The Kinks

Dave Davies slashed his amplifier speaker with a razor blade¹ and the sound that came out — a ragged, distorted roar underpinning the riff on “You Really Got Me” — has a plausible claim to being the first power chord in rock and roll.² That alone would have earned the Kinks a footnote. What earned them a chapter is what happened next: Ray Davies stopped looking at America and turned around to face England.³ By 1966 the band that had made one of the most aggressive singles of⁴ British Invasion was writing gentle, melodically precise songs about village greens and autumn almanacs, dedicated followers of fashion⁵ and the melancholy hidden inside a sunny afternoon — social observation with the wit of English literary comedy and the warmth of music hall. The Kinks never sold as many records as The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, but their influence on punk, Britpop, indie rock, and the entire tradition of English guitar pop may be equal.

Influences and inheritance

The Kinks began, like everyone in the British Invasion, with American R&B and rock & roll. But Ray Davies’ turn toward English sources happened faster than any of his contemporaries’. Music hall gave him the melodic language (the singalong warmth, the gentle waltz rhythms), Noël Coward and Evelyn Waugh gave him the tone (amused, compassionate, never cruel), and English folk gave him the subject matter. By Face to Face (1966), the American influences had been largely metabolized.⁶ Where the Rolling Stones kept reaching back to the Mississippi Delta, Davies was reaching back to the English village.

Core musical identity

Ray Davies draws his characters the way a sympathetic novelist would, then needles them in the same line. He writes characters — the status-obsessed suburbanite in⁷ “Well Respected Man” (1965), the fading aristocrat in “Sunny Afternoon” (1966), the nostalgic preservationist in “Village Green” — with a tenderness that never quite tips into sentimentality⁸ and a wit that never quite hardens into satire. The melodies are simple and memorable, rooted in English folk and music hall traditions rather than American blues. Dave Davies’ guitar provides the edge: distorted and aggressive on the early records, more textured and varied as the band evolved.

Key records

“You Really Got Me” (1964) — The debut hit; Dave Davies’ slashed-speaker riff as the plausible first power chord in rock & roll⁹
Face to Face (1966) — The turn toward English social observation; “Sunny Afternoon” (1966) as the manifesto¹⁰
Something Else by the Kinks (1967) — “Waterloo Sunset” (1967) alone justifies the album¹¹; baroque pop meets music hall
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) — The masterpiece: a concept album about English nostalgia, released the same day as the Beatles’ White Album and almost entirely ignored.¹² Its reputation has only grown.
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969) — A rock opera about English identity, class, and empire; harder-edged than¹³ Village Green
Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround (1970) — The music industry as subject; “Lola” (1970) as the hit¹⁴

Legacy and influence

The Kinks’ influence is disproportionate to their commercial success. Dave Davies’ distorted guitar on “You Really Got Me” (1964) is a direct ancestor of heavy metal and punk.¹⁵ Ray Davies’ English social observation was the template for the Jam, the Smiths, Blur, Pulp, and the entire Britpop movement.¹⁶ Village Green Preservation Society’s concept of an album as a detailed portrait of a specific place and culture anticipates what the Smiths did with Manchester and what Blur did with London.¹⁷ The Kinks proved that the British Invasion didn’t have to mean imitating America — that English culture, in all its class-consciousness and gentle melancholy, was a subject worthy of rock & roll.

MAP

Explorer

The Kinks

Influences and inheritance

Core musical identity

Key records

Legacy and influence

See also

MAP

Explorer

The Kinks

Influences and inheritance

Core musical identity

Key records

Legacy and influence

See also

Footnotes