Ray Davies on the American Journey

Published by Interrobang Staff at December 13, 2013

Musician Ray Davies is best known as lead singer, songwriter and founding member of The Kinks. Since the Kinks disbanded in 1996 he’s also put out five solo albums, including “The Kinks Choral Collection”- a beautiful re-imagining of some of the great Kinks’ singles performed by a chorus, and a new album that was released after this interview was recorded, “See My Friends.” Earlier this year he stopped by the SiriusXM studios to sit down with Ron Bennington and talk about his new book, “Americana.” Excerpts from the interview appear below. You can find the full interview exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

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Ron Bennington: This book is fascinating on so many levels, but a big part of it is this wrestling match I think that we all go through in America. This kind of love, and then, “What the fuck?” that we all have with America. You have toured this country, do you even know how many times?

Ray Davies: I don’t. I know the first two times. The first time we came here in the mid ‘60s was a catastrophe which resulted in a ban by the American unions. So we couldn’t come back for four years, which the book goes into. And then when we came back, the only way we could really make our mark here – because when we couldn’t tour, it’s pre-MTV. You couldn’t get on TV, you couldn’t get on the radio, really, unless you toured. So, it was really relentless touring, one tour after another. Sometimes three, four times a year.

Ron Bennington: Just slugging it out, just battling back to really your rightful place. Because, for a band, those first couple of years are so important to play live and establish yourself with the audience.

Ray Davies: Sure. And it was a British Invasion, of course. We couldn’t tour here – I think it took the big years away from us when could’ve played things like Monterey, Woodstock… Actually, maybe they did us a favor by banning us. In the formative years, when we were having lots of hits – singles hits – we couldn’t play here. And I wrote lots of English music – “Village Green Preservation Society,” “Waterloo Sunset,” “Sunny Afternoon,” “Days,” which became kind of classic hits in England, but they were relatively unknown in America because of that. So when we came back here in the ‘70s, we just toured relentlessly with albums like “Muswell Hillbillies,” “Everybody’s in Show-Biz,” which had songs like “Celluloid Heroes” on it. So we really started from nowhere again.

Ron Bennington: But the kind of beauty of that from an artistic point of view is that when they put up that block, it forces you to keep writing. You could not rest on your laurels.

Ray Davies: Well, I was like a man possessed with writing. We signed with a new label, RCA Records. We started with “Muswell Hillbillies” and we went into concept albums: “Preservation,” “Schoolboys in Disgrace,” “Soap Opera,” which we played at Madison Square Garden – Felt Forum, and places like the Spectrum, theatrical shows. And then we reached a point where we decided to really crack the market, after building a core audience we signed with Clive Davis’s Arista label, and that’s where the commercial success really started to kick in again.

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Ray Davies Talks About Coming Back To America After The Kinks Were Banned

Ron Bennington: Your stuff is always new.

Ray Davies: I think that the struggle after the band is, as I say in “Americana” – “Americana,” the book, is about that journey back and what drove us to get back to America, and what instilled the energy in us. Because we were a particularly English – particularly during the band, I wrote very, very English material, which I say… To be fair, Mo Ostin at Warner/Reprise did their best to launch some sort of Kinks campaign while we were a band. And when we came back there was a core underground kind of audience ready for us, and it was perfect for the times. Because when we came back, there were bands like Frank Zappa, Mothers of Invention, The Doors… We had some sort of, on the wave of that, rebirth in many respects.

Ron Bennington: You talk about America. Did you see the changes since the first time you came over? Is the change a constant in this country as well?

Ray Davies: It does. What I’ve tried to do is parallel our career with [the] American journey. Because when we first came here, Kennedy had just been shot a few years earlier. So much was suppressed and even more conservative than it is now. And that’s why we were banned, I think. We had a sort of radical and stupid English sensibility that people didn’t really… The first time I came through the American immigration, the immigration man said, “Are you a Beatle or a girl?” I said, “I’m a girl, and so is my brother.” So I knew we wouldn’t hit it off. And it has to do with sensibility. But during the British Invasion, when we came back four years later, there was a new American humor. Humor had changed, TV had changed, attitudes had changed. Of course, there was civil rights movement, which I talk about in the book. I think it paralleled our journey, because during that four years, you had the space race. And I talk about a fantastic confrontation I had with Joe Frazier, the heavyweight champion of the world. I met him in Howard Johnson’s on 8th Avenue, and someone spiked my drink the night before I played Lincoln Center somewhere. Just as I went on stage, somebody gave me a drink, which I thought was Coca-Cola, and it was spiked.

Ron Bennington: A little something extra.

Ray Davies: Yeah, and I wandered around the city all night and then I ended up on this Howard Johnson’s, which is not a great part of 8th Avenue, maybe it’s not anymore, but… I jumped in the line, this guy next to me said, “Hey, wait your turn.” I said, “Alright, man. Don’t give me a hard time. Who are you?” He said, “My name’s Joe Frazier, I’m the heavyweight champion of the world.” So, even great champions have to eat at Howard Johnson’s.

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Ray Davies Talks About Getting Shot

Ron Bennington: We really should take a moment to say you could’ve been shot a lot times, not just the once.

Ray Davies: Oh yeah. Yeah. The critics often try.

Ron Bennington: Wandering around New York tripping in the middle of the night back in those days, not the best idea you’ve ever had.

Ray Davies: No. When you’re young and innocent, you do that.

Ron Bennington: Absolutely.

Ray Davies: When I was in New Orleans, when I stayed down there, I used to go jogging at night in the Tremé area, as if it was Muzzle Hill in London. People say, “You don’t do that!” But when I got attacked, it was in bright daylight and unexpected. The book goes into a lot of detail about that time.

Ron Bennington: The book does go into a lot of detail, and it’s amazing writing, by the way. I mean, it takes you right to that – there’s occasional times I had to put it down for a couple of minutes because this is something that could happen to anyone at any time. And we always sit around and talk about, “Well, at least I have my health.” But when you lose your health, nothing is more important.

Ray Davies: Yup. And the amazing thing about me down there – I love the city, it’s a great city. But the thing with me is, I lost my identity for a few hours. I was this this person called “Unknown Purple,” which is a wristband they put on me, because I lost all my ID. I’m not the most well-known face in the rock music world, so I was an anonymous person on a stretcher called “Unknown Purple,” and it goes into a whole identity thing. I didn’t have a music entourage with me, didn’t have a tour entourage with me. I was basically by myself, apart from a few good friends I had there in New Orleans. So, it was a life-changing experience.

Ron Bennington: And did that change your writing too? Did that change the way you started to approach music after that?

Ray Davies: Well, what I did – I was so frightened in hospital because it wasn’t just a gunshot, it was all things to do with your heart and pulse rate, and a lot of other scares – to keep my mind occupied I wrote lyrics on a notepad in the hospital. And out of that came many of the new songs that are quoted in the book. So, that’s the way I get out of trouble – when in trouble, I write my way out of it.

Ron Bennington: But those songs, too, are so sentimental in interesting ways. You would think you could become more cynical from something like that happening, but these songs I think embrace life more than maybe any of your other music.

Ray Davies: I think, if nothing else, I think millions of people have been in this situation. I’d just like to say at this point, what happened to me – I got shot and I had a lot of medical problems as a result – but in the big picture with what happens in the world every day, it’s the equivalent of a toothache. But at the same time, it’s big for me. It puts life into perspective, and maybe makes you write things – probably I would’ve written things differently if this thing hadn’t happened to me. So, it has entered my creative spirit and made me rethink a lot of issues.

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Ray Davies Talks About People Dealing With Trauma

Ron Bennington: Well, even when you said, “It’s just a toothache,” a toothache is not a big thing until it’s yours. So, when you’re dealing with physical pain or psychic trauma which takes place from an attack, it’s very difficult to think of anything else. And to come out of that is always an extreme, I think, spiritual change on some level.

Ray Davies: You talk about trauma victims, all the big issues with vets: the Vietnam, war, the Iraq, or Afghanistan. Terrible trauma those people are going though. I hope in some way that I can, through my own small project, highlight some of the issues that are going on there. Of course, it’s a terrible issue that has to be addressed all over the world, expats, ex-military.

Ron Bennington: It’s horrible. And when you find out that someone else has experienced it, it helps you to think that, “OK, what is happening to me is OK. I’m not crazy, this is something that goes on when you’ve been through trauma.”

Ray Davies: Yeah, I think near the end of the book, when I kind of rationalize what’s happening to me – and some of these songs I did write at the time are going to be recorded soon, so there will be new music with it. But it’s putting life in perspective.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. And then you find out when you’ve been through something traumatic, if you turned on the TV, for some reason we treat trauma as entertainment. So you’re constantly seeing people shooting each other in movies –

Ray Davies: Well I go into it in the book: when I’m in trauma room, they’ve got a TV above my bed showing a James Bond marathon. People get shot every five seconds.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. It’s the last thing you want. And then you’re like, “Well, what the hell has been wrong with me? I’ve been watching this kind of stuff for years.” But when it happens, it’s not entertainment. It’s not a game.

Ray Davies: Yeah, I know.

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Ray Davies Talks About Justice

Ron Bennington: The person who shot you has still never been brought to justice.

Ray Davies: Yeah. I know his name, I know where he lives, but you have to join the queue if you want to get him.

Ron Bennington: Isn’t that amazing?

Ray Davies: Well, that’s the way it is. And it says a lot about the justice system in Louisiana. The government doesn’t give enough funds to public defenders – they can’t afford public defenders, most of these characters can’t afford that. And they almost like people to go free rather than go through the expense. Funny thing in the book, I talk about when I was on the stretcher, on the gurney, being attended, having my leg pumped for the residue, there were two guys next to me in chains from the Louisiana State Penitentiary complaining they were not being seen fast enough. [laughs]

Ron Bennington: So here you are, the victim – sitting, laying right next to two guys who probably would’ve done it if they would’ve had the chance. But here, everyone rests comfortably in this room.

Ray Davies: One of them had been shot because they were trying to escape. [laughs]

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Ray Davies Talks About Helping Kids

Ron Bennington: So many great stories, but it’s always about music for you, right? It’s been an obsession since you were a kid.

Ray Davies: Yeah, I don’t know why music – I say in the book, I’m a lousy communicator apart from my songs. It has a lot to do with me. I’ve had issues when I was a kid. I had to go to special schools because I didn’t communicate with my school people. I learnt through those classes to use art, then music to be a voice. I think a lot of kids out there now, without music they’d be lost. That was why I was trying to develop this music program in New Orleans with the local marching band. I was going to work with them to develop new- them to write new music, instead of just doing the classics at Mardi Gras. Because it’s a short leap from being a school kid in New Orleans – as it is now in most parts of America, but there particularly – there was not many chances – you had to be a waiter, get a menial job, or you get into drug culture, which is always waiting around the corner. The music therapy clinic was something I was trying to set up there.

Ron Bennington: The interesting part of that too, when talking about kids, is that so many times we look at them at that age and want them to be normal. Like, “Oh, make sure they take these classes, and have a normal life.” But, so many times when kids don’t fit in, it’s because they’re extraordinary. There’s other things that they could do besides just follow along.

Ray Davies: When I was down there, I was trying to create an exchange program for the school – it was called John McDonald school on Esplanade Avenue, and a school in East London called Hackney school, where the demographic is roughly the same. Trying to get a way for them to exchange cultures, and I was on the way to doing that when this happened.

Ron Bennington: Just seeing how much they’re alike as well as being different at that age.

Ray Davies: Yeah, but their lives – the music is different. A lot of those kids wouldn’t have known my music that I was working with, but it’s not the music so much, it’s the spirit behind it, and what the music does to allow people – particularly deprived kids who don’t have much choice – a way to express themselves. And if music can do that, whether it be through rap, whether it’s through hip-hop or rock music, or folk music, it is an important thing to instill in them.

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Ron Bennington: The book is terrific, Ray, but I wouldn’t have expected anything else. You’ve written some of the greatest songs of all time, and now a couple of great memoirs, and this is a fantastic one. As we say, if you love music and writing – because not a lot of people can sit down and explain where their heads were when they wrote certain songs – but also a great thing, if anyone’s been through trauma, here’s a way to see that there is some light on the other side of that darkness. Thank you so much, buddy.

Ray Davies: My pleasure, man.

Ron Bennington: I’ll see you next time coming through.

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