YOU STILL REALLY GOT ME

"I’m a 20th century man/But I don’t want, I don’t want to be here,” Ray Davies groaned while opening up the Kinks’ 1971 Muswell Hillbillies LP, a record that celebrated and memorialized his family’s life in North London. As Ray sang about nuclear and technological nightmares that still ring true today, his younger brother Dave played slide guitar that sounded like shrapnel from a bomb blast.

Both brothers would make it into the following century, but not easily. Ray, who was initially hesitant to embark on their inaugural and ill-fated American tour in 1965, citing the JFK assassination as a sign of a country in crisis, would ironically find himself plugged with lead in New Orleans in 2004. A few months later, Dave would be felled by a stroke in London. Thankfully, Muswell Hill’s Sons of Thunder survived their injuries (and each other).

Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Kinks’ landmark single “You Really Got Me,” Dave Davies sat down for Zoom coffee with CREEM and a freewheeling 45-minute chat.

Dave, have you had any jellied eels now that you’re back in London?

[Laughs] Not anymore. Years ago I used to love them! My mum turned me on to jellied eels when I was a kid.

I love them. My wife wouldn’t eat them on our last trip, but I couldn’t get enough of them.

Oh, you like them? They’re supposed to be good for you.

Well, I was the only one not hungover the next morning, so I attribute it to the eels.

They’re good for hangovers, too, yes.

So, to get started, musically the Kinks are thought to be the de facto proto-punk or protometal band, but you guys were also including fairly risque lyrics for the early ’60s. The Beatles had “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” but the Kinks had “You Really Got Me,” which to me is much more primal. Even with “All Day and All of the Night,” it seems even then you weren’t looking to waste time holding hands.

Although yeah, I didn’t like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” it was kind of heavy for the Beatles. I wonder where they got that idea from! [Laughs] But I do like the Beatles quite a bit.

In 1964 it was still a time when you needed innuendos to be under the radar, so to have songs called “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” it’s not even subtly sexual, it’s almost overt: “You really got me.” It seemed to have been a harbinger of what the decade would bring for rock ’n’ roll and counterculture.

Well, that’s what us and our mates used to sing about. You hang out, and what’s a young guy supposed to do?!

Perhaps not known to people who aren’t Kinks diehards is that you guys were actually banned from America for four years after your first tour of the States. What memorable stories do you have that resulted in your banning?

I don’t really have any because I still don’t know to this day why we got banned. [Editor’s note: Tensions erupted between the Kinks and American union officials over poor ticket sales and contract disputes, which culminated in Ray Davies punching out a union head who claimed that the British Invasion was a communist plot.] I think it was a mixture of management fuckups, and we were kind of...the Beatles were a very well-honed organization and even the Stones were. But we didn’t really have the niceties.

You guys were much more rough-and-tumble.

Rough and ready, yeah.

There also must be some sweet memories of your first trip to America. To be 18 and making a journey like that must have been heavy.

Well, yes, when I heard we were coming to America I was so excited—Buddy Holly, Muddy Waters, Otis Redding, all these people. And so I was surprised to see when we got to America how old-fashioned they were. Americans seemed a bit behind the curve. But for the music, a lot of the Brit bands were so much into the whole R&B thing. We loved it.

I always considered American and British music to be a big tennis match with the Atlantic as the net. The blues gets lobbed over to the U.K., and the British Invasion smacks it right back over to the States. Same with the resulting waves of punk and heavy metal.

Oh, that’s brilliant. Yeah, the Ramones were one of my favorite bands. But as a kid I was a very big fan of Eddie Cochran. To an English kid growing up, he had this—I mean Elvis was great, but Eddie represented the street guy.

Also, Eddie wasn’t a rat like Elvis was—going after John Lennon, hanging with Nixon, get tha fuck outta here. Johnny Cash was the real deal.

Oh, Johnny Cash was amazing. When I saw that video he made for his last album, fuck. Blew my fucking mind. Old and near death, really. That grit and that funk and that attitude, it was punk rock. He was still angry, and that’s what kept him going. Hank Williams was also a big influence. My older sister Dolly, she loved American country music. That was really the beginning for us. But I mean, Johnny Cash, he was more of a rocker than a country guy to us.

Yeah, I mean if you hold the title of the Man in Black even back then—

You gotta be pretty cool, right?! [Laughs]

Getting back to the ban. It seems it was a blessing that indirectly made you England’s quintessential band. The Stones were singing about St John’s Wood and Knightsbridge in those early days. By the 1970s they had gone to the swamps of America and the chateaus of France, the Who had gone to the opera, and the Beatles were just gone. After the Kinks had sang about Waterloo, Denmark Street, and North Soho, you kicked off that decade still proudly stomping around Muswell Hill.

I suppose so, yeah. But still, we loved America, and so when we got back to playing we always appreciated what a hardcore audience we had there. Boston was one of my favorite towns to play. They were rough, but they were smart—which was a bit like the Kinks, in a way. New York, Philly, and of course Chicago were good towns for us. They were real people. L.A. was important too.

I love L.A. too, but I think more for the environment and scenery. The atmosphere is real, but the people sometimes aren’t.

That’s good! You know, you should be a writer! I did love L.A., it was very magical for us Brits.

Back in London during that period, who was the top boozer at the Scotch of St. James?

I can’t remember! It’s where I met Jeff Beck. I saw Jeff literally weeks before he died, and I’m so glad I did. It was like time had been erased. It was just two guys having a beer. But in the early days at the Scotch I became friends with Brian Jones. He was a great guy. He was so talented. He had this kind of.. .he was a bit of a poser, but he was cool [/aughs], if you know what I mean. I think he was one of the coolest dudes!

I’m guessing you playfully call Brian Jones a poser. Obviously he was a friend...

Oh, I loved him, man. We were good friends. Obviously I take the piss a bit.

Of course, and that leads to my next question, about your song “Prince of the Punks” from 1977. Again, musically it’s as punk as what you were writing 15 years before. But the lyrics especially predate the content of the punk subgenre of Oi! The music of working-class London teenagers poking fun or fists at people trying to be something they weren’t; namely, rich kids glamorizing the working-class life or trying to co-opt the genre. Posers! Do you agree?

I think that came from our parents in growing up how we did. Ray and I had six sisters, so our house was always packed with family or my dad’s drinking buddies. So there was this lovely feeling of camaraderie: It’s us against the world and things are going to be okay. Be proud of who you are and what you got. So that’s how we grew up as kids. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re fucked. Because someone’s gonna do it for you. So humor was always a big part of the Kinks.

To me that seemed like a main inspiration in the songs you and your brother wrote. You could find wonder in a dustbin.

Yeah, and that’s why I always thought “Dead End Street” was more of a Kinks anthem than “You Really Got Me.” All the people on the Muswell Hillbillies album, all those people are real, Ray just changed the names. Ray had a real knack for that keen observation of people. You’d even find that at the early shows. We’d see ourselves as part of the audience. Of course, Ray would take a back seat and I’d be up front scuffling.

You guys even fought each other! Your drummer knocked you out with his hi-hat stand in Cardiff. That must have been a good way to keep people at a safe distance. Because for me, bands are this wonderful cross between a family and a gang: “I just kicked the shit out of my bandmate, imagine what we’ll do to you!”

[Laughs] Good point!

Getting away from music, I was thrilled to recently see you defend Martin Short on Twitter when someone said he wasn’t funny.

I love Martin Short. I always recognized his talent. He is such a talented guy.

Did you ever see Clifford? Where he plays a 10-year-old boy? My personal favorite.

I haven’t, but I need to check it out. I loved SCTV. Do you remember that weird skit they did riffing on Midnight Cowboy?

I actually don’t remember that one.

Oh God, it was great. John Candy plays the groovy guy, the Jon Voight character, and he’s huge. And I can’t remember who did Dustin Hoffman. Eugene...

Eugene Levy?

Fucking talented guy! When you watch it, pay attention to his walk. Silliest fucking thing!

With your affinity for American culture, how did it feel for a guy like Wes Anderson to use your music in his films?

Oh, I mean it was so emotional.

“Powerman” is one of my all-time favorite songs in general, but to see it set to a film like that...

Oh, I love that. Thanks, man. That [song] became a bit of an anthem as well. When we found ourselves as a band we were never really...respected. I’m kidding, but [“Powerman”] was like us fighting the world. And “This Time Tomorrow” has always been one of my favorite Kinks tracks.

Yeah, we always think of those soundtracks to our lives as a film, so to have that actually happen with your own music, I can’t imagine.

Yeah, you get it. It was very emotional. To have other creative people notice what you’re doing and bring that into their art, it’s a great thing.

Transgenderism is such a flashpoint in the world today. Yet “Lola” became a massive hit more than 50 years ago. You’ve always been open about your bisexuality. Your song “Party Line” was written a year before homosexuality was legal in England. “Is she a she at all?”

In the beginning when we started, nobody talked about homosexuality. We were surprised by that because there were more gay fans than there were girl fans, “Hey, where are the girls?!” [Laughs] So for me that was always an interesting, integral part in learning who you are, the sexuality of it. Like, “You Really Got Me” was about a young guy hanging with a chick in the beginning, but it developed into other things, as we found out.

Is there a chance we see the Kinks play in 2024?

Well, me and Ray have talked about it, so I'm hoping to do something. Ray would too. Never say never.

Thanks again for your time, Dave. I’ll let you go so you can rediscover your love of jellied eels.

Cheers, mate!