Flowers in the Rain – Dave Davies

 

Like a perfect spider's web

Almost unbearably pretty, delicate, like a perfect, intricate cobweb spun across your path on a summer’s day, ephemeral, evanescent, something that cannot last, that a casual hand or gentle breeze might accidentally sunder. An evocation of another era, the innocence of all our childhoods. Suffused with sadness, regret, longing, tenderness, but also the understanding, forgiveness and acceptance that accompanies the passage of time. It reminds me in a way of Fleetwood Mac's Say Goodbye, written by Lindsey Buckingham.

A wistful but philosophical meditation on young love, from the vantage of the present, with Dave’s voice even more affecting as it breaks slightly reaching for a note, as if what he feels can't be restrained by his physical ability, that it transcends something so corporeal. A melancholy refrain gives way to a chorus that gently takes flight, never soaring but remaining in harmony with the simple restraint of the song. It refuses to aggrandise the sentiment into something it’s not.

More Artful Dodger than Oliver
in Dead End Street, wicked boy

The video of this on YouTube was my first sighting of a grown-up Dave. I only started liking the Kinks, as you can tell from these blogs, in 2011. And the fact that he was so much older than the wicked boy I had seen in Kinks videos, physically almost frail (post-stroke), increased the song’s poignancy, as a reflection on a youth that was over and the exuberance, purity and intensity of first love.

Pretty boy

Every time I heard this song I used to cry, particularly if I were watching Dave sing it live at those unforgettable Satsang events, detailed in Dave Davies Breaks My Heart (Again): Satsang I and Dave Davies: Satsang II: April 2012: You Only Live Twice. It’s like a snippet from someone’s diary, personal, intimate, authentic. I’m not sure that Ray could write a song like this because he has too much self-awareness. Dave has an emotional intelligence that, put into song, can transcend some of Ray’s writing. And here there’s something unadulterated, a truth, something that Ray perhaps can't access as easily (or chooses not to access) because his intelligence, his craft, get in the way, advising an ironic distance; he has too many options, too many personae, too many angles and ideas. He sees each side. And Ray rarely opens his heart like this. He keeps his heart under wraps, keeps it safe. Here Dave shares an experience, private and precious, at once individual and universal, lets his guard down, exposes his vulnerability. It was this song that made me like Dave. I went on to love the dis-ingenu Dave of the early Kinks, always more Artful Dodger than Oliver, the wicked boy.

Today as I'm sifting through these photographs of you/Never thought I'd feel this way/All these memories keep calling me to you/How I wish they'd go away/All these visions just remind me of better days/And I miss you most of all/When I see Flowers in the Rain/I see you laughing as we run across the fields/Through the thunder and the rain/Finding shelter in each other's arms that day/All the things I didn't say/All these words keep going round and round in my brain/And I miss you most of all/When I see Flowers in the Rain/Wish I could do something about it/Life can be cruel, no doubt about it/In life's many mysteries/It just wasn't meant to be, oh no/I miss you most of all/When I see Flowers in the Rain.

Another pretty boy

Ray’s style is more masterful, more knowing, more constructed, an artifice, in words and music. There’s truth and power but it’s one step removed. His songs make you think as well as feel. But when they’re simple and seem heartfelt, you know it’s a decision, the reflection of a thought, that this is how he meant them to sound although early Kinks songs had a similar immediate charm. I would say that Ray is probably a deeper thinker than Dave generally (and I'm sure that Dave would take issue with that), that Dave doesn't always consider before he acts, is more impetuous in life. And the result is songs that don't always make sense lyrically, don't necessarily follow any standard template but seem to arise organically and have an added impact because of that, for instance, This Man He Weeps Tonight and Mindless Child of Motherhood. I'm not going to say Ray's work is not emotionally affecting because I'm moved by so much of it, from the super successful (Waterloo Sunset - unbelievably, this seems to be the first time I've mentioned this fantastic song in any of my Kinks blogs, as if I didn't appreciate its consummate artistry) to the, to non-Kinks fans, relatively obscure (Get Back in the Line), not to mention the incredibly rousing I'm Not Like Everybody Else (this live version is particularly amazing). But he will never let his guard down (in his work at least). Dave is unguarded. There is an honesty and directness in this and many other Dave songs. It’s as if the song were born, rather than carefully crafted, although I know it wasn’t. There's something  uncomplicated, unostentatious, sincere, instinctual that we react to instinctively.

Dave then

This song is almost like when you pick a scab off a cut to reveal fresh skin underneath. It’s still tender but it’s healed, it's new. Love is lost; love is found; we lament, but scars fade and life goes on. Dave moves on, often burning his bridges behind him.

So, how can I fall out of love with Dave, when songs like this still touch me? And that’s not nothing. It’s something: to be moved by a tune, a lyric, a delivery, all of which are in their way, Dave’s way, immaculate here. Flowers in the Rain is a direct call from Dave's heart to our hearts to which our hearts cannot help but respond.

Dave in 2017

For more on Dave Davies's songwriting, see Dave Davies and George Harrison: Parallel Lives Part I and Dave Davies and George Harrison: Parallel Lives Part II.

Dave Davies Breaks My Heart (Again): Satsang 1

So we did it. Went on the Satsang Weekend. It took a huge leap of faith. Like the jump that Robert Redford and Paul Newman make in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Well maybe not as risky as that. It was billed as the opportunity of a lifetime but I’m the sort of person who, when opportunity knocks at the door, crouches down behind the sofa until it goes away again. At one point during the preliminaries, I thought I was joining the FBI or something; the payment method that my bank told me was unsafe and would cost me £30 (luckily the bank proposed an alternative that worked), the security, the ID laminates, the whole clandestine nature of the affair seemed so outlandish but in a way, this somehow only served to make the prospect more intriguing. It was all so Secret Squirrel. Although I did wonder what might be coming next: Fingerprints? Retinal scans? The absolute secrecy, need-to-knowness was possibly a little excessive considering that, if I’d told my friends that I was going to a satsang weekend at Dave Davies’s house, they wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh my God, you know where Dave Davies lives?’, they would have asked ‘Who’s Dave Davies?’ and possibly, ‘What’s satsang?’ I did wonder what sort of people had been invited to Dave and Kate’s before that they felt the need to make us sign a declaration that we would abide by a daunting list of ‘terms and conditions’ and just as it was nerve-wracking for us to put our trust in people we had never met, I kept thinking it can't be easy to invite all these strangers, possibly stalkers, to your house so it was probably even more nerve-wracking for them. Still, it was a little ironic given Dave’s rep as a rule-breaker. When I told my friends I didn’t know where I was going and wasn’t allowed to know, they were sure I would be inducted into a cult and they would have to break me out and then spend a long time deprogramming me. Still, I’d never been in a cult before so was willing to take my chances. After all, you only live once. My worry was that it all seemed like it might be a bit ‘Abandon cynicism, all ye who enter here’, which is a hard thing for me to do. With the added pressure of breathing and meditation, two things I don’t excel at.

So what was it like? Although it wasn’t exactly what we were promised or what we expected, because of Dave, who and how he is, it was so much more. He didn’t only open his house to us; he opened his heart and soul. He’s a sweetheart; totally unguarded, so open that he releases some conduit of emotion in me so that I spend much of the weekend in tears. This is partly because of bad news that I had before I went away but it’s something more. Dave really touches me and affects me somehow so that I feel what he’s feeling, so that each time he cries or his voice breaks, I’m already in tears but I can't know what he’s thinking about. It’s very strange. At one point he talks about being in love – I think he must imagine I’m in the middle of or at the end of a tragic love affair because I keep bursting into tears. I feel there’s some emotional connection, elemental and beyond words, and maybe only momentary. But Dave   probably has this effect on many people and has learnt to go with it.

I’ve never cried so much or been hugged so much in my whole life although my life has not been high on the hugs front anyway. It’s cathartic. The other members of the group are really supportive and kind and I hope that many of us will keep in touch. There is healing from the professionals Dave has enlisted but it’s therapeutic just to be in the group, to accept its and Dave’s kindness.

It’s interesting to hear some of Dave’s ideas, reassuringly eclectic, especially for someone like me, a Brideshead Revisited type of Catholic, more interested in the superstitious, personality-based side of religion, whose own brand of beliefs is a bit like a Woolworth’s pick and mix, with bits of everything all jumbled up, there’s nothing like variety, my ultimate faith lying in St Anthony, and Dave’s credo, which is based on love, should be our ideal although some things are a little harder to accept (like dolphins coming from another planet). Having recently had what faith I had shaken by an event that belies any concept of karma (and not for the first time), it was surprisingly moving to be with people who still believed in something, who could conceive that their positive energy could affect the universe, that we could pool our spiritual resources and make a difference. Dave is very anti intermediaries (priests and so on) but he can be my intermediary any day. Dave notwithstanding though, a couple of days after the weekend, I hedged my bets and bought medals of the saints from Buckfast Abbey and celebrated the Equinox at some stone rows on Dartmoor with a Druidess.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not quite ready to canonize Dave yet because I just read an interview with Ray where the interviewer was ‘kind’ enough to point out all the cruel things that Dave had recently said about him. Ray said that he wouldn’t read the article because it would only upset him. It reminds me of my sister and I. I once said that she has empathy for every living creature except me. I know circumspection’s not in your nature but have a heart, babe. He may be all those things but if you prick him, doth he not bleed?

And am I the only one who was a bit disappointed that the talking stick never said anything?

But, let’s be honest here. I didn’t even know what satsang was so I’m not really here for that even though it was intriguing and I found it really affected me. (Or was it just Dave?) Primarily, I’m here for the music.

The gigs in the evening are amazing and the band are great. More than intimate – we’re practically standing on top of them. Dave might forget the words or even the chords occasionally but the emotion and the passion and the humour shine through any minor restarts. He really gives of himself when he performs. He might have managed to get through ‘Flowers in the Rain’ the second night without crying but I didn’t and L* knew I wouldn’t. It gets me every time. I don't think about myself – it’s imagining what he’s feeling that upsets me so much. Empathy. Kurt Cobain was right about that. Still, Dave manages to slip easily between joking and intensity.

But we danced, we sang along, we had a blast. As a relatively new fan, it was the first time I had heard ‘Are You Ready, Girl?’, ‘Rock You , Rock Me’, ‘The Lie’ and ‘Get Back in the Line’. Wow. How lucky am I?

It was incredibly uplifting to hear Dave sing ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’, a pivotal track for me and a major factor in the reasons for me being here at all, and have everyone sing along. I could forget my disappointment in karma and experience unadulterated joy. And he danced with me! Well, sort of.

So many things that I wish I’d asked or said, like ‘Dave. Did you ever know all the words to ‘Village Green Preservation Society'?’

And maybe next time I’ll get up the courage to request some songs. I was dying to hear ‘Run’, ‘Mindless Child of Motherhood’, ‘Lost in Your Arms’, ‘Love Gets You’, but angsted too long over whether there was some particular reason he didn’t play them any more.

Despite everything, the expense and the extreme secrecy, I ask a friend if she’d do it again and she says ‘In a heartbeat’ and I would too. Of course it’s Dave that does it; he still has it, whatever it is. He really touches me. Ok, he looks older but he has that indefinable something; you can see and hear the sixteen-year-old he was in him still, that love of life. Great to see him so well recovered from his stroke. If he toured, wouldn’t we all go? Looking forward to hearing the new album.

Dave, Don’t Stop Breaking My Heart.

Birth of an Obsession – The Kinks

Amazing how your life can change almost overnight. Before and after the Kinks. Of course, for Ray Davies, there’s probably a B.D. (Before Dave) and an A.D (After Dave). And it all hangs on my marking the Kinks programmes on BBC4 in the TV guide (Kinkdom Kome and Imaginary Man), thinking they might be interesting, wanting really a chance to hear ‘Celluloid Heroes’ again, a song that moved me long ago. Must have listened to it on a little transistor. Perhaps because of the poor reception, I always thought the line about Marilyn was ‘Should have been made of vinyl steel [rather than ‘iron or steel’] but she was only made of flesh and blood’. Can anyone tell me why these verses are not in later live versions of the song? But it was really only chance that I watched any of this retrospective. So completely random and now I’m so glad that I did. It seems that I was just waiting around for something to obsess about.

I don't know if it’s good or bad the way I am. At any point I can develop an obsessive interest in something. Obviously I liked them in the past. But only a little. Particular songs I remember hearing on oldies stations are ‘Celluloid Heroes’, ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Lola’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’. Certain songs are very familiar to me when I hear them again – ‘Dead-End Street’, ‘Autumn Almanac’, ‘Set Me Free’, which I don’t think I realised was the Kinks but probably thought was the Beatles, and ‘Come Dancing’ but I never truly appreciated their genius till now. Plus in the old days, it wasn’t only the fact that I didn’t have the means to indulge an interest in something and I didn’t – I had no power at all, let alone purchasing power. In those days, I was acted upon and not acting because of the way I’d been brought up or maybe simply because I was a child. But the means itself didn’t even exist.

Now of course there’s youtube, which has enabled me to rediscover the Kinks, gradually, live and on record, at different stages in their career. I always thought of them as whimsical and witty, not quite serious but they’re so much more than this. Ray Davies, observing and commenting on the world around him, with accuracy, wry humour, irony and affection, long before Damon and Jarvis. Now I can't believe how much time I’ve spent in the last week just watching or listening to the Kinks, wondering about them, well, the brothers mainly and their fascinating relationship. It’s total immersion. And I wonder: is it only me that gets like this? Or do the Kinks do this to everyone who takes the time to really listen? I actually feel lucky to care so much about something, and that there is something special enough to involve me so completely. The music is paramount but let’s face it, the Davies brothers are intriguing and charismatic, in performance captivating, which doesn’t hurt. Now, when I’m working (so fortunate to work from home), I have to have a ‘Kinks break’ every half hour or so. After more than an hour, I start Jonesing for a song. The songs are something else.

So begins the voyage of discovery, a magical mystery tour entirely dependent on the efforts other music fans have made to download tracks (famous, rare, from obscure foreign TV shows, live, studio, audio only) and interviews onto the net. Thank you to everyone. Now the songs that we listen to most are not the ones we knew although all those songs are glorious but earlier or later ones, like ‘Tell Me Now So I’ll Know’, a perfect jewel of a 60s pop ballad, the angst-ridden ‘This Man He Weeps Tonight’, the Dylanesque ‘God’s Children’, the later, rocked-up version of ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’, with either brother singing lead or the melancholic anthem, 'Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy'. Not to mention the solo material – ‘Imaginary Man’, 'Flowers in the Rain'; I could go on but this is only meant to be an introduction.

And so it begins. From a stray spark on BBC4, a fire has been lit. (Sorry – I seem to have gone all Lord of the Rings). The fuel is inexhaustible with more interviews and songs coming online every day. At the moment, it feels like an eternal flame but I am anxious that, several ebay and Amazon purchases down the line, it will sputter and go out. Is it merely an infatuation or the real thing? Oh, who cares? At least I feel enthusiastic about something. As those other warring brothers might put it: ‘You gotta roll with it.’

More later.