Getting People Over the Beatles: A Series Examining the Greats of British (and UK) Pop Music (part 59)

by Jamie
Rereading one of my favorite books about rock music recently (‘Britpop! Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock’ by John Harris) I was struck by a wonderfully perceptive quote from Jarvis Cocker that gets to the heart of the matter just four sentences. It almost seems like it could be a thesis to this entire Series as well:

“When British pop is great, it’s great because of the personality in the music. The sense of the romantic in the everyday. Ray Davies finding the poetic in the sun going down over Waterloo Station. You don’t get that much in American rock.”

So with that today, I offer what I consider to be the greatest Pop band Britain has ever produced: the Ray Davis led Kinks.

Saying this one then realizes how difficult, and perhaps arbitrary it is to nominate a single album from their catalog today. It would just barely speak on the albums brilliance and more about my personal preference. But, as I said last week all great bands have a stretch in their career of about 3 to 5 years where nothing is released but supreme masterpieces, and the Kinks run, from roughly 1966 to 1971 is second to none. Just consider the albums in order: Face to Face, Something Else by the Kinks, The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), Lola vs. the Powerman & the Money-Go-Round, Pt. 1, and finally their most underrated album Muswell Hillbillies (there is also untold riches in the singles from this era as well). From there there would be a smattering of high points (sometimes it’s just a single track like ‘Celluloid Heroes’, and sometimes it’s a complete album, like Misfits from 1978) but never did they reach that point consistently again. And, this is more then understandable and perfectly fine, that run is perhaps the greatest ever (and you could even go a little earlier if you wanted to as something like Kinks Kontroversy from 1965 is great too). The fact that this era also coincided with a late 1965 ban by the US Government that stipulated the band not be allowed to enter the country that wasn’t lifted until late 1969 meant that they were deprived of the largest market in the world and their most brilliant period would never be given its full due. In an era of such social and musical change a voice as articulate and perceptive as Davies’ would have surely been welcomed. Instead, the Kinks are always viewed as slightly lesser then the other titans of the form, always viewed primary by a rabid cult for what they really were.

Today, I’ll be picking for discussion their 1969 concept record Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), but I’d like to make special comment that I could just as easily be talking about Muswell Hillbillies had the coin toss came out oppositely as they are neck and neck as my favorite from the band.

Arthur opens  with the bluesy strum shuffle of ‘Victoria’, which points that while Arthur may be similar to their earlier effort (that many probably thought there’d be no way of topping) Village Green in concept, it was an altogether more rocking affair. ‘Yes Sir, No Sir’ opens with a military cadence and expounds the sometime lack of self worth so found in the working class. It becomes apparent here that this is a chief concern of Davies throughout this record, a class struggle is further articulated into a struggle within the individual, an individual that’s been shown nothing but ill will his entire life and how he (or she) can rise above this for real change. Will he continue to ask permission for such simple acts as breathing from his ‘superiors’ or will he take some semblance of control. Davies gives it the added historical relevance of an entire Imperialist culture for added measure.

The context grows into ‘Some Mother’s Son’, which is easily one of Rock’s defining anti-war statements. A generation later Paul Weller would see the same story for his similar ‘Little Boy Soldiers’ (Setting Sons) but here is the original in all its melancholy timeless beauty. Its vivid imagery makes no connections to any specific conflict thus making it about all modern armed conflicts. ‘Drivin” then seemingly lessens the mood, but therein is the brilliance, as the ‘troubled world around us’ is the specific reason the charms of turning to an open road and just motoring with a loved one is such a desired idea. Dave, the Kinks great guitarist, and Ray’s brother, offers one of his many exciting and instantly recognizable guitar breaks.

‘Brainwashed’ and ‘Australia’ work in tandem to point towards what a more nailed down concept would have sounded and been concerned with (Arthur was originally set to be a TV piece as well). Both songs feature the Kinks sounding like they did a few years prior— a band that executed the greatest examples of British sloppy drumming and garage sound around.

‘Shangri-La’ comes next, and for my money is one of the Kinks truly great tracks, if not my all-time favorite. It turns the album from masterpiece status to status as one of Rock’s true landmark records. It’s achingly bittersweet and poignant, the most beautiful punch in the gut you’ve ever heard. It begins in a stark sarcastic tone, about a retired man who has been spit out from a hard life spent doling towards a twilight where he figured he’d have at least something meager to look forward too. Davies understandably cuts all this down, and around 2:50 the rest of the band joins in to thoroughly trash this culturally respected idea down to nothing but a sedate roll on the old rocking chair. It’s such a powerful track that one doesn’t know to cry tears of sadness or have their eye’s squeeze out tears in the name of righteous anger.

‘Mr. Churchill Says’ continues the song cycle away from Australia and more towards Britain looking eastward upon Australia, and the role the mother country must play going forward. ‘She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina’ continues the Anglocentric portion of the record, and indulges with several new musical textures.

‘Young and Innocent Days’ makes a great argument as the best straightforward pop song on the record. Midtempo ballads had by now been almost been a market cornered by the Kinks (what else can one say when you think about it, this is the band that had offered ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Well Respected Man’, ‘This Time Tomorrow’, ‘Dandy’, ‘Village Green’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Big Sky etc in the previous few years), and ‘Days’ does nothing to disappoint. Again, a sad longing hangs over much of the affair, but it’s an epic beauty as well making countless plays virtually impossible to resist.

It’s then no wonder that ‘Nothing to Say’ is arranged as it is, uptempo and quite bubbly. The entire band seems in great spirits, there is a rolling piano, Davies offers several vocal ideas and cadences, and the drums remain at their bar room beat best. ‘Arthur’ furthers the upturn in musicality as the album comes to a close. Lyrically it’s wonderfully concise and full of summarization. It’s essentially the entire albums story retold as an epilogue on clarity. Arthur was a swell fellow, and in this frank matter of factness one can either feel happy and joyful or incredibly sad. It’s quite up to you how you take life no?

“Arthur was born just a plain simple man
In a plain simple working class position
Though the world was hard and its ways were set
He was young and he had so much ambition.”

It can crush or it can come and go. As Ray says, “Someone loves you, and wants to help you / Don’t you know it?” In an episode of the old UK show called ‘My Generation’, a show where each episode was devoted to a classic English musical act that some great soul has uploaded a good number of episodes into youtube, Ray Davies himself closes the Kink’s episode with such a perfect and melancholy tribute: “I’ve always been wary of doing interviews, because my work is better then I am. I just don’t live up to it. I’d love to be as good as ‘Waterloo Sunset’.”

(it’s also worth mentioning as long as this album is the subject, is that the deluxe remaster added additional tracks and B-sides from the albums sessions and one is really foolish to not be aware of something like say, ‘This Man He Weeps Tonight’ or the weirdo beautiful melody contained within ‘Mr. Shoemaker’s Daughter’. Bands kill for tracks like these while the great ones stick them on B sides or in vaults unreleased for decades)

Happy listening, see you next week.

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