Dave Davies: Kinkdom Come

This programme contains some strong language.

As a small boy I was always intrigued with the moors

and I came across a magazine that had pictures of the moor.

I was always fascinated,

because it looked like another planet or the moon.

This is the valley of the rocks.

It's quite a mystical place.

I first came to Exmoor when I had a camper van, ages ago.

I made a platform on the roof so I could put a telescope up there

and I used to go UFO spotting.

In November the skies are extraordinary.

The night skies, they're so rich with stars and heavens.

The reason I moved here in the first place is because it is so desolate.

Oh, it's invigorating, so quiet, a wonderful place to contemplate and meditate.

# I don't want to ball about like everybody else

# I don't want to live my life like everybody else

# And I will say that I feel fine like everybody else

# Cos I'm not like everybody else. #

# Mum would shout and scream when Dad would come home drunk

# When she asked him where he'd been

# He said up The Clissold Arms

# Chatting up some hussy But he didn't mean no harm

# Oh, Fortis Green

# Memories Of days when I was young

# It can only be a memory

# A time that now has gone. #

Our family was really a matriarchal system, family.

because my mum was the boss.

I had loads of aunties, my big gran,

as we used to call her - my mum's mum - had 21 kids.

She actually they looked a bit like Queen Victoria.

She would have come from that period.

There was eight of us. I was the youngest.

There were six sisters, my mum would spend all day delegating,

"You do that, that's your job, you do this."

My dad was like the hunter, if you like, going out to provide for his family.

We weren't very well off financially,

but I think that helped us.

It helped me gravitate towards things that were more important,

like family and the support that you get from family.

As a kid, I was always seeking for fun.

I used to get bored if people would get serious.

I was quite a wild kid.

My mum was constantly chasing me with a broomstick.

I was a mischievous kid, but it was seeking, I was looking for things.

I absolutely love it up here on the moor.

Early in the morning, about this time,

when you walk across the moor on your own,

and find a place that feels right, I sit and just reflect on things.

I love those old Sherlock Holmes films,

especially The Hounds Of The Baskervilles.

There is actually a legend about the Exmoor beast,

which supposedly roamed this whole terrain

out into the inner part of Exmoor.

It was cited as a black panther. They never really found evidence.

I like to think that it still roams the hills.

I was the sort of kid that was fascinated by things that were unusual.

There was a TV show on when we were kids, the first of the Quatermass.

You watched it behind a pillow, or behind the settee you know?

Trying to not see it, but you had to watch it.

There was this thing on the wireless called Journey Into Space.

# ..Hancock's Half Hour Luxembourg

# We'd sit for hours... #

My mum often used to finish a cup of tea

and turn the teacup back and there would be all the tea leaves.

She'd sit there and read, "Oh, there's a man in a black cape."

This was quite a normal thing to see my mum and sister sitting round a Ouija board

and put things on the glass.

Then us kids would be hiding behind the door somewhere,

thinking, "What the hell are they doing?"

I can remember the first day I went to school, when I was five.

My mum dragged me screaming up the road,

stuck me in this room with these other poor kids.

The teacher made me stack up these bricks.

After about half an hour I got so fed up

I knocked them down and I left school.

I came home and my mum said "David, what are you doing home?"

"I've been to school and I don't like it." And I thought that was it.

And one day, the teacher was blathering on about God and this, that and the other.

After God had made the trees and the flowers,

he made animals to go deep down inside the earth, didn't he?

-Ants, and worms.

-Worm and flies.

I put my hand up and I said,

"Please, miss, if God made everything, who made God?"

"Oh, sit down David."

I was like "Hang on!" It made me feel stupid

cos I thought I'd said something wrong.

Afterwards I realised it was quite an important thing to say.

# Those great

# So great

# Young and innocent days. #

I wasn't content with things as they were,

I didn't trust teachers

because I always felt I was being talked down to.

I didn't like that, because at home,

everybody seemed like we were all getting on together

and it all kind of worked in a very natural, organic way.

The front room at Denmark Terrace was really the party room.

It had that funny old upright piano.

Typical Saturday night at the Davies' on Denmark Terrace

was always lots of music,

lots of laughter, lots of faces.

When I think back I always think of the Fellini films,

leering down at you and these big faces with teeth and great noses.

Character faces, laughter and loud and singing and drunk.

It was like, as a little kid, sort of sitting there, soaking it all up.

# My old man said follow the van

# And don't dilly-dally on the way

# Off went the cart with me old... #

Me mum would have a few drinks.

and she'd start singing the songs that affected her.

Whenever my mum sang, I always used to go quiet because

I could sense a lot of her inner pain.

People from that generation that went through two wars,

you didn't even say, "I love you."

like today everybody is kissy kissy.

In those days, they kept all their feelings to themselves.

And like the party was a way of letting it go. "Sod it!"

# St Theresa of the roses... #

When my mum used to sing,

I used to really listen, so much pain in there.

Like, she was someone totally different,

her persona was totally different

from every day when, "Come on, David, it's time for school."

Totally different person so that intrigued me.

I learnt about love and affection from my sisters.

I think that was important to my growth and to Ray's I think.

That helped nurture the creative stuff going on inside us.

Guys get together going up the pub.

You didn't talk about things like love and beauty,

not in those sort of fairly harsh working class families.

We obviously saw a lot growing up,

you know, what women are like when they got...

I shouldn't say that. Cut!

Like female competition for guys and you know,

trying to make themselves look nicer than the other one.

# Sister's in the doorway

# Snogging with her bloke

# Scared to put the cat out

# In case I put him off his stroke

# But she wouldn't be denied

# I got a shilling as a bribe. #

I was 11 when my sister Rene died and it was like a trigger.

It really upset me profoundly.

They just had a body and they put it in a box and I saw it in the ground.

I thought, "That can't be... There must be more to life

"than just, ending up in the ground in a box."

I'm going to walk right across the moor to the sea

and then I'm going to swim all the way over to Wales.

# Big sky looked down on all the people looking up at the big sky

# Everybody's pushing one another around. #

That lilac and pink, blue and grey sky. Isn't that amazing or what?

Me and Ray as kids became close with football

because that was a very intuitive thing.

It was almost like telepathic thing.

Like I'd play on the left side of the field. He'd play on the right.

We kind of knew, you could see the picture of the game where it was going

and who was going to be where.

And music, even more so, because

we kind of both knew what the other was going to do.

So many times that we'd get together just jamming around.

In later years, like 13 or 14, I had a friend called George at school,

who was into guitar playing.

His dad died, his mum used to have to work,

so all day long, after nine o'clock, his house was empty.

I'd get ready for school, with a tie on and everything,

and we'd pretend to walk to school and just go to George's house.

We'd sit there all day playing guitar,

listening to whatever we could get hold of.

Blues was a really big thing.

There was something in blues music

that resonated with us as working class kids.

It had an oppression in the music that was screaming to get out.

# Hah! Take this hammer

# Hah! And carry to the captain... #

Leadbelly was singing about how he couldn't get a job and you had to be

of a certain colour and a certain type of person

to get a job at some railway or on the buses or whatever.

Then we could see that happening with people...

uncles, people in our own family.

When Ray and I were learning guitar,

our styles developed differently, because Ray had few guitar lessons.

I never had guitar lessons.

Ray's first guitar was a Spanish guitar.

You have a rather common habit of leaning too much to the left.

He learned how to finger pick properly.

It was far too fussy for my taste.

I was very into like the rock and blues stuff,

like Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Bert Weeden.

I was never that good at copying.

If I was trying to play Walk Don't Run...

..it would kind of sound like it, but a few notes...

But I thought, "Oh, just do what I want" instead.

I learned five chords.

So I said, "Right, mastered that."

Ray and I's first public gig was in the pub.

It was opposite our house The Clissold Arms.

We got up and played Walk Don't Run, Apache.

That vibe you get with an audience,

I think that's when you realise there's something going on here.

Well, the Kinks really started from school,

when we first got together with Pete Quaife.

# Too much monkey business

# Too much monkey business

# Too much monkey business for me to be involved with you... #

Pete was really important to our musical growth.

Because he was kind of like in the middle of me and Ray all the time.

You could feel that there was a little bit of animosity going on.

Ray going, "I'm going to be better than you,"

and Dave going "I'm going to be better than you.

Pete was a great eccentric.

Everything was larger than life. Everything was over the top.

He spent half his life lying.

It was like exaggeration.

If it's not interesting enough make it up, sort of guy.

I loved it.

I didn't realise until like Pete died

what an incredible bond the three of us had,

me, Ray and Pete, before we were even the Kinks.

I didn't know Ray that well in a way because he had a lot of...

problems

and he was quiet and withdrawn.

I just thought that's the way he is and that's all right.

When you're brought up in a big family,

everybody's different anyway.

And he went to art school.

I was more into the jazz clubs and the clubs

and the social scene rather than into art.

What put me off art at school is I had this horrible art teacher.

I was just, you know, as you do, just messing around,

and she laughed at my painting.

I thought, "Fuck it, I ain't going to do it."

I refused to do art then.

The big thing for us was the El Toro coffee bar in Muswell Hill Broadway,

where all the kids used to hang out.

# Come on, pretty baby Let's move it and a groove it... #

My first purple hearts came here.

I got expelled from school when I was just 15, I think.

Cos I was caught in the woods with my girlfriend

with my trousers down.

# Let me tell you baby It's called rock and roll... #

I'm lying in bed for three weeks, thinking, "This is great."

And then my mum says, "Come on, you've got to look for a job."

I eventually got a job in a music shop

in Leicester Square, where they fixed woodwind and saxophones.

I learnt a lot about how little musicians take care of their instruments.

We had a clarinet in one day and it was filthy.

It stunk.

All the pads were rotten.

"Oh, it's Acker Bilk's clarinet!"

Pete Quaife was working at a place called The Outfitter in Charing Cross.

The Outfitter was a fashion mag

and Pete was really into graphic art.

He was a really good artist, cartoonist.

As well as a great musician.

# Have I the right to hold you?

# You know I always told you... #

Me and Pete became really close,

we would meet at lunchtime or after work and go and seek out

all the clothes shops in Kingley Street and Carnaby Street,

way before it became Carnaby Street!

# Come right back

# I just can't bear it

# I've got some love and I long to share it

# Come right back I'll show my love is strong

# Oh Oh yeah... #

The fashion thing for me was very much like,

if older people didn't approve, we must be doing something right.

She looks familiar, doesn't she?

To walk down that road with slightly long hair was frowned upon.

I would go to a clothes shop and just get the silliest hat

I could find and just stick it on my head.

And just... You know.

'No, that's not the hat, that's a device for measuring the exact confirmation of the head.'

# Everybody's going for those kinky boots

# Kinky boots

# Kinky boots. #

Women's fashions were a lot more interesting than men's.

'Undercarriage up.'

'Beverly, meanwhile, is in landing strip.'

I really liked the clothes that my girlfriends wore

and I used to try them on.

PVC I thought was really interesting and leather.

Mannello and Davey made me a pair of thigh-length boots.

# Leather is so kinky

# Come and get those kinky boots

# Boots, kinky boots! #

The way I was, the music and the girls

and the self-expression and the clothes was all kind of interwoven,

all a part of the same adventure.

Because I was young, I couldn't get into the clubs,

they used to always let me in the back door.

The Piccadilly Club and Studio 51.

I went there one night and The Stones were playing.

# I'm going to love you night and day

# Well, you know my love will not fade away... #

Amazing. That was one of those moments.

Those "Uh" moments.

Me and Pete carried on playing together

while Ray was away at art school.

But, of course, we had a problem when Ray came back

into the fold, as it were.

We realised that if we were going to make a band,

we needed a singer.

None of us really knew that much about singing.

I always thought Ray should sing

because he could kind of mimic Buddy Holly quite good.

And we all liked Buddy.

As fate had it, we met two upper-class guys.

One was a stockbroker, Granville,

and the other one, Robert Wace.

I don't know if he came from an aristocratic family

or whether he faked it.

They were about 7'2" and still are.

They were rather sort of debonair and upper-class.

I remember Robert going to a restaurant

and ordering food and deliberately leaving half the food.

Cos that's what you did.

You didn't eat all your food. Whereas...

Whereas we'd go and eat and eat everything on the plate.

That was the way things were in our house.

If we didn't eat the food quick, someone else would have it.

Granville was looking for a band that could back up Robert

cos Robert fancied himself as a...

high-falutin' singer to impress all the debutants and his posh party friends.

# The changing of the guard

# We made our sacrifices

# We haven't got a butler or a maid... #

So we did a gig at the Grocer's Hall. Robert singing.

Us lot, The Ravens, playing.

We were doing a song called Rave On.

Robert was going,

POSH VOICE: # Rave on

# Rave on and tell me Tell me.. #

You know? In a really immaculate Saville Row suit.

And halfway through the song,

he hit the mic with his two front teeth

and he broke one of his teeth.

He runs off stage and we were still jamming away.

We thought someone's got to sing

and I'm sort of going like this to Ray.

So, Ray goes up to the mic and starts singing Rave On.

And it seemed so natural.

The band was born out of that funny gig.

And Robert and Granville decided to be our managers.

We thought, this is great.

Maybe we're going to hit the big-time.

So you've got a bunch of kids playing instruments,

wanting to conquer the world.

We didn't know what we were doing.

We took on two managers who didn't know what they were doing either,

so it's a recipe for either greatness or disaster.

# Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John

# He said he got the blues but he had a lot of fun

# Oh, baby

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh baby

# Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh baby

# We're having some fun tonight... #

We were just kids struggling.

Struggling for identity, trying to do something that we wanted to do

but didn't quite know what it was.

I found the Kinks by accident. I was going to a Chinese restaurant on New Year's Eve

and I saw all sorts of people coming in.

Long-haired boys...

amplifiers moving in.

And, all of a sudden, out came the music.

It was a group known as The Ravens,

a little while later known as the Kinks.

And from then on, I couldn't wait to get my hands on the Kinks.

We got a deal with Pye Records.

Ray and I were so excited because we were going to be on the same label as The Searchers.

# Sweets for my sweet Sugar for my honey... #

# Your first sweet kiss thrills me so... #

We were recording in the same studio so we thought, maybe we should do a couple of tunes like The Searchers.

One of our early singles before You Really Got Me was called You Still Want Me.

If you play it, you can imagine The Searchers in there somewhere.

# And you still want me

# And you still want me... #

But it flopped.

We had a couple of records and they flopped.

And...

BIRD SQUAWKS

HE LAUGHS

# ..And the wind is blowing cold across the moors... #

At that time, like '63, all the amps

had more of a clean tune, almost, to them.

The Adventures and The Shadows, they were good,

but I was looking for something that had a bit more balls and bite to it.

And a more expressive, aggressive sound.

I was always messing around with stuff.

I found this amp in a store up the road from where we lived.

It was about that big.

About that big.

A little green called Elpico.

I plugged it in and messed around with it.

It was too weedy. It was the same old, same old. Ching, ching, ching.

I got so fed up with it I got a razor blade, a single-sided Gillette,

got hold of the back of the amp and I sliced the comb all way round,

so the combs remained intact.

SCRATCHING

I didn't think for a minute it was going to work

but I plugged it in...

DISCORDANT GUITAR CHORDS

DOGS BARK

I didn't know anything about electricity.

I did get a terrible shock.

It did throw me across the room.

My mum came up the kitchen - "What you doing?"

So this sound I developed was like an emotional platform for me.

It felt like me.

It was like an extension of my own inner rage.

You Really Got Me was really born in the front room in Denmark Terrace.

Ray, one day, he came in and started playing on the piano.

That lovely old upright piano we had, which had all the beer over it from all parties

and all the piss-ups. It was always just perfectly out of tune.

That was another key moment, I think, when I played it on my guitar.

MUSIC: Opening Chords to "You Really Got Me"

And that was it. It was like climbing Everest.

The moment of clarity.

Before, you felt insecure, and then the event happens and you feel whole again.

I've been looking for that wholeness all my life,

whether it was in music or in relationships

or in the universe

or inside or...

Where is it?

These cliffs are about 1,100 ft, the highest cliffs in Britain.

In Victorian times, if you wanted to get rid of your missus,

you could bring her here or on holiday and push them of the cliff!

WOMAN SCREAMS

"OK, darling. Want to come for a little walk along the coast path(?)"

LOUD SPLASH

Throughout the Kinks' career, I don't think people knew what to do with the Kinks.

'One lump or two?'

We went into record You Really Got Me, and it sounded horrendous.

I think Ray was furious. We were all furious,

the fact that it was sounding so...horrible.

# Girl, you really got me going

# You got me so-o-o- I don't know what I'm doing... #

We wanted to re-record it, three amps, three guitars,

a drum kit, set up in a room.

That's what we wanted it to sound like.

So Robert paid 200 quid for a session.

They allocated two hours in the studio, that was it - "Forget it, next."

WALTZ MUSIC PLAYS

Next. The problems I had trying to record my guitar sound.

People would say, "You can't record that...noise."

If it hadn't been for Robert and Ray being pissed off, it might not have got made.

# Girl, you really got me going

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing

# Yeah, you really got me now

# You got me so I can't sleep at night

# Yeah, you really got me now

# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing

# Oh, yeah

# You really got me now

# You got me so I can't sleep at night

# You really got me You really got me

# You really got me. #

The first time that I heard it on Radio, I was in Greek Street

and I suddenly realised, this is something really special.

I think we lucked out of it, timing-wise.

It was just perfect timing for music to turn a different corner.

# ..You got me so I can't sleep at night

# You really got me. #

You Really Got Me was a very sexual sound.

# ..Ohhh... #

My first girlfriend was really jealous of my guitar,

because I used to take it to bed with me.

Just wanted to make sure it was OK.

A lot of young guitarists ask me questions about technique,

which I know virtually nothing about.

At that age, 15, 16, it would have been just pure rage,

or anger or, "What the hell?!" or panic, or all those things.

Aghhh!

You know? And it's all over with, it's only eight bars.

So, whew...

Only a crazy kid would play solo like that,

not a well-honed session man.

I mean, it's just pure.

I think the big thing about the Kinks is that we thought we were playing R'n'B,

but we were playing something nobody heard of before!

It was all so energy driven.

He doesn't sit back and think about anything.

It's just like, "Argh!" He just goes into it.

And that's the way he played guitar.

AUDIENCE SCREAMS

# I need you

# I need you more than birds need the sky

# I need you

# It's true, my little girl

# That you can lift the tears from my eyes

# But if you ever tell me goodbye

# I'll break down and you'll hear me cry

# I need you... #

It's wonderful to get that sort of acclaim and attention,

but there was an awful lot of jealousy towards the Kinks, or towards me and Ray.

Two scruffy kids - how dare they write music?

How dare they have success?

Ladies and gentlemen, at this point in the programme

it is my pleasure to present the awards to the Kinks

for the runner-up position in the Best New Group section.

Funnily enough, the Rolling Stones won the Best Newcomer award two years running.

For some reason, they just did not want to give it to the Kinks.

There was always a thing in the background - the Kinks didn't deserve it.

The guitarist can't string five chords together.

We were never in the club, we were outsiders because of a lot of things.

We didn't want to play the game. "You can join this club but there's rules." We never did that.

I thought that red hunting jackets were a bit of a silly idea at first until I put one on.

I thought "Hey! Cool."

It didn't feel like a uniform, it felt like a statement.

"Wow, makes me feel good. Maybe this ain't such a bad idea."

Robert was wonderful with that, really.

And Granville.

Because they came from that sort of background where you would go riding in Hyde Park.

It was quite common, it's what you do.

# I am a dull and simple lad

# Cannot tell water from champagne

# And I have never met the Queen

# And I wish I could have all that he has got... #

'60s girls often had long hair with a parting in the middle, like that.

I used to copy my girlfriends.

# Standing, standing

# We're gonna go now

# Who you gonna run to? #

I thought it was much more elegant to part the hair in the middle.

# ..You're chasing all the girls They can't resist your smile... #

One particular girlfriend I had had very long hair. She used to back-comb it

so it'd sort of come up like a little dome.

And I kind of did my hair like that.

# ..Pouring out your charm... #

I never really took it all that seriously

because I wanted to explore and express myself and have a good time.

There was, like, a little clique of these guys.

There was Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Dave Davies.

Watch out when this lot get together.

I mean, it was really...

Wow, very wild.

If they thought of anything, they'd do it.

They wouldn't consider any kind of consequences at all,

so it would be quite wild, quite wild.

You have to remember, there were an awful lot of chicks to fuck at times.

I'm sorry. Hang on, I'll do it again.

I was 15. We had, all of a sudden, limelight and TV

and earning money and excitement. I just went with it.

I was well up for it.

The girls all over the place. I could do what I liked.

I was a young man who was very virile and I liked sex.

GUNSHOT

I had the world at my feet.

The world at my dick.

I had a close relationship with a guy called Michael Aldred.

He was one of the comperes on Ready Steady Go!

Me and Michael had a really great time,

because he had a wonderful sense of humour and he looked a bit like a young Dirk Bogarde.

So I thought he looked really cool,

and he thought I looked ready cool, so we became close friends.

But I found, after a while,

Michael was taking our relationship...quite seriously

and that's when I saw the other side of it and I thought,

"Shit, I can't take advantage of his feelings like this.

"I can't tell him I'm just exploring and having a bit of fun."

It was like a soap opera drama, or something.

I'd come home, I'd be out all day shopping,

I'd be in about ten pubs and come home at midnight,

out my brains drunk, and Michael Aldred was there, with his apron on,

like he was being housekeeper, housewife.

And the guy, you know, loved me.

He said..."David..."

I can't say it without laughing!

"David, your beans on toast are in the oven, and they're burned.

"And that's it!"

And I had to console him in the garden for, like, an hour.

I thought, "What the hell am I getting into?

"I can't...

"What am I doing?"

Isn't it amazing here?

If you look across that landscape there, you could almost be on a different planet.

What was a really magical thing was me and Ray when we sang together.

I've got quite a high voice and I used to sing octaves with Ray.

Despite us being different personalities,

our different voices complemented each other.

One of my favourite Kinks songs was See My Friends.

# See my friends

# See my friends

# Playing across the river... #

The droning sound that we achieved from a really cheap old guitar that was detuned.

It created this hypnotic drone

and it sounded very Eastern and sitar-like.

It can kind of put you into a meditative state.

# ..She is gone

# She is gone and now there's no-one there

# Except my friends

# Playing across the river

# She is gone... #

See My Friends really set a trend towards Indian music.

A lot of other bands started to buy the actual sitars and tablahs

and all the real Indian instruments

to try and duplicate the sound we got on a cheap, detuned guitar.

Sound and light is all energy,

and the vibrations just vibrate in different frequencies.

I've always loved being beside water.

Running water is very cleansing to your thoughts and your mind.

# They call me Long Tall Shorty

# Cos I know what love is all about... #

Here at the Shindig! are the fantastic Kinks!

# ..They call me Long Tall Shorty

# Cos I know what love is all about

# Well, I can tell you where the lights go

# Ooh, when they go out... #

When we first went to America, the audience were saying, "Fabulous,"

audiences, but there was an older generation of Americans

that were very loath to get out of the '50s,

that really thought we were a threat, or something.

Because our music was a lot more aggressive and, I like to think, more sexual than the Beatles.

We were kind of a bit scruffy, a little bit wilder.

I had shoulder-length hair and, especially in Middle America or the South,

you'd get those slurs from Red Necks.

"Are you a boy or a girl?"

I'm both, actually.

And having a name like the Kinks doesn't really help.

But I loved it. I thrived on it, really, because I was a cheeky kid.

It seemed fun that people thought I was pissing them off.

# I'm a lover not a fighter

# Well, I'm a lover not a fighter

# Well, I'm a lover not a fighter

# And, man, I'm built for speed. #

On those shows like Shindig!, that we did in the States,

they were really heady times and it was very exciting.

I was 15, 16 years old,

playing in front of all these girls

and who knows how many millions of people were watching?

And I kind of just used to explode with excitement when I played my guitar.

You had Jimi Hendrix at that end, Noel Coward at the other end.

There was always me in the middle, rocking it back and forwards, you know?

I just thought it was being exciting and being expressive,

but I think they thought it was a bit sexual, maybe.

Like, "Maybe we shouldn't have this..."

We didn't realise how powerful the unions were.

Like, if they didn't like you, that was it. "You're out, mate."

Being banned from America was a big help for us.

We had to re-address the whole situation.

This could be a career,

and I should start learning how to play guitar!

Learn some scales and stuff, which is a real job.

There was a big shift in our music, moving away from those aggressive early, riff-driven songs,

and coming back home to our roots, Max Miller and stuff like that.

Stuff that our parents listened to.

# Friday evenings People get together

# Hiding from the weather

# Tea

# And toasted buttered currant buns

# How to compensate for lack of sun

# Because the summer's all gone

# La, la, la, la, la

# Oh, my poor rheumatic back

# Yes, yes, yes It's my autumn almanac... #

My mum and dad used to love to come to our shows.

We'd come off a big tour and go up the pub with my dad and his mates, play shove ha'penny.

You know? Darts and a pint.

# Mr Pleasant

# How is Mrs Pleasant?

# I hope the world is treating you right

# And your head's in the air

# And you're feeling so proud

# Because you're such a success

# And the whole wide world is on your side

# Hey, hey

# How are you today?

How's your father? How's your mother?

# How's your sister? How's your brother?

# How's your brand-new limousine? 24-inch TV screen?

# Is you like prosperity more than you like poverty?

# Life is easier now... #

A lot of the material was so heavily drawn from our background as kids.

A lot of the characters in early Kinks music was based on our own family.

Sometimes we teased Ray about some of the songs that he wrote.

It was really written by my family.

# Well, I said goodbye to Rosie Rooke this morning

# I'm going to miss her bloodshot, alcoholic eyes... #

He was writing about what I did a lot of the time, I'm sure of it.

Like Dandy.

I did the parting, and Ray wrote about it.

He was Oscar, and I was Wilde.

Ray would often pick the phone up and say, "Dave, I've got an idea, da-da-da-da," you know?

I'd come round and we'd sit round a piano and he'd play me...

..a core riff.

You could always tell when something was going to really work.

It's a collaborative thing.

We trigger each other. "Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, we should do that."

It goes backwards and forwards.

# In the summertime... #

I wanted to be supportive, helping each other, helping the family out,

and then Ray would come back a day or two later with the complete thing finished.

# ..Everybody's looking for the sun

# People strain their eyes to see

# But I see you and you see me

# And ain't that wonder? #

Ray can write a song about anything,

where I can't. It's got to be an emotion first.

# I've been crying all the winter

# I've been waiting for some good to come my way

# But I'll wait till the summer comes along

# Lord, have I done so much wrong?

When you're sitting down making a song, working on it,

are you trying to do anything other than enlarge your bank balance?

Um... Oh, definitely, you know.

-It's not just strictly a commercial...

-Oh, no.

-..venture?

Actually, if it was, I wouldn't be able to do it.

-If I thought of it that way I wouldn't be able to do it.

-How do you think of it?

It's funny because, you're not going to believe me, but I don't think of it when I do it.

You sort of have a few drinks, you sit down, and you think of something

that somebody's said or a television programme you saw, say, somebody in Vietnam getting shot or something,

and it, sort of, forms a pattern in your brain. Like a dream.

Like playing, I suppose you can compare it to dreaming, as well.

Lots of things compressed

and it explodes.

# You don't have to look at me

# You don't have to smile at me

# You just got to love me till the sun shines... #

I started to find, as the years get to about 67, 68,

I used to go in the studio and my hand ached,

from just drinking and pill-popping...

...just burning the candle at both ends.

One day, you wake up and you think,

"What's the point?

"What am I doing?"

Death Of A Clown, I wrote in that same front room at the house.

The vibes in that room always felt happy to me.

My sister's got married and they came to the reception in that room,

and the family gatherings were happy.

It was like a focus of energy.

# My make up is dry

# And it clags round my chin

# I'm drowning my sorrows in whisky and gin

# The lion tamer's whip doesn't crack any more

# The lions, they won't bite and the tigers won't roar

# La la-la la la la-la la

# So let's go and drink to the death of a clown... #

The Death Of A Clown thing just came out of what I hit on the piano,

because I was in that mood of not being happy with

the situation in my life and feeling like it should be something else.

Those yearning feelings do stimulate you to want to write or play something.

So, I expressed it in a song.

# Let's all drink to the death of a clown.... #

It's about the solution.

I realised that going out, drink and drugs and girls -

beautiful girls, as well, I might add - the lifestyle with it

was just like the analogy within a clown -

trying to make people laugh and in the end, just crying.

# So won't someone help me to break up this crown

Let's all drink to the death of a clown... #

Everybody wanted me to go solo.

Robert and Grenville, especially, wanted me to go on tour.

They would do, with the money and stuff.

They kept saying I could be a huge success.

# Oh, Susannah's bedraggled

# But she still wears the locket round her neck

# She's got a picture on a table of a man who is young and able

# Oh, Susannah's gonna cry

# Oh, Susannah's still alive

# Whisky or gin, that's all right

# There's nothing in her bed at night

# She sleeps with the covers down hoping that somebody gets in

# It doesn't matter what she does She knows that she can't win

# Oh, Susannah's gonna cry... #

I did put two or three solo singles out, without the Kinks, but I thought, "No, we're a family.

"Let's continue and see where it takes us."

Let's hear it for Mr Death Of A Clown, Dave Davies.

APPLAUSE

Now, this thing about the rivalry between me and Ray,

I didn't know anything about, until I was about 18, 19, 20 years old.

Because it never struck me that there was any rivalry or jealousy.

So it came as a big surprise to me when people started to talk about it.

There's two mountain goats sparring up there.

# Sylvilla looked into her mirror

# Percilla looked into the washing machine

# And the drudgery of being wed

# She was so jealous of her sister

# And her liberty and her smart young friends

# She was so jealous of her sister... #

I could say that I was a victim of a very abusive relationship,

but that's not really what we want to do, is it? No.

If we make a list of all the bad things that happen to us

and moan about them, it's really unproductive.

Even the people we don't like, or at times think we don't like, are there for a reason,

for our own personal growth.

The blame thing is unhelpful.

If there hadn't been bad times, I might not have got interested in spiritual things.

I'm thankful to have Ray as a brother, even though he's an arsehole,

because it made me look at life differently.

I thought, "He's my brother, I love him.

"He does something to me that I don't like, what do I do?

"Hit him over the head? Shoot him? What's the point of that?"

I can't change him.

# Picture yourself when you're getting old

# Sat by the fireside, a-pondering on

# Picture book Pictures of your mama

# Taken by your papa a long time ago

# Picture book of people with each other

# To prove they loved each other a long time ago... #

After three years, when we could go back to the States again,

it was a totally, totally different mood.

It was like starting all over again.

Instead of all the little teeny girls screaming,

trying to rip your clothes off, there were all these grey-faced,

bearded men - not women.

Really dour, kind of down beaten, lying on the floor,

"Yeah, sure."

The bands were heavier and serious and darker.

It was a very dark period.

# I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you...

# Fire! I'll take you to burn... #

Rock and roll had a looming sort of feeling about it.

# Burn, burn, burn, burn!

# Ah ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha... #

America went into that Vietnam zone,

and the mood and life

became very, very serious, all of a sudden.

These young people, instead of them partying and smoking dope,

wearing flowers in their hair, suddenly realised they were being called up to kill and get killed.

# Land of hope and Gloria

# Land of my Victoria

# Land of hope and Gloria

# Land of my Victoria... #

It was hard, because the support structure started to collapse,

with our management leaving.

Pip leaving.

It was kind of like in no-man's land.

We were so out of fashion, out of touch with what people were going through.

Fortunately, there was a cult thing about the Kinks and it was weird.

The Americans seemed to pick up on that, where the English didn't.

JIMI HENDRIX GUITAR RIFF

The only time I spoke with Jimi Hendrix was when

we sat next to each other on a plane going to Sweden, for some TV thing.

He didn't talk a lot, but he said he thought

You Really Got Me, the guitar sound was a landmark guitar sound.

I always thought that, coming from him, that was,

you know, quite a compliment.

Mitch Mitchell, Jimi's drummer, lived for a while in my house that I rented in Muswell Hill.

We went away on tour and he used to keep pigeons

under the bed.

Weird. When we got back, threw him out.

On the back of a so-called flop,

which I always regard as one of our best albums -

Arthur - we started to build up again.

I was thinking, "I don't think it's done yet, because people want this

"and if people want this, we must be doing something right."

# Well, sit by the fire in your Shangri-La... #

And I knew that Ray was going through an immensely creative,

as well as a destructive, period.

So I thought, "We've just got to ride it out."

I had a really, really bad time in 1973.

It was obviously the drugs and stuff as well, but the sort of lifestyle.

You think, "What the hell am I doing flying on a plane,

"across the other side of the world? Horrible and I feel tired.

"Am I supposed to be a rock star? Is that what I'm supposed to do?"

We were playing a beer festival.

It was a beer-sponsored thing in New York.

I felt I was in a bad way. I could play, I could get by,

go back to the hotel room and then it started - hearing voices.

I'm thinking, "This is what mad people do."

I heard stories about this woman walking down the street talking to imaginary people.

I'd think, "Hey, fucking, hey."

I haven't really spoken in depth about it to many people

because it's being in the land of the insane, it's not a very nice place.

I was sitting in a hotel room, the whole of the day on Eighth Avenue,

looking out

and hearing these voices saying, "Jump out of the window."

It's like me saying to you, "Julian, come on, jump, jump.

"Go on, jump."

And there's nobody there.

My senses all kind of...

All over the place.

I'm trying to function, get up and sleep and trying to get up,

tune my guitar and I suddenly said, "Please let's get back to England, let's get back home,

"see what the fuck's going on here."

And it was awful.

I called it a psychic death.

I felt that there must be ways to combat this, and Ray did,

trapped in his own hell, his own world, and I was trapped in mine.

We were brothers living only a few miles apart and we couldn't connect in that way.

I decided the only way that I was going to get out of this hell,

my own little private hell, was to work on it myself.

The mind's so easily persuaded in so many different directions.

Use the imagination to make it work for us, instead of against us.

It's restructuring your thought process - reprogramming.

When you feel, "I can't get out of bed, can't get out of bed, I'm too depressed."

It just drags you down and down and down,

into an abyss that some people can't get out of.

And there's the ruins of an old monastery.

I don't know if I can get up there, but quite an exceptional place.

I got interested in spiritualism.

I knew a bit about astrology and a bit about yoga and I thought,

"I'll get into a regime where I can do my yoga every day and do some meditation."

The yogis talk about working on the energy of the mind and knock it into shape, for Christ's sake.

I became more introvert.

From being, like,

out there, I was more like this.

Sensitivity has a price and I think, all that money does,

it creates a moat around your life.

You might be sensitive, but you are protected from experience.

Although we were written off at this point,

the Kinks did succeed in coming back to conquer America again.

# And it's back where we started

-# Here we go round again

-Here we go round again

# Back where you started Do it again, do it again... #

There's no such thing as failing at anything.

You don't fail, you have an experience.

It is a means to progress further.

I think Kinks' music is music of hope

and humour and reality.

People do fuck up, they do mess up, they trip up.

Martin, my eldest son, and I decided it would be cool

if we made a film about my mystical journey.

An introduction to so many aspects of magic, the golden dawn, occultism,

spiritualism and all the allied areas that you can investigate.

It has been a main thread throughout my life and career through the Kinks, anyway.

It isn't like something I just woke up one day and thought, "Oh, that's interesting."

It's tying to understand mystical elements in our lives that are very real.

HE SINGS "JERUSALEM": # And did those feet in ancient times

# Walk upon England's mountain green?.. #

Sorry!

It is better for us to control our own minds than

someone else do it for us, like some organised religion might do.

The main battle we all have is about inside, with ourselves.

I think, in the '70s, when I went through that bad time, I think

when I went within, wondering if I could play any more,

kind of motivated me to think maybe I could use this energy for some sort of healing.

When you're playing music,

on the big stage with thousands and thousands of people, there is a helluva lot of energy flowing around

that auditorium that most people don't even know about.

It's what's entertainment is.

It's about bringing people up and out of their isolation,

that they can join the party.

The Aschere Project is something I put together with my son Russell,

who is a very accomplished musician in his own right.

He sent me some ideas on MP3s. I went for a drive over Exmoor

and walked across the sea and I listened to this music and thought,

"I can see this story emerging."

# When you sleep I am there with you

# When you wake, I will protect you

# When you dream I will show you... #

It's a love story between a man and a woman that are separated by time and space.

The night skies in Exmoor, with the stars, inspired the thought

of separation, the girls, one side of the universe, and the guys, stuck on earth.

They devise a mystical way to get back together.

If it gets a bit too way out, it's still just about love and lovers.

It's also the underlying thread in the album is the love between a father and a son working together.

When you are actually immersed in a creative thing with your own son,

it is like joy.

All these ideas I get, if I can get them from here or here into a bit of

music and put some words with it, that is me functioning at my best.

Ray and I have talked about doing new Kinks recordings, but it doesn't feel right to me.

It's like trying to repaint a Rembrandt or something.

Those wonderful pieces of music weren't done like that.

They sort of appeared through Ray's consciousness

and my energy and the other people around us.

It's the imperfections that helped develop us as a spiritual being.

Getting back to that thing I was talking about earlier,

about finding those moments of clarity or moments of oneness.

Maybe a second, a split second.

-# Waterloo sunset's fine

-Waterloo sunset's fine... #

So many times me and Ray have been on stage

and something will happen and we'll look at each other and we'll know the whole atmosphere has changed.

In a way, Ray and I were magicians, without realising it,

purely because of that love bond.

So, playing something together, it automatically had that love vibration.

Maybe it is good that you get two people that think totally different.

Because it is something opposite in front of us,

it helps us try and figure out how we fit into the whole thing.

# Waterloo sunset's fine. #

APPLAUSE

I once read somewhere that Ray said, if he had to do it all over again, he'd change every single thing.

That's so amazingly funny or curious because I wouldn't change any of it.

# Where are you going to? I don't mind

# I have killed my world and I have killed my time

# So where do I go? What will I see?

# I see many people coming after me

# So where you going to? I don't mind

# And if I lived too long I'm afraid I'll die

# To peace we find Tell you what I'll do

# Everything I own I will share with you

# Strangers on this road, we are one

# We are not two, we are one

# Strangers, on this road, we are one

# We are not two, we are one

# I'm not like everybody else

# I'm not like everybody else. #

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