RAY DAVIES: Face To face With The Lost Decade Part Two

RAY DAVIES: Face To face With The Lost Decade Part Two

by Iman Lababedi and Bob Nevin

(If the Ray Davies interview in last month’s CREEM seemed to end rather abruptly; it’s only because we inadvertently forgot to mention that part two of the story would be running in this month’s issue. Last month, writers Iman Lababedi and Bob Nevin questioned Ray about the Kinks’

new UP, Think Visual, his video concepts, his personal life, John Mendelssohn’s Kinks Kronikies book, and Mick Avory’s departure from the band, among other things. We’re sure you’ll agree that this second installment follows in the same heavy vein.—Eds.)

“Iman, where are you from?” asked Davies.

I’m Lebanese.

“I played in Beirut around ’69, the time of Arthur. I met a girl named Hudda, and I became really friendly with her. Later I heard she died in the war.

“When I was there, Beirut had the most amazing night life I’d ever seen. The clubs were amazing. The scary thing is, when we’d get out of a club it’d be dawn and police would stop us to check our passports and stuff.

“The morning we left, I went down to the port and had an old hooker—the promoter took me there—gave it a shot. On the way to the airport three jets roared over. You could see the signs of what was going to happen.

“It’s such a tragedy. Beirut could have been a great rock ’n’ roll city, if you’ll forgive the expression. A great rock town.”

We deserved it. You can’t have such extreme wealth next to such extreme poverty without war.

“You see that in Bombay. I was only there two days. We were staying in this palatial hotel on the beach and next door there were people living in holes they’d dug out themselves.”

But let’s get back to why you’re so uncertain about touring.

“Well, you called Think Visual ‘business as usual,’ and that’s good because it took a lot of work to make it sound like business as usual. And when the Kinks are doing business as usual, it’s really much better than a lot of people are.

“We recorded it in January ’86 and the band nearly broke up. I said I’m never going to make another record. Finishing this album and getting it out was an achievement in itself, believe me.”

Why?

“Because of people like you, even within the industry, falling afoul. They’ll run the industry down, but they’ll still go to the Warner’s Christmas party and accept whatever free gifts are offered; accept this, accept that. People become part of the chain.”

Can’t you disassociate yourself from that?

“Yes, you do have a choice. You can starve. I mean that is a choice. I think you can use the word artist, then you can create a person who can starve. But it’s like John Lennon said to the New York Times just before he died: ‘Now I understand you don’t have to suffer for your art.’ ”

Why do you think the Kinks have remained a cult band?

“I don’t think they understand us here, and we couldn’t tour here for a long time for reasons I’ve been asked about many times. Let’s say we couldn’t tour here during a crucial time in our development. In America, the first exposure to the Kinks was when we did ‘All Day And All Of The Night,’ then they didn’t see us for four or five years—and in that time we’d gone through ‘Weil Respected Man,’ ‘Waterloo Sunset,’ ‘Sunny Afternoon,’ ‘Preservation’—and we’d totally changed our style. We came back here and we were starting from the bottom with a tremendous catalog of hits behind us. It must have been hard for the public to keep in touch with us, there weren’t even any film clips.”

“If you’re a creative person living in the ’80s, it’s the lost decade. People are lost”

The Stones are burnt out and Paul McCartney is really terrible. The Kinks are still working at it, having bypassed that drain. How?

‘‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear the last Stones, I haven’t heard the new McCartney. I’ve never taken his work seriously since the Beatles broke up. A few of his songs ... he’s a great tunesmith, no doubt about it, but I just loved the Beatles so much, and McCartney felt like only half a group.

“But as for the Kinks’ consistency. I’ve no explanation for that. We were never as successful as those bands. I think we’ve just kept that continual outputbusiness as usual—and that’s why we’ve not become a nostalgia band. And for the most part we’ve tried to innovate new ideas, not tread the same ground too often.

Are you rich?

“No. I could go about a year-and-a-half without working.”

I used to think you were a romantic....

“I still am.”

I don’t see that. Think Visual appears to be a threnody for the ’80s: depressing, upset. There isn’t a happy or romantic song on it, it seems to be absolutely disgusted.

“If you’re a creative person living in the ’80s, it’s the lost decade; you’re living in the lost decade. People are lost. Like you, Iman, you have no country. You’re lost, right? And if you’re a creative person in the ’80s you accept the situation around you. I’m not going to write romantic songs or happy songs; I’ve got to relate ... I will relate to the situation I’m in, and build a happiness, reasons to be cheerful around what I’ve got to live with.

“The best chorus on the LP goes: ‘We beat the fear,’ because the ’80s is also the age of fear. You get uplifted by fear, because without fear you can’t be creative. I think we’re being frightened by a media that controls everything we do and whether you know it or not, you’re controlled by the media: you’re one of its subjects.

“That’s the reason you misunderstand the new album. With Think Visual what you’ve got is—deliberately on occasions—a very bland concept. But when it’s seen as a whole entity, with a film or a show, and then you listen to it in the right environment, it will have more meaning.”

Fine, but I have to judge it on the merits of what’s presented to me.

“This is the problem I have in resolving my position in the music industry. I would have liked this to be a film album. Then it would have told the whole story. As good as I think Think Visual is, any album I’ve done is only 75 percent there. As for the rest of it... I had dreams and ideas and concepts that are far greater than anything I’ve put into the album.

“Fortunately, my songs—you like ‘Waterloo Sunset’—you can close your eyes and the pictures are there.”

And that’s why we’re sitting here, sipping at our ice cold beer, listening to the John Mendelssohn-compiled Kinks Kronikles, trying to figure out why we feel all wrong but alright. As Ray noted many years ago: “It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world.” A wonderful nightmare with lost pop stars and last chance songs; business moguls and lifetime commitments. And an England long since gone. If you close your eyes you can almost see it.

Sometimes it’s paradise.