The Kinks 60's Studio Discography

THE KINKS

60's Studio Discography



Albums:



1964 - The Kinks (Released in the US as You Really Got Me)

1965 - Kinda Kinks

1965 - Kinkdom (US only album)

1965 - Kinks-Size (US only album)

1965 - The Kink Kontroversy

1966 - Face To Face

1967 - Something Else by the Kinks

1968 - The Village Green Preservation Society

1969 - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)



BitRate: CBR 192kbps

Source: CD

Not My Rips





The Davies brothers were born at 6 Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green, North London, the only boys (with six older sisters) and last two children of their parents. As children, they were immersed in a world of different musical styles, from the music-hall of their parents' generation, to the jazz and early rock n' roll that their older sisters listened to. Ray Davies (b. Raymond Douglas Davies, 21 June 1944; vocals/guitar/piano) studied to be a theatre director at Hornsey College of Art and gained experience in music as a guitarist with the Soho-based Dave Hunt Band in 1963. Ray and his brother Dave (b. David Russell Gordon Davies, 3 February 1947; guitar/vocals) had been playing skiffle and rock and roll together. The brothers attended William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School, now known as Fortismere School. Ray's friend and schoolmate Pete Quaife (b. Peter Alexander Greenlaw Quaife, 31 December 1943, Tavistock, Devon, England; bass/vocals) joined them and they formed a band, with Quaife's friend John Start on drums. The band went through a series of lead vocalists at this time, the most notable being Rod Stewart. Stewart performed with the group on at least one occasion in the spring of 1962 (when they were called The Ray Davies Quartet), but was soon dropped due to complaints about his voice from then-drummer John Start's mother as well as musical and personality differences with the rest of the band. Glenn Mohre, a childhood friend of Davies (and future lead guitarist for Passive Aggressor), also tried out for lead vocalist, but was disqualified after it was discovered that he had an addiction to prescription drug Percodan.



The band performed under many names between 1962 and 1963 including "The Ray Davies Quartet," "The Pete Quaife Band," "The Bo-Weevils," and "The Ramrods," before the band settled on "The Ravens" in the summer of 1963 and recruited drummer Mickey Willet. A December 1963 audition with Philips Records ended in rejection, but eventually a demo tape landed in the hands of American record producer Shel Talmy, who helped them land a contract with Pye Records in early 1964. It was during this time that The Ravens changed their name to The Kinks.



Before signing to the label, drummer Willet left the band. The Kinks invited drummer Mick Avory (b. Michael Charles Avory, February 15, 1944, in East Molesey, Surrey), to join the band after seeing his advertisement in the magazine Melody Maker. Moreover, Ray already knew Mick: the two had grown up together in the same neighbourhood. Avory's previous experience included one gig with the fledgling Rolling Stones, but his background was in jazz drumming.



The first single from The Kinks, "Long Tall Sally", was a cover of a Little Richard song, but because The Beatles had also covered it with enormous success, The Kinks' version was overlooked. Nevertheless, the band received heavy publicity through the efforts of their managers Robert Wace, Grenville Collins, and ex-1950s showbiz star Larry Page. Their second single, "You Still Want Me", also failed, while ignominiously shifting a minuscule number of units.



However, their third single, "You Really Got Me", hit No. 1 in the United Kingdom and made the top 10 in the United States, boosted by a performance on the U.K. television show Ready Steady Go!. The loud, distorted guitar riff achieved by Dave's slicing of the speaker cones in his Elpico amplifier (referred to by the band as the "little green amp") gave the song its signature, gritty guitar sound. "You Really Got Me" arguably provided a blueprint for hard rock, and served as template for heavy metal. The group's fourth single, "All Day and All of the Night", another hard rock tune, was released in late 1964. It rose to No. 2 in the United Kingdom, and hit No. 7 in the United States. In 1965, The Kinks recorded "Set Me Free" and "Tired of Waiting for You", which both featured a repeated bass guitar riff.



The group released three albums and several EPs in the next two years. They also performed and toured relentlessly, which caused tension within the band. Some legendary on-stage fights erupted during this time as well. In the most notorious incident at The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, Wales in 1965, the normally placid drummer Avory hit Dave Davies with his hi-hat pedal and assaulted him on stage. Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at each other.



Following the summer 1965 American tour, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts in America for the next four years, cutting the Kinks off from the main market for rock music at the height of the British Invasion. Although neither the Kinks nor the union gave a specific reason for the ban, at the time it was widely attributed to their rowdy on-stage behaviour.



The group made its first tour of Australia and New Zealand in January 1965 as part of a "package" bill that included Manfred Mann and The Honeycombs. A stopover in Bombay, India on the way to Australia led Davies to write the song "See My Friends" (released as a single in July 1965). This was a prominent early example of crossover music, and along with The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood", was one of the first pop songs of this period to display a direct influence from the traditional music of the Indian subcontinent. According to Ray Davies' book X-Ray, he was inspired to write "See My Friends" after hearing the songs of local fishermen during an early morning walk.



The band's stylistic changes were first evident in late 1965, with the appearance of singles like "A Well Respected Man", "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", and their third album The Kink Kontroversy. These demonstrated the progression in Davies's songwriting, from hard-driving rock numbers toward songs rich in social commentary, observation, and idiosyncratic character study, all with a uniquely English flavour. The satiric single "Sunny Afternoon" was the biggest U.K. hit of summer 1966, topping the charts.



Prior to the release of The Kink Kontroversy, Ray Davies suffered a nervous and physical breakdown from the pressures of touring, writing, and ongoing legal squabbles. He spent several months recuperating, during which he wrote several new songs and pondered about the band's direction. Quaife also left the band for much of 1966 after an automobile accident. After he recovered, he decided to step back from the band. Mick Avory's friend John Dalton replaced Quaife until he decided to return to the band at the end of the year. This caused some tension, as Avory was more used to Dalton's style of playing.



"Sunny Afternoon" was a dry run for the band's Face to Face, which displayed Davies' growing skill at crafting gentle yet cutting narrative songs about everyday life and people. One of the songs from the album, "Session Man," was written about notable session musician Nicky Hopkins, who often joined the band in the studio playing keyboards, mellotron, and harpsichord. Hopkins had first played with the band during The Kinks Kontroversy sessions the year before. He would play on the band's next two studio albums and would also be featured on numerous live BBC recordings with the band, before joining The Jeff Beck Group in 1968.



The great social commentary single, "Dead End Street", was released at the time of Face to Face, and became another big U.K. hit. It failed commercially in the United States, only reaching No. 73 in the Billboard charts.



In May 1967, The Kinks returned with "Waterloo Sunset" (which reached No. 2 on the U.K. charts), an emotional single with the melancholic observer spying two lovers meeting and crossing over Waterloo Bridge in London. The song was rumoured to have been inspired by the romance between two British celebrities of the time actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie though Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography. The songs on their enduring 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks expanded the musical progressions of Face to Face, adding English music hall influences to the band's sound. Dave Davies scored a major chart success with "Death of a Clown", co-written with Ray and recorded by The Kinks, but also released as a Dave Davies solo single. Later, the Rolling Stones would remark that Face to Face and Something Else were both serious influences on their own albums of the late 1960s.



After a disappointing commercial reception for Something Else, The Kinks rushed out a new single, "Autumn Almanac", which became another U.K. hit. But their next single, "Wonderboy", released in the spring of 1968, stalled at No. 36 and would become the band's first single not to make the U.K. Top Twenty since their early covers.



Throughout 1968, Davies continued to pursue his deeply personal songwriting style, while at the same time rebelling against the heavy demands placed on him to keep producing commercial hits. At the end of June, The Kinks released the single "Days", which made #12 in the United Kingdom. It was a Top 20 hit in several other countries in the summer of 1968 although it did not chart in the United States and it is also notable as the last recording made by the original lineup of the group.



Their next album, released in the autumn of 1968, is now widely regarded as a masterpiece, but at the time The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society failed to sell strongly. A collection of thematic vignettes of town life, it was assembled from songs written and recorded over the previous two years, but the album's deliberately understated production contrasted with the extravagant style then in vogue, and it did not have a popular single ("Starstruck" was released in North America and continental Europe, but failed to chart anywhere but the Netherlands). Although it was commercially unsuccessful, Village Green was embraced by the new underground rock press, particularly in the United States, where The Kinks' status as a cult band began to grow. Village Green is now widely considered one of the best rock records of the era. An album track, "Picture Book", was featured in a popular Hewlett-Packard television commercial in 2004.



Original bassist Peter Quaife resigned in March 1969 to form his own band, Mapleoak, but also because there was a long standing rivalry between him and Ray, and was again swiftly replaced by John Dalton. The American ban upon the band was finally removed that same year. Yet the band had to now adapt to an American concert scene that had changed radically in their absence; when The Kinks returned to the United States, their shows were at first held in smaller venues such as the Fillmore East. It would take several years of extensive U.S. touring between 1969 and 1972 before the band developed a disciplined stage act that would generate positive reviews and draw crowds to larger concert venues.



Before their return to the United States, The Kinks recorded another album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire). As with the previous two albums, Arthur was soaked with British lyrical and musical hooks, having been conceived as the score for a proposed but never realised television drama. It was a modest commercial success and was particularly well received by music critics in America, who compared it favourably to the rock opera Tommy by The Who. Much of the album was inspired by Ray and Dave's beloved sister Rosie, who had migrated to Australia in the early 1960s with her husband.