Kinks - Rock Postcards from the British Empire

Instructions for use

The caveat is necessary, because the Kinks' discography is nearly as complex as their music. At least as far as the Sixties are concerned, a fair chunk of their major output was released exclusively on 45s, and to this day no compilation exists that gathers all the gems that were left off albums at the time. The more recent reissues have at least partially remedied this, tacking the tracks in question onto the end of the original sequences a few at a time. So — demos and alternate versions aside — don't skip the bonus tracks when you sit down to listen to their albums: it's almost always essential material for understanding the band's legacy.

The discography under consideration here is the British one, since the American one, up until autumn 1965, featured track listings that were completely reshuffled.

An incalculable legacy

The British Sixties were a mythical era for popular music. For many, it's the season that made rock grow up, and it's not hard to see why. That scene launched a string of innovators capable of turning everything on its head, bands whose fingerprints can be traced in hundreds of later artists: Rolling Stones, Who, Yardbirds, Small Faces, and many more besides. Then there are the Beatles, whose success made rock palatable even to listeners who up to that point had remained immune to it — think of classical music lovers.

And yet, in retrospect, none of these bands has had as vast and varied a following as the Kinks. They've often been belittled and ranked by rock critics as inferior to the Beatles-Stones-Who triad because of their comparatively modest success, but if you examine their legacy without prejudice, and without bringing their limited social impact outside Britain into the equation, you'll find that on purely musical terms they produced an unprecedented string of innovations, often astonishingly ahead of the rest of rock. The Kinks passed through almost every rock fad, but by the time any given one exploded, they'd already moved on to anticipate the next: a constant step forward that often meant they went unrecognized in their own time.

The revolution began with "You Really Got Me" (August 1964): that one song alone was enough to lay the groundwork for rock's harder edge. It's now universally accepted that this single song contained the seeds of what, many years later, would become punk, hard rock and metal. It's worth repeating, to give a true sense of how vast its influence was: punk, hard rock and metal. A multitude of bands, a whole cosmos whose scope still hasn't been fully measured, all trace their ancestry back to that primal, obsessive riff, those raw-throated vocals, that frenzied guitar solo. Van Halen sealed the deal in 1977 with a tribute cover that went on to sell millions of copies. They didn't pick a Stones song. They didn't pick a Beatles song. They picked "You Really Got Me", because that's where their roots were.

That, however, was merely a circle closing. Long before that, the song had perhaps done more than any other to popularize the distorted-sounding power chord among rock bands, giving birth to the modern concept of the guitar riff. The Who's Pete Townshend was one of the first to be struck by lightning, and in many interviews he's been careful to stress the impact the song had on him. "My Generation" would never have existed if the Kinks hadn't raised the bar on how violent beat music's sound could be, which up to that point had been fairly tame. The Rolling Stones' own "Satisfaction" is probably a direct consequence of the leap the Kinks triggered.

Had the Kinks recorded only this one song, they would still rank among the most influential bands of the era. Instead they recorded a great deal more, with equally epoch-making impact, even if it's far less well known today.

"See My Friends" (July 1965) comes immediately to mind, the first rock song heavily influenced by traditional Indian music. Here too they were well ahead of everyone else, and here too they triggered a remarkable chain reaction. The Beatles heard it and, according to Barry Fantoni's account, decided to get hold of a sitar, since the guitar on the Kinks' track had a sound that evoked one: that's how "Norwegian Wood" came to be. In the popular imagination, it's the little Beatles gem that's remembered as the first rock song scented with India, both because it actually used a sitar rather than just imitating one, and simply because it was far more successful. If the irony can be forgiven, it amounts to a genuine patent theft — one for which the Beatles obviously bear no responsibility, but which is rather emblematic of how underrated the Kinks have been.

Even so, the credit is theirs, even if hardly anyone knows it, and it's thanks to them that within a couple of years the Byrds would release "Eight Miles High", the Stones "Paint It Black", Traffic "Paper Sun", the Velvet Underground "Venus In Furs", and so on and so forth. Here too, a door in rock was flung open with their key.

In 1966, Face To Face was the first British concept album, and one of the first concept albums in rock in general (the others that came out the same year were by the likes of Beach Boys, Mothers of Invention and Jan & Dean). Here again, their countrymen were thoroughly beaten to the punch.

The album also contains "Sunny Afternoon", perhaps rock's first decadent ballad, and certainly the most representative example of that gloomy romanticism and that intellectually tinged world-weariness later found in Lou Reed, David Bowie, Ian Hunter, Steve Harley and so on. In case you're not convinced, the same album tackles the subject head-on with the satirical anthem "Dandy".

Speaking of satire, the Kinks were the first to bring it into rock on an ongoing basis, to the point of making it a stylistic trademark. Starting with "A Well Respected Man" (September 1965), a good portion of their songs are vignettes that observe, and when the occasion calls for it mock, the British way of life, both past and present.

"Lola" came out in June 1970. T. Rex had not yet released "Ride A White Swan", the masterpiece single that effectively kicked off the glam era. And yet, looking closely, "Lola" already contains many of the elements of glam: a muscular rock backbone, a pronounced folk streak (just think of the introductory acoustic guitar), an infectious, slightly cheeky sense of communal singalong, a sexually ambiguous and morbid mood. Granted, it lacks the orchestral component and the sense of excess typical of Marc Bolan's songs, but it's clear they had already fully grasped the direction things were heading.

The Kinks' greatest gift to music, however, is none of the above, and sadly it's almost never acknowledged. The Kinks saved local popular music from oblivion. Without them, the old music-hall tradition would have vanished from the DNA of British musicians, taking with it all its distinctive traits: the jaunty march-like rhythms, the caustic humour, the theatrical flair, the irresistibly catchy chorus, the arrangements that shift between folk elements and more urban ones. These are strongly distinctive traits, and they would go on to define many of the most quintessentially British bands in pop-rock: Mott The Hoople, Xtc, the Jam, Madness, Blur, Divine Comedy. Names that would be unthinkable without this specific role as keepers of historical memory that the Kinks took on.

Although they never actually covered them, the Kinks effectively absorbed the songbook of the great music hall stars – names largely unknown today such as George Formby, Florrie Forde, George Robey and Harry Champion – and brought their defining traits back into vogue, adapting them to the sounds of rock. The very same rock that had helped raze music hall to the ground now found itself enriched by its contamination. In essence, without the Kinks, rock would probably never have developed such a recognisably British form, and the history of popular music would be completely different today.

Finally, it's worth remembering that, while the Sixties were without doubt the golden age of the Kinks, the Davies brothers' band proved to be in fine shape and in step with the times – if not ahead of them – in the following decade too: Muswell Hillbillies is arguably the most important country-rock album ever released by a non-American artist; several critics trace the seeds of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" back to the Preservation project; and a hit like "Superman" could easily have come straight off a Franz Ferdinand record, were it not for the fact that it was released in 1979. And these are just the most striking examples, since all the nuances and innovations that sprang from the Kinks' music simply can't be measured with precision. All that remains is to hope that one day all this will be acknowledged more openly than it is today.

1964

The Kinks settled on their name more or less at the start of 1964, after a couple of years spent under provisional names such as Ray Davies Quartet and Raven. The line-up that recorded their first songs featured Ray and Dave Davies (both singers and guitarists), Pete Quaife (bass) and Mick Avory (drums). All the members came from the outskirts of London and remained deeply attached to their roots, although the love-hate feeling toward the life the working class was forced to lead would take more than a year to emerge as the dominant element in the band's work.

Spotted by producer Shel Talmy, they landed a contract with Pye Records and by April already had two singles to their name: a punchy cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally", and a Ray Davies original, "You Still Want Me", pleasant but rather harmless, just another beat tune among many of the era.

Both songs quickly sank into obscurity, and the band responded with "You Really Got Me". The gap between this devastating-sounding track and the little tune that preceded it is one of the most striking on record. Certainly no one could have predicted such a transformation after hearing "You Still Want Me".

The band set out to create something new and winning, having evidently realised that, with the Beatles around, the Rolling Stones constantly on the rise, and Gerry and the Pacemakers smashing record after record, sticking to the typical beat sound would not have been a wise move.

Dave thus decided to do away with the guitar sound then in vogue, slashing his amplifier with a razor blade and irreversibly roughening its tone. The lyrics are still a long way from the sharp social portraits that would become Ray's trademark, but in their adolescent innocence they pair perfectly with the brutality of the arrangement and the faint sexual tension lurking in the background.

Success was immediate and transatlantic: on 10 September 1964 the song topped the British chart, and a little later it reached number 7 in the American one. The band was finally on everyone's lips, and Pye wasted no time putting out the debut album, hoping to strike while the iron was hot.

Kinks came out on 2 October; it doesn't include the first two singles, but it does of course include "You Really Got Me". Alongside that, we find "Stop Your Sobbing", a tender song about the end of a relationship, conceived as a tribute to Fifties pop. Fifteen years later the Pretenders would record a version of it that became a classic. There isn't much else worth mentioning, since the rest consists of covers of rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues classics, recorded at breakneck speed in August, wringing the band dry like a lemon. While they're undeniably enjoyable listening, the role of cover band is certainly not the one that suits the Kinks best.

The public nonetheless responded well: the album reached number 3 in the UK and stayed near the top for several months, while in the US it made the top 30.

Three weeks after the album's release came a new single, which wasn't included on it. It was called "All Day And All Of The Night" and sounded like an earthquake. It follows the structure of "You Really Got Me", but the riff is slightly more intricate, and the result is so ferocious that some consider it a refinement of what the earlier song had created. It was another hit: number 2 in the UK and 7 in the US.

Towards the end of the year came the EP Kinksize Session. It includes a cover of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" and three originals. Although "I Gotta Go Now" and "I've Got That Feeling" never became part of the Kinks' core repertoire, they're songs worth rediscovering, as they already show the first signs of the sophistication that would soon become one of the band's stylistic hallmarks.

1965

It's arguably the busiest year of the Kinks' career in terms of releases. It opens with one of the songs Ray would later call one of his proudest achievements, "Tired Of Waiting For You". It's a languid, meditative kind of pop, with an atmosphere quite far removed from the previous year's two hits, although some common traits remain (take the abrasive guitar that punctuates the chorus). The public embraced the shift: the single shot to number 1 in the UK and number 6 in the US.

In March came their second album, Kinda Kinks, written almost entirely by Ray. The record doesn't quite shine, apart from the aforementioned hit and "Come On Now", another irresistible variation on "You Really Got Me" (though with a more intricate guitar pattern and no distortion).

In more than one spot you can sense a certain strain in sustaining the album format, as shown by "Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight", about as standard-issue rhythm & blues as it gets. To bring out the full potential of "Something Better Beginning", it would instead take the surprising baroque cover by the Honeycombs, produced by the great Joe Meek and rather obtusely despised by most Kinks fans. The album reaches number 3 in the UK, while in the US it stalls at 60 due to its release being pushed back by a few months.

Between spring and summer, three singles came out, none of them taken from the album. The first featured "Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy" (UK A-side) and "Who'll Be The Next In Line" (US A-side), two deconstructed R&B numbers with syncopated basslines, hand-clapping and off-beat guitars. The chart positions this time weren't exciting: number 17 in the UK and 34 in the US.

The second single featured "Set Me Free" on the A-side, another introspective gem marked by ethereal harmonies and fragile falsettos, and on the flip side "I Need You", once again a ravenous proto-punk assault. Given the quality of both tracks, this is certainly one of the Kinks' finest 45s, though its chart showing, while respectable (number 9 in the UK and 23 in the US), doesn't fully do justice to its stature.

Things could have gone better too for the extraordinary follow-up, "See My Friend", which cracked the top 10 in the UK but failed miserably in the American market, not yet ready for this oblique, slightly off-kilter pop, let alone for its vaguely Indian-tinged atmosphere. On the flip side, the garage-pop of "Never Met A Girl Like You Before", featuring one of Dave's most inspired solos (and it may just be an impression, but amid that tangle of sharp notes, scrapes and twists, you can almost hear, far in the distance, the future style of Tom Verlaine of Television).

In September came the EP Kwyet Kinks, the band's last, after which they became convinced the format held little appeal. It remains, however, one of the most important moments in the Kinks' career, since it contains "A Well Respected Man". The track - of little impact in the UK, but number 13 in the US - effectively marks the start of the more typical, and perhaps most beloved, Kinks. It's their first open dip into music hall sounds, their first satirical song, their first little march. The English middle class and its obsession with appearances are mocked as no rock band had ever dared before. "He's a well respected man about town, doing the best things so conservatively."

In November came The Kink Kontroversy, the band's first album truly living up to its potential. It reached number 9 in the UK, but in the US it barely clung to the edges of the top 100.

That near-flop is well explained by one of the most glaring injustices in rock history, perhaps the most absurd of its era: at the end of a summer US tour, the American Federation of Musicians issued what amounted to an outright ban against the band, barring them from performing in the United States for an indefinite period, which would stretch all the way to April 1969. This decision, with its whiff of a witch hunt, was prompted by the band's stormy on-stage behaviour (including fights between the Davies brothers and Avory), and it probably changed the course of rock history.

During that period, lasting almost four years, the band would place six consecutive singles in the British top 5, reaching one of the peaks of their popularity. Of these, only "Sunny Afternoon" made any impact in the US. It's therefore clear how badly that disastrous decision damaged the band's fortunes in the world's most important record market. Had the Kinks of this era won over a bigger American audience, who knows how rock might have evolved (even so, plenty of American bands, especially in the underground, would study those songs diligently, starting with Big Star). What's certain is that not even the Rolling Stones, the terror of every American parent, ever came close to suffering such a boycott, which says a lot about just how disturbing the Kinks were perceived to be.

Getting back to The Kink Kontroversy, it's first and foremost the album of "Till The End Of The Day", number 8 in the UK singles chart and one of their last barnstorming power-chord anthems. But there's much more to it. "Milk Cow Blues" is a fantastic cover of the old Sleepy John Estes blues number, marked by an obsessive rhythm and the sharp, dirty vocals of both Davies brothers, a small preview of Robert Plant. "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" is garage-rock with a faint Dylan-esque flavour, which a few years later would be covered in tribute by Bowie himself. The lyrics sharply contrast with the lively instrumental backdrop, casting a glance at the economic hardships of the working class and the state of depression many of those people live in. "I'm On An Island", with its calypso flavour, shows how their range of musical influences was visibly expanding.

1966

It would long remain the last year in which the Kinks managed to make any mark on the album market, thanks in particular to the compilations "Well Respected Kinks", number 5 in the UK, and "Greatest Hits!", released exclusively for the American market, which hit number 9 and spent a full fifteen months on the chart (it contained, after all, all the hits scored before the ban). It wasn't the first time one of their anthologies, released only in the US, had achieved notable results (the year before, the singles compilation "Kinks-Size" had climbed to number 13, effectively overshadowing the album Kinda Kinks).

Destined to stay off any album, "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" came out as a single in February and, at least at home, brought the band's stock back to its peak, reaching number 4 and becoming over time one of their most played and best-remembered songs, thanks in particular to its title, which has since become a genuine turn of phrase in England, and to its call-and-response choral chorus. It's the band's second hit openly influenced by music hall and steeped in caustic humour aimed at middle-class conformism. "He thinks he is a flower to be looked at, and when he pulls his frilly nylon panties right up tight, he feels a dedicated follower of fashion."

In June came what, without any exaggeration, is one of the greatest 45s of the Sixties. On the A-side, "Sunny Afternoon", a ballad that keeps the music hall tone but reveals its darker, more decadent side, with minor-key verses, Quaife's cavernous bass up front, the catatonic mood of the backing vocals and the little piano flourishes of the legendary session man Nicky Hopkins, which seem to come straight out of an old gramophone. The lyrics tell of a rich, spoiled man watching his luxuries devoured by taxes until he's left in an empty house. Ray's relish in singing about the decline of the nobility and of inherited wealth in general is plain to hear. Wary that the audience might end up sympathising with the character, he paints him as a drunkard who has no qualms about mistreating his partner. On the flip side, an epic garage-rock number about nonconformity, "I'm Not Like Everybody Else".

The single quickly climbed to number 1 in the UK, dethroning the Beatles' "Paperback Writer", and reached 14 in the US, where it would remain the only modest success they achieved during the ban.

It was precisely during this period that Ray made a move that wasn't exactly great for his public image: in an interview for Disc & Music Echo, he poured venom on one of the Beatles' most celebrated singles, the double A-side featuring "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yellow Submarine". Of the first, he said the string-quartet arrangement was basically a nerdy gimmick; of the second, that it was pure garbage and that the Beatles themselves knew it. Whether he was right or wrong isn't for this writer to decide, but it can certainly be said that Ray never lacked the courage of his convictions.

Despite the considerable sales that the compilations and singles were racking up during this very period, the new album, Face To Face stalled at number 12 in the UK and missed the top 100 in the US altogether. While it's regarded today as the first in a long line of masterpieces, at the time it effectively marked the decline of the Kinks on the album market, in favour of the singles market, where they would keep winning for quite a while longer.

"Rosie Won't You Please Come Home" is a heartfelt, autobiographical piece of folk-rock in which Ray begs his beloved sister Rosie to come back home. Even here, though, there's room for a jab at the hated upper classes: "Rosie won’t you please come home? Since you’ve joined the upper classes, you don’t know us anymore".

Sung by Dave, "Party Line" was written jointly by the Davies brothers but credited to Ray alone, sparking one of the first of the many grudges that over the decades drove the two apart and fuelled the barbed remarks they often trade in interviews.

There's also room for a couple of songs Ray had initially given away to other bands, "Dandy" and "A House In The Country". A new comic gem in the music-hall vein, the former was a huge hit in the hands of Herman's Hermits. The latter was instead tackled by the Pretty Things, with their renowned rhythm & blues drive, before their psychedelic turn. Either way, the Kinks' own version is preferable for both songs, not least because it's in their rendition that "A House In The Country" reveals its striking resemblance to an almost identically titled Blur hit recorded three decades later.

As well as being the first Kinks record without a single cover, Face To Face is also the first album on which Ray insistently pushes to reclaim old-fashioned British musicality, striving to make the songs feel as far removed from the present as possible and steeped in nostalgia. It's an effect he's willing to chase by any means necessary, from the lyrics (most of which are swollen with regret) to the sound (on several occasions it's not guitars that dominate, but harpsichord, once again played by Hopkins).

The final result was nonetheless subject to record-label interference: viewing it as a concept album, since every song examines some aspect of the British way of life, Ray tried to tie the tracks together with a series of sound effects (rain, wind, waves, traffic and so on). Unfortunately the device was deemed to compromise the listening experience, and the Davies brothers were forced to strip out almost all the noises, which remain audible in only a couple of spots (among them the gloomy folk of "Rainy Day In June").

Of the singles that had preceded the album, only "Sunny Afternoon" made it onto the tracklist, tucked near the close, but that wasn't enough to revive sales, any more than the dazzling psychedelic cover art was. After all, there wasn't a single psychedelic sound in those grooves. That was their bad luck: having invented this new approach to pop, they had completely lost interest in it. If Ray Davies was a genius at anticipating trends, he was certainly no great strategist when it came to riding them. The summer of love was about to explode, and he was busy rescuing pre-war sounds from the dust of time.

The dark side of music hall resurfaces towards the end of 1966 with a new single, "Dead End Street", which reached number 5 in the UK. It's a marching tune full of constant mood shifts, a funereal-sounding trombone and lyrics with no way out: "What are we living' for? Two-room apartment on the second floor. No chance to emigrate, I'm deep in debt and it's much too late".

The hardship of the lower classes is thus thrust shamelessly into the charts, and the Kinks start to fall out of favour with the establishment. The BBC proves reluctant to air the mini-film the band shot for the song, deeming it tasteless that the members are dressed as ragamuffins. This was hardly the first time a hit had tackled such subjects — think of the classics of blues and country (the weight of debts incurred just to survive, for instance, defined the famous "Sixteen Tons" by the magical guitarist Merle Travis). The context, though, is rather different: this is the height of Swinging London, and nearly every other hit song around is about love or hallucinations brought on by exotic substances. The Beatles had briefly strayed from that path with "Eleanor Rigby" and its moving lyrics about loneliness, yet that song describes a private situation that contains no social critique, implied or otherwise. "Dead End Street", on the other hand, is a resounding finger pointed straight at those in power: a slice of Britain is living in deprivation, and all the government knows how to do is raise taxes. What's more, while the Beatles soon went back to good feelings and submarines, the Kinks carried on relentlessly twisting the knife, with the consequences we'll soon see.

The year closes with another great single, released in America (where it makes no impact at all) and in continental Europe (where it does a little better), but not in the UK, where it wouldn't surface until months later as a B-side. It's called "Mr. Pleasant", and it features a pronounced ragtime piano, a blaring trombone, an unforgettable crescendo of vocal harmonies and a rhythm section that goes completely wild by the end. And given such ingredients, what better subject than a man who, after years of hard work, finally strikes it rich and effectively joins the upper middle class? "Did you like prosperity more than you liked poverty?", Ray asks him, before the idyllic little picture shatters and the wife, tired of being neglected because of his business dealings, starts cheating on him with a younger man.

1967

In May came "Waterloo Sunset", whose single reached number 2 in just a couple of weeks, though it was kept from the top spot by the Tremeloes' "Silence Is Golden". Time, fortunately, has set things right: today one is regarded as among the greatest classics of British pop-rock, while the other is, at best, a pleasant oldie to trot out at revival nights.

"Waterloo Sunset" is, for many, the greatest Kinks song ever; for Paul Weller and Damon Albarn, it's simply the finest song of all time, and it's hard to blame them for thinking so. Structurally it resembles "Sunny Afternoon", but it refines the formula to a whole new level of obsessive detail. The melody floats between soaring, delicate vocal harmonies, the atmosphere is intangible, the production gleaming. To achieve the famous opening guitar sound, they turned to tape echo, an effect that actually dated back some fifteen years and had by then fallen out of use. Once again, Ray draws on the past to make the present feel unusual.

The lyrics tell the story of Terry and July, two young lovers, but it's easy enough to sense that the real subject is London itself, a city that, for all its contradictions, Ray simply can't help loving. "And they don't need no friends, as long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset, they are in paradise".

July brings “Death Of A Clown”, released not under the band’s name but under Dave Davies’s alone, since he’s the one who wrote it. The others are still present, though, especially Ray, who comes up with the famous “la la la” refrain and has his wife, Rasa Didzpetris, sing it. Her vocal is drenched in echo and buried deep in the mix, coming across as almost disembodied, like a siren’s song. That isn’t the only trick up their sleeve: the piano sound at the opening was achieved by Hopkins plucking the strings with his fingers. The lyrics offer a melancholy metaphor for the dawning realization of adulthood.

Even though the Kinks’ name doesn’t appear on the sleeve, the single is a considerable success, climbing to number 3 and briefly tempting Dave to leave the band for a solo career. The itch fades a few months later, when the clattering harmonica and piano refrain of “Susannah’s Still Alive”, again released under his own name, stalls at number 20.

Something Else By The Kinks arrives in September, though hardly anyone notices (number 35 in the UK, outside the top hundred in the US). It’s a run of immaculate pop songs that, in this writer’s opinion, makes it the best rock album of 1967.

It includes “Waterloo Sunset”, “Death Of A Clown” and eleven other tracks. The arrangements are irrepressible: alongside the usual rock and folk setups, we find harpsichord, organ, harp, strings, horns and exotic percussion.

The opening track, “David Watts”, is one of the most beloved among Kinks fans. The protagonist is obsessed with David Watts, a schoolmate whose wealth and knack for excelling at sports and studies he envies. Toward the end of the song, though, it emerges that Watts’s long list of admirers are all constantly left empty-handed, hinting at the golden boy’s homosexuality and, quite possibly, that of the narrator smitten with him. Ray would later tackle the subject even more openly, while for most of his contemporaries it long remained taboo. Driven by a tight rhythm and a hypnotic little chorus (“Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa, fa-fa”), it was covered by the Jam in 1978 in an equally memorable version, bordering on punk.

“Two Sisters” tells of two sisters with very different temperaments, although Ray later revealed it was actually a metaphor contrasting his own personality with that of his far more extroverted brother. The sound is more old-fashioned than ever: in his quest to cross-breed the songs with music hall, Ray has gone back a hundred years. The harpsichord and violins, heard for the first time on a Kinks track, make it sound like a song from some hypothetical 19th century in which rock music already existed.

“No Return”, elegant jazz-inflected folk, is basically “Garota de Ipanema” as filtered through Ray Davies. In “Harry Rag” those being squeezed dry belong to the most modest social classes, painting a picture of a state that by now shows mercy to no one, while its martial drumming makes it one of the most lopsided grooves of their career. Propelled by playful, blaring horns, “Tin Soldier Man” continues the thread on bourgeois appearances, comparing a married man to a little toy soldier polished up for the parade. On “Lazy Old Sun”, a sort of hallucinated hymn to apathy, you can almost hear the Syd Barrett of his two solo albums, with the rhythm section seeming to pull in the opposite direction from the vocal.

There are also two more Dave-penned tracks, “Love Me Til The Sun Shines” and “Funny Face”, spirited beat numbers that do showcase the guitarist’s undeniable songwriting skills, even if Ray was operating on another level entirely.

A month later comes a new single, left off the album. It’s called “Autumn Almanac” and marks the start of a new phase. Besides being the first time they used a Mellotron (and anyone still convinced the horns introducing the chorus are real should give it another listen), it’s also the song that crystallizes the bucolic, pastoral mood that would define their next album in full. Reaching number 3 in the UK, it would, for the time being, be the band’s last hit.

1968

“Wonderboy” suddenly sees the Kinks’ stock as singles-makers plummet. Released in April, it manages a dismal number 36 in the UK. It would end up being despised by the band members themselves, its only real fault being poor sales, since the song itself is excellent. With its idyllic little choruses, the gentle tone of the harpsichord, and an unexpected lyric celebrating the beauty of life, it’s one of the sunniest moments in the Kinks’ catalogue. Funny that it should have marked the start of their toughest commercial period.

Two months later it’s the turn of “Days”, which fares a bit better, reaching number 12. Although still far off the results of 1967, the song is today regarded as one of Ray’s finest, helped by the strong posthumous reputation it has earned through covers and reissues. The Mellotron is once again part of the arrangement, this time set to a string sound; the track is a folk-pop gem whose lyrics thank everyone who, having played an important role in someone’s life, must eventually move on.

What many critics still regard as their finest album, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, comes out toward the end of the year. A full fifteen new songs, yet without a single capable of breaking through. To this day it remains their only album never to have charted at all, with worldwide sales at the time under a hundred thousand copies.

It’s a concept album revolving around an idealized English rural village and all its characters and traditions. As Claudio Fabretti already wrote in the piece dedicated to the album: “The fil rouge of nostalgia for lost innocence ties together the fifteen sketches, faded snapshots of a British Arcadia populated by quirky, anachronistic characters”.

A real orchestra appears only on “Village Green”, recorded during the Something Else sessions; everything else that might resemble one is in fact the Mellotron, making this one of the albums that puts the wonderful, famously unwieldy keyboard to its best use.

Both the strings and horns on the proto-Bowie-esque nursery rhyme “Starstruck” are Mellotron, as is the bizarre blanket of muffled trombones that surfaces in the satirical folk of “Johnny Thunder”. Davies’s genius shows through most, though, whenever he opts for its more unusual settings rather than simply using it as an orchestral stand-in. It mimics an accordion on the ragtime trinket “Sitting By The Riverside” and runs wild on that unexpected nod to psychedelic pop titled “Phenomenal Cat”: flute, drums and even a guitar part are all built on the Mellotron, in one of the most glorious moments in the instrument’s history.

Memorable too are the arrangements free of any particular technological trickery: “People Take Pictures Of Each Other” is a folk romp built on calypso piano and hand-clapping, “All Of My Friends Were There” has a verse with a village-fair brass-band feel and a celestial, waltz-time chorus, “Monica” is marked by a Latin-pop mood, “Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains” is a splendid blues that keeps gathering speed, complete with the classic harmonica mimicking a locomotive, the infectious folk-rock of “Picture Book” is played on a drum kit with a strange sound due to the missing snare, while “Do You Remember Walter?” is a track almost impossible to pin down, a prototype of the Kinks style in which music-hall march, folk-rock and rhythm&blues walk arm in arm in flawless balance.

1969

Ray is left deeply disappointed by the failure of Village Green, yet he doesn't give up, and in March he attempts a comeback with a single, “Plastic Man”. The song is extremely catchy, but unfortunately, in describing his personality-less plastic man who is nevertheless loved by everyone, Ray overdoes it with the zeal. The BBC opts for censorship over the phrase “plastic arse”, and the single stalls at number 31, to the band's great dismay. Peter Quaife decides to jump ship before it sinks. The Davies brothers thus recruit John Dalton, who had played bass for the Kinks back in 1966 while Quaife was recovering from a car accident.

It's at this point that what will remain the most complex Kinks record is recorded – the most multifaceted musically, the most disillusioned lyrically: Arthur Or the Decline And Fall Of The British Empire.

The sessions start off, at the very least, with good news: in April Ray flew to Los Angeles to produce a Turtles album, “Turtle Soup”, and in the process managed to put an end to the famous American touring ban. The result is immediate: although the record doesn't spawn any hit singles, it edges into the American top 100 and spends four months on the chart. A result that's anything but triumphant, granted, but one that leaves room for hope of a recovery after a disastrous year.

It's in the UK, if anything, that people turn up their noses: the record was supposed to be the soundtrack for a Granada TV show, in the hope of drawing renewed attention to the band. Unfortunately, after a year spent shaping the script together with writer Julian Mitchell, the production is cancelled, officially due to lack of funds, but more evidently, as Ray pointed out, due to the maneuvering of a political class that didn't take kindly to a show of this kind. Highlighting Britain's gradual, unstoppable decline was evidently unacceptable. Once again, at the peak of their artistic inspiration, the Kinks run into a boycott.

A summary of the script is nevertheless included in the album's packaging, which is a genuine rock opera. Arthur belongs to the British middle class: he's a modest working man born during Victoria's reign, who has watched his brother die in the First World War, his children emigrate to Australia, one of them die in the Second World War, and now finds himself in old age tightening his belt during the economic depression that follows.

And yet the record opens in the most festive way imaginable, with the acrobatic, choral blues-rock of “Victoria”. The Empire is at its peak, and even the destitute are happy to belong to such a powerful nation. The Fall, among the sharpest heirs to the Kinks, would pay tribute to the song with an excellent cover in 1988.

War breaks in, though, already with “Yes Sir No Sir”, a militaristic march laced with blues and split in two by a sudden change of pace with blaring brass fanfare. War is still present in “Some Mother's Son”, which depicts the grief of parents losing their children to a cause that has nothing to do with them. The backing vocals that carry the ballad throughout sound like the most harrowing of laments. The record's baroque nature, its ever more layered arrangements, the blazing entrances of the orchestra conducted by Lew Warburton, the constant shifts, the slowdowns and the daring melodic intersections place it, in effect, a step away from the nascent progressive rock, showing a Ray who, for once, is in step with the times rather than lost in a world of his own.

“Brainwashed” is a frenzied, horn-driven rhythm&blues number that lasts little more than two minutes, but that's enough time to drop in a furious hard-rock riff as a surprise interlude. There's no room for metaphor here: the working class is made up of puppets, and the Davies brothers shout it out in unison: “You look like a real human being, but you don’t have a mind of your own”. It's the same kind of negativity that, a few decades later, would belong to the Manic Street Preachers.

At 6 minutes and 46 seconds, “Australia” is the longest track the Kinks had recorded up to that point, a maze of vocal harmonies and shifting timbres, a hybrid of baroque pop and blues that spills over into a jam with jazzy shadings, with Avory stormy on drums and the horn section grumbling mischievously.

“Shangri-La” opens side two of the vinyl in a pool of despair: a mortified Arthur looks back on his own life and realizes he has no way forward. “You’ve reached your top and you just can’t get any higher. You’re in your place and you know where you are, in your Shangri-La”. Here too the structure is anything but predictable: it starts as an acoustic ballad, swells in the chorus thanks to the rhythm section and horns, then explodes into a wordy bridge driven by a slashing acoustic riff, before a choir brings everything back to its initial form.

“Mr. Churchill Says”, which brings us to the Second World War, delivers the album's most tragic moment. Exactly at 1'35'', when the sirens kick in to simulate an air-raid warning and, as the backing track mutates into a frantic jam complete with vibraphones, Ray sings of a bombed house and corpses to be cleared from the streets. After a twisted Dave solo somewhere between blues and raga, there's room for a spoken-word section that is yet another nod from Ray to the music hall tradition, but which, heard today, sounds very much like rap ante-litteram.

Once the war is over, with Britain in pieces and the population choked by poverty, along comes “She's Bought A Hat Like Princess Marina”, the quintessential music hall moment: a delightful harpsichord ballad that at a certain point goes haywire in a neurotic whirl of sounds (kazoo, car horn, whistles), underlining a contrast in form similar to the one experienced by the population. People are starving, yet they worry about getting hold of the latest fashionable hat so as not to show their poverty to the neighbours.

It closes in glory with “Arthur”, which sums up the protagonist's life over one of the earliest examples of British country-rock. It's a choral apotheosis, with the powers that be taking care to tell Arthur – and so all the Arthurs of the world – that they love him and want to support him. “Arthur we read you and understand you, Arthur we like you and want to help you […] Somebody loves you, don’t ya know it?”.

It couldn't have ended in a more grotesque fashion – not even Monty Python could have dreamed up an ending with such bitter comedy, such a cruel joke after all that suffering.

1970

After returning to touring the United States, the Kinks take a long break and don't put out anything new until June 1970. Rather more than just something, in fact: “Lola” is the comeback single, as well as the first to feature keyboardist John Gosling in the lineup. It takes just a month to catch on, after which it soars to number 2 in the UK and number 9 in the US, four years on from their last American hit. It ends up as one of the best-selling singles of 1970, topping the charts in nearly every corner of the world (not in Italy, of course not).

In this mighty folk-rock track, which as already noted anticipates several aspects of the coming glam explosion, a young man is seduced by a cross-dresser. There's no crude irony, no judgment, just a scene laid out plainly: "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know what I am, I'm a man, and so is Lola".

Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround – Part One came out in November, but not even containing a hit like "Lola" was enough to turn the album into a commercial success. A modest number 35 in the United States is all it managed, while in the UK not even the band's own relatives seemed to buy the LP. As some consolation, the eleventh track on the record, "Apeman", was released as a single around that time, reaching number 5 in the UK and selling a good million copies worldwide. Besides this infectious calypso number, the album also features the keyboard-driven roots-rock of "This Time Tomorrow" — given a great second life after appearing in a 2005 Philippe Garrel film and a 2007 Wes Anderson one — and "Strangers", a soul-tinged ballad marking Dave's return to songwriting after a few years of dormancy.

The album's many nods to America are merely a taste of what was soon to come.

1971

After the forgettable soundtrack for a Ralph Thomas film, Percy, the Kinks release their ninth album, Muswell Hillbillies, their first for RCA. While the subject matter is the usual (poverty, exploited workers, the changing face of London's suburbs), the sound marks a real shift. What was only hinted at on the previous record runs rampant here: rural America has relocated to Britain, cowboys and scrappy street blues combos have taken over Waterloo Station.

The public isn't ready for such a move: no single is a hit, and neither is the album, though critics still regard it as a gem.

"Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues" is funny from the title alone: by this point Ray is wallowing in squalor, and the band backs him up with ragged slide guitar and horns that sound like they've come straight off some New Orleans sidewalk. "20th Century Man" is a surge of conservative nostalgia, probably more extreme than Ray's actual views, but perfectly suited to the rustic tone of the arrangement, which comes close to Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Despite a sly, music-hall-derived piano, the choral "Have A Cuppa Tea" pokes fun at English traditions while revealing a strong country streak, while the delicate "Oklahoma U.S.A." sends a bored Englishwoman off to dream of the wide-open spaces of the West as painted by Hollywood films. Gosling accompanies her with a plaintive accordion. The most emblematic track is the title track, which builds a brisk, airy country-rock over one of Dalton's finest bass lines. For a moment, you can really picture Queen Victoria on horseback riding across the plains of Tennessee. No one on this side of the Atlantic has ever captured the rural face of the United States so thoroughly.

1972

On the double album Everybody's In Show-Biz, half live and half studio, Ray begins complaining about life as a rockstar on the road and the long stretches away from home and loved ones. Beyond the ironic title and the decadent pose he strikes on the cover, he includes a ballad on the subject, "Sitting In My Hotel", featuring a touching arrangement for piano, electric organ and trumpet.

Another highlight worthy of the band's best work is the long, poignant "Celluloid Heroes", in which elegant key changes provide the backdrop to a nostalgic parade of faces and films. Greta Garbo, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, George Sanders, all swept together in a black-and-white stream of memories.

The album performs slightly better with audiences than its predecessor, thanks largely to yet another calypso flirtation, "Supersonic Rocket Ship" (a top 20 single in the UK).

1973-1974

Left by his wife and children in the summer of '73, Ray suffers an unprecedented nervous breakdown and nearly dies from an overdose of psychiatric medication. He responds, however, with remarkable strength of spirit, throwing himself into the wildly ambitious rock opera Preservation, originally meant to be a double album but which ended up spanning three full LPs, the first released in November '73 as Act 1 and the other two as Act 2 in May '74. For many, it's the lowest point of the Kinks' career, but not for this writer. While far from a flawless project, it shows plenty of flashes of genius worthy of Davies at his best.

The story it tells is a little gem of comic science fiction, in which the ruthless capitalist Flash seizes control of England and forcibly bulldozes its rural areas for profit. Opposing him is Mr. Black, an ice-hearted socialist who, once the tyrant is defeated, sets up a government built on puritanism and automation. Watching the situation go from bad to worse is an outside commentator identified as The Tramp.

Act 1 includes “Money And Corruption” (Celtic rock with a convulsively rhythmic chorus), “Sweet Lady Genieveve” (one of the Kinks' great forgotten singles, perfect pastoral-flavoured folk-rock) and “Where Are They Now” (another nostalgic ballad with electric organ). Three minor classics, more than enough to justify the record's existence, even though the rest genuinely suffers from too many shifts in tempo and musical-theatre overtones.

Act 2 is the real highlight. It's undeniable that the spoken-word fragments, conceived for the work's theatrical dimension, don't work on record and drag down the listening experience. Once spotted, though, they can easily be skipped over. Many songs are also criticised for failing to develop proper choruses, ending up sounding more like unfulfilled promises than actual songs. Fair enough, yet even these sketches carry melodies more effective than those of plenty of middling pop-rock songwriters.

The arrangements are surprisingly modern, with Ray abandoning the English countryside to engage with technology. “Introduction To Solution” is slick, polished funk, with electric piano and one of Dave's most inspired solos; “Second Hand Car Spiv” is a cabaret number with distorted guitar, horns, a chorus marked by lightning-fast keyboard flourishes and a finale with an Oriental-tinged riff; “Mirror Of Love” is a dixieland interlude with a deluxe production swollen with echo; “Nobody Gives” turns the blues form inside out with theatrical flair, loading it with an outrageously loud bass, a searing guitar and gorgeous exotic strings; “Flash's Confession” is dark rock, delivered with Bowie-esque shifts in tone, continually pierced by synthesizers and wah wah; “When A Solution Come” is atmospheric folk-rock, with a detached vocal, mysterious electric piano sequences and electric guitars drenched in effects.

In these and other passages, beyond overflowing with creativity, it barely even sounds like a record released in '74, and it's striking how few people have, to this day, recognised its true worth. Those few, however, agree in pointing to it as the forerunner of “The Wall”. One can sense the same neurotic tension, the same contrast between the subdued and the hysterical vocal parts, even similar sounds (listen to “When A Solution Come” and try imagining it as a dress rehearsal for “Comfortably Numb”).

1975-1976

Unfortunately, the total commercial flop of both acts pushes Ray toward yet another change of style. The band's next two albums, Soap Opera and Schoolboys In Disgrace, fall back into the rock opera vein, but take a staggering step backward musically. Guitars on autopilot churning out the most generic hard-rock riffs imaginable, the odd Fifties rock'n'roll piano, predictable orchestral power-ballads breaking up the pace. For the first time, the Kinks' songs sound like a mere surrogate of other people's ideas, failing both to forge a vision of their own and to modernise the past.

1977

Here begins a period of lineup instability, with only the Davies brothers and Mick Avory remaining as fixed members. No great loss, since this is precisely the moment the band is reborn commercially. Not at home, where their new material goes largely unnoticed, but in the market that matters most, America. Before long the Kinks become an arena band, and their records, without turning into bestsellers, start charting respectably again.

Sleepwalker, which peaks at number 21, is the first fruit of this new course. An unexpectedly fresh gust of air, given the two previous records. It almost sounds like the debut of a brand-new band: apart from Ray Davies' voice, too distinctive to mistake for anyone else's, the rest takes on the big FM-radio names on their own turf. Intricate guitar interplay, jazzy keyboards, layered percussion, funky bass and a bright West Coast vocal harmony. A few useful reference points to get a sense of it, drawing both from the more rock-leaning acts and the softer ones: Doobie Brothers, Blue Öyster Cult, Steve Miller Band, Jefferson Starship, Boz Scaggs, Warren Zevon.

The brightest gem of this new course is “Juke Box Music”, though “Life Goes On”, “Mr. Big Man” and the title track also shine. The arrangements are layered yet graceful, the guitars never clutter things up even when they toughen, the sound is dynamic, the production spot-on. These may not be the Kinks who shook up the rock world with every note in the previous decade, but it's certainly a fine listen.

Toward the end of the year, the Kinks' first and only Christmas song, “Father Christmas”, is released as a single; it goes largely unnoticed at the time, but becomes a classic as time passes. Needless to say, it's the most irreverent song ever written on the subject. Punk arrangement and children protesting against Santa Claus, demanding he give some money to their struggling parents instead of wasting time on useless toys.

1978

Misfits peaks at number 40 and delivers the band's first notable American hit in eight years, “A Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy”, which cracks the top 30.

The vaguely fusion-flavoured keyboards of Sleepwalker give way to synthesizers with a more futuristic sound, though used judiciously. Some songs are truly worthy of the band's past, and Davies' staying power as a songwriter after all these years is striking. Take the aching melancholy of the title track and the above-mentioned single, or the rousing antifascist anthem “Live Life”, built on yet another variation of one of rock music's immortal riffs. No one quite knows who originated it, since everyone has used it, always to great effect: off the top of one's head come the Stones' “Brown Sugar”, the Specials' “Little Bitch”, Menswear's “Stardust”, the Dandy Warhols' “Bohemian Like You”, and surely many more besides. Either way, it's merely the icing on the cake for another thoroughly solid album.

1979-1980

Despite the title, Low Budget (July '79) reveals a band more competitive than ever. The Davies brothers push the guitars into overdrive and embrace pretty much every new rock trend going, as if afflicted by some kind of Zelig syndrome: the beefiest hard-rock with the title track, AOR with "Catch Me Now I'm Falling", punk with "Pressure", new wave with "National Health", and an incredible disco-rock hybrid with "Superman", a sound that still holds up today. The album climbs to number 11 on the American chart, a small triumph for the band.

A fantastic tour follows, with Ray and Dave never so wild onstage. Watching the footage today, you'd swear they had amphetamines running through their veins, though it might equally have been the effect of their renewed creative streak and the public's rediscovered favour. Either way, it yields one of the greatest live albums in rock history, One For The Road (June '80), two LPs, nineteen songs, an hour and a quarter of great music.

The songs from Low Budget, already strong, explode here into their full potential: sped up and swathed in keyboards, "National Health" makes the original version pale by comparison, while the new "Pressure" is as driving as the Ramones, and "Catch Me Now I'm Falling" boasts a tighter sound while keeping the refinement of its harmonies. Only "Superman" loses a bit of its groove.

"Prince Of The Punks" is a frantic rarity, whose studio counterpart never saw the light of day at the time. The lyrics are a poison-tipped dart aimed at Tom Robinson, with whom a couple of years earlier there had been some professional friction.

The old classics shine in a whole new light, which, while it can't replace the original versions, at least serves as a fitting companion to them. "Celluloid Heroes" swaps the organ for a synthesizer and the acoustic guitar for an electric one. "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night" become what only the technology of the time had prevented them from being, namely two bombs halfway between punk and hard-rock. "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" makes a strong impression thanks to guitar pumped full of steroids, while "Victoria" seems almost born to exist in this arena-rock guise.

The album climbs to number 14, stays on the chart for eight months and becomes the best-seller of this surprising phase.

1981-1983

Proof of just how much the Kinks had by now become a matter for the New World, Give The People What They Want is released in August '81 in the US, where it reaches number 15, and only five months later in the UK. While not up to the standard of its predecessors overall, it does deliver a couple of classics: the power pop of "Better Things" and the self-referential "Destroyer", built on the riff of "All Day And All Of The Night" and the lyrics of "Lola". It's also the album marking the Kinks' first contact with MTV: Ray agrees to shoot a video for "Predictable", directed by Julien Temple. Nothing memorable, but important in showing the artist the potential of the new medium. That potential is fully exploited on the following State Of Confusion (June '83), with the two memorable mini-films shot for "Come Dancing" and "Don't Forget To Dance", again directed by Temple and closely tied to the lyrics as Ray wanted, playing multiple roles in both.

They certainly wouldn't be enough to explain the album's success on their own, if the songs weren't two polished pop gems perfectly in step with the times, one a one-of-a-kind calypso for the new-wave era, the other worthy of the most atmospheric moments of Bryan Ferry.

The album reaches number 12, "Come Dancing" number 6, while "Don't Forget To Dance" lands in the top 30. Also worth remembering is the title track, with a notably harder sound, featuring jittery little keyboards, distorted guitars and epic harmonies.

1984-1996

Unfortunately there isn't much to say about the band's final years. To be clear, Davies's inspiration held out well beyond any reasonable limit. From 1964 to 1983, with the exception of the 1975-76 rock-opera pairing, he managed to pack a handful of classics into every album, not to mention the singles that didn't make the cut. There are around ten albums that are strong from start to finish. A vast songbook spread across twenty years, something very few other names have ever managed. But at some point the wheels had to come off, and in this case it happens right at the peak, immediately after what seemed like the album of the definitive comeback. The albums that follow show a sharp decline in success and increasingly less inspired songwriting, along with sounds unable to keep pace with the music around them. Of course, being Ray Davies, he still shows flashes of brilliance now and then, but within albums that on the whole drown in tedium and autopilot. Some songs worth noting: "Do It Again", a kind of reworking of the Clash's "Clampdown", taken from Word Of Mouth (1984), the ballad "Lost And Found" and the biting rock of "Think Visual", from the '86 album, and the majestic frontier mood of the single "To The Bone" (1996), the last release under the Kinks name. Shortly afterwards comes the official split.

Ray Davies's attachments

Although they've certainly already come through in the analysis of the lyrics, it's worth highlighting a few aspects concerning the values of the Kinks' principal songwriter. Davies is, above all, the classic chronic malcontent. He's spent his career playing with nostalgia and the good old days, yet when he sets a song in the past, "Victoria", life turns out to be just as unjust as it is in the present, with part of the population forced into poverty while those at the top try to numb them into avoiding revolt. He's spent his career criticising the capitalist system and the depersonalisation it brings, yet when in the fiction of Preservation he has it collapse, what takes power is a socialist system with even worse consequences. In short, Ray isn't someone who offers solutions, he's only able to see the problems, but he sees them with such sharpness and such feeling that he's forgiven, essentially, for being an old grump (and for having been one since he was young). Like all the great figures of rock who have come close to the role of poet and generational narrator, Ray has above all been able to create empathetic characters, making it beside the point whether or not one shares their values.

Beyond that, much of what Ray has had to say was inspired by the people around him. His relatives played a hugely important role, starting with Dave, to whom he dedicated "Dandy" and "Two Sisters". The idea for Arthur came from the husband of his sister Rosie, the one from "Rosie Won't You Please Come Home".

Another of his six sisters, Rene, eighteen years his senior, was immortalized in "Come Dancing". In the lyrics, Ray pretends to remember when his sister used to go dancing as a girl (impossible given the age gap) and later imagines her happily married, with daughters who are themselves old enough to go dancing. This ending is moving precisely because it's fictional: in reality, Rene died of a heart attack at thirty-one, after a domestic life spent suffering her husband's abuse. Ray wanted to imagine a happy life for her, one she fully deserved, considering that on the very day of her death the young woman had given him his first guitar.

Deluxe Editions

In 2018, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, the Kinks' pastoral album, the one that sublimated the crossing of folk aromas with Beatles-esque psychedelia, turned 50. On October 26, BMG released a lavish deluxe edition, which lends extra allure to the (re)discovery of one of the masterpieces by Ray Davies's band. Several formats are planned, among which the most wallet-friendly is the double CD featuring the original tracklist presented in two remasters - stereo and mono - with the addition of several bonus tracks, the previously unreleased "Time Song", and a booklet packed with period photos and artwork.

For those willing to spend a bit more, there's the lavish Super Deluxe Box Set, featuring special packaging: embossed cover, aluminum foil text, and linen finish. 174 audio tracks in total, spread across three vinyl records and five CDs. The box set also includes a booklet with liner notes written by Ray Davies, three 7-inch singles, a 52-page hardback book, tour posters, photos, concert tickets, and sheet music. On top of all this, there's a photo exhibition dedicated to the Kinks, on view at the Proud Gallery in London until November 18.

The reissue campaign will continue on schedule in 2019 with "Arthur", and in 2020 with Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One. In this hugely expanded edition, alongside the original tracklist, remastered for the occasion, there's room for alternative takes, mono and stereo, newly re-edited mixes, b-sides, live recordings, plus various instrumental and acoustic demos. The entire sequencing was personally curated and produced by Ray Davies.

The box set also includes two singles from the era, in 7-inch format, four light card photographs, recordings of some domestic conversations between Ray and Dave Davies, various memorabilia, a pin badge, and an essential 60-page glossy hardback book, featuring new statements from the band, rare images, and detailed information on each song.

This brings to a close the release of the commemorative box sets marking the fiftieth anniversary of the trilogy comprising the Kinks' essential works - a band that deserved far greater recognition in their youth, but one that has profoundly inspired thousands of musicians, both contemporaries and successors.

Contributions by Claudio Lancia ("The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society" (deluxe edition), "Lola Versis Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One" (50th anniversary))

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