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Dave Davies explains how he REALLY got the raw guitar sound on The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’
05.21.2016
08:48 pm
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The fuzzy riff of the Kinks’ epochal 1964 hit “You Really Got Me” is one of the great “opening statements” in rock and roll history. For so many of us, that lick was the first time we ever heard the Kinks—leading to countless hours spent listening to some of the greatest rock and roll ever recorded.

Recently, the origins of that notably fuzzy sound were the topic of a passage in Rich Cohen’s new book The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, which was excerpted in Slate a couple of weeks ago. In addition to writing this book, Cohen is one of the creators of the HBO series Vinyl, along with Mick Jagger, Martin Scorsese, and Terence Winter.

Dave Davies, who wrote the riff, is very annoyed at Cohen’s portrayal of how it came about. Davies spoke out on the Kinks’ official Facebook presence earlier today with a lengthy open letter to “Rich Cohen, Random House, and Slate magazine” in order to air his grievances.
 

 
The roots of Davies’ annoyance seem to relate to the notion that his brother Ray was involved in the incident, which involved a speaker being cut by a razor blade, when he actually was not involved at all. Obviously, the relationship between Ray and Dave Davies has been notoriously difficult for decades now. Dave once said of Ray, “I love my brother… I just can’t stand to be with him.”

According to Davies, neither Cohen nor Slate have responded to his requests to identify the source of the anecdote. Here’s the section of Cohen’s book that irritated Davies (boldface added):
 

When Keith listened to the new version, he knew what was missing. The riff! He had to crank it up. The next morning, Ian Stewart came back from the music store with a Gibson Maestro fuzz box, a new gizmo that distorted guitar, junked it up. The sound was akin to the lead on the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” which, according to legend, resulted from a fight between Dave Davies and Ray Davies. One of the brothers cut a speaker with a razor blade, causing the same sort of snarled line Richards achieved with the fuzz pedal.

 
And here’s the relevant portion of Davies’ response:
 

Mr. Cohen and Slate magazine editors have refused to provide a source for this passage despite repeated requests from my staff. As I have stated in interviews and print since 1964, I was alone at home in the front room of 6 Denmark Terrace in Muswell Hill North London when I got angry because I was upset about being separated from my girlfriend. I slashed the speaker cone with a razor blade IN A FIT OF RAGE. Ray was not with me. I was alone in my ANGER. IT had nothing to do with a fight with my brother.

 
The full letter is much longer—it’s definitely worth a full read. According to Dave Lifton at Ultimate Classic Rock, Dave Davies got bent out of shape in late 2014 when Ray stuck an incident along these lines into his musical-in-progress about the Kinks, which goes by the title Sunny Afternoon. Dave’s comment on the situation at that time was:
 

“My brother is lying. … I am just flabbergasted and shocked at the depth of his selfish desire to take credit for everything. I never once claimed songwriting royalties on “You Really Got Me,” yet this song would not have happened without my guitar sound.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.21.2016
08:48 pm
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The Kinks showcase a storming selection from ‘Sleepwalker’ live in 1977

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1973 was not a good year for The Kinks. Personal problems, changes in line-up and a whole shift in the music scene led Kinks frontman and main songwriter Ray Davies to question what he was doing with his life. In June of that year, Davies’ wife Rasa left him taking their children with her. It sent Davies into a major depression.

During the band’s headline concert in July at the White City Stadium in London, Ray Davies announced from the stage he was quitting the band. According Roy Hollingsworth in his review of the gig for music paper Melody Maker:

Ray Davies should never have been at London’s White City Stadium, on Sunday. Physically, and more important, mentally. Davies was in no fit condition to play. And in no fit condition to stand on a stage and say that he was quitting, He was a man neck-high in troubles, and when he shouted “I quit,” he should have shouted “Help!”

Ray looked frightening in dark glasses for the sun wasn’t shining … He was a wreck that evening … Davies swore onstage. He stood at the White City and swore that he was ‘F—ing sick of the whole thing … Sick up to here with it … and those that heard shook their heads.

After this tirade, Ray walked across to his brother, guitarist Dave, kissed him on the cheek and exited the stage. He then collapsed from a massive overdose of “valium.” According to Dave Davies this was the night Ray had “tried to top himself.”

I thought he looked a bit weird after the show—I didn’t know that he’d taken a whole bloody bottle of weird-looking psychiatric pills. It was a bad time. Ray suddenly announced that he was going to end it all—it was around that time that his first wife left him. … She’d left him and taken the kids on his birthday, just to twist the blade in a little more. … I think he took the pills before the show. I said to him towards the end that he was getting a bit crazy. I didn’t know what happened—I suddenly got a phone call saying he was in the hospital. I remember going to the hospital after they’d pumped his stomach and it was bad.

During his recuperation in hospital Ray spent much of his time listening to Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony The Resurrection—the story of one man’s redemption and resurrection after death, which Ray described as “a moving piece of music.” It made him think about taking the band in a more theatrical direction.

When Dave came to visit him, Ray told his brother he no longer wanted to just be a rock band but “wanted to explore the idea of rock theatre, something no one else had really done before.”
 
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In many respects this idea—or concept albums similar to this idea—exactly what The Kinks had been experimenting with since The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in 1968, and had continued with in Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970), Everybody’s in Show-Biz (1972) and Preservation Act 1 in July 1973.

Out of hospital, Davies returned to the band and started mining his “rock theatre” idea with Preservation Act 2 (1974), Soap Opera—which was made into a TV musical extravaganza Star Maker (1974), and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975). Though each of these albums has its merits—and all deserve considerable reappraisal—they performed poorly in the charts and did little to keep The Kinks relevant with a younger audience. In hindsight, none of this matters much as the quality of the songs and Ray’s ideas have outlasted the fickle fancies of pop fashion. However, the Kinks’ record company was not impressed and demanded that the band’s next album had to be a stand alone traditional collection of good songs—as if such a thing can be ordered to suit.

In 1976, Davies therefore started writing a non-concept album Sleepwalker, which was released in February 1977. Though the songs still reflect Davies’ own preoccupations—the title track dealt with the singer’s insomnia after moving to New York—it was the first album to give The Kinks a top fifty placing since the singles “Lola” and “Apeman” in 1970.

Sleepwalker was generally well received—Melody Maker said the record was “the group’s strongest and most organised album in years” which:

...emphatically testifies to the dramatic artistic revival of Raymond Douglas Davies, whose supreme talents as a writer have been so distressingly overlooked during the first half of this decade.

 
The Kinks showcase ‘Sleepwalker’ and more, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.30.2016
10:58 am
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Birth of the heavy: 50 years of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’
09.26.2014
12:01 pm
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The misconception that a pre-Yardbirds/Zeppelin Jimmy Page played the hectic guitar solo on the Kinks’ stunningly durable first hit “You Really Got Me” seems like it will never die, despite being denied repeatedly, for decades, by the song’s producer Shel Talmy, Page himself, and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, who, as the actual pair of hands behind that solo, must be singularly miffed that he’s been so widely denied credit for it for five decades. (Davies also famously invented, by slashing the speaker cone of his cheap amp, the guitar distortion effect that became practically a requirement in hard rock forever after that song hit. It bears mentioning that he was 17 years of age at the time.)

Just this last summer, a BBC documentary called London’s Tin Pan Alley: Danny Baker’s Musical History Tour repeated the long-debunked Page myth, prompting a response on Davies’ Facebook profile:
 

 
That justifiably salty post was the next day toned down a bit to this:
 

 
Perhaps the error is being corrected, as the doc is, as of this posting, no longer available for viewing on the BBC’s web site.

The song first appeared on Billboard’s charts on September 26, 1964—fifty years ago today. Its success was dramatic. The Kinks had two flop singles behind them, and their contract with the Pye records label was for three singles. “You Really Got Me” didn’t just launch the Kinks’ career, it saved it, and the label didn’t even approve of its release. Details of the single’s backstory are bared in Thomas M. Kitts book Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else.

The Kinks’ path…began on August 4, 1964, with the release of “You Really Got Me.” Although audiences had responded enthusiastically to the song since the Dave Clark Five tour, record executives thought it too loud and crude, lacking in melody, and too far removed from the harmonies and smooth rhythms of the popular Merseybeat sound—one executive, according to Ray, compared Dave’s guitar to a “barking dog.” Pye Records would have preferred the Kinks to record something else for their third and, most likely, final single. But with two failed efforts behind them and their career in jeopardy, the Kinks insisted on “You Really Got Me,” and to anger executives further, the barely twenty-year-old, unproven lead singer and composer demanded to re-record the song because the production on the first recording dissatisfied the band. Pye only yielded to Davies because Larry Page, the representative of Kassner Music assigned to the Kinks, threatened to withhold the mechanical license to the song. Pye agreed to allow the Kinks to re-record “You Really Got Me,” but at the band’s expense—costs were assumed by Wace and Collins [London businessmen who supported the Kinks early on]. Then, having fulfilled its end of a three-single contract with the Kinks, the company could release the band from the label.

 

 
That should go down in history as shocking executive myopia to rival the famous Decca honcho who passed on the Beatles.

Here are the Kinks performing the song on Shindig in 1965.
 

 
Dave Daives new solo album Rippin’ Up Time is due out in October.

Previously on Dangerous Minds
Kink think: Luscious fashion ads from 1966 starring Dave Davies—and Terylene, the wonder fabric
Was the Kinks’ ‘Dead End Street’ promo film the world’s first concept music video?
The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’: Kinky Barbie version

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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09.26.2014
12:01 pm
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Kink Think: Luscious fashion ads from 1966, starring Dave Davies—and terylene, the wonder fabric
09.03.2014
11:13 am
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These eye-catching fashion advertisements emphasize the non-kinking qualities of the (then) wonder material of terylene—so they naturally hired world’s second most famous Kink, Dave Davies.

These images come from the May 25, 1966, issue of Queen magazine. Dave cuts quite the figure here, no? “Smooth,” says Dave of Ina’s outfit.
 

 

 
In other Kinks news, Dave’s brother, head Kink Ray Davies has denied rumors that the group would reunite “with or without” Dave, with whom he frequently feuds. Good thing, too. A Kinks “reunion” without both of the Davies brothers would be like an Oasis reunion without one of the Gallaghers. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Ray Davies’s Kinks musical, Sunny Afternoon, is due to open at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London on October 4th.

Below, Dave Davies doing his solo hit, “Death of a Clown”:

 
via 1960’s and 1970’s Advertisements

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.03.2014
11:13 am
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The Kinks rip up le joint, Paris 1965
01.08.2014
11:31 am
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With the recent news that the remaining members of The Kinks may reform this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their debut release, it’s worth reminding ourselves just how good and powerful The Kinks were when they first started-off all those years ago.

This is The Kinks performing at Le Palais de la Mutualité, Paris, on April 24th, 1965. Dave Davies kicks off proceedings with a raw and rocking version “Bye Bye Johnnie” before the band rip into “Louie, Louie” and then “You Really Got Me.” The concert has been recorded like a newsreel package, with numerous cutaways of glaikit/grooving audience members and some very bad lip-synching issues. But hey, this all becomes irrelevant as we watch The Kinks just do what they’re great at and blow the audience away.

Track Listing

01. “Bye Bye Johnny”
02. “Louie, Louie”
03. “You Really Got Me”
04. “Got Love If You Want It”
05. “Long Tall Shorty”
06. “All Day and All of the NIght”
07. “Hide and Seek”
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
‘Starmaker’: Ray Davies and The Kinks’ postmodern soap opera
Stations en Route to Ray Davies’ film masterpiece ‘Return to Waterloo’

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.08.2014
11:31 am
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The Kinks’ Dave Davies paints a self-portrait
08.12.2013
10:49 am
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Dave Davies’ unusual self-portrait for MOJO is accompanied by his equally colorful description of himself:

I would describe myself as… handsome, sexy, 5ft 10 and a half, 12-and-a-half stone. Dark hair. Inventor. Metaphysician. Musician. Innovator. Gorgeous. Intelligent. Fabulous father. Loving, compassionate, kind. Generous. Modest. Humble. Magnetic personality. Generally wonderful.

Bob Dylan’s self-portrait was probably a bit better, but who knows, maybe Dave will grow into it!

Via Mojo

Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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08.12.2013
10:49 am
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‘Imaginary Man’: Julien Temple’s superb documentary on Ray Davies

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Director and Kinks fan, Julien Temple beautifully captures Ray Davies’ wistfulness in his excellent documentary on the former-Kink, Ray Davies: Imaginary Man. Davies is allowed to gently meander around his past life, talking about his childhood, his family of 7 sisters and 1 brother, his early days with The Kinks, the development of his writing skill (the quality and consistency of which now makes him seem at times better than, if not on par with Lennon & McCartney, Jagger & Richard), and onto his life of fame, of parenthood, of growing-up, all of which seemed to happen so fast.

It would seem Davies has always lived his life with one eye on the past—from the nostalgia of The Village Green Preservation Society through to his film Return to Waterloo, Davies takes solace from the past. It gives his music that beautiful, bittersweet quality, as Milan Kundera reminds us that:

The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

But it’s not just about wanting to return to some mythical past, it’s also about loss—whether this is the loss of the past, of opportunities, of career, or, even of memory—for without memory we are nothing. Memory keeps us relevant, and all artists want to be relevant. Throughout Temple’s film, Davies makes reference to this sense of loss, from the remnants of Hornsea Town Hall, to the changing landscape of London, or the songs he has written. And put together with the brilliance of the songs, the wealth of archive, and Ray Davies’ gentle narration, Temple has created a clever, beautiful, and moving film, which leaves you wanting to know and hear more.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Stations En Route to Ray Davies’ Film Masterpiece: ‘Return to Waterloo’


‘Kinkdom Come’: A beautiful film on Dave Davies


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.05.2013
08:31 pm
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Happy Birthday Dave Davies

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Happy Birthday Dave Davies - founder of The Kinks and highly original guitarist, whose innovative playing style influenced Psychedelic Rock, Heavy Metal, Punk Rock and Brit Pop.

Mr Davies continues to make wonderful music and has just released a fab new CD Fortis Green 2, a follow-up to his 1999 release, named after the district in London where Davies was born, sixty-six years ago. The album is exclusively available at Dave Davies homepage.

Happy Birthday Dave Davies and long may you continue to make music.
 

Dave Davies - ‘Fortis Green 2’ promo
 

The Kinks - ‘Got My Feet On The Ground - written and performed by Dave Davies
 

The Kinks - ‘Susannah’s Still Alive’ - written and performed by Dave Davies
 

Dave Davies - ‘Death of a Clown’ Live Belgian TV, 2002
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kinkdom Come: A beautiful film on Dave Davies


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.03.2013
11:00 am
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30 Minutes of Excellence: The Kinks ‘In Concert,’ January 1973

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Forty-years ago this month….

‘But they don’t feel afraid…

Of course not—as we have a whole thirty-minute concert of The Kinks to watch! And it’s a candy box full of all our favorite centers!

Track Listing

01. “Victoria”
02. “Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues”
03. “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”
04. “Lola”
05. “Holiday”
06. “Good Golly Miss Molly”
07. “You Really Got Me”
08. “All Day And All Of the Night”
09. “Waterloo Sunset”
10. “The Village Green Preservation Society”

The Kinks live at BBC TV Center, January 24th, 1973.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.29.2013
03:27 pm
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Kinkdom Come: A beautiful film on Dave Davies, the other half of The Kinks

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In June 2004, Dave Davies suffered a stroke as he was exiting a lift, in BBC’s Broadcasting House.

Suddenly the right hand side of my body seized up and I couldn’t move my arm or leg. Although I didn’t lose consciousness, I couldn’t speak. Luckily my son Christian and my publicist were there, so they carried me outside and called an ambulance.

Though he had warnings signs - waking up one morning to find he couldn’t move his right hand or speak when he opened his mouth - and was examined by a doctor, nothing indicated the imminence of his stroke. As Dave later wrote in the Daily Mail in 2006:

I was told I’d had a stroke - or, in medical terms, a cerebral infraction. An ‘infarct’ is an area of dead tissue and there was a patch of it on the left side of my brain - the bit that controls movement on the right side.

The doctors told me I had high blood pressure and that this was what had caused the stroke. They thought I’d probably had high blood pressure for at least ten years….

...Two weeks after my stroke, I finally plucked the courage to pick up my guitar. I held it across my lap, pressing on the strings. I could feel everything but the hand itself was virtually immobile.

I knew I was going to have to work very hard if I was to get better, and I started using meditation and visualisation. I thought if I could visualise myself running, walking and playing the guitar, it might prompt my brain to remember how I used to be.

It took Dave 18 months of physio, determination and hard work, to get “about 85 per cent back to normal”.

I believe my stroke was meant to happen to slow me down. I’d like to write and male films and start a foundation where I can help people be more spiritual…

...For now I appreciate my slower pace of life. I feel I have discovered an inner strength which I know will see me through any adversity.

Made in 2011, Julien Temple’s pastoral documentary Kinkdom Come is a touching portrait of the other half of The Kinks, Dave Davies.

Opening with Davies in the wilds of Exmoor, where he revels in the desolation and the quiet, Temple’s film moves through Dave’s life story, examining key moments in his childhood, his career as guitarist with The Kinks, his openness about sexuality, his (some would say torturous) relationship with his brother Ray, and the damagingly high cost of that all of his fame, success and position as “iconic Sixties figure” has cost him.

Throughout, Dave comes across as an honest, gentle soul, slightly lost, beautifully innocent, almost ethereal, as if he is a visitor from some other galaxy.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.19.2012
07:47 pm
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Dave Davies: ‘I love my brother… I just can’t stand to be with him’
10.13.2011
11:11 am
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Though his stroke in 2004 made Dave Davies more mindful of what he is doing and “appreciative of the chance to do it,” there’s still little chance of a Kinks reunion anytime soon, as Dave tells Neil McCormick in an interview over at the Telegraph:

“About an hour with Ray’s my limit, so it would be a very short reunion.”

Dave talks to Neil about his relationship with Ray, his time in The Kinks and his thoughts about being a sixties superstar:

‘I felt that I was indestructible, but rock and roll does that, you strap on that guitar and think, ‘F—- the world.’ I wasn’t a very academic kid, and music was the way for all that feeling and angst and sex and love and anger to be channelled.”

Dave has always been “the other Kink”, and it is his dysfunctional relationship with his more famous, more acclaimed and, arguably, more accomplished brother that has come to define him in the public’s eye. They could be the prototype for the Gallagher brothers, their bickering, battling relationship so mutually dependent and disharmonious that, even though the Kinks disbanded in 1996, Ray still constantly hovers at the edges of conversation, alluded to directly and indirectly.

One moment Dave will describe Ray as “a vain, egotistical arsehole”, but another he will profess profound respect and affection, saying: “How could I not love my own brother? I just can’t stand to be with him.”

Dave and Ray grew up in a large (six girls, two boys) working-class family in Muswell Hill, close to where we meet. “I had to look sibling rivalry up in the encyclopaedia: for years, I didn’t even know what it meant. He was my older brother. I looked up to him; he inspired me.

“I thought what we were doing in the Kinks was collaborative. But Ray uses different words to me. He would talk about me as his muse. So I’m important to be in his life, but only as a support for what he’s doing. That’s a pretty hard pill to swallow.”

Davis is still performing, and claims he sounds and plays better now than ever before. He is working on a ‘new’ alum, and though never as prolific as Ray, Dave is still a fine songwriter, as this classic track, “Death of a Clown” attests.

Read Neil McCormick’s with Dave Davies here.
 



 
Via the Daily Telegraph
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.13.2011
11:11 am
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Kinks feud continues: ‘You’re not a genius. You’re a fucking arsehole.’
10.30.2010
01:13 pm
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You’ve really got to hand it to Dave Davies: neither a stroke, nor advanced age, has seemed to mellow the former Kinks guitarist’s… intense hatred for his older brother, Ray. If this new interview from the Daily Mail is anything to go by (!) don’t expect the famously feuding Muswell hillbillies to reform the Kinks anytime soon, if ever. This is classic!

“The last time we were all together was at my 50th birthday party.

Ray had the money and I didn’t, so he offered to throw it for me.

‘Just as I was about to cut the cake, Ray jumped on the table and made a speech about how wonderful he was. He then stamped on the cake.”

A Kinks reunion? Never! Not since my brother Ray stamped on my 50th birthday cake (Daily Mail)

Below, a clip of Dave Davies performing “Death of a Clown,” a song about the great Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame. From the Kinks LP, Something Else.
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.30.2010
01:13 pm
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