Monday, 15 January 2018

AAA Extra: Kinks abandoned projects and outside productions




 You can buy 'Maximum Consumption - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of The Kinks' by clicking here! 








As well as the albums listed in this book, there were a whole load of Kinks projects that ‘got away’, with Ray Davies second only to Pete Townshend for thinking up grand concepts on which he eventually changed his mind. Some of them only ever got as far as one song that was intended to be the start of a whole great rock opera musical/film/multimedia project – others were entire abandoned albums. So here’s a guide to a sort of parallel Kinks universe full of scattered projects that never quite reached fruition.
Abandoned Kinks Projects:
1)   ‘Occupations’ (EP, 1966)
During early sessions for ‘Face To Face’ in 1966 the music paper ‘Disc Weekly’ visited Ray in the studio and asked about his plans for the next Kinks projected. He mentioned to them that his initial thoughts were to release an EP and that he had four songs that seemed to fit the theme of ‘jobs’. Given that, like many a Kinks project to come, this one was never heard of again fans have wondered what might have been on it. The infamously unreleased song [94] ‘Mr Reporter’ seems likely, while the reporter goes on to mention certain songs by name such as ‘Girl Who Goes To Discotheques’ (which is almost certainly [82] ‘Little Miss Queen Of Darkness’) and, oddly, [72] ‘Party Line’ (although goodness knows what the ‘occupation’ is there!) Three unreleased songs are often named in relation to this project too, which have yet to be heard even on bootleg: ‘Sir Jasper’ (apparently a Kinksian tale of a school teacher who uses his life story as a message to kids of what not to do with their lives), ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Personality’ (a similarly Kinks tale about the dream of becoming a celebrity, which sounds a lot like the plot of ‘A Soap Opera’ nine years early!) and a song about actor Charlton Heston which didn’t have a title at the time of the report. Shortly after the Disc Weekly report The Kinks were said to be working on a song titled ‘Yes Man’ which may well have been connected to this project too (before that song morphed years later into [152] ‘Plastic Man’. The project was never officially abandoned, unlike most of the other entries on this list, but seems to have morphed into ‘Face To Face’ somewhere along the way.
2)   ‘Face To Face’ (Original version of LP, 1966)
Instead Ray Davies turned to his next idea – the standalone collection of his most emotional and intelligent songs yet ‘Face To Face’. However the original idea for The Kinks’ fourth album wasn’t initially meant to be ‘that’ standalone, as Ray intended his latest batch of songs to be linked by sound effects, all the tracks running into one other via segues so that they would feel like a ‘whole’ (in his mind and some fans’, it’s the world’s first rock and roll concept album – well, unless you count The Beach Boys singing twelve songs about cars). Ray was persuaded to drop the idea as fans would have trouble finding the individual tracks to play in the days of vinyl and ‘song banding’, but some made the final project: the ringing telephone of [72] ‘Party Line’ and the thunderstorm of [77] ‘Rainy Day In June’ among them. I’m often wondered: what would the sound effects on tracks like [84] ‘Sunny Afternoon’ have sounded like? (A millionaire licking an ice lolly?) While the Ray Davies choice of cue that started his most revealing songs like [73] ‘Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home’ (about his sister emigrating to Australia) and [75] ‘Too Much On My Mind’ (about his nervous breakdown) would have been highly revealing. I hope one day a ‘deluxe’ edition of this album (there have been lots down the years after all) will put us out of our misery and put the sound effects back in again!
3)   Dave Davies LP (1967)
The most famous unreleased album of all wasn’t a Kinks project but Dave’s. We’ve already covered what this album might have looked like in the main book: fabulous, mostly, with the archives of Dave’s abandoned first project sounding equally fabulous whether on bootleg (usually as ‘The Album That Never Was’) or on CD (as the diluted ‘Hidden Treasures’ in 2011). Kinks fans know most of the songs of course as they ended up either as Dave’s trio of A and B sides across 1967-1968 or – after the project was officially abandoned – as a series of Kinks B-sides across 1969, not to mention the songs that ended up on The Kinks’ ‘Something Else’ album in 1967. What an LP: ‘Death Of A Clown’ ‘Susannah’s Still Alive’ ‘Creeping Jean’ ‘Love Me Till The Sunshines’ ‘Mindless Child Of Motherhood’ ‘Groovy Movies’ ‘Mr Shoemaker’s Daughter’ ‘Lincoln County’ ‘There Is No Life Without Love’ ‘This Man He Weeps Tonight’ ‘Hold My Hand’ …Even with a couple of lesser songs only revealed for the first time in 2011 (‘Crying’ and ‘Do You Wish To Be A Man?’) this would have been an incredible effort that matches any Kinks album of the 1960s. Dave and Pye alike, though, got cold feet as his solo singles started slipping down the charts and in the end the project ran out of time, money and songs, with Dave abandoning his solo career for another twelve years. How different fate might have been though, as the release of this album might have given him the respect that always greeted his brother as a creative powerhouse.
4)   ‘Four More Respected Gentlemen’ (US LP, 1968)
This is where things started getting complicated. The Kinks recording enough songs across 1968 for either a long-running double album or a short-running triple, but kept changing their minds about what to do with it. For a long time Ray  was worried that his original very English version of ‘Village Green Preservation Society’ (still twelve tracks at this point) was maybe a little too ‘English’ (i.e. eccentric and localised) to appeal to international fans and wanted to provide an alternate ’American’ release made up of all the other Kinks recordings that didn’t make the LP, with ‘Days’ the only song in common between the two (typically it won’t feature on any Kinks album in the 1960s!) This is, as it happens, a very odd idea: would American really have understood tracks like [132] ‘Berkley Mews’ (an area of Marleybone, London) or the very English charms of [123] ‘Phenomenal Cat’ (initially meant for this album before being switched to ‘Village Green’) any better than [127] ‘People Take Pictures  Of Each Other’ or [117] ‘Last Of The Steam Powered Trains’? Ray apparently baulked at Pye’s intended title (a reference back to an earlier Kinks LP that sounded nothing like this one!) and their very dated cover art of the band in hunting jackets and pulled the whole thing (when asked in later years about this album he told a reporter, quite innocently, that it was an entire abandoned concept album about ‘table manners’, which might well be a dig at his American audience or just a joke!) Much of this album was resurrected by Pye after The Kinks left the label as ‘The Great Lost Kinks Album’ – Ray will have it pulled after a threat of legal action in 1973 (see below!) There was a running order suggested back in 1968 as briefly advertised to the public in Pye’s advertisements for late 1968 that’s similar but not identical: [96] ‘She’s Got Everything [126] ‘Monica’ [131] ‘Mr Songbird’ [116] ‘Johnny Thunder’ [129] ‘Polly’ [130] ‘Days’/ [120] ‘Animal Farm’ [132] ‘Berkley Mews’ [115] ‘Picture Book’ [121] ‘Phenomenal Cat’ [135] ‘Misty Waters’
5)   Village Green Preservation Society (20-track Version, 1968)
His original plan abandoned, Ray decided to make ‘Village Green’ a twelve song album – which was sent to reviewers and released very briefly, before being pulled and revised again. Before it was the fifteen-track version fans know today this was a budget double-LP that sold at the price of a single, with an impressive twenty songs on it (not unlike The Beatles’ White Album, except of course for price). This would have contained everything released on the eventual fifteen track version, plus [130] ‘Days’ [131] ‘Mr Songbird’ and some unknown others – possibly [96] ‘She’s Got Everything’ [129] ‘Polly’ [132] ‘Berkley Mews’ or [135] ‘Misty Waters’ again. Pye reject this on the grounds that it was expensive and a waste of money for a band with falling sales, before coming up with the compromise of the fifteen-track version that did finally make it to the shops.
6)   Arthur (TV drama 1969)
From the beginning the concept album ‘Arthur’, about Ray’s uncle who emigrated to Australia in search of a ‘better life’, was intended as a joint TV project, to be screened on BBC Two following Ray’s ties with the ‘Eleventh Hour’ series for whom he wrote a song a week. We don’t much about it and it would have been hard to put into visuals (with much of the album reportedly playing in place of the actors ‘saying’ anything) but it sounds a fascinating idea. The play would take place on the day that ‘Ray’ and ‘Arthur’ are saying goodbye to each other, with so much to say about the past, present and future but with very English reserve meaning never quite says it to each other (Ray was very close to his uncle and sister Rose and his nephew Terry, with whom he lived for much of his childhood when his own childhood house got too ‘full’). [150] ‘Nothin’ To Say’ is set at this point in the story and would have worked well as an overture, with all the WW2 footage perhaps told in flashback and showing how Arthur came to be scarred by the country for whom he risked his life and got nothing except a mortgage and a Shangri-La house that looked like all his neighbours’. The title track seems designed with an ‘end credits’ montage in mind too, though quite what this TV script would have turned out like nobody seems to know. Let’s hope the first draft of the script still exists so somebody can make it one day…
7)   ‘The Kinks Part Two’ (Lola v Powerman sequel LP 1970)
‘Lola v Powerman and Money-Go-Round’ was ambitiously titled ‘The Kinks – Part One’. What would have been on ‘Part Two’? We don’t know, but Ray clearly felt enough venom in him against modern-day living for a second part to put that wording on the album cover(which was a Kinks ideas, not a ‘Pye’ one). In the end, a surprise switch of record companies to RCA Victor meant that it was null and void anyway and The Kinks ended their contract with the soundtrack to the film ‘Percy’, but I’ve often wondered – could the first draft of the songs for first RCA album ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ be intended for this project? The two albums are very different in tone ([158] ‘Lola’ is warm and feisty, ‘Hillbillies’ cold and troubled) but the songs themselves are actually quite similar: characters like Lola who struggle to be their individual selves sound at one with the angry narrator of [167] ‘20th Century Man’ and the quirky [177] ‘Uncle Son’, while [178] ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ title track is all about belonging to a collection of similar misfits, whilst songs like [173] ‘Here Come The People In Grey (To Take Me Away)’ sound very much like [165] ‘Powerman’ and [160] ‘The Money-Go-Round’ to me.
8)   The Songs I Sang For Auntie (Ray Davies solo project 1971)
Ray had been trying for three years to release a compilation of the songs he recorded for two separate BBC projects (the ‘Aunty’ of the title) – ‘The Eleventh Hour’ and ‘Where Did My Spring Go?’, which would have been the first release under his own name rather than the band’s. Work was meant to start on ‘sweetening’ the recordings and replacing them with Ray’s own vocals rather than the actor’s in some cases before The Kinks started work on ‘Arthur’ in late 1968 and the project was abandoned, but came close to release in 1971 when The Kinks re-signed to RCA Victor. The label was encouraging, but a combination of the speed the band needed to work at their deadlines and the relatively poor sales for band projects meant this album was quietly abandoned afterwards too. A couple of songs were later tucked away at the end of The Kinks’ ‘The BBC Sessions’ but that aside have never been heard of again. A possible track listing: You Can’t Give More Than What You Have/If Christmas Day Could Last Forever/We’re Backing Britain/Poor Old Intellectual Sadie/Could Be A Poor Country Girl/The Man Who Conned Dinner From The Ritz/That Is What The World Is All About//When I Turn Off The Living Room Light/We Take Off All Our Clothes/We Are Two Of A Kind/Darling I Respect You/Where Did Our Spring Go?
9)   Everybody’s In Showbiz (TV Version 1972)
Another Kinks album also intended to be a tie-in TV show, this would have been a more ‘normal’ release than the TV play of ‘Arthur’. This concept double LP was split between two sides – one a studio set based around the problems and difficulties of being a touring band and the second the joyous release of the live set. This behind-the-scenes documentary about what being in a band was really like would have balanced the two, with deep reflective backscene shots of angst soundtracked by the first album and a joyous performance by the band akin to the second. RCA Victor, at first so promising about the idea, took one look at the poor sales for ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ and decided not to finance this TV special after all. Instead the band will re-use many of the elements for little-seen Kinks documentary ‘The Road’ from 1986.
10)               The Great Lost Kinks Album (Pulled from release 1973)
This is the odd-one-out in the list, given that it was indeed release, just not for very long: Pye had access to a lot of rare unreleased recordings by the band, particularly the ‘Village Green’ rejects in 1968 outlined above, so when compilation ‘Kinks Kronikles’ did quite well they decided to make this their sequel and ‘pretended’ it was a whole unreleased Kinks LP and released it into the record shops in America around the time of ‘Preservation Act One’. The Kinks weren’t consulted and Ray only discovered the album was out by chance when an American fan wrote to him about it and later sent on his copy when Ray claimed never to have heard of it. Davies was furious, not so much with the contents (which mixed 1968 and 1969 outtakes with common B-sides, ‘Percy’ soundtrack fodder,  rare Dave Davies singles and Ray Davies BBC productions) but the nasty snarling comments about the then-current ‘Kinks’ (and his reference to the ‘Showbiz’ album where ‘bitchy egocentric Ray…whose primary interest is making it clear to the listener the agony he must endure for staying on the road to entertain us’) that were on the sleeve that reckoned the band had gone badly downhill since 1968. He threatened legal action and the album was withdrawn very quickly, making this set a real Kinks Kollektible. The track listing was: Til’ Death Us Do Part/There Is No Life Without Love/[133] Lavender Hill/Groovy Movies/[134] Rosemary Rose/[135] Misty Waters/[131] Mr Songbird//When I Turn Off The Living Room Light/The Way Love Used To Be/[88] I’m Not Like Everybody Else/[152] Plastic Man/This Man He Weeps Tonight/ [136] Pictures In The Sand/Where Did My Spring Go?
11)               Untitled (Alternate ‘Sleepwalker’ 1977)
Every Kinks album (except perhaps the rushed ‘Kinda Kinks’) went through all sorts of changes from the band’s original intention when they set out to record it, but none more so than ‘Sleepwalker’ in 1977, which was started again almost from scratch after a series of recordings at the start of the year. The album was an important one as the band’s first release on new label Arista and they went to great lengths (arguably a few too many) to get the album just right. Many of the abandoned songs turned up on later albums (songs like [262] ‘Hay Fever’ [267] ‘Black Messiah’ and [273] ‘Live Life’ turning up on 1978’s ‘Misfits’), some came out as B-sides ([272] ‘Prince Of The Punks’), some only came out twenty years later in the age of the CD player ([258] ‘The Poseur’ [259] ‘Artificial Light’ and [260] ‘On The Outside’) while many songs were never returned to again: tracks with such appealing titles as ‘Lazy Day’ ‘Back In ‘64’ ‘Child Bride’ ‘Everything Is Alright’ and ‘A One Woman Man’. What’s unusual is that for a long time ‘Sleepwalker’ consisted of just three tracks that made the final record: [249] ‘Life On The Road’ [252] ‘Brother’ and [253] ‘Jukebox Music’, all of which will be re-recorded for use on the album and all sounded very different. All in all, ‘Sleepwalker’ probably had more unused material recorded for it than any other Kinks set.
12)               Untitled (LP 1979)
‘Low Budget’ was another Kinks album that originally looked a bit different, even if there weren’t quite as many differences. Ray commented to a reporter during early sessions for the album that he wanted the songs to be punchy and modern and that would be reflected in the song titles. The ones he quoted to the reporter include ‘oil’ (surely [281] ‘A Gallon Of Gas’), ‘radio’ (possibly a working title for [289] ‘Around The Dial’) and ‘television’ (possibly ditto for the title track of [290] ‘Give The People What They Want’ or possibly [333] ‘Entertainment’). Once again it’s interesting to see that only one song that later made the album seems to have survived from the earliest sessions, while the outtakes will be re-recorded on albums scattered across the rest of the decade.
13)               Double Life (Original version of ‘One For The Road’ 1981)
The Kinks always had real problems with their live albums and spent months on them, unlike most bands who released them as ‘filler’ between making ‘proper’ records. Though planned from the outset as a double live album, there are almost no similarities between the original plan under the working title ‘Double Life’ and the final released album ‘One For The Road’. The initial plan was to release the best from four Kinks gigs played between August 16-19th 1979 at California’s Universal Amphitheatre, including various differences in the running order (which includes such songs as [249] ‘Life On The Road’ [266] ‘Permanent Waves’ [171] ‘Alcohol’, a cover of ‘Twist and Shout’ and an unusual medley combining [43] ‘A Well Respected Man [98] ‘Death Of A Clown’ and [84] ‘Sunny Afternoon’, a trio of songs that continue the grand tradition of the ‘Milk Cow Blues/Batman/Tired Of Waiting For You’ medley of ‘Kelvin Hall’ in 1968 by shoving together three songs that have nothing in common whatsoever. The band are disappointed in the tapes and re-record a further set of gigs the following Spring.
14)               Entertainment (Original version of ‘Give The People What They Want’ LP 1981)
‘Entertainment’ was revived again in 1981 and very nearly became the title of the band’s eighteenth LP. Ray’s initial idea was to play the album songs off this central one, the idea that the mess of modern-day living turned out the way it was because it was ‘entertaining’. This song did make the same point as several others on the album, though, which might be why it was later demoted to an album track on 1989’s ‘UK Jive’ instead. At this early stage the track listing also included [301] ‘Bernadette’, abandoned until the sequel album ‘State Of Confusion’ in 1983.
15)               Chorus Girls (Musical 1978-1981)
More obscure even than Ray’s ‘Around The World In 80 Days’ musical from the end of the decade, this collaboration with playwright Barry Keefe was surely inspired by Ray’s new ballerina wife Patricia. While Ray’s songs play the audience saw a ‘Spitting Image’ style mute rant as various people in Thatcher and Prince Charles masks fall down trapdoors to their doom, the ‘musical within a musical’ before Ray tells the more human story of what it’s ‘like’ to be a chorus dancer at everyone’s beck and call (how I wish he’d revived The Kinks’ [157] ‘Get Back In The Line’!) Alas we don’t know any more about the plotline than this and no songs have ever leaked on bootleg, never mind been given an official release, so a description from Melody Maker who see one of the very performances at Stratford’s ‘Theatre Royal is all we have to go on. They also add that the musical covers ‘unemployment, patriotism and royalty!’ The only song title we know are the ones people talked about the most: feminist rant ‘All Men Are Fools’ and Ray’s only reggae song, which mockingly ‘Celebrates England’. A project ripe for a revival in our modern times, perhaps?
16)               See My Friends: A History Of Britain 1900-? (1982)
This project seems to have been abandoned as soon as Ray thought about it, which is a shame; suffering from rare writer’s block, Ray wanted to write about somebody, anybody but himself for a change and proposed a Kinks-eye view of Britain in book form. The work would probably have ended up much like ‘Arthur’ did, with Ray taking a working class man’s eyes of the improvements and problems with being an ‘ordinary’ person across a turbulent decade. In the event Ray will write books, but not about Britain – usually they’re about America (when they’re not being ‘unauthorised autobiographies’!)
17)               Medication Abuse In America (1988)
This and the next two projects were single-line ideas given by Ray when effectively ‘talking out loud’ about his next planned projects to the papers, all of them ‘film projects’ to come after his work on the films ‘Absolute Beginners’ and ‘Return To Waterloo’. This one sounds particularly interesting – would it have been scored with music similar to [275] ‘Pressure’ one wonders, the one previous Ray Davies song on this theme?
18)               Man Of Aran (1988)
This one was a slightly more complex film project, about Ray’s newfound love for Ireland after moving there with his fourth wife. This tale centred around the IRA and a terrorist who had sympathies with Ireland but actually spent all his life in England. Fleeing from the law, he makes a new home in the country he’s come to see as a utopia in his mind and the clashes between this and everyday reality there. Chances are the ‘Phobia’ song [355] ‘The Informer’ started life here again, but otherwise this project was never heard of again.
19)               Playing The Crowd (1988)
Finally, all we know about this film is that it was about the ‘music business’. Given the amount of previous Kinks projects on this theme (‘Lola v Powerman’ ‘Everybody’s In Showbiz’ and ‘The Road’) it seems likely that Ray would have had a thing or two to say about it!
20)               Million-Pound Semi-Detached (Early Version of ‘UK Jive’ 1989)
The last two Kinks albums ‘UK Jive’ and ‘Phobia’ were much altered and could have been released months if not years before they actually were. As it turns out the final version of ‘Phobia’ just keeps having songs added to it (with [349] ‘Only A Dream’ and [347] ‘Still Searching’ added towards the end to add ‘humanity’ to an often brittle and harsh album and [359] ‘Scattered’ and [342] ‘Did Ya?’ older songs added at the request of the record label). ‘UK Jive’ is a more interesting alternate prospect though: for a time it was the last great Kinks concept album and centred around the idea of a businessman who made his fortune and then pondered what to do with it and whether he’d sold out to get it. The album at first seems to have been inspired by Ray’s script for another abandoned film project ‘Breakfast In Berlin’, with [340] ‘Million Pound Semi-Detached’ given as the title track. Not many of the finished album songs fit this theme though, suggesting that Ray had second thoughts and quickly went back to re-using songs (the only one that does, [336] ‘Loony Balloon’, is a much older song from the ’80 Days’ musical). So far Kinks scholars have yet to trace what the rest of this concept would have consisted of, but it sounds fun!



Davies Songs Given Away and Outside Productions:


There are additionally a dozen outside productions worked on by Ray or Dave Davies, mostly during their early time in the band or when they were producing artists for their ‘Konk’ record label. Many of these early items feature unreleased Ray Davies recordings, who seemed to have worked his fingers to the bone in 1966 – I still keep waiting to hear about another leaked batch of demo tapes on bootleg as he must have recorded some of these himself, though most sound quite different to Kinks songs and seem to have been written with the other artists in mind. Please note that we’ve skipped songs already done by The Kinks that were covered by different artists but have included songs where The Kinks’ version only came out long after the cover versions. Update: Well, wouldn’t you know it? No sooner had we published this article and tracked down most of these hard-to-find records then Ace Records decided to compile all of them into a handy single disc set! Most of the following songs given away can now be found on ‘Kinked! Kinks Songs and Sessions 1964-1971’ but rather than moving them to our ‘CD’ page we’ve left it here complete as there are a handful of songs that weren’t available for that set due to copyright issues.

1)   Shel Naylor ‘One Fine Day’ (1964)
We start, for instance, with this ‘odd one out’, a song not by Ray but by Dave in the days before he’d even had his first full solo credit on a Kinks album. Then-producer Shel Talmy was in charge and gives this song the same short sharp shock of electricity common to all his 1964-1965 charges by all his bands. A noisy, brash, Merseybeatish song, this one sounds nothing like The Kinks, even back in 1964 (it’s closest in style to [5] ‘You Do Something To Me’ but if it had been played by The Rolling Stones!) The lyric is oddly upbeat too and evidence sadly of what a happy-go-lucky chap Dave was before the starin of being in The Kinks got to him: ‘One fine day we’ll be as happy as happy can be!’ cries the chorus which may well be an early sign of wish fulfilment with girlfriend Sue as Dave sings about being out on the road for now but promises to back if his un-named other ‘waits’ for him, with a very Un-Kinks like yell of ‘woah yeah!’ in the chorus too. Ray, never immune to recycling ideas from his brother, may have ‘borrowed’ the idea and developed it to become [34] ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’. The Kinks don’t play on the song which might account for it’s rather odd sound, but as is often the case with Shel Talmy future Led Zeppelin bandmates Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones both play.

2)   The Cascades ‘I Bet You Won’t Stay’ (1965)
Technically this isn’t a Ray Davies production, but the Kink is thought to have been there to see how the song he gave away to a Californian  beat group (with the gimmick that they were all made up of navy vets – or at least that’#s what they told the press!) turned out. Sounding not unlike a first draft of [73] ‘Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home?’ twinned with a re-make of the sighing chords of [34] ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’, this song is an early exercise in fun with harpsichords that will be so much a part of The Kinks’ sound, though this band sound more like ‘The Four Seasons’. The narrator is a typically edgy Ray Davies character too, with his neuroses driving him to expect the worst: his lover comes to visit, he’s sure she’ll leave; she asks to spend some time with him, he expects her to go soon. Nowhere in this anxious, troubled little song can he truly relax and enjoy himself even though everything seems to be working out for him. An early sign of Rays’ worry about his first marriage to Rasa, given away to another band to sound less obvious? 

3)   The Majority [63] ‘A Little Bit Of Sunlight’ (1965)
The majority of Kinks fans won’t know this song by The Majority but as a low-key demo where a suitably embarrassed Ray finds himself singing a chorus ‘of ‘ooooooh’ and a lyric about life being better in the future that sounds almost happy. This very Beatley song reveals Ray’s natural gift for melody and the idea that in another era he’d have made a fine tin pan alley writer, but this song about only needing a little bit of hope to stay happy feels false and unbelievable in both his mouth and that of his chosen band, who seem to have only made this one single before disappearing. A little dated by 1965 standards, you can see why Ray might have wanted to give this one away, but the tune is a good one and it’s great to hear Ray happy in the ‘mid-day sun’ for a change. 

4)   Dave Berry [68] ‘This Strange Effect’ (1965)
Controversial I know, but Dave Berry’s cover of this unusual haunting song is perhaps the only one in this list I would take over Ray’s (or Dave’s). Ray’s sleepy voice takes the song into a particular place as if he’s sleep-walking, but under-rated hitmaker Berry sounds much happier as if he’s a willing participant in the hypnotism. You can tell that Ray wasn’t writing this song for himself, but it seems unlikely this was a specific commission – Berry’s managers were probably just the first people who bit when Larry Page began offering the song around. There’s a great rise of ascending chords in the middle of the song that’s only sketched in on Ray’s demo that’s followed by a melancholy brass section that’s very 1970s Kinks, the sound of a man whose so unused to being onto a good thing that he’s already waiting for the day when it’s going to go wrong. A klassy Kinks kover.  

5)   Peggy Lee [69] ‘I Go To Sleep’ (1965)
While everybody thinks of this nowadays as a Pretenders song (with Ray’s girlfriend Chrissie Hynde looking through his song collection for a track that would be a hit!) Ray said that he always intended this song for 1950s star Peggy Lee. She did sing it first too based on the creaky demo that Ray made for her (and in which he sounds not unlike her in retrospect). The problem is Peggy’s character was based so squarely on doe-eyed energy that she never really got both the lethargy and lurking paranoia in this song and never really makes the most of it, turning it into a breathless waltz. A much better period performance was released barely days afterwards by Midlands band The Applejacks with the best non-Pretenders version by Lesley Duncan that’s well worth seeking out.

6)   The Honeycombs ‘Emptiness’ (on LP ‘All Systems Go!’ 1965)
Fellow 1960s Londoners The Honeycombs had scored one of their biggest kits with a kover of [40] ‘Something Better Beginning’, a song that’s basically a ‘tidier’ bigger budget version of The Kinks’ own.  Figuring that lightning might strike twice their manager asked Ray for a song of their own but whether through tiredness or threat of competition Ray seems to have given them a very flimsy song indeed. Though not released till 1965 ‘Emptiness’ sounds more like a 1963 vintage song to me – it’s full of Beatley good-time pop and forced smiles through tears imagery that had been milked to death by 1965. ‘I wonder whose world you’re stepping into now? I wonder if you really love him?’ croons Dennis De’ll before complaining about the emptiness at home without their loved one around. This song could indeed have been written by almost any decent hack writer, but the su-den unexpec-ted pauses and the breathless rush through a line-filling ‘oh but I know’ give it away as a Ray song. Uniquely for this list rather than release it as a fingers-crossed single The Honeycombs hid it away on the middle of their two records instead. 

7)   Barry Fontoni ‘Little Man In A Little Box’ (1966)
This track does sound like a Kinks song though, with the world-weary feel of a song like [66] ‘The World Keeps Going Round’ and the angry sobs of a song from ‘Face To Face’. The mood is turbulent and feisty, the song’s riff is deeply unsettling and the lyrics are a more philosophical take on [88] ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ as the song’s narrator pleads not to be pigeon-holed or restricted to the life people want for him, a very Kinks kry for individuality. ‘You can’t turn me on, you can’t switch me off, you can do anything with me, anything you please! Carry me around, pick me up put me down, anytime of day, anywhere anyway’ runs the lyric, which sounds suspiciously like a dig at The Who’s similar ‘Anyway Anyhow Anywhere’ then setting the charts alight. Barry Fontoni copes well considering that his career really was as a TV presenter on such programmes as ‘A Whole Scene Goin’ On’ and his voice is just Kinkish enough to get the ‘feel’ of Ray’s work (nobody seems to know why he suddenly started this one-off singing career or how he got this song, but The Kinks did appear on that show - their performance of [84] ‘Sunny Afternoon’ now sadly lost - so maybe it was a ‘favour’?!) Musically what’s interesting here is how much the guitarwork sounds like Dave’s snarly sound, but for perhaps the first time on a Ray Davies production it plays a sighing duet with the much more stately harpsichord, the ‘new’ modern sound of rock and roll every bit as much of a ‘trap’ as old archaic Victoriana ways. It’s a sound that will set up much of ‘Village Green’ and ‘Arthur’ but is being used for the first time here on an ‘experiment’ Ray could afford to let flop. Sadly the song did exactly that, although it’s something of a cult classic now, with Barry Fontoni now better known as the spoof obituary columnist ‘E J Thribb’ in Britain’s satirical Private Eye magazine. A glorious lost gem, kolleckted on Kinks Kompilation ‘Kontroversial Kovers’.

8)   Leapy Lee ‘King Of The Whole Wide World’ (1966)
Leapy Lee is one of those characters who was on the fringes of stardom many a time across the 1960s but somehow couldn’t get a break despite a very 1960s name (his birth name was the very un-rock and-roll Graham Pulleyblank) and an impressive contact book, of whom Ray was only one of many. Davies offered to record a whole album with the singer over at Decca, but when this first trial single came out and missed the charts the whole plan was scrapped. It’s a fun song, that marries a very Ray Daviesian melody (all arch quotation marks and rises and falls) with a very un-Kinky lyric (this is a man apparently out for power, wanting people who once laughed at him to bow to him; in Kinkland even the ‘super-heroes’ have doubts about their special gifts). ‘Don’t know why I feel this way, hoping that I’ll feel good’ sounds like a very Ray line though, while the narrator concludes happily that he really wants to be ‘King of the whole world’ because then his girl could be his Queen. Awwww.

9)   The Thoughts [67] ‘All Night Stand’ (1966)
Ray’s demo for this song came out as an extra on the ‘Kinks Kontroversy’ deluxe CD and was for decades a bootleg favourite, perhaps because of all the tracks from this period it feels like a Kinks song that got away. The narrator is desperate for a real emotional connection, not the brief dates he enjoys (possibly with groupies), and spends the whole song worrying over an angular variation of the age-old [12] ‘You Really Got Me’ riff. Ray sounds tired of life on the road’ years before he turns that idea into a full song, playing to a ‘million faces’ but always feeling alone and disconnected from humanity. Oddly The Thoughts make this song even more of a Kinks song with their harmonised arrangement, speeding up the tempo so that this sounds less like a nagging worry and more like a panic attack, the band struggling to spit keep up with the tune and spit the words out in time. The suitably psychedelic, spacey production (so very 1966) made this track a standout song for many and the track can be heard on the superlative various artists box set ‘Nuggets II’ (i.e. the ‘world’ edition, rather than the American one). 

10)       Mo and Steve ‘Oh What A Day It’s Gonna Be!’ (1966)
This one’s unusual. Mo and Steve aren’t rock and rollers but big balladeers (think a less righteous Righteous Brothers) and this song is very much in their usual line of work.  ‘It seems the very air I’m breathing is bringing you to me!’ sings the loved up narrator, as he imagined a happy future in old age ‘remembering the things we’re now doing’. It’s not very Ray at all, especially the song’s plucked strings and big horn arrangement (much more schmaltzy than any Kinks recording) and the glowing hope as the narrators long for a better future. In a way though the lyric about the weather bringing hope is a first draft for [105] ‘Lazy Old Sun’ without the drama.  

11)       The Uglys [108] ‘End Of The Season’ (1966)
In 1964-1965 Pye was doing spectacularly well for a relatively low budget label, lucky picks in The Searchers and The Kinks keeping them close to the sales of the big boys EMI and Decca. By 1966 though The Kinks were slipping and The Searchers had fallen in terms of sales figures. So they pinned their hopes on their next big band: The Uglys (a band I’ve often thought might have been named in reference to ‘The Pretty Things’). Just to make extra sure the band were the big splash Pye wanted them to be, Ray Davies was coaxed to lend both a hand and a new song, although the lazy ballad about cricketers going home ‘End Of The Season’ maybe wasn’t quite what the label were looking for. The song has become a cult mod classic now but flopped badly at the time, perhaps because the band’s performance falls flat compared to The Kinks’ re-recording from the following year and maybe because the arrangement (a tad quicker and, well, sillier than the band’s re-recording for ‘Something Else’) doesn’t quite make it. You can hear the words rather better than Ray’s Noel Coward crooning though: is the line ‘I get my chicks’ as sung here the ‘real’ line (which sounds mightily like ‘kicks’ on The Kinks’ recording to my ears?) 

12)       The Turtles ‘Turtle Soup’ (whole LP 1969)
Jumping forward three years, another band in trouble were America’s once high selling Turtles, who by 1969 had experienced a dry spell and had somewhat retreated into their shell. Ironically for a band that provided so many famous producers (Chip Douglas quit to work with The Monkees, while Flo and Eddie worked with everyone), they decided what they needed to turn their fortunes around was a big name producer and Ray seems to have been the first guy to say yes. He produced the whole of what turned out to be the last Turtle LP, but didn’t contribute any compositions and the LP doesn’t sound much like Ray’s style at all with its manic fuzz guitars and basic boogie woogie beat – or indeed much like The Turtles’, who split for good after this record’s release. The opening lines of the opening song are ‘I once had a drink but I drank it, once had some money but I spent it’ which doesn’t sound much like Ray at all! ‘She’s Always Laughing’ is a particularly beautiful song though, the last great Turtle classic!

13)       ‘This Is Leon Bibb’ (‘The Ballad Of The Virgin Soldier’ 1970)
No, I don’t know who Leon Bibb is either, so it’s nice of him to introduce himself to us. Thibb seems to have added his own anti-war lyrics to a tune that Ray submitted to feature film ‘The Virgin Soldier’ and which is another bootleg feature – a sweet little tune, unsteady on its legs, it grows in size and stature as more and more orchestra get added to the point where it becomes quite epic by the end (even pompous). It’s a measure of how low Ray’s stock was in the pre-[158] ‘Lola’ Kinks renaissance, though, that the film company asked if Ray could provide some lyrics to go with the tune and he passed, allowing an outside writing team to come up with what we have here. This song is more direct than any Kinks song would ever be, though there are similarities with recent ‘Arthur’ songs such as [142] ‘Some Mother’s Son’. ‘Got no name for my epitaph because I died before I had a chance to live, never tasted love never tasted love never felt the joy a girl can live, no sad songs when you bury me – let my music be the thunder of the hills, shouting loud my dreams of so many things I thought I’d have but know I never will’ the lyric runs, the narrator ‘leaving only footprints on the sands of time’. Despite Ray’s low involvement with the song, it’s one of the very best in this list. 

14)       Cold Turkey [182] ‘Nobody’s Fool’ (1972)
The Kinks song that got away like no other, you can tell that this little-known band had access to Ray’s original demo and the unknown singer does such a close Ray impression that more than one fan has been fooled into thinking this is a Kinks recording. The backing though is very un-Kinks like: there’s a guitar that doesn’t snarl musically the way Dave does so much as slide and sigh in a Clapton-type way, the catchy riff has been slowed down to a crawl and the tinkling chord bash piano is as different to John Gosling’s style as any two players on the same instrument can be. Though the lyrics are all the same the sheer oomph of this production means that it sounds less like a depressive introspective piece and more like a piece of moody teenage blues. The demo is clearly far far better, but it’s a song that deserved to do better in any version – especially when it was picked as the signature theme to the short-lived UK TV series ‘Budgie’ (no, not the Sarah Ferguson helicopter monstrosity but a serious fore-runner to ‘Only Fools and Horses’ with Adam faith as a conman on the make, produced by Dr Who heroine Verity Lambert).   

15)       Claire Hammil ‘Stage Door Johnnies’ (whole LP 1974)
The Kinks’ original vision of record label Konk was grand: a state of the art studio that many bands would use and an entry to the music world for all sorts of unsigned talent! In the end only three acts were ever signed to the label outside The Kinks, two by Ray and one by Dave. This is Ray’s great belief of 1974, as he proudly told the music papers that this was the year of Claire Hammil and that ‘I’m gonna make her a star!’ Ray had first tapped her deep smooth voice and her services for the stage version of the ‘Preservation’ musical, but was worried that her first two albums had been ignored and she needed ‘help’ with her third. Ray produced the whole of the album, which sounds much like the first two and not like The Kinks at all, though The Kinks’ horn section of the time appears a lot and Ray himself can be heard in the throng of backing singers occasionally. It’s an interesting but inconsistent little album with Claire’s ability as a writer for half the record (she’s a deeper Kate Bush crossed with Joni Mitchell!) much more exciting than her abilities as a cover artists of such 1960s classics as ‘We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place’ and ‘Go Now’ (but sadly no Kinks songs). The cheeky title is most unlike the ‘feel’ of this record, by the way, which promises to be a Stones-style nudge-wink affair but if anything sounds posher and sweeter than period Kinks Koncept recordings. The heartfelt song ‘All The Cakes She Baked Him’, with its sultry string quartet, is our pick of the record’s best moment and very wonderful it is too, though the rest of the LP is not quite as strong.

16)       Andy Desmond ‘Living On A Shoestring’ (Most of LP 1974)
This, meanwhile, is Dave’s big chance at breaking a new artist on Konk and he tapped the services of Kinks pianist John Gosling to help him. The pair play most of the backing tracks themselves and offer up a much quirkier, Kinksier production than brother Ray. The songs feature sound effects, sudden variations of sound and frequent singer-songwriter style guitar from Dave that’s much softer and playful than his Kinks recordings. The songs are rather good too, Andy having a much softer, more emotional writing voice than even The Kinks, more in the style of Gordon Lightfoot or Ralph McTell. ‘Can’t Bear To Live Without You’ is particularly interesting and features pretty much a full Kinks performance, Ray aside, complete with The Kinks’ current selection of girl backing singers, though the quiet acoustic strum of the title track is our pick as the best of the LP. Dave, always fascinated by the technical aspects of making a record, really went to town on this album and it deserved to do better – it’s a real shame he didn’t do any other productions after this either, his own records aside, as he (and Gosling) have a really clever touch at keeping a song interesting all the way through (those years of practice on Kinks records clearly working well!)

17)       Café Society ‘Whitby Two-Step’ (1975)
This, though, is the most famous Kinks outside production. Café Society were at the time an unknown band with an unknown singer-songwriter named Tom Robinson who was eager to move music on from prog rock to punk. Goodness knows why Ray Davies thought he’d be a good signee, but he may well have recognised something of himself circa 1964 in the brash, talented yet insecure singer who wanted to change the world but was clueless about where to start. The pair struck up a strong friendship and Ray ‘produced’ this album for Konk, more as a way of keeping any other record label man away and let the band do what they wanted without interference than anything else. At least for the most part – the title track of this LP sounds incredibly like a Kinks song, full of oompah-ing jazz, a sarcastic lyric about class and ‘becoming one of us’ and a tune not unlike a faster version of [192] ‘Look A Little On The Sunny Side’. Alas the two had a major falling out, with Ray accidentally/on purpose (depending who you believe) keeping Tom waiting for the last sessions of this album as The Kinks’ Kontract with RCA got ‘heavy’. When Ray turned up late, Tom performed a sarcastic version of [34] ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’ at the piano and a scorned Ray walked home, mad with fury, writing Kinks B-side [252] ‘Prince Of The Punks’ as his riposte. The move from Konk was inevitable after that but didn’t seem to do the young singer any harm as he formed a new ‘Tom Robinson Band’, became a hero of the punk counter-culture and can now be heard as a DJ on BBC’s Radio Six Music where he is very popular. I’ve never heard him play any Kinks songs though.

18)       Trevor Rabin (‘Wolf’ LP 1981)
Bored of his time in prog rock band ‘Yes’, former session musician Trevor Rabin set off to make a solo record that was much more ‘new wave’ ish. Trevor asked around for help and Ray got in touch, agreeing to be ‘associate producer on his whole LP ‘Wolf’ in 1981 during downtime from ‘Give The People What They Want’. Ray produced the whole LP, which interestingly sounds much more like the contemporary work his brother Dave was making (the guitar is upfront, the sound is brittle and the songs are almost all about the modern world going mad). However the most interesting track for fans is the last one, ‘Long Island’, a co-write between Trevor and Ray (and Ray never collaborates with anyone – he only did it with his brother once!) The angry guitar riff sounds very much at one with ‘Give The People’ but the mood is much happier: this is an escapism sort of a song, not unlike [67] ‘I’m On An Island’ without the calypso. Simpler than anything Ray had helped write in years, it feels like the sort of Kinks song that’s going to end up with a sting in the tail, but no – it gets to the end without incident, a happy go lucky song to the finish.

19)       The Moondogs ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ (LP 1981)
Somehow Ray also got to hear about this Northern Irish new wave trio and helped encourage their signing to oldies wanting to be new wavies label Sire in 1981. He also produced their debut album for them, which sounds like it uses many of the production tricks of period Kinks album (the ‘dry’ wall of sound heard on ‘Low Budget’ ‘Give The People’ and ‘State Of Confusion’) but not the actual songs, which tend to be more like the younger Kinks, a looser and more daring variation of the same tight angular guitar riffs. It’s an interesting record, more adventurous than most new wave acts and with his own fondness for Ireland you can see why this band would have appealed to Ray. Sadly the elder Kink never seemed to want to make another record outside his own after this!
‘The Kinks’ (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-kinks-1964.html

‘Kinda Kinks’ (1964) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-kinks-kinda-kinks-1965.html


'The Kink Kontroversy' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-kinks-kink-kontroversy-1965.html

'Face To Face' (1966)  http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-8-kinks-face-to-face-1966.html

‘Something Else’ (1967) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-kinks-something-else-1967-album.html


'The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society' (1968) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/the-kinks-are-village-green.html

'Arthur' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-30-kinks-arthur-1969.html

'Lola vs Powerman and the Money-Go-Round' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-74-kinks.html


'Muswell Hillbillies' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-kinks-muswell-hillbillies-1971.html

‘Everybody’s In Showbiz’ (1972)  http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-kinks-everybodys-in-showbiz-1972.htm



'Schoolboys In Disgrace' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-kinks-schoolboys-in-disgrace-1975.html

'Sleepwalker' (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/news-views-and-music-issue-132-kinks.html


‘Misfits’ (1978) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-kinks-misfits-1978.html


'Low Budget' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-kinks-low-budget-1979.html

'Give The People What They Want' (1981) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-81-kinks-give-people-what-they.html


'State Of Confusion' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-kinks-state-of-confusion-1983.html

'Word Of Mouth' (1985) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/news-views-and-music-issue-96-kinks.html

'Think Visual' (1986)  http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/news-views-and-music-issue-37-kinks.html

'UK Jive' (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-93-kinks-uk-jive-1989.html


'Phobia' (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-kinks-phobia-1993.html

Pete Quaife: Obituary and Tribute http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010_06_27_archive.html


The Best Unreleased Kinks Songs 1963-1992 (Ish!) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-kinks-best-unreleased-songs-1963.html


Non-Album Recordings 1963-1991 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-kinks-non-album-recordings-1963-1991.html


The Kinks Part One: Solo/Live/Compilation/US Albums 1964-1996 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-kinks-part-one-solo-dave.html


The Kinks Part Two: Solo/Live/Compilation Albums 1998-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-kinks-part-two-ray-and-dave-davies.html




Abandoned Albums and Outside Productions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/aaa-extra-kinks-abandoned-projects-and.html


Essay: The Kinks - Why This Band Aren’t Like Everybody Else https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-kinks-essay-why-this-band-arent.html


Landmark concerts and key cover versions

https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-kinks-five-landmark-concerts-and.html

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