Ray Davies: 'It's really been quite a trip': Life on the Road 2012

In a Moment at the Fairfield Halls

Is this really it?/Is this the final station?/It's really been quite a trip (Imaginary Man)
So, Ray's UK tour is over, the dates have had him zigzagging all over the country, back and forth, coming back to the London area three separate times. I would be exhausted but Ray seems to thrive on this frantic schedule and have boundless energy and adrenalin. 

And still all the critics keep saying/Are they still around?/When are they gonna stop? (The Road)

I’ve been moved to respond to some reviews of Ray’s gigs because it seems that we’re being infiltrated by incredibly shallow people who want us to follow some code of what is/isn’t appropriate, some kind of Style Stasi. And isn’t this the exact antithesis of what the Kinks and Ray were always about? These criticisms often relate to age and often to fashion, something I consider the biggest waste of time ever. Wear whatever suits you and what you’re comfortable in. For a non-Kinks-related example, when the Olympics were on, I read a whole article in a daily paper bemoaning the fact that gymnasts still thought it was ok to wear scrunchies, which went out with the 80s. Let’s not concentrate on their extraordinary talent or ability, let’s worry about what they put their hair up with. Could it be any more fatuous? 

Underneath this crude exterior/She knows I got something superior (Hidden Quality)

Apparently when you get to your late 60s, it’s unseemly to wear trainers or do star/scissor jumps on stage. You should really mellow out and sit on a stool and wear a cardigan. Well Ray Davies does all of the above (except he saves the cardigan till later). Some people break the mould. I’m the same although my experience has led me to believe that I’m a lot less like everybody else than everybody else is. I’ve done some pretty strange things in my time (exorcised a TV cabinet, made an in-flight announcement on an aeroplane, been stranded in New Jersey with only one odd shoe and $13.50) and have failed to do many things my contemporaries have, such as acquire a taste for red wine or even beer, start to hold dinner parties, care about home décor and cooking. Not yet domesticated. I still dance although no longer a teenager. Actually teenagers are way too cool to dance, unless it’s affected with extreme irony.

Ray's response to the critics: 

But I won't give it up/As long as I can make the bread/When I do, I shall stop/Close my eyes and go to bed. (All Night Stand)

From a blog review:‘His white trainers suggest that he isn’t the Dedicated Follower of Fashion he once was.’

This rather misses the whole point of the song. Ray wasn’t the dedicated follower of fashion – he was affectionately taking the piss out of him (and possibly brother Dave although both have worn some outlandish but still appealing ensembles in their time, Ray’s outfit in this version of Skin and Bone a case in point). In fact, Dedicated started out as a riposte to a designer who criticised Ray’s flares. As usual, he answered with a song.

Spotlight: Oklahoma USA

She walks to work but she's still in a daze/She's Rita Hayworth or Doris Day/And Errol Flynn's gonna take her away. 

The story behind this song, described in my last blog reminds me of my Mum. I think she believed that one day a great romance would find her, à la Some Enchanted Evening, that she would catch the eye of Rossano Brazzi across a crowded room. And I can't be the only person who watches a movie and walks out of the theatre imagining for a few minutes that I look like one of the protagonists. I used to be a great proponent of escapism, a devotee, fantasy has reality beat every time but now I wonder if cinema in the old days was ‘the opium of the masses’, how it unwittingly kept everyone in a drudge-like job in their Dead End Street.

Royal Albert Hall 4 October 2012

Bashful has blogged on this so I haven’t much to add. When we get up to dance, no one stops us but when people move to the front, the security men are determined to make them sit down again, courteously tapping people on the shoulder one by one; they win a few skirmishes but they don’t ultimately win the war. Great sound at the concert. I’ve only been to the RAH once before, when we bought our Dad and a friend tickets to see the Moody Blues and we were so high up and over to the side that it actually gave you vertigo to look down and we couldn’t see all of the stage. This time we're in the second row right at the front.

Extras: Paul Weller joins Ray for Waterloo Sunset, which seems to be in the wrong key for him. Starts off shaky but sounds better by the end. I never noticed that his voice is a little like Grant Hart’s before. Ray plays Twentieth-century Man and includes Days in the encore so we can't complain. The same T-shirts as at Canterbury cost £5 more. How’s that for London weighting?

Ray at Fairfield Halls

Fairfield Halls, Croydon 10 October 2012

Here, after we’ve navigated the urban wasteland (well it wasn’t but I like that term), crossed the tram tracks, and traversed the car-park and met some fans in the bar, we discover that there’s a long queue to get in to see the support act. I start to worry that there’s going to be airport-type security checks and that my camera and water bottle will be confiscated. My camera is large and professional-looking (unlike me) but no more powerful than that on most people’s cell phones. I couldn’t tape a whole song even if I wanted to because the files are too huge to upload anywhere. However, my fears are unwarranted; the delay was due to a late sound-check.

James and Kami seem very relaxed tonight. They’ve got married (to each other) since we last saw them. But at the next gig, he’s by himself … Hope Kami's not honeymooning alone.

Decide to risk the paper plates but stage is too far to spontaneously throw them on during the performance so I neatly place them around where I assume Ray will be (by the cup of tea or voice-saving concoction in the cup-holder on the mike stand – does everything have cup-holders these days? Perhaps we should genetically engineer children to come with them? How handy would that be?) The security man wanders past twice to check what I’ve done but decides they pose no viable threat. He must think I’m simply some harmless nutter who randomly dispenses disposable picnic-ware at rock gigs. Perhaps he thinks I’ll be back later with sandwiches.

Ray at Fairfield Halls

So the gig proceeds much as Canterbury and the RAH except that we get up to dance, and the people in the front row (friends from the Kinkdom), arise too. They move to the front of the stage. This precipitates our ungainly scramble over the seats in front to join them.

Special treats: Ray opts to play Apeman, which he says he might not have played live since the last time he played Croydon. Croydon does tend to bring out the Neanderthal in all of us. When in Rome … only kidding, guys. So infectious and I was really longing to hear it. We also get Tired of Waiting for You, which he didn’t play at the first two shows we went to and the whole of ‘Victoria’ instead of just a snippet. Excellent.

No scissor jumps tonight – just upward leaps, legs together. Hope Ray hasn’t given himself a groin strain.

A Face/Voice in the Crowd

More enthusiastic but unfortunately also more out-of-key and out-of-time singing here than anywhere else so far. One lady doesn’t know the words so just about picks up the lyric at the end of each line and I hear the last word repeated a beat after in a flat echo.

Ray at Nottingham

Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham 14 October 2012

Our non-Kinks friends seem a little frightened of meeting our Kinks friends for some reason. Have we made them sound like raving lunatics? I don't think so. And one of the non-Kinks ones collects Action Men and is in the process of swapping some hands for some feet in the post. Miniature body parts in little plastic bags. Who has the most to fear?

Undeterred, I recycle the paper plates (surely Ray would approve) and add another one, hoping to hear Celluloid Heroes as it has surfaced at other shows. We get I Need You instead. Does Ray look at my request and think ‘Hmm. What can I play that’s the total opposite of that?’ 

Let's sing it loud with feeling/Come on, one more time (One More Time)

By the time Ray reaches Nottingham, his voice is a little hoarse and there are a couple of slightly off-key notes right at the start but he’s able to compensate by altering the key or taking the pitch down or just changing the phrasing so a long note becomes a short one, or simply encouraging the crowd to sing all of the chorus, etc. A master at work.

Misfits at Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury 

Now you're lost in the crowd/Yet, still go your own way

Ray mentions that Mick was a boy scout and still has his uniform. Mick wasn’t a boy scout; he was a sea scout. I love the way Ray’s always slightly misinformed. I get the idea that he’s deliberately imprecise about things, or rather precise in his errors (like in ‘X-Ray’ when he insists that Dave was caught in flagrante by his headmaster rather than the truant officer) because he perceives his alterations strengthen the story or make the joke funnier. Weirdly, tonight he misses out You Really Got Me. Plus there's the mystery of the reappearing lisp.

So to summarise, we did get variations in the set over the course of the tour. Some nights Ray played Celluloid Heroes but I never got to hear it. This and other songs that were played at some shows but not all, were Tired of Waiting for You, Too Much on My Mind, Victoria, Apeman, Full Moon, Misfits, I Need You, Twentieth-century Man.

I think it’s curious which Kinks songs Dave and Ray opt to play – some are the same, especially the early ones. Dave tends to leave out Waterloo Sunset, Autumn Almanac and Lola. Ray doesn’t play any Dave songs though I’m sure he could do a creditable version of Strangers or even Living on a Thin Line, which Dave originally wrote for him. Neither plays Well Respected Man. Dave will do Get Back in the Line but Ray won't.

Although both have assembled great musicians to back them, who know the catalogue really well, there isn’t that sense that anything might happen, that I think people experienced at a Kinks gig. Of course this could be good or bad but always memorable I'm sure. Dave says in Kinkdom K/Come:

‘Ray and I were magicians without realising it’ that they could look at each other on stage and ‘the whole atmosphere will change’. You can see this in some YouTube clips. They play off each other, wind each other up, piss each other off and spur each other on. Ray admited at the recent Radio 4 Mastertapes recording that he would deliberately antagonise Dave and then Dave would play something exceptional, on stage and in the studio.

He also talked about how the Kinks were like family (one of them was of course), how they had one another’s backs. It reminds me of my family when we were growing up. We would argue with each other a lot, maybe appear to hate one another but when it came down to it, it was always us against the world.

I suppose what I’m saying is that the ideal, if we assume that Ray and Dave playing together is far less likely than Bobby and JR ever seeing eye to eye (maybe scratch that analogy after this week's episode of Dallas), would be to see one play one night and one the next. Dave is much more likely to deviate from the list than Ray is, attempting a song without rehearsal, without remembering the lyrics, so there’s still an element of surprise.

[All 2012 images and video are mine.]

Ray Davies Live 2012: The Canterbury Tale

Canterbury and Croydon shows are missing from this flyer

So, for those unable to make it to a solo Ray show, here’s one he made earlier. Spoiler alert for those yet to attend one. I went to four (which I thought excessive until I met fans who were doing many more). They were all similar and all different, the shows not the fans – no, actually both were.

The duo Dead Flamingoes (James Walbourne and Kami Thompson) open most nights. James Walbourne is in the Pretenders line-up, with Ray’s ex, Chrissie Hynde so perhaps that’s how they connected.

I’m not sure that this name is right for them. It makes them sound more like a comedy double act than anything with serious intent. I wonder if it were adopted as a joke. I suppose Dying Flamingoes would be worse. It certainly doesn’t do their country-style songs, lovely harmonies, passionate and intricate guitar work justice. I particularly like the song they tend to start with, ‘Bonnie Portmore’; it reminds me of early Fleet Foxes. Having listened to some tracks on the net, I can report that the DFs sound better live: louder, more committed.

James Walbourne wrestles his guitar, with a pained expression, for all the world as if it’s a recalcitrant cat which has decided it no longer wants to be picked up and is doing everything it can, including scratching, to escape his arms. It takes all his effort to contain it. But he sure can play that cat.

At Nottingham, he appeared alone. I was disappointed that he didn’t introduce himself as ‘a Dead Flamingo’.

This review will be too long if I include all the shows we saw so I’ll start with the first one we went to, also the first of the tour, and see how I go.

Ray Davies and Band at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury 30 September 2012

Here (and later at the Royal Albert Hall), there were some slow handclaps when Ray failed to materialise exactly on schedule, a few more elderly audience members possibly being better accustomed to the rigid timetabling of the residential care home than the vagaries and unpredictability of a rock concert. No, seriously, they weren't that old, just a bit impatient.

Ray’s entrance follows a particularly annoying piece of frantic music with revved-up trumpet blasts on the otherwise dreary warm-up tape (which actually makes me want to blow my brains out on fifth hearing at Canterbury, and so enter the territory of a Kami Thompson song about suicide, ‘Hold Your Fire’).

After the applause has died down, he says ‘That’s alright for Bill but what about me?’, initiating a second burst.

The shows follow a standard format, with variations on a theme, according to audience input and how Ray’s feeling. Usually Ray performs some songs unplugged, with Bill Shanley before the rest of the band make their appearance.

Nobody dances or even gets up and I start to feel like a volatile patient in a hospital ward, strapped to the bed, who keeps trying to rise, except the restraints are regrettably self-imposed. Why do I do this to myself?

By the second show, I’m able to recognise most songs by Ray’s introductions.

Ray starts with:

This Is Where I Belong (The line ‘Tell me now if you want me here to stay’ warrants crowd confirmation, but at many of these shows, this is only realised by the front two rows so that intimate connection isn’t made. It's a beautiful song, sensitively performed.)

Audience participation is de rigueur on the choruses of the next two numbers, reconfigured as vaudeville turns here:
Autumn Almanac (‘Roast beef on Sundays/Alright’ usually accompanied by a line such as ‘I take it you’re all meat eaters then?’, the response in Croydon prompting him to alter it to ‘Nut roast on Sundays’)

Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Introduced as an old English folk song, occasionally sung in the style of Johnny Cash, along with the reminder that ‘That’s dedicated, not medicated’.)

Admittedly, some Kinks songs Ray always treated as singalongs – see these 1973 performances of ‘Dedicated’ and ‘Lola' – and the audience was often slow to pull its weight. I really don’t mind it on the choruses but sometimes, given a little encouragement, it gets out of hand and you can imagine yourself at some kind of old-style Cockney ‘knees-up’. Plus Ray’s in fine voice and I would rather hear him.

In a Moment (Introduced as a new song for all the insomniacs out there and I say again, 2007 is not new, honey, when you have an album in the pipeline, still lovely though. Ray mentions that the album, Working Man’s Café, was recorded in Nashville. I wish he would play more of his solo material live – The Real World, Vietnam Cowboys, so many of these songs deserve attention. Dave mixes it up more at his Satsang shows but then he’s assured of a receptive group of people who don't only know the Kinks 60s and 70s hits – I’m afraid that Ray has made the right assessment of the majority of the people here tonight.)

See My Friends (Ray’s ‘gay’ song. Still defeats me as to why when he’s written many ‘gayer’ ones.)

The Kinks as the audience remembers them

Sunny Afternoon (Ray claims he wrote this as a joke. Cue more singalong and Ray gets to say the line that he’s been using since the early 70s, ‘If you don't know it, learn it’.)

Dead End Street (The band come on and join in during this and sound pretty excellent and things start to get rowdy for the next three songs.)

Time to introduce the band who are absolutely excellent. Both Dave and Ray are adept at choosing people to accompany them. We have Bill Shanley on lead guitar, former Kink Ian Gibbons on keyboards (and accordion), Richard Nolan on bass and
Damon Wilson on drums.

Till the End of the Day (Still sounds so vital.)

Where Have All the Good Times Gone? (A crowd pleaser whether with Dave, Ray or the Kast-offs.)

I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Expected more reaction from the crowd but this song doesn’t have the same resonance with UK audiences as it does in the US where it was featured in The Sopranos and found a new lease of life live.)

Waterloo Sunset at Marlowe Theatre

Waterloo Sunset (A request from the stands that Ray immediately obliges unlike any of mine.) (Describing this as a secret song that he didn’t want to share, it doesn’t seem to matter where he plays it, in front of how many people, the Olympics closing ceremony, for instance, it always retains a certain atmosphere of intimacy. Invoking us to do the ‘shalalas’ makes us feel part of something great, this triumphant paean to London. He usually follows the lines ‘As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset/They are in paradise’ with ‘And so am I’ and somehow manages to sound completely sincere each time and his voice is perfect, delicate, evocative.)

Lola era Ray

Too Much on My Mind (On a par with Dave’s version at Satsang.)

Mentions his See My Friends collaboration, ‘managing other people’s egos’, etc. when introducing the next song and meeting a pretty blonde in cowboy boots, Lucinda Williams, who chose to cover it.

A Long Way from Home (points out that this was directed at Dave, a way of saying ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ at which point I call out ‘He loves you too’ but he doesn’t hear me – probably just as well. The lyrics and melody capture Ray’s wistful regret.)

Lola (Bill Shanley reproduces Dave’s guitar riff. The crowd oblige with backing vocals.)

It would be impossible to reflect the sheer diversity of the Kinks output in one show plus we would need more instruments so Ray chooses to showcase a couple of albums here: Muswell Hillbillies and Sleepwalker. These slightly lesser-known songs are a little taster of what’s out there. He could choose two different albums each night and I would still want more.

So James Walbourne (also from Muswell Hill, accompanies Ray for:

Muswell Hillbilly

and

Oklahoma USA at Marlowe Theatre

Oklahoma USA (Great to hear both of these, one jaunty, Ray’s voice way more tuneful than it is on the rather flat, whiny LP version, the guitars ramping it up into a good ole country romp, the other a beautifully plangent ballad about how going to ‘the pictures’ allowed Ray’s sister Rose to escape the drudgery of factory life. Music helped the Davies boys evade a similar fate.)

Misfits (I wasn’t expecting Ray to play this and find it really moving.)

Full Moon (Complete with howls from Ray and enthused reception from the Americans at least.) 

Come Dancing (Ray describes his sisters' sorties to the Palais and claims one would return and tell him ‘I came dancing tonight, Ray’.) 

You Really Got Me (Ray talks about the blues genesis of the song and wanting to be Johnny Lee Hooker, a difficult aspiration for a ‘honky’ from North London, then has Ian plink the notes on the piano as Ray himself did for Dave. I imagine this to be a little like the scene in ‘Close Encounters’ when they play pipe tones to try to communicate with the spacecraft – Ray strikes them on the old upright in the famous front room, then when Dave plays them on the guitar, it’s the moment when the spacecraft repeats the notes at a deafening volume, blowing the glass in the window. An understanding, an accord, a momentous breakthrough. Ray says something like ‘and Dave picked up his guitar and played the Kinks into rock and roll history’.)

All Day and All of the Night (Let’s rearrange those chords again and have another hit. Mission accomplished.) 

Low Budget (A new one to many here tonight but a staple of the Kinks live shows since the late 70s as in this 79 version in which Dave lets rip on the guitar. And who can fail to be entertained by Ray’s lyrics: ‘Even my trousers are giving me pain/They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn't complain/ They squeeze me so tight so I can't take no more/They're a size 28 but I take 34’. I love these lines as it always gives Ray a chance to flaunt his arse. Let's face it, any excuse. But if you’ve got it …. And we all join in on: ‘At least my hair is all mine/My teeth are my own/But everything else is on permanent loan’ – well, not all but we devotees in the front.)

Before he leaves us, Ray comes to shake hands with some of us in the front row. I resist the temptation to pull him off the stage for a hug.

Tired of Waiting for You or Tired of You Waiting for Me …

Hung around fruitlessly at the Stage Door afterwards but feeling like a predator lying in wait for prey made me uncomfortable, as if I were about to ambush him, especially when I learned that Ray had managed to avoid us. It wasn’t that hard – we’re pretty pathetic predators. It was like sending a couple of rabbits to capture a lion. That’s what happens when you pit amateurs against experts. This whole fan thing is so weird. Now, having read that he gets tired of seeing the same old people, I’m anxious not to become one of them although I expect there’s something reassuring when you look out from the stage and spot some familiar faces.

See Our Friends

Ray has described his songs as his friends and what we discovered when we saw the those original BBC4 programmes on the Kinks, Ray and Dave, about a year ago, is what some of the Canterbury crowd find out tonight, that they’re our friends too (or at least nodding acquaintances that we’ve always wanted to know better), that we’ve assimilated them in the collective unconscious, they’re part of our history, and though dressed in different clothes, they’re instantly familiar and it warms our hearts to see/hear them again.

So all in all an exciting show. Ray’s energy is astonishing. I can't understand why reviewers complain about him still doing scissor jumps or leaps. God, do everything you can until you can no longer do it. I won't sum up yet as I have three gigs to go … it’ll be a marathon rather than a sprint.

[All 2012 images and video are mine.]

 

Dave Davies: Unsung Guitar Hero

An appraisal and appreciation of Dave’s untrammelled and unparalleled live performances with the Kinks, with examples of how his playing expands the horizon of a song until the possibilities seem limitless at which point he’s able to bring it home to a flawless finish, like allowing a wild pony to have its head, run free, all the time keeping a hold of it so that he can rein it back in when it’s time. 

‘Davies' guitar was the dynamo that drove the Kinks. Brash, aggressive and entirely unforgettable, his chord progressions on their early hits have become a rock & roll rite of passage for any aspiring guitarist; "You Really Got Me" has alone launched countless garage bands.’ (Rolling Stone)

I’m not a muso, never learned an instrument, never had a piano in the house or all that jazz. For me, having a piano rather contradicts the Davies' working-class roots.[It reminds me of what a friend once said to me. Her grandparents had servants. I expressed surprise, thinking they must have been rich but she averred that her background was working class and that ‘everyone had servants in those days’. Anyone see anything wrong with her logic here? She certainly didn’t. My grandparents were her grandparents’ servants. Oh dear, starting to sound like one of those Monty Python sketches, 'You were lucky...'.] My parents thought a useful extra-curricular activity would be getting us to drag the washing down to the launderette every Saturday and bring home fish and chips for lunch. Forget about doing something we enjoyed or acquiring a useful skill. Anyway, I’m only trying to explain that I love music while not always understanding how particular effects are achieved, or which guitar is which (although the names are so evocative – Harmony Meteor – who wouldn’t want to take that home?) and I can distinguish a guitar from a bass guitar (even though Dave thinks I can't count beyond three, that’s only when breathing) and recognise a Flying Vee. I respond to the emotion generated by how the instrument is played. But even I can tell that Dave is something of a virtuoso. Shel Talmy, interviewed recently, agrees.

FZ: How would you rate Dave [Davies] as a guitarist?

ST: I think he’s one of the more underrated guitarists there are. He was an extremely good guitarist.

FZ: He doesn’t quite get the credit that he deserves.

ST: Never, I don’t think he ever got the credit. His inventions of the solos and stuff, I mean, Jimmy Page did not play the solo on 'You Really Got Me’ which I’ve said about 5,000 times to people who insist that he did. The reason I used Jimmy on the Kinks stuff is because Ray didn’t really want to play guitar and sing at the same time. In fact, Jimmy was playing rhythm guitar.

(The more people mention this, even to deny it, the more robust the myth becomes somehow. And what did I just do?)

Ray admits that Dave’s contribution was vital, saying:

‘If Dave never plays another note, his performance on “You Really Got Me” will always give him a special place among guitar players. The sound was created in our parents’ living room and ended up being copied by nearly every rock guitar player in the world.’

And Ray asserts that what Dave brought to the band was ‘the angst, the energy and an incredible right hand’.

But it’s as if Ray’s always sidelining Dave’s influence to one particular song, or sound, suggesting by this quiet insistence that that was the only thing he ever did. What about the electric guitar riff on ‘Lola’? Then, when the Kinks went ‘rock’ in the late 1970 to 1980s, a move that attracted a whole raft of new fans, particularly in the US, it was Dave’s playing that led the way and his charisma as a guitarist that helped to make the Kinks such a terrific experience live. And it sounds like it was also his initiative – he says in ‘Mystikal Journey’ that he wanted

‘to get back to a more fundamental basic rock thing’

and this was seconded by their new record label honcho, Clive Davis, who advised Ray that

‘Sometimes to move forward you have to take a step backwards.’

This was after the concept album shows, which looked like great fun to me. Ray has said:

‘Oddly enough on the shows that had themes to them, the band was much tighter as they were playing to cues’

but unfortunately there’s no good footage of these shows on YouTube.

To begin with, discovering them in the 2010s, I thought the 80s songs were too generic, too obvious, but a few listens down the line, I now appreciate all the layers of influences, irony, humour, intensity, the riffs that sound vaguely familiar, as if they’ve always existed, have entered your subconscious via some other means and can recognise that they’re still imbued with Ray’s idiosyncratic inventiveness. Perhaps it was a direction that appealed more to Dave than Ray but it became another means to demonstrate Ray’s versatility as a songwriter. And popularity in the US is really what kept the Kinks going despite NBC’s recent shameful omission of Ray at the Olympics closing ceremony. You only have to watch Ray’s ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ speech to see how important this support was to them.

But, more than providing the band with rock credibility, Dave’s enthusiasm was infectious, even when he and Ray were having difficulties, the enjoyment he exudes when on stage playing, is almost tangible (witness he and Jim Rodford dancing, running and jumping about as they play in this version of ‘Catch Me Now I’m Falling’, they’re so obviously having the time of their lives), his extraordinary talent and innovation added depths to songs live that were never reached in the studio versions. Unlike (the) Eagles, for instance, whose concerts sound just like the recordings, with the Kinks, nothing is ever that set in stone (except some of Ray’s jokes – bless, ‘If you don't know it, learn it’). Dave hardly ever plays the same solo the same way or even the same solo, if you know what I mean because he can do anything with a guitar. His ability means that he’s spoilt for choice. Why stick to the same old thing? He constantly improvises and invents so that every song played live is a work in progress. Fluid. Unrepeatable. Inimitable. He can make it scream, sing, cry, take us in any direction. Dave plays the guitar like it’s an extension of his body, like it’s completely natural to him. It doesn’t ever look like something he has to work at.

It makes each concert an adventure into the unknown as Dave is constantly upping the ante. In the 90s, his guitar work rejuvenates, transforms and beefs up ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ for a new generation. It sounds like a completely new song. Perhaps that’s why Ray sings the lead although he originally wrote it for Dave’s voice.

[Admittedly, I’ve never been to a Kinks concert, having only liked them a year or so; I can only judge from videos on YouTube and people’s recollections. With the Kinks, I didn’t so much come late to the party as turn up not only after it had finished but when the people holding it had got married, had kids, watched these kids grow up, moved into a retirement community and sold the house to fund their care in old age. I arrived in time for the new owners’ housewarming do.]

This mutability might also hint at a lack of discipline, another recurring feature of some Kinks gigs. A friend saw them at a festival in 71 I think and they only played three songs before Ray poured beer over the musicians at the front and then stormed off stage. In the Jon Savage biography, he mentions a gig in the US in 1965 where the Kinks

‘played one song – ‘You Really Got Me’ – for the whole act’.

You take the rough with the smooth. No wonder their managers were sometimes at their wits’ end.

In 1979, Dave invests ‘Superman’ with rock kudos, conducting a guitar masterclass from about three and a half minutes in, fleshing out a fairly ordinary pop song so that it sounds entirely different, he and Jim on backing vocals. (I always thought the female backing vocalists were unnecessary.) There’s nothing better than hearing the counterpoint of the brothers’ vocals. It’s even better when they share the lead, changing for the verse, the chorus or the bridge, as on ‘Arthur’ or ‘Artificial Man’. Dave’s vocals on the latter (very Ian Hunter-ish) surpass Ray’s, the aural equivalent of a colour segment in a black and white movie.

The dual vocal on this version of ‘Jukebox Music’, with Dave singing the lead works in a similar way, his pitch suiting perfectly and contributing that emotional edge. There’s something very special about the combination of their voices when they come together, blended like a good malt whisky, like on the chorus of ‘Hatred’ in this live rendition; Ray’s smile (2.09), Dave’s quick solo (3.25), a certain relish in the delivery of
‘Why don’t you just drop dead and don’t recover?’
(at 3.40) create utter magic.

‘Life Goes On’ 1977. How difficult it must be for Dave to accompany Ray’s vocal, its phrasing always changing, on guitar but he manages it, again with exquisite touch, so we can forgive a little ‘guitar face’.

When Dave is told to run with it, he extemporises with such talent and virtuosity, you wish all this was in the studio version. Thank God for YouTube. Rockpalast shows seem to bring out his inner guitar god, investing ‘Yo-Yo’, for instance, already a delicious diatribe, with an extra dimension, effectively changing the whole character of the song. The original’s relative resignation and restraint are ratcheted up to rage, with both Ray and Dave totally focused and committed. If they can play like this together, why would they ever want to stop? The whole climactic crescendo of sound is simply magnificent.

If looks could kill

But after watching this interview at the time of 'Scattered' (1993), I can see how Dave would never want to put himself in a similar situation again, where he’s literally frightened to speak, even to interject a frivolous comment, that it’s not worth the risk of Ray’s wrath, that look he gives him is so cutting and demoralising (see 1.17 to 1.29 for their awkward interaction). And yet, there’s affection there, in the video of the same song, when Ray sings

‘I feel older, I feel fatter’

and their exchange of smiles around two minutes in looks genuine but is it only for the benefit of the camera?

They would have to be willing/able to put aside their own past personal grievances and behave respectfully towards each other if there were ever to be a Kinks reunion. Although Dave is all about forgiveness, it’s one thing to forgive and another thing to put yourself in a position where you know you will have to exercise the muscle of forgiveness in advance.

Everybody’s waiting for the blog on Satsang 3 but I left everything I wrote in the hotel and have yet to get it back. It’s in transit. The gigs were great and we got to hear some tracks off Dave’s new album, very interesting, very varied – the five tracks we’ve heard so far (either live or as album mixes) are quite different. Dave still rocks, still emotes, still surprises. I don't know whether I’m allowed to divulge track titles yet.

Brothers Beyond: 'Kink' - Dave Davies/'X-Ray' - Ray Davies

Dave makes smoking look cool

It occurs to me that I’m experiencing the 60s and 70s vicariously through Dave’s book. Such is my second-hand life.

So again I find myself digressing along a path I didn’t intend to take. You know how it is when you’re on holiday and you see a sign that says ‘KEEP OUT’ or ‘DANGER BEYOND THIS POINT’ (they had one of those at Niagara Falls) and it entices you to go exactly where you shouldn’t. The lure of the forbidden. Anyway, here are more thoughts on ‘Kink’, including some comparisons of how Dave and Ray remember and relate certain episodes in their lives.

In ‘Kink’, Dave more frequently (although not always) shows awareness of how other people are involved in or impacted upon by what he does or what happens. This reading highlights how two events can be perceived (or at least remembered) quite differently by the participants or observers of the time. It’s not that one brother is right and one wrong; it’s only natural that there should be these discrepancies but what they do and don’t include and the emphasis they place on these does help to illuminate facets of their personalities. ‘Kink’ extracts purple; ‘X-Ray’ green; others blue.

Schooldays

Normally you could say that school might come before sex and drugs and rock and roll but with Dave and Ray, they were to prove almost concurrent.

The fight

Ray is much more competitive than Dave. He likes to win. But the boys don’t only fight each other.

As schoolboys, Ray and Dave are both boxing in the same tournament. Typically, Ray doesn’t even acknowledge that Dave was also fighting while Dave watches Ray in action and lets us know how he feels:

‘I flinched at every blow, winced at every punch’ … ‘I was torn between my own joy over winning and concern and worry for my brother’ … ‘Ray had lost the bout but had won much respect and admiration from the crowd for the courageous fight he’d put up against a more seasoned boxer. I burst with pride.’

Dave wins his match, motivated by the desire to impress the teacher he fancies:

‘The joy of victory was nothing compared to the look of approval and pleasure I received from Miss Joshua.’

Ray comments that he’s rather unlucky to come up against a formidable opponent, Ronnie Brooks, reigning British school boxing champ, a fact Dave also includes:

‘the referee intervened to prevent what little brain I had from being spilled all over the floor’.

But each particular setback makes Ray more generally resolute:

‘I began to associate those flashing lights with defeat, and I was determined to avoid defeat in the future.’

Ray’s focus is more self-central; he doesn’t even seem aware that Dave was there. Or if aware doesn’t deem it relevant. I don't know whether this is because Ray is more single-minded about winning or whether he simply can't be bothered to watch his brother. The concern at this point seems to be all one-way.

Perhaps it was fortuitous that the young Davies brothers were encouraged to take up pugilism, given their later propensity for pugnacity and tendency to get into fights with each other and everyone else, this later possibly being the ‘mystery’ behind why they were originally banned in the US, Ray reacting in a Dave-type manner, unusually for him not rationalising the ramifications of his actions:

‘I believed America to be an evil place …I remember we were doing a television spot, I think it was for The Dick Clark Show – and this guy kept going on at me: “When the commies overrun Britain, you’re really going to want to come here …?” I just turned round and hit him, about three times. I later found out that he was a union official.’

Ray in underwear

Sex

For Dave, see ‘Man Behaving Badly’.

I’m going to contradict myself here. Ray details some of his experiences with groupies in a similar way to Dave (although occasionally allowing another character to describe them, like a Vulcan mind meld, but they’re still his memories). And they’re explicit and raunchy. He doesn’t stint us on the viscera as I might have previously implied, for instance:

‘My head is banging against the door and the brunette is heaving back and forth, still with her head attached to my penis, her mouth slurping like a giant suction-pump’

although he does make this experience sound a little frightening. Note the lack of agency though – Ray is ‘acted upon’. For more on Ray’s sexhanigans, see ‘Sex-Ray’.

And Drugs

It’s that instant vs delayed gratification phenomenon again. It’s frightening – even after a friend dies of an overdose, Dave shows no signs of slowing down or giving up or even hesitating in his quest for the best high. After all, this is the Dave who filled in a questionnaire, putting his likes as ‘Money, clothes, cars’. Let’s face it – teenage Dave was pretty shallow. He wasn’t the Dave we know today, all sensitive and planet(s)-friendly. In the 60s, the spirits he was into were of a more liquid variety, usually taking the form of Rémy Martin.

In the US, a girl called Norma convinces Dave to try acid.

[Acid is the street name for LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), a semisynthetic psychedelic drug, known for its psychological effects, which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synesthesia, an altered sense of time and spiritual experiences. Good news is that it’s non-addictive and not known to cause brain damage, although in rare cases adverse psychiatric reactions such as anxiety or delusions occur.] [I don’t really understand what synesthesia is so if anyone can enlighten me, please feel free.]

‘Before me I could see the universe and all it contained and I was rushing at the speed of light into what seemed the very heart of it.’ … ‘I examined a chair and could sense the pulsating radiations from its atoms’ … ‘I would be suddenly lifted into mystical realms of ecstasy’ … but this elation doesn’t last: ‘Hopelessness pulled at the core of my being.’

This trip has a lasting effect on Dave. Overcome with sadness and anxiety, he tries to counteract this with first wine then sleeping pills. Good thinking, babe. Later he goes on stage:

‘Halfway through the show, I couldn’t stand it any more, so I left the stage, put my guitar in its case, and left the building.’

Naturally, Ray isn’t that sympathetic although just as volatile and unpredictable himself.

‘By 1971 I had lost my confidence to play live and was mentally in very bad shape’ … ‘I was again in despair and continuing to experiment with hallucinogens’ … ‘I spent the entire time in my room drinking wine and taking mescaline’

[Mescaline is a hallucinogen obtained from the cactus peyote. It produces rich visual hallucinations but the full spectrum of effects serves as a chemically induced model of mental illness. It is used as a recreational drug and also to supplement various types of meditation and psychedelic therapy. Users typically experience visual hallucinations and radically altered states of consciousness, often experienced as pleasurable and illuminating but occasionally accompanied by feelings of anxiety or revulsion. Other effects include: open and closed-eye visualizations, euphoria, dream-like state and laughter.]

Then a girl called Diana (there’s always a girl) introduces Dave to Angel Dust:

[Angel Dust is the street name for PCP, a recreational dissociative drug, formerly used as an anaesthetic, with both hallucinogenic and neurotoxic effects. It is significantly more dangerous than other categories of hallucinogens.]

‘It seemed fine when I was lying down but trying to walk was really difficult’ … ‘it was intended to be used when you were so drunk and stoned with everything else that it would be the only thing that could effect any noticeable difference’ … ‘God, it was wretched stuff.’

Dave with Flying Vee

It’s no wonder that Dave sometimes didn’t feel very well. Ray hasn’t really commented on any of these strange and disturbing interludes or the effect that any of this had on him and the band, whether through lack of interest or out of discretion, I can't say although he does mention the altercations that sometimes ensued as a result. Nor does he admit to having succumbed to any of the mind-altering substances out there, except for alcohol. Of the Cardiff fiasco (see below), he writes:

‘Dave had been hanging around with Brian Jones … and as a result started mixing drink and drugs. Everybody was relieved when, after several run-ins with the police and punch-ups outside clubs, he returned to live with Mum and Dad.’

That Brian Jones has a lot to answer for.

And Rock and Roll (Fantasy)

‘The year was 1963, and what I had on my mind mostly that year, besides girls and football, was guitars.’

Green amp set-up

Green amp

‘I always loved to mess around with amplifiers.’

‘When I was sixteen, I discovered how to make my guitar scream.’

Dave starts his book with a description of the sound he achieved with these different amps (the Elpico green amp – 10 watt says Dave, 8 watt says Ray, the 60-watt Linear, and Vox AC-30: a tale, recounted in vivid detail, involving razorblades and electric shocks (and knitting needles according to Ray). You know the one. Ray also recalls using this little amp at an early pub gig, where the band was dragged offstage but the amp played on.

‘It wasn’t called heavy metal when I invented it.’

Both recognise how important this was; it’s natural that Dave covers some of it more thoroughly than Ray (whose version is condensed and not quite accurate) because it was he who instigated the mutilation of the amp and it reinforces how integral he was to the distinctive guitar sound which was to jumpstart the Kinks career and influence so many other musicians.

‘As it vibrated it produced a distorted and jagged roar … the original set-up was so crude that the main amp's hum was almost as loud as the sound I had created. A sound was born, but I didn't know it at the time.’

Dave has just written a song called ‘Green Amp’. It would be great to get hold of a copy of the lyrics. Will hopefully hear it again at the September Satsang. Wonder if he'll try to reproduce the amp's sound.

They then use this strange multi-amp set-up live.

‘You Really Got Me’

It works well on ‘You Really Got Me’, the guitar all crunchy, but Dave calls the first attempt to record this ‘a disaster’:

‘After we threatened to pack the whole thing in if they released it, Robert and Grenville lent us the money to go back in the studio and record it again. I think it cost £200’ (a lot of money in those days, or even today)

Ray recalls this differently. He’s the one who objects and insists it be re-recorded when it sounds too smooth, determined to recreate the raunchiness they achieved live on the track. He does mention Dave:

‘At the time Dave had a girlfriend called Linda who put my feelings into words when she said that it didn’t make her want to drop her knickers’ …

‘I threatened to leave the band and never have anything more to do with the music business again but nobody took any notice.’

Luckily for us, Ray eventually gets his way and they redo the recording:

‘Dave’s eyes squinted and his face broke into that arrogant sideways smile that I had learned to love and hate over the years. … He gritted his teeth and sneered at me before turning away to play his solo.’

If Ray hadn’t been so stubborn so early on, they maybe wouldn’t have had their first hit and the course of their career might have been very different. In a recent interview, Shel Talmy has said:

‘Ray was always difficult. I didn’t have a problem with anybody else. Ray was moody, and I think it’s fair to say jealous from the outset that I was the, quote-unquote, producer and that he wasn’t. We were obviously close in age, which made it even more difficult … but hey, we worked it out.’

This might be a reference to that first encounter.

As they were, 1960s

'Well, the road's been rocky along the way’ (‘The Road’)
The Cardiff Incident (sounds like one of those 70s thrillers my dad watches, like ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’) or Where Have All the Good Times Gone, already?

‘Mick tried to slice Dave’s head off with a cymbal during “Beautiful Delilah”’

‘I looked at Mick and shouted at him, calling him a useless cunt. I said his drumming was shit and they’d sound better if he played them with his cock. I sneered at him and kicked his drums all over the stage’ … ‘he hit me over the head with one of his cymbal stands’

It was a stand not an actual cymbal that did the damage. He says he had half a dozen stitches in his head. Ray increases the number but I can't remember to what.

In Jon Savage’s book, we get Mick’s side of the story:

‘Everyone misinterprets it and says I hit him with a cymbal. If you hit someone with a cymbal, you decapitate them. I only had a high hat left from my kit to hit him with so I hit him over the head with the pedal end.'

This might be the memorable occasion when Dave is said to have spat in everyone’s faces but I’m only guessing. Happy days.

Pete and Jonah’s car accident 1966

Dave gets a call at 3 am from Grenville. Pete’s ok but

‘Jonah … was in a bad way, with fractures to the ribs and pelvis, acute stomach lesions and, worst of all, severe injuries to his face and jaw.'

Dave goes to see them both in hospital and is obviously concerned:

‘I was particularly upset about Jonah because I had grown up with him and we were good mates. His family ran the newspaper shop a few doors down from us.’

Ray hears about the accident in a news report before ‘Grandstand’. It’s not clear why no one tells him personally. Maybe they didn’t dare. He acts like this is a slightly annoying inconvenience but one that can be got around on their scheduled TV appearances as these are usually mimed anyway. Pete is missing from this ‘Sunny Afternoon’ from around the time and Ray looks pretty pissed off.

I think these comparisons show that Ray was detached from those around him, almost remote, in a way that Dave never was. Dave is much more emotional than Ray; Dave makes me emotional when I’m with him. But Ray retains that distance for safety’s sake and so that he can observe and judge and make a considered decision. Dave’s decisions are rooted in his feelings. (See ‘Man Behaving Badly’.)

I’ll end with a quote from ‘Kink’, something Ray’s second wife, Yvonne, said to Dave:

‘If Ray was bit more like you and you were a little more like him, then both of you would have been better off.’

It takes a woman.

Last word

I know that if Dave thinks I look cold, he’ll offer me a sweater to wear; I don't know about Ray. I think he would probably say ‘Why didn’t you wear something warmer?’ I'd love to meet him and find out.

To come: The third Dave Davies Satsang weekend retreat; the Kinks trail in Muswell Hill and Highgate complete with surprise guest appearance from an original member of the Kinks.

Thanks to Wikipedia for drug descriptions and Frank Lima for amp set-up picture.

Dave Davies – ‘Kink’ – Man Behaving Badly

If you see a fair form

If you see a fair form, chase it
And if possible, embrace it,
Be it a girl or a boy.
Don't be bashful, be brash, be fresh.
Life is short, so enjoy
Whatever contact your flesh
May at the moment crave:
There is no sex life in the grave.

W. H. Auden

This poem could sum up Dave’s carpe diem approach to life in the 60s. And perhaps other people’s attitudes to his fair form.

In 1964, Dave held all the cards. Seventeen, heartbreakingly beautiful, confident, talented, successful, limitless sex appeal. He played what should have been a winning hand with reckless abandon while Ray feinted and bluffed with his.

Somehow, despite everything that Dave does, he emerges untouched, still retaining a naivety and an aura of innocence, purity. There must be a portrait gathering dust in an attic somewhere.

I promised relationships, respect, responsibility and it seems to me that these are inextricably entwined. I might not fit them all in this blog though.

‘I wanna lot out of life, but I know my limitations/Guess I want a lot of things and got my inclinations’ (‘Got My Feet on the Ground’)

Dave’s sheer exuberance and joie de vivre carry us along with him as he bounds from one (mis)adventure to the next, hardly pausing for breath, his lust for life redolent in the action and in the telling (encapsulated in Shel Naylor’s suitably raucous and energetic version of ‘One Fine Day’). Dave is open to everything, an attractive quality that can be a fault as well as a virtue. He doesn’t reason things out too much when he’s in his teens and early twenties. And he manages to have his cake and eat it too. I’ve never really understood the thinking behind that phrase. What’s the point in having cake if you're not going to eat it?

Battle of the sexes?
I do sometimes wonder whether both brothers fight a tiny, subconscious misogynist urge. Maybe all men do, being encouraged to perceive themselves in an adversarial relationship with women, obliged to take part in the battle of the sexes. There are certainly signs although I’m sure that they would say that they love women and Dave championed female deities and feminine power at the last Satsang. Ray often seems to divide women into those who withhold sex in order to trap/control a man (usually holding out until they see Dave’s smile) and those who freely indulge in sex, in order to trap/control a man and he thinks each is a deliberate manoeuvre. Girls withhold for many reasons, especially first time around, many having little to do with the actual man who feels he’s being denied. There are questions of respect, born out of attitudes exactly like Ray’s. You’re a slapper if you put out and frigid if you don’t.

Consider these lyrics:

Ooh, Bernadette, you are so expensive/You've never done a day's work in your life/You've got no incentive/You've made a career out of punting off all of the men you've slept with' (‘Bernadette’)

and Ray's exhortation at the end of this live version (quote deleted to appease the moral majority). Anyway, it sounds pretty bitter, possibly a reaction to a particular experience or the influence of too many recreational pharmaceuticals.

In Kink, Dave claims that there’s an old Cockney saying: ‘I fucked her rigid’. Never heard that one.

Ray and Rasa wedding photo

I’m not saying that some women don’t use sex as a weapon; some definitely do, if not as a weapon, at least as a means of manipulation. (This is sometimes learnt behaviour from how men react to them). I’m not saying that women don’t trap men in all sorts of ways. And possibly this does happen with Dave and Ray at different times in their lives although of course, if it’s an unplanned pregnancy, both partners have equal responsibility. I also believe that men collude with these stereotypes, liking to see themselves as desirable of entrapment, even if it means playing the role of the dupe.

I know several men who claim that they get on really well with women and that they are in touch with their feminine side although many are sorely deluded. These men often cite an early female-dominated environment as being at the root of this innate ability to connect with women. As far as Ray and Dave are concerned, this would relate to their being the first boys in a family of six girls, who petted and adored their younger brothers. I believe they went out in the world expecting all women to cosset them like this. So, while both claim to have been shy although Dave admits he was never shy with girls, they were also supremely confident. Their upbringing led to a sense of entitlement and a sense of security. Witness Dave walking home from primary school because he didn’t like it and Ray refusing to toe the line for the Eleven Plus.

First experiences

Women are usually very receptive to Ray and Dave and their attentions. Some are kind and giving as both brothers acknowledge. The Davies boys appear reactive rather than proactive so it’s usually a girl that approaches them or makes the first move. Dave sleeps with groupies but these are usually girls he doesn’t have to seek out. Even Lisbet was introduced to him. And Rasa pursued Ray, see my blog on ‘X-Ray’ for more on this.

‘I used to do my courting on an old kitchen chair/The girls were all so sporting, but I only really cared for my little Katie-Sue/There was nothing she wouldn't do’ (‘Fortis Green’)

So their first sexual encounters seem to be initiated by women or girls, from Sue:

‘We pushed our chairs together and began to kiss, deep tender kisses … Sue straddled herself across my lap after hitching up her delightfully pleated skirt and I entered her. It was a truly magical moment’ after which ‘Sue and I made love at every opportunity.’

to the ‘lady of the night’ (as my Mum would have put it), with a heart of gold (Miriam) in the club who is kind to Ray:

‘Then I felt her hands on my skin as she slid them under my shirt to feel my backside. … She kissed me gently on the face … she just grabbed me harder and kissed me on the mouth.’

‘So tonight let's be together, live for love and life and pleasure/Feel each moment there to treasure, soon we will be gone forever’ (‘Ladies of the Night’)

Ray, of course, doesn’t reveal exactly what takes place. Dave does. This willingness to divulge is apparent again when he relates some of his experiences with groupies.

EP cover

‘God save little shops, china cups and virginity’ (‘Village Green Preservation Society’)
'He'll make you laugh, make you smile/And make you feel good for a while/Wicked smile, decadent grin/He likes school girls, nuns and virgins' ('He's Evil')

While still living with his parents, Dave’s escapades are escalating:

‘Often Mum would try to bash down the door to see if there were any underage girls. Of course there weren’t … . But on one occasion I was with a girl whose hymen was so difficult to break that for a moment I thought she still had her tights on.’

I do feel sorry for Eileen, a friend of Rasa’s, of whom Dave says:

‘A pretty, dark-haired girl whom I took back to my hotel. … Eileen hung around a lot but I wasn’t interested in her as a constant companion. There were too many girls to see in other towns we visited.’

They connect at the same time that Ray meets Rasa, hook up at the wedding and are ‘lying locked in sexual ecstasy’ when Dave is supposed to be making his best man’s speech. So when Eileen announces she is pregnant, possibly expecting that Dave might do ‘the better thing’ as Ray had done with Rasa, and as he failed to do with Sue two years earlier, ostensibly owing to the machinations of their parents, she is bitterly disappointed. A paternity suit is filed and the implication of:

‘It was amazing what 50 quid could buy in those days’

is that Eileen was bought off by Dave’s lawyers. Ray mentions this in ‘X-Ray’ very briefly as another paternity suit. Were there more then?

Although Dave claims to feel badly for Eileen, he writes,

‘I also felt manipulated as I had only had sex with her three or four times and I knew that she had been hanging around with other bands at the same time.’

Fair enough. How many times does it take though? Only one. Eileen comes to see Dave in the 90s to show him photos of her son (perhaps his son) but he writes:

‘I just didn’t have any deeper feeling about it … I didn’t “feel” like I was his father and he my son.’

It’s not really about you, honey. It’s about him.  Dave allows his heart and what he feels for Eileen (not very much – it was a bit of fun that got too serious too soon) to guide him (a positive trait, which, in other situations, leads him to show a compassion and understanding missing from some of Ray's reactions) but sometimes following your own heart can break someone else's. Sue’s daughter, Tracey, fares better but that’s a longer tale so I’ll leave it for now.

Back to the groupies although it’s not entirely clear if that’s what these girls are or whether they would have ended up in bed with Dave regardless, pop star or not. Such is his youthful appeal. He often has girls jumping into bed with him and as a red-blooded male, he very rarely refuses when they offer. 

‘After a while, I was awakened by the blonde girl as she snuggled up beside me. She was naked.’

Naturally, Dave doesn’t resist this opportunity.We get details and let’s face it, that’s what we want from an autobiography, ‘This blonde Vampira licked my stomach and placed my penis fully into her mouth and began to suck on it like the Goddess of Whores’.

Again, she makes the first move and what is she labelled? The ‘Goddess of Whores’? (Double standards, anyone? Although I actually think Dave means this as a compliment.) (Of course David Watts does call Dave ‘that little whore’, a term of affection in that instance.) Again, the woman takes control:

‘Then she sat on top of me and placed my cock inside her.’ It's clear that Dave doesn't have to try too hard. I like this evocative description of another encounter:

‘One of the girls undressed me and laid me on the couch’ … ‘I felt her mouth on my penis and it felt as if her tongue was inside my head, touching and stimulating every nerve ending and sensory centre in my brain.’

He’s understandably more reticent on the subject of the women he cares about – Sue, Lisbet, Nancy – realising that discretion is the better part of valour. And he spends time talking to them before getting down to it. Or does he?

‘Once in my room I began to make clumsy and drunken advances to a bewildered Lisbet. After a short while, before I could remove any of her clothing, there was a loud knock at the door.’

Long John Baldry

Men
Dave’s short-lived relationships with men, such as Michael Aldred and Long John Baldry are mentioned:

‘Long John and I sat talking, kissing and holding hands.’

All night. Hmm. Would Dave have been satisfied with this if LJB had been a woman or would he have expected more?

‘It was very beautiful. I always remembered that feeling of being close to another man, of being intimate in a respectful way.’

Things progress further with Michael Aldred, for whom Dave seems to develop a genuine affection:

‘I really liked him but I tried to avoid having sex with him because I never enjoyed it as much as I liked just sharing a relationship with him. I never really thought much of it, in fact; to me it was just perverse fun. I think he really did love me and I must have hurt his feelings but I was young and arrogant and possessed too much of an insatiable hunger for women to be faithful to him.’

This shows a certain self-awareness and Dave, a habit of his, tries to be kind while being cruel; he stays out late drinking only to be greeted by a mini melodrama on his return; it seems quite amusing in retrospect but could not have been much fun at the time:
‘With that he tore off the apron and flung it dismissively in my face.’
There’s shouting, a fight, tears, a kiss and make-up before an ultimate break-up. Once the relationship threatens Dave’s freedom and ceases to be fun, he sympathises but calls it a day.

He sums up his feelings:

‘Recently someone asked me if I had ever been in love with any of the men I slept with. And the answer is I loved them but I was never in love with them, not like being in love with a woman.’

Exotic women

I’m always a bit suspicious of men who choose to hang out with, go out with and eventually marry someone who does not speak English as a first language, unless they or their lover are bilingual. To me, it suggests that the attraction is instinctual, primitive, purely physical rather than any meeting of minds or convergence of ideas and values. Simple basic sex with no intellectual engagement. I also wonder if there isn’t some element of power involved. It’s different of course if the man moves to the woman’s country – then he’s the one who has to adapt and he’s the one who’s lost control. Interesting that both Dave and Ray married exotic foreign ladies. And that Dave should go out for a while with a German girl he couldn’t converse with at all. Uncomplicated sex free of any commitment. And why not? But can this initial attraction either sustain or develop into a real relationship?

[I admit though that this is a bugbear (what is that?) of mine, having once fallen for a guy who I thought was single, only to discover that he had a Hungarian fiancée. He went back to Hungary to break up with her and go out with me, perhaps confused by my foreign name but eventually dumped me for someone who was genuinely foreign, later splitting up with her to marry a Belgian girl.]

Jackie Leven is of a mind with Dave here: ‘We really liked all the exotic women coming and going. I think we all knew that this was probably our one and only chance to have massive sexual availability. We all had far too many girlfriends going on. And swapping them didn’t assuage the situation.’ Get it while you can.

As they were, 1970s

With Dave, the inclination is to blame any error on his youth; it’s true, he was exposed to temptations at a very young age (and it was the permissive 60s) but I believe that, had their ages been reversed, Dave would still have been the miscreant, the recidivist raver, would still have over-indulged. And Ray would have been the sensible one, ‘the wicked headmaster’. He would have contemplated, considered and intellectualised it all. Not that he didn't play any of the cards he was dealt. He just kept them closer to his chest.

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' (The Go-Between)
'Because I've lived this life/And I made it for myself' ('All Night Stand')

There’s a real joy in 'Kink' though; Dave captures that sense of a wild ride. And his candour deserves credit, as confessing his misbehaviour in such delicious detail leaves him open to criticism, but he did it so he writes about it and can be commended for his honesty and bravery. Perhaps the needle on another person's moral compass might be spinning but Dave is not constrained by society's codes. He's not like everybody else; at this point (and maybe even now), he's a law unto himself, true to himself, in a world of his own making.

Next time: responsibility. For first part, see Reflections on 'Kink'.