The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

by Andy Miller

  Once the April tour got under way, Davies’ unhappiness was evident in his on-stage demeanour. “Ray seemed a bit bored by the whole business — his ‘sad clown’ face forcing the occasional toothy grin to convince us he was really having a ball,” reported Disc and Music Echo from Walthamstow on the second date of the tour. Night after night, The Kinks ran through a desultory set, which included ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Death Of A Clown’ and their new single ‘Wonderboy’. “It was a chore, very dull, boring and straightforward,” says Pete Quaife. “We only did twenty minutes, but it used to drive me absolutely frantic, standing on stage playing three notes over and over again.”

  As the tour progressed, tickets stubbornly refused to sell. Venues were sometimes only half-full. Those who did buy tickets largely came to scream at The Herd, whose singer Peter Frampton had been marketed as ‘the Face of 68’. In general, the teenyboppers were not there to see the boring old Kinks, who occasionally had to endure chants of “We Want The Herd!” during their brief appearances.

  “In 68 and 69 it was very difficult. People laughed at you if you said you were a Kinks’ fan,” remembers Bill Orton, president of the Kinks Fan Club, who was fourteen when he saw the group for the first time in Coventry, on the tour’s last night. “I went to the early show. My seat was in the third row, so I had some screaming girls next to me. They were looking at the bill and saying, ‘Well, there’s nobody here except The Herd’. In fact, whatever band came on they went crazy anyway.” Although Bill enjoyed the concert, he was surprised at the group’s perfunctory treatment of their biggest hit ‘You Really Got Me’. “At the end of the show, the curtain came down, they played the opening riff, and then didn’t carry on. That was it.”

  The mood of despondency engendered by the tour was not improved by the abject failure of ‘Wonderboy’, “a flop staggering in its finality and completeness,” as Chris Welch wrote a few months later. “It was put out because we were going on tour,” said Davies. “We had made that title as an album track, but they wanted to take it out as a single while we were on tour. But I was not too sure of its single potential.”xxxvi He was right. The track was a mess, one of Davies’ finest lyrics hidden beneath a trite arrangement and murky production. It sold 27,000 copies, a tenth of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ or ‘Autumn Almanac’, and barely crawled into the top forty.

  For Pete Quaife, ‘Wonderboy’ crystallised the mounting dissatisfaction he felt with The Kinks. “‘Wonderboy’ was horrible,” he says. “It sounded like Herman’s Hermits wanking. Jesus, it was bad. I hated it. I remember recording it and doing the la-la-las and just thinking, ‘What kind of bloody prissy sissy nonsense are we doing? We’re the guys that made “You Really Got Me”, for Chrissakes!’ “

  “What really pissed me off is that we were pandering to what Ray wanted to be, how he wanted to be perceived. It was very much a Noel Coward kind of idea, and we were being forced to go along with it. I felt quite stupid doing it, to be honest. I don’t really blame Ray, I blame the managers for putting thoughts into his head, telling him he could do this and he could do that, without giving any regard to the other members of the group.”

  Quaife had known Davies since school, and it infuriated him to see Ray receive what he considered preferential treatment. Mick Avory, however, was a latecomer to the band and took a more sanguine view. “When it came down to it, the management knew they had to look after Ray and pamper him,” he says. “He was the main writer in the band, he wrote all the hits. The rest of the group were just there. From more or less being all the same when you first start, Ray comes out of the group and he’s on a pedestal — but that’s through his talent, rather than someone just putting him there. I mean, Pete Quaife’s got a certain amount of talent, but he ain’t got Ray’s talent, and neither has Dave. It’s no good me saying we should all be the same — we ain’t the same.”

  The dual flops of the April tour and ‘Wonderboy’ hit The Kinks hard. To Pete Quaife in particular, they confirmed that Ray Davies’ domination of the group, encouraged by a shortsighted management team, was smothering The Kinks and bringing their career to a speedy close. For Davies himself the race was now on to get his Village Green album completed and released the way he wanted it, while The Kinks still retained their commercial clout. The previous year’s dreams of a Ray Davies solo project began to fade.

  The Kinks returned to the studio in May to add to their cache of inspired recordings: ‘Picture Book’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Johnny Thunder’ and the superb ‘Days’. At this stage, Davies seems not to have had the album’s contents worked out beyond his initial Village Green idea — TKATVGPS, a subtly different and more sophisticated creation, was still some way off. Typically, he did not discuss it much with the other members of The Kinks. “Ray explained that he wanted all the songs to tie together, subject-wise, so we knew that much,” says Mick Avory. “Ray always kept everything to himself, everything was a big secret,” says Pete Quaife. “But when the numbers started to come together, we began to see what he was driving at. About the time of ‘Animal Farm’, it all clicked.”

  Meanwhile, Reprise, the group’s record label in America, was demanding a new Kinks LP. Under duress, Davies acquiesced. In June 1968, he submitted a fifteen-track ragbag of Village Green songs, singles and off cuts to Reprise, who gave it the provisional title Four More Respected Gentlemen, a weak reference to an earlier American Kinks hit. At this stage, Davies seems to have assumed America would not want the finished Village Green album, perhaps judging it too parochial for that market.

  By accident or design, Davies’ compilation of Four More Respected Gentlemen is not quite as random as it first appears. Musically, it contains a high percentage of rockers and fast songs, something emphasised by Reprise’s edit of the LP.4 Moreover, many of Davies’ lyrics reflect his uneasy personal and professional situation at the time, being largely concerned with ways of escape: running away (‘Polly’), booze (‘Misty Water’), cheap music (‘Mr. Songbird’), nostalgia (‘Picture Book’), one-night stands (‘Berkeley Mews’), even suicide (‘Did You See His Name’). In the event, there were sufficient delays to Four More Respected Gentlemen to ensure it was never issued, although acetate copies do exist. Instead, TKATVGPS was released in America in January 1969, where contrary to group expectations, it turned out to be the beginning of The Kinks’ revival, its Angloparochialism the very thing some American listeners liked about it (Gor, darn it).

  Meanwhile, tensions in the group had reached a head in May during the recording of ‘Days’. Unlike ‘Wonderboy’, Davies always intended this new song, a bittersweet adieu to a former lover, to be a new Kinks single. Once again, he had something to prove. However, there was a major row in the studio between Davies and Quaife, with the latter storming out. The fight was sparked off by Quaife doodling the word ‘Daze’ on the box of the ‘Days’ master tape, a story corroborated by Dave Davies in his autobiography Kink. Ray Davies was incensed at Quaife’s apparent disregard for his work and his feelings; ‘Days’ was “the most significant song in my life so far.” A screaming match ensued, although Davies concedes it was conceit on his part. “My work had become too precious to me,” he wrote in X-Ray. “I was literally in an emotional daze about where I was, who I was and who I wanted to be with. Maybe Quaife was as well.”xxxvii This story has passed into Kinks legend, largely thanks to its retelling in Ray Davies’ Storyteller presentations where, as in X-Ray, it takes on a retrospective symbolic resonance: “I was convinced Quaife had decided to leave the band forever . . . ‘Days’ was telling the world that it was the end of the group.”xxxviii

  Not surprisingly, Quaife’s version of events is slightly different. In an interview with Bill Orton and Russell Smith in 1999, he recalled what happened.

  Pete Quaife: “After a while it became colossally boring, to sit there listening to this thing over and over and over again, so what I was doing was doodling. I was drawing this little man and Ray saw it and got really upset! I was doodling instead of li
stening to the damn music, and he started making a big fuss about it. I went, ‘Fuck it Ray, I’m out of here’, and I just walked out. Rasa came running after me; ‘Don’t go, don’t be like that!’ I said to hell with it, I’m not going to be spoken to like that . . . I was drawing a little cartoon character, me. I can even tell you where it was on the box . . . for some reason he has changed that around to [me] writing the word ‘Daze’.” Russell Smith: “Was that an excuse on Ray’s part?” PQ: “He thought it makes a better story if he said that.”xxxix

  Whatever the exact truth of it, the ill will hung around as The Kinks embarked on their next misguided venture, a hastily arranged June tour of Sweden. “We were staying slightly away from each other,” says Quaife. “It was the best thing to do at that time.” To make matters worse, The Kinks’ new agent Barry Dickens had booked the group to play in the open air at a series of Swedish ‘folk parks’, family leisure parks sponsored by the state. The Kinks had been told they were flying out to play rock festivals; they were taken aback to discover “parents strolling around with kids licking icelollies alongside genuine fans and party revellers,” recalls Dave Davies in Kink. “It was a horrible, soulless experience.”xl But things would get worse before the year was out.

  ‘Days’ was released at the end of June. The single slowly sold a respectable 82,000 copies and hung around the top twenty for several weeks, but reviews were lukewarm. “The brothers Davies sing through another nondescript tune against a barrage of strings — or electronics — it’s hard to tell these days,” noted Melody Maker.xli Penny Valentine in Disc liked the single (“better than they’ve done for ages”) but in Melody Maker’s Blind Date column, Keith Moon of The Who pronounced ‘Days’ “pretty dated, like one of the songs Pete [Towns-hend] keeps under his sink.” He spoke for many. “I dig what The Kinks do, but I’ve never thought of them as a group.”xlii

  Back from Sweden, The Kinks undertook a final burst of recording for the Village Green album — it is believed ‘Wicked Annabella’, ‘Starstruck’, ‘People Take Pictures Of Each Other’ and the poignant ‘Do You Remember Walter’ were all recorded in July 1968. Crucially, Davies made the conceptual leap from Village Green to TKATVGPS, writing ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, a song he called the album’s “national anthem”. Some songs still seemed like remnants of a wholly different, personal Ray Davies project. Everything was becoming blurred.

  On their return from Sweden, there is some evidence to suggest that, after the disappointments and infighting of the previous months, a ceasefire was brokered. Davies acceded to the band members’ requests for more creative input, albeit somewhat reluctantly. “I’m happy the way the recordings are coming out,” he said at the time. “I’m getting over to the group more. We’re doing what I think the group wants, although it’s hard, sometimes, to feel the same way.”xliiiDavies also accepted this album would be The Kinks’ new LP.

  “We developed it together, which was the first time that had happened really,” says Mick Avory. “Because it had a theme, I think he wanted some kind of continuity of feel for it. We were adhesive and locked into each other’s ways. He trusted us a bit more.”

  Pete Quaife looks back on this respite as The Kinks’ Indian summer. “I’m not quite sure what it was — either Ray was not feeling too well or he was very tired, maybe it was the court case — but all of us managed to get in ideas and put them over and do them, which was amazing. During rehearsal and recording. Just for that little period, he lightened up a lot. In the studio, it was a lot easier to get ideas across or to suggest things.” Of course, this may just have been a ruse on Davies’ part to get the LP finished. “Towards the end — Boom! He went back to being Ray Davies and that was it. We all went back to living in a haze of ‘What the hell is going on?’ “

  As Davies’ creative energies focussed on the end product, the ‘preservation’ umbrella also permitted him to incorporate some of the more personal songs The Kinks had been working on. “It was a vague idea in the beginning,” confirms Pete Quaife, “but then it began to take form as we were recording. Eventually he realised — jeez, I can put this together as that.”

  With the album nearing completion, a release date was pencilled in for late September. In early July, The Kinks recut ‘Monica’ in two separate radio sessions for the BBC, while at the end of the month, the group appeared on the Colour Me Pop strand of BBC 2’s Late Night Line-Up, performing a selection of numbers that included ‘Days’, ‘Sitting By The Riverside’ and ‘Picture Book’. In interviews, group members began to puff their forthcoming LP. Dave Davies, who was supposed to be promoting ‘Lincoln County’, seemed much more excited about Village Green, as he referred to it, than his much-delayed third solo single. “It was originally Ray’s idea to do it as a stage musical,” he told Disc. “That never came off though, so we did it on an LP. It’s about a town and the people that have lived there, and the village green is the focal point of the whole thing.”xliv In New Musical Express, he was more effusive. “It’s the best thing we’ve ever done . . . All Ray’s songs came at the right time for us, just when we were wondering what to do next.”xlv

  Ray Davies spoke cautiously of the tracks on the album. “They’re all related in a way. I hope they will be self-explanatory if people are interested enough to listen. Sometimes I wonder if they really do listen to records.”xlvi Elsewhere, he revealed he had ditched his solo plans and reaffirmed his commitment to The Kinks. “I’ve asked the group to sing and play on it with me and they have kindly consented,” he told Keith Altham. “I would like to make it clear that I’ve always wanted to do an LP with the Kinks anyway!”xlvii

  For the cover of the new album, a photo session was organised on Hampstead Heath. On a balmy August day, the group strolled from Kenwood House out onto the Heath itself, ambling through the long grass with two photographers, Pye’s in-house snapper and Melody Maker’s Barrie Wentzell. “I’d met The Kinks a few times before and was always a bit scared of them,” remembers Wentzell. “To my surprise the boys were dressed casually and seemed in mellower mood. After tea on the terrace we set off across the Heath to take some pictures in the long grass which Hampstead Council used to leave uncut, thus giving the place a truly country feel.” One of Wentzell’s photographs was used on the rear of the album, although he did not receive a credit (or payment).

  “That was one of those days when everyone got on great,” says Pete Quaife. “It was long but it was very pleasant. I could take you there now and take you where we walked. Down by the lake, over the bridge . . .” Mick Avory also has fond memories of the day. “We just turned up in what we were wearing. It was nice because it was just down the road from where we lived.” Ray Davies looks back on the photo session as The Kinks’ last golden day. “When Barry Wentzel (sic.) took those last cover shots outside Kenwood House in Hampstead, he was documenting the end of the band.’xlviii

  In August, Ray Davies left Fortis Green for Borehamwood and The Kinks recorded ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’. In theory, the album was now complete. “It’s something I wanted to do two years ago,” Davies said. “I’ve got the feeling it is going to work the way I want it to. It will be what I’ve always wanted. It’s just a matter of the things that are on it.”xlixThe unhappy significance of this last comment would only become apparent in the weeks ahead.

  Davies initially sequenced a twelve-track version of TKATVQPS, which was glowingly previewed by Keith Altham in NME on September 21st, singling out the title track for special praise. “This is Mr. D’s personal musical museum,” he wrote of the album as a whole. “It’s worth more than just a thought.” Pye advertisements appeared in the pop papers showing a black and white cover design (reproduced in the booklet of the current British edition of the album).5

  “I went up to their managers’ office to listen to a tape,” recalls Altham. “It was very interesting from a musical and aesthetic point of view, and I liked it, but I knew it was a Ray Davies solo album in all but na
me. There was something missing in terms of dynamics. It was an interesting cameo of English class structure, but it didn’t seem to have that anger, the kind of attack that Dave used to bring. For The Kinks, I thought it was risky. Ray had this way of writing that, within itself, was ambiguous. And although the album was clever, it didn’t seem to me to have the ambiguity that his best work had — or maybe it had too much. Either way, it was a bit too twee.”

  TKATVGPS was scheduled to appear in the shops on September 27th 1968, a week after Altham’s preview. It never made it. At the very last minute, Ray Davies had a change of heart.6 He wanted the album postponed. More, he wanted to expand it to a double album, and went to Pye with the suggestion that the album could be sold at a budget price, twenty new Kinks tracks in one fell swoop.7 Pye refused but a compromise was reached — Davies could resequence a fifteen-track edition of the album as a single disc. He agreed, but rather than draw on The Kinks’ considerable backlog of material, he took the group back into the studio in October to record two new songs — the awe-inspiring ‘Big Sky’ and a gently satirical number called ‘Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains’.