(Drivebycuriosity) - A quite a while ago "The Kinks" belonged to my favorite rock bands - besides the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who & The Animals. I got electrified by the rough and distorted guitar riffs of their "You really got me" & "All day and all of the night" - two songs that defined rock music in the early 1960s and laid the foundation for hard rock, punk, noise rock and heavy metal. And I enjoyed their later melodic pieces like "Days" and the atmospheric "Waterloo Sunset". But in the 1970s the group disappeared from my radar and my attention went to Jimmy Hendrix, Pink Floyd and others.
Out of curiosity I read the biography "God save the Kinks" by Rob Jovanci ( amazon). I wanted to know what happened with these pioneers. On more than 300 pages the book narrates the many metamorphoses of the group, but also explains why they disappeared from my radar in the 1970s even though they created studio albums through the 1990s (and solo albums past 2000).
The heart - and the engine - of the band were the brothers Ray Davies, the composer and lead singer, and Dave Davies, the lead guitarist. Ray´s sheer infinite creativity and Dave´s guitar technique helped to define rock music and influenced countless other composers & performers.
But the group`s development was shaped by manifold struggles between the brothers and with other band members, who were coming and going. "The Kinks" story reminds me of a quip by a journalist about another group, I believe it was about "King Crimson": "They where hold together by their centrifugal forces".
Over their whole career the Davies brothers - and some of the other, often changing, band members - behaved sophomoric, aggressively and erratically. The Kinks came up to the cliche of a spoiled rock star. There were fist fights on the stage during gigs, they performed boozed, ruined their hotel rooms, suffered nervous breakdowns and more. These issues could be the reason that the iconic Kinks stand in the shade of Beatles & Rolling Stones, who behaved much more professional.
But maybe their behavior was inspired by their band name, maybe it was part of their business model and was meant to entertain their fans. The anecdotes about fights, sexual experiments, divorces, accidents & incidents and about "paranoia, depression, heavy drinking and living on the edge" make the book really interesting.
It is interesting that while their singles & studio albums became more and more mediocre, what showed in the British sales numbers, the group became even more popular in the US and filled huge stadiums. But this tells us more about the American taste than about the group.
Anyway, rock music wouldn`t be as we know it without The Kinks and Jovanic gives a wonderful introduction into their kinky world.
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