The Prescience of Ray Davies

A Well-Respected Man, Indeed

In the British Invasion, The Beatles and Rolling Stones are Mt. Rushmore - when listing your faves or influences, you needn’t name them or rank them. Without them, rock and roll as we know it wouldn’t exist. Without them, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and many other master creators would be unknown to the average, casual consumer. Music geeks would know them, of course. But The Beatles and Rolling Stones reinforced their greatness. They inspired the average listener to take some deep dives.

For me, there’s another layer of artist without whose input I would be somewhat incomplete. Those artists are The Zombies and The Kinks.

Fortune has shined twice upon me and my love of Sir Ray Davies’ quirky and exceptionally British music hall tunes, prescient and melancholic lyrics, and the colorful characters who populate his songs.

Ray as FLASH from School Boys in Disgrace

In July and August 1978, Blondie opened some of The Kinks’ North American tour dates. By that time, Pleasant and I were quite close with all the Blondies, and we pretty much went to any show on a whim, knowing we would be welcomed and taken care of. The tour had a San Diego date, and with the proximity to Tijuana, a favorite road trip for us anyway, there was no question we would go. My sister joined Kid Congo Powers (then still Brian Tristan), Pleasant, and me.

Brian Tristan, the future Kid Congo Powers, and Pleasant Gehman

The weekend before the show, Pleasant and I went to our favorite quarterly rummage sale at the Beverly Hills All Saints Church. In the $1 per bag game, we really scored. I found green satin Schiaparelli pumps in my size and a fabulous dress with neon chartreuse and hot pink diagonal stripes.

I think these shoes were originally gold and then dyed green. Over the years, I noticed gold pentimento

Both Pleasant and I - brunettes with olive skin tone - tried on the dress and despite ADORING IT, agreed neither of us looked good in it. I bought it anyway. On Tuesday night, we visited Blondie at the Tropicana and I brought the dress, “gift-wrapped” in hot pink yarn and Debbie was as thrilled about it as we were.

Early Wednesday morning, we all piled into my little Honda Civic and headed off to Tijuana. Pleasant, Kid, and I had made this journey so many times, we didn’t need any directions. Blondie and The Kinks were playing at San Diego State University’s athletic stadium, so we figured it would be easy to find or get directions for at a gas station after we were done with Tijuana.

Once we did arrive the university, we hung out in a clean and well-appointed backstage and hospitality area. We noticed a long rope on the ground and jokingly challenged Blondie’s keyboard player, Jimmy Destri to make some knots - like a Boy Scout or sailor. And then Pleasant and my sister thought it would be fun to tie him up - for the camera, of course!

It was about the time that we agreed to untie Jimmy (after he told us he knew how to tie a noose) that Ray Davies sauntered in, looking for solace from his band / brother dynamic and probably to chat Debbie up. Clem introduced us and I was thrilled as could be. Clem was over-the-top excited to be on tour with Mick Avory. Clem and Mick remained pals until Clem’s dying day.

One surprise after another - meeting Ray Davies was HUGE, but so was seeing Debbie wearing the dress I had given her just the previous night when she walked out on stage. I swear I talked to myself. She altered it herself - shortening it by about 6 inches.

In the years since this concert tour, I have read public/social media comments from people who saw Debbie perform in this dress - comments such as “Stephen Sprouse designed that for her.” While the fabulous late designer was friends with Debbie, and designed in that pop/punk manner, he did not design this dress! He launched his design career in 1983, and while he did favor Day-Glo (tm) colors, this dress was made long before 1978, which is when it was in the church rummage sale where I bought it, for probably 25 cents ($1 a bag, remember?).

This 1988 Sprouse design is the closest thing in his body of work that resembles my 1978 rummage sale find.

BUT I DIGRESS!!

Ray Davies. Sir Ray to you!

I wrote about this second fortunate experience with Ray in a post last June:

In 1995, Ray Davies embarked upon a one-man-show tour called The Storyteller, where he read from his book, X RAY, and sang his hits, accompanied by a guitarist, Pete Matheson.

At this time, I was working at VH1 and was in New Orleans for a few days in advance of the final show of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ DOG WITH WINGS tour (which was October 8, 1995). The New York Times was delivered to the hotel room every morning and on Thursday morning October 5, I read Neil Strauss’s column, The Pop Life. In it, he reviewed X RAY and revealed that “On Oct. 19, Mr. Davies is to perform a solo, acoustic concert at the Academy. He said he would play a set of Kinks songs that move through his book chronologically -- from the garage rock of “You Really Got Me” to the pristine pop ballad “Waterloo Sunset” to the comical “Lola” -- with occasional breaks for readings from the book.”

Well, there was absolutely no doubt that I would be at this show. Even though I would be back in NYC well in advance of the concert, I immediately called the two main promoters in NYC to figure out which one of them was presenting the show, and got tickets. Monday was “Columbus Day, observed” and I was not going to wait until I was in town on Tuesday to miss getting a good seat.

After the show, I reverted to being a teenage stage-door-Johnny and waited for Ray so I could ask, “Do you remember me from the 1978 tour when Blondie opened for The Kinks?” When I explained the circumstances under which we met, he said, “Yes, you were there! Do you still have Debbie Harry’s phone number?”

I actually got Ray’s number to pass on to Debbie (cuz you don’t give your gal pal’s number out to anyone - not even, or maybe especially not to a rock star, even if she, too, is a rock star) and had an even better proposition for Ray. While I was waiting for him to exit the stage door, I caught up with one of my co-workers who directed our live concert programs. He asked me, “Why weren’t we filming this?” As I was in a position to instigate such things, I assured him that I was indeed going to proposition Ray with filming.

I explained to Ray what I had been doing in the years since we last saw one another and asked if he was interested in VH1 filming a special of his one-man-show (knowing him already, I offered money right off the bat; I had a budget). He gave me his agent’s info, and told me to make him an offer and then to let him (Ray) know when I had transmitted it, and he would vouch for me.

That, dear reader is really how VH1 Storytellers got its start. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes, the channel wanted their own version of UNPLUGGED, but it wasn’t until I propositioned Ray (and his stage show was actually called The Storyteller) that the pieces came together. And Ray corroborates me to this day.

In advance of the filming, which took place on February 20, 1996, I shot practice video of his performance over several nights of his regularly scheduled shows at NYC’s Westbeth Theatre (which is also where we filmed Storytellers). Each night after the show, Ray and I would decamp to the erstwhile Tortilla Flats restaurant to review the show and plot the filming. There’s a sizable die-hard Kinks fan contingent in the area, and they showed up too.

Our show was nominated in the 1996 Cable Ace Awards - and we were competing against two other series produced under my purview. Ray said I would cancel myself out, and he was right.

Because the Emmys started recognizing achievements in cable television, the Cable Ace Awards held their last ceremony in 1997, and VH1 Storytellers was again nominated.

So - Ray’s prescience

I’m leaving it til last because you will have gleaned from the story directly before this, he was right about many real-world things. He had, after all, lived through so many cultural shifts, from the 1940s to present day - he had seen it all.

As for me and The Kinks, I loved everything I heard from the riff-heavy “You Really Got Me” and its mirror, “All Day and All of the Night” to the whimsical concept albums and ditties like “Village Green” on the album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. It was released in 1968, and by that time, I had already been taking photos (I hijacked my parent’s Leica Rangefinder and 8mm movie camera; we had Polaroids and Instamatics - we made memories!) since the age of 5, and at the age of 10, hearing “Picture Book,” I felt Ray was on to something accurate that was also a nice song:

Picture book, pictures of your mama
Taken by your papa, a long time ago
Picture book, of people with each other
To prove they love each other
A long time ago

Everything about this simple lyric was actually complex - sure, take it at face value - but reading between the lines exposes family and interpersonal dramas without saying they exist, but absolutely signaling that they do. Popular music became a great educational tool for me - in the soft skills of understanding people, relationships, the world. The Kinks followed Village Green with another concept album, Arthur, and then Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround. The social commentary on Lola (“Apeman” and “The Moneygoround,” especially addressed societal pressures on individuals who just wanted to live without pressures) are perennial discontents. But the prescience of Ray Davies truly shines in the hit song, “Lola.” From the controversial (in terms of “standards and practices”) name-checking of Coca-Cola to the gender bending attraction and acceptance. Shocking! Just as, if not maybe more shocking in 1970 than the film THE CRYING GAME in the 1990s.

My favorite Kinks album, Muswell Hillbillies, came next, in 1971. It was not a hit in the United States nor in the Kinks’ own England. By “not a hit,” I mean the record failed to chart in the UK and only reached 100 on the Billboard charts in the USA. The record BUSINESS doesn’t like it when a smash hit (such as “Lola”) doesn’t have another smash hit follow up. I fell in love with Muswell Hillbillies from the first track, “20th Century Man.”

Talk about prescient! In 1971, Ray Davies was commenting on things we complain about today… 55 years later… just call it 21st Century and it still fits.

Even the grunge / Gen X listeners who were just babies or born with this record said the same things in the 1990s:

How is this different than “Head Like a Hole” or anything by Nirvana? It’s just earlier.

And one-fourth of the way into the 21st Century, as the trendspotters insist ANALOGUE IS BACK (and I say it never left), Ray insisted on staying analogue half another century ago:

20th Century, man!

But for me, the kicker is in the title track itself. In “Muswell Hillbillies,” the narrator is being sent to some kind of home (old age, one presumes) and he most certainly objects to the dehumanization. Ray specifically pointed out / predicted some of the most pernicious discontents of the 21st Century, man.

Remember, this record was released in 1971.

ladies and gentlemen- Sir Ray Davies, one of my favorite social commentators, songwriters, rock and rollers, and Englishmen.

Please enjoy this performance of “Waterloo Sunset” that Ray performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. The audio isn’t very good, but it’s a clip that shows him arriving at the stage in a London black taxi…. so very bloody English!

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