the other watershed seasons of rock ’n’ roll.

As the Kinks move on with “Life On The Road,” I’m more and more enthralled with Ray Davies’ leaping stage demeanor. That sensitive songwriter with the hundreds of tunes behind him is bouncing around the Low Budget set like a young Iggy'Stooge. Dave Davies, dressed in a what-me-worry? sleeveless t-shirt, gives his older brother a knowing look as he flies by, sends an ersatz kick toward Rodford’s balls, and jjhen returns to concentrating on his own strings.

Mick Avory hunches over his fifteen-yearKinks-heartbeat drum kit, glad that he’s a drummer and so is Charlie Watts.

This Kinks show is better-paced, and more “professional,” than the others I’ve seen. The Kinks, new and old, have all their numbers down perfectly, and they waste no time in the transition between the songs.

With his persistent anxiety over rock audiences’ acceptance of the,.Kinks, Ray Davies seems determined to do up tonight’s show tough and lively enough to “justify” the group’s recent recording successes.

Still, Ray hasn’t lost his customary, if gentle, irdnic sense; he strums the well-1 known intro to “Lola,” acknowledges the cheers of recognition with “There’s another song we won’t be doing tonight!” and then, -with the hit-mongerers beginning to sigh, goes ahead and does a smashing “Lola” after all. Ray enlists the grasping audience members to sing the choruses, to make them earn their hit in best Live At Kelvin Hall fashion. Throughout the evening, Davies shouts out random “Day-O!” call & responses, to keep the crowd on their $7.50 toes.

During the tour’s title tune, Ray exits the stage, to return stripped of his jacket and tie, and with with hair mussed, for even lowerbudget action. Davies almost resembles opener Cougar now, but he and the Kinks are definitely their own power-poppers, as the crowd-inciting “Superman” leads into the even more enthusiastically-received “You Really Got Me.” Music Hall is thumping with the Pavlovian hit-reaction of the fans’ feet, so the Kinks slow the emotional tempo with the sentiment-laden "Hollywood Boulevard.”

' Just for a moment, though, as Ray Davies then shouts, in grotesque boogieband parody: “Rock bands come, and rock bands go, but rock ’n’ roll goes on forever!” Another burst of the flashpots obscures Ray’s probable, patented smirk, as he reflects that at least one r’n’r band is still far from going. In the meantime, that band has rushed into a searing “All Day and All of the Night” capstone.

After that Kinks-signature, Ray thanks all the fans in Cinciknotty” who have “bought Kinks records and have gone -to Kinks concerts” over the years, which is certainly thanks enough for this Cincinnatian, but the rest of the crowd is far from sated as the Kinks race offstage. Following the customary foot-stomping formalities, the ahdiencepressured Kinks return for a double encore, including “Pressure,” the ancient “Twist And Shout,” “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” and a mysterious instrumental introduced by the non-verbal opening of Freddy Cannon’s “New Orleans” (!?) Ray Davies grabs hands along the edge of the stage, with the enthusiasm of a Jimmy Carter, as the concert comes to a close.

Out on Elm Street, as we make our way through the heterogenous throng of Kinks fans, I come upon still more voluntary interviewees, who must somehow sense that I didn’t get to talk to Ray Davies tonight. A rather stoned young lady is sprawled against a car, shouting out her review of the concert in a self-consciously Eastern voice: “Nawthing from the Arthur album, nothing from Muswell Hillbillies* But he has great legs, and a great ahhsss! He has the best ahhss in rock ’n’ roll!”

Thanks, Alice, for the perfect coda to my autumn almanac.