The Storyteller
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Ray and Dave Davies were the youngest of eight children whose ages spanned almost 30 years; the six elder siblings were all girls. The Davies family home was a tiny house in the London suburb of Muswell Hill, although the two brothers spent many of their childhood years apart -- Dave went off to live with one of the sisters, Rene, while Ray divided his time between his family's home and that of his eldest sister, Rosie, and her husband, Arthur (who was roughly the model and inspiration for Davies' first significant concept album, the 1969 "Arthur, or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire," originally conceived as a musical television drama).
The brothers were never close, and their persistent, crackling sibling rivalry -- which probably wasn't helped much by either Ray's stubborn eccentricities or Dave's loose-screw loopiness -- has become the stuff of legend. It's probably also the thing that gave the Kinks their distinctive character: Ray was the chief songwriter and singer, Dave the lead guitarist and glamour boy. Ray is always acknowledged as the great mind behind the Kinks, but lurking in the shadows of the band's story is the niggling sense that Dave completes him in some way -- or, at the very least, tends to piss him off so much that the tension throws off a creative charge.
In 1995, Ray Davies published his "unauthorized autobiography" X-RAY. A few years later he released what amounted to a musical adaptation of that tale with THE STORYTELLER.
Davies was always the most British of his Sixties contemporaries. Classic albums like SOMETHING ELSE, THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY, and ARTHUR revealed Davies as a songwriter who was concerned with the changes he saw in the British Empire and was nostalgic for a past which no longer existed except in his memory. Many of these songs ("Victoria," "20th Century Man," "Autumn Almanac")are revisited here in live versions in small venues with sparse instrumentation (including original Kinks drummer Mick Avory on a handful of tracks).
The songs and the accompanying dialogue (the latter comprises a bit over thirty minutes total) tell the story of The Kinks from its origins to the release of its first successful single--the classic "You Really Got Me." Many of Davies' stories provide new insight to songs like "See My Friends" (written after the death of his older sister when he was 13) and "You Really Got Me" (which the record company did NOT want to record so the band had to raise their own money to record it, and was supposed to include a session drummer--but Mick was sneaked into the studio and allowed to play tambourine).
There are a handful of new songs. "Storyteller" would not have been at all out of place on MUSWELL HILLBILLIES. "X-Ray" is about a sports injury when Davies was young and was told by a doctor that if he didn't quit sports he would end up like the hunchback that frequented the neighborhood. "Art School Babe" is about an unrequited love. "Julie Finkle" is an ode to groupies. "London Song" is the only track to appear on the album twice--the first is a lovely acoustic version, the second is an electric studio version with a full band. [The only other studio recording is "X-Ray."]
Overall, this is a low-key, utterly charming collection of songs. In the introduction to one of the songs, Davies says that despite going to a church school, the closest he felt to religion was not when he was singing in the school choir or going to Sunday School, but "it was more when I rehearsed with (my brother) Dave in the front room." Over the course of 74 minutes, Davies shows us how much these songs mean to him. And in doing so, they give new meaning to his fans.
What I have none here is to combine some of the tunes and dialogue into a single MP3 so as to give you a sense of the linearity of the disc.
I found this to be a fun little project and is an interesting listen for those who were Kinks and British "invasion" fans. The song in the post is the opening track on the cd and I will post additional "collages" in comments - 3 in all. Hope you enjoy.
Comments (10)
1. Storyteller
2. Introduction
3. Victoria
4. My Name (Dialogue)
5. 20th Century Man
6. London Song
7. My Big Sister
8. That Old Black Magic
9. Tired Of Waiting
10. Set Me Free
11. Dad And The Green Amp (Dialogue)
12. Set Me Free
13. The Front Room (Dialogue)
14. See My Friends
15. Autumn Almanac
16. Hunchback (Dialogue)
17. X-Ray
18. Art School (Dialogue)
19. Art School Babe
20. Back In The Front Room
21. Writing The Song (Dialogue)
22. When Big Bill Speaks/ The Man Who Knew A Man (Mick Avory's Audition Dialogue)
23. It's Alright (Managers Dialogue)
24. It's Alright (Havana Version, The Kinks Name Dialogue)
25. It's Alright (Up tempo, On The Road - Dialogue)
26. Julie Finkler (Dialogue)
27. The Ballad Of Julie Finkle
28. The Third Single (Dialogue)
29. You Really Got Me
30. London Song (Studio Version)
From The CD Liner notes:
North London, A RAINY NOVEMBER NIGHT IN THE lATE 1970’S. THE PUBS HAD SHUT AND I’D JUST TAKEN MY DOG FOR A WALK AROUND HIGHGATE VILLAGE. THEN THERE WAS A KNOCK ON THE DOOR A lARGE FIGURE OF A MAN HUDDLED IN A RAINCOAT STOOD SILHOUETTED BY THE STREET LAMP OUTSIDE. IT WASNT UNTIL THE FIGURE EMERGED INTO THE LIGHT OF MY PASSAGE WAY THAT I RECOGNISED HIM AS MY OLD FRIEND FRANK SMYTH WHOM I HADNT SEEN FOR ALMOST FIVE YEARS.
“Raymond, dear boy, can I come into your house and have a crap. It was obvious that Frank had been drinking. I showed him into the house but issued a stipulation. “Of course Frank, provided you use the toilet.” I showed him where the loo was and after taking relief, he came into my front room and sat down. His clothes were wet and there was a hole in one of his shoes that squelched out rain water onto my carpet. I put down an old newspaper so that it absorbed the seemingly endless trickle of water from Frank’s shoe. I brought in a small electric bar heater so that he could warm up. Then I opened a bottle of brandy, which seemed to cheer him up and after a while we started to exchange stories about what we’d both been up to since we had last met. Mine was a trail of recordings, tours and relationships and as I spoke I could see that Frank seemed to be transfixed by a small picture of old Highgate Village that was hanging on the wall. Then he started talking about how in old times the cattlemen would bring their livestock down from the North of England to the markets in London. When they had climbed the large hill on the final approach to the markets they stood and looked down over the city before taking refreshment at a nearby Inn. Frank explained that this was the final stop before completing the journey down to the cattle market. At the very top of the hill was a large gate. The cattlemen passed the gate with their livestock and named it High Gate. That, according to my friend Frank, was how the village where I lived got its name. I still do not know whether the story is true and I have often recounted it myself. That, I suppose is the way folklore is born. That must have been the way songs were passed on in the days before radio and records. There is
no real connection between this chance meeting with my old friend and this record. Frank stayed in Highgate for a few years and worked at the Konk bar where the Kinks had their recording studio. Then he moved on and eventual!y settled in Dorset. He would often call me, sometimes in the middle of the night whenever he’d seen me on TV or read a story on myself or the band in the newspapers. Frank had been a publicist for The Kinks in the 1960’s and had written the sleeve notes on our “FACE TO FACE” album. In many ways he still acted as a surrogate publicity advisor even though he had long since given up PR to concentrate on his own writing.
Frank loved to recount various adventures and laugh about characters he’d met in his life and while these accounts would often vary depending on the amount of alcohol he’d consumed there was no doubt that Frank knew how to tell a tale.
THE IDEA FOR MY SHOW CAME WHILE I WAS DOING IN-STORE READINGS TO PROMOTE MY BOOK, X-RAY. SOMEONE SUGGESTED THAT AS MY SONGS WERE SO CLOSELY LINKED TO MY OWN LIFE THAT IT WOULD BE AN IDEA TO PUT SOME EXAMPLES OF THESE SONGS IN DURING THE READINGS. I REMEMBERED A PASSAGE IN MY BOOK ABOUT THE FRONT ROOM IN THE HOUSE WHERE MY PARENTS LIVED.
“Once upon a time there was a room in a house called The Front Room. It was so named because it was at the front of the house, by the street. It was reserved for special occasions: Christmas parties, wedding receptions, birthdays, christenings and funerals all took place in the front room. Important visitors were always shown into it. It was also the official sickroom when there was an illness serious enough to call a doctor to the house. The sick person was moved down from one of the upstairs bedrooms to the front room. Guests slept there. People laughed, cried there. My sisters courted their boyfriends in there. Every special time and occasion was celebrated in the front room. The first time that I, Raymond Douglas, saw David Russell, my baby brother, was in the front room just after he had been born . .. years later I sat down in the front room and started to write a song on the old upright. I thumped out these crude fifths with my left hand, and Little Richard style eighth note chops with my right. I thought of a melody to go with the phrase: ‘Yeah, you really got me going, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Then I called Dave in from the kitchen where he was having dinner with the rest of the family, and he picked up his guitar and plugged into the green amp. He started playing along with the riff I was punching out with my left hand. As the amp warmed up I heard that wonderful distorted sound. It was a perfect representation of my anger, and yet beautiful at the same time. As I taught Dave the song some of our sisters came in to listen. Mum hovered by the door, half-afraid the neighbours would call the police again. When we got throngh the song for the first time, our small audience applauded. I had written ‘You Really Got Me’, and it happened in the front room because all important things happen there.”
The first performance of my show was in the small 200 seater Hazlitt Theatre in Maidstone on 28th March 1995. I worked out a running order as we drove down to Maidstone in the van and the show itself lasted around three and a half hours. The old hits were providing more of the back story similar to the way they would in a
musical. At the beginning of the Storyteller show I read from X-RAY and say that my name is of no importance; I am a faceless man; that one day I will become an individual. Maybe this sounds a little extreme, but when I was a confused teenager, I certainly felt that way on occasions. I also realised that when I was a child I had no way of properly articulating my emotions until I started writing songs. The show charts the growth of a person trying to struggle to find his individual identity and finally ending up writing songs about the street 1grew up in. Also, the more I have played the show, the front room I wrote about in X·RAY has become more important. Come to think of it, in days gone by, a wandering minstrel could have performed my entire show in somebody’s front room. That was the function of pop songs when I was a kid. Weddings, birthdays and christenings and funerals, someone would get up and do a turn. Whether it was a popular ditty sung by a nephew, a romantic ballad spewed out by a drunk uncle or a recited piece performed at me by an amorous niece. Everybody would have an opportunity of taking centre stage in the front room to perform their party piece. The same as Frank when he told me about the cattleman passing through Highgate. Frank was very enthusiastic about my book X-RAY when it came out and my solo show would have obviously been right up his street. He was always trying to get me to put the show on in Bridgeport near to where he lived. In recent years Frank had suffered with a bad breathing disorder and this illness made it difficult for him to travel to see me play and so he tried to arrange for me to travel to him. I was in the middle of finishing this record and I was thinking about asking Frank to write some sleeve notes when I got a ‘phone message that Frank had died. His funeral was held in August in Highgate and he is now laid to rest in Highgate Cemetery in a very prestigious plot near to Karl Marx and Max Wall. Now whenever I sing the line in LONDON SONG “if you’re ever up on Highgate Hill on a clear day I’ll be there”, I will think of Frank Smyth, one of the greatest storytellers of them all. Also, The baby Eva, who is still too young to speak and yet when she looks at me seems to know all the stories ever told.
This album is dedicated to them and those many others who have tried to help and encourage me to become an
individual. I hope you’ll sit back in your own front room and allow me to spin you my little yarn.
6th September 1997
great info my friend, Im off to bed on that inspiring note, thanks for posting
Wow, what a great post! I've been a huge fan for years, and you've filled in a bunch of gaps in my knowledge. Brilliant reading! The Kinks are wonderful "cold-weather music" for me, and I'll be hitting them hard from now until April. Thank you for the early Christmas present!
" I'm a paranoid schizoid product of the 20th century"
Yeah, I feel that....heavy. Saw a doc on Ray recently, and I gotta say, I don't know if there is any other performer from his period of music that is that expert at crafting raw emotion and reflection into his songs.
That quote about writing "You Really Got Me" is fascinating and just gave me the good-chills man!!
Cool project, well done...
Going to come back to this later, when I have time to appreciate this in full... thanks IRF... great post even at first look.. :-)
glad you peeps liked - I wasn't sure if it was a little to removed from the current musical universe. but that is the exact reason I worked it up and enjoyed it so much.
Yes, great post for sure! Learn more every day.....even a "later" Kinks song like Come Dancing sounds more like his own little nonfiction memory just knowing about his real- life older sisters for example.
This is charming stuff. I listened to everything. I have to say, though, that the acoustic rendition of Set Me Free was particularly entrancing.
One of the best if not the best posts I have seen here. Great information and great music by one of the top songeriters of ours or any age.
thought you might like it!