Kinks

The Kinks' great problem: brilliant at anticipating trends, clumsy at riding them. Over the course of their career they certainly weren't short of hit singles, but when it comes to commercial success in the album market, the Davies brothers' band comes off decidedly worse for wear next to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or even just the Who. Without repeating here the countless innovations the Kinks brought to rock music, since that's already been covered at length in their dedicated profile, the fact remains that none of those innovations were ever exploited at the right moment.

"Arthur…" occupies a special place in this respect within the Kinks' discography: it's perhaps the only one of their Sixties records, at least among the more mature ones, in which Ray Davies's desire to engage with his own times comes through. It's no coincidence that it was released at the height of the rock opera format's popularity. By this point the album was no longer simply a collection of songs, but a unified project, and while this had already been hinted at with their earlier concept efforts, among them their own "Face To Face" (1966), the rock opera now pushed that ambition to its peak. It was, quite simply, a film without images, complete with a story, characters and a narrative arc.

In the specific case of "Arthur…", however, the images were actually meant to exist, as becomes clear once you look into its genesis.

It's the beginning of 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 plastic little man, personality-free yet loved by everyone, Ray overdoes it. The BBC opts for censorship over the phrase "plastic arse", and the single stalls at number 31, much to the band's disgrace. Peter Quaife decides to jump ship before it sinks. The Davies brothers then recruit John Dalton, who had played bass for the Kinks back in 1966 while Quaife was recovering from a car accident.

It's with this new line-up that the Kinks record their new album, bearing the never-ending title "Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire" (though only the first word appears on the artwork).

The sessions unfold in an atmosphere of confidence, buoyed by excellent 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 US ban that had for years barred the band from performing on American soil.

The return on the image front is immediate: although the album doesn't spawn any hit singles, it comes close to the American top 100 and spends four months on the chart. Hardly a triumphant result, granted, but one that offers real hope for a recovery after the disastrous year that was 1968.

It's rather in the UK that some turn up their noses: the album 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 scrapped, officially due to lack of funds, but more evidently, as Ray himself pointed out, because of the manoeuvring of a political class unwilling to tolerate a show of this kind. Highlighting Britain's gradual, unstoppable decline is clearly unacceptable. Once again, at the very peak of their artistic inspiration, the Kinks run into a boycott.

A summary of the script is nonetheless included with the album's packaging: Arthur belongs to the British middle class, a modest working man born during Victoria's reign, who has watched his brother die in the First World War, his own children emigrate to Australia, one of them die in the Second World War, and now finds himself an old man tightening his belt through the economic depression that followed.

And to think the album opens in the most - at least seemingly - festive way possible, 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' legacy, will pay tribute to the song with an excellent cover in 1988.

War bursts in, however, as early as "Yes Sir No Sir", a militaristic march laced with blues and cut in half by a sudden shift in tempo complete with a brass fanfare. War is still present in "Some Mother's Son", which paints 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 album's baroque nature, its ever more layered arrangements, the blazing entrances of the orchestra conducted by Lew Warburton, the constant shifts, slowdowns and daring melodic intersections place it, in effect, a step away from the newly-born progressive rock.

"Brainwashed" is a frenzied, horn-driven rhythm & blues number lasting little more than two minutes, but that's enough time to slip in a furious hard-rock riff as a surprise interlude. There's no room here for metaphor: 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". The same bleakness that, decades later, would belong to the Manic Street Preachers can be felt here.

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 textures, a hybrid of baroque pop and blues that spills into a jazz-tinged jam, with Avory stormy on drums and the horn section chiming in mischievously.

"Shangri-La" opens the second side of the vinyl in a pool of depression: a mortified Arthur looks back on his own life and realizes there's no way out. "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 out as an acoustic ballad, swells in the chorus thanks to rhythm section and horns, then explodes into a wordy bridge driven by a lashing acoustic riff, before a choir brings everything back to its original 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 morphs into a frantic jam complete with vibraphones, Ray sings of a bombed-out house and bodies to be cleared from the streets. After a twisted Dave Davies solo somewhere between blues and raga, there's room for a spoken-word section that is yet another homage from Ray to British music hall tradition, but which, heard today, sounds a lot like proto-rap.

Once the war is over, with Britain in ruins and the population strangled by poverty, "She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" takes the stage, the quintessential music-hall moment: a delightful harpsichord ballad that at a certain point goes haywire in a neurotic whirl of sounds (kazoo, horns, whistles), underlining a contrast in form similar to the one experienced by the population. People are reduced to starvation, yet they still fuss over getting the latest fashionable hat so as not to reveal 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 let Arthur know – and thus every Arthur in 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.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

09/11/2014