Relations in the Kinks—Familiar but not Fully Familial

Abstract

Battling brothers. Sibling rivalry. The animosity between the Kinks' singer/songwriter Ray Davies and guitarist Dave Davies has been the band's requisite tag‐line for journalists. It may have been a useful promotional celebrity text, but it has served to obscure and distort the actual relations among members of the group. The paper focuses on a complex of factors that have determined the pattern of relations in the Kinks. Structural factors play a leading role in the analysis, particularly the tensions among performing and creating positions and the contrasting musical temperaments of the occupants of these positions. Exacerbating the tensions created by structural factors are the band's business problems. Adding to the volatility of the preceding factors is the complicated ambivalent relationship between the Davies brothers.

Notes

1. Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Van Halen, Pantera, Skid Row—the list is long.

2. Was it Boll Weevils or Bo Weevils? About half the references spell it one way, and half the other. It is a nice example of the trivial but unreliable information found in the rock press.

3. Who named the band (one of their managers or a member of the band) and how the name was derived (from the TV show The Avengers, from the word kinky) is another set of conflicting factoids.

4. Tom Kitts suggests that the band's name at the beginning depended on which member got the gig. It would be called the Peter Quaife Quartet if Pete made the arrangements. Ray had the most connections at the time so it was usually his name that was most frequently used (Personal correspondence, 15 June 2005).

5. Three were well documented: May 1967, July 1970, and July 1977—but he admitted to frequently using this tactic.

6. The problem of reliability in band research is exemplified by the date listed here. I first found Christgau's article on an elaborate Kinks site (http://kinks.it.rit.edu/misc/articles/kinkskountry.html) In June 2005, I asked the webmaster if the year was entered incorrectly or if the error was in the original. He replied: “I don't have the original article, so I can't tell if the author made the error or whoever typed it in. I think I'll go ahead and correct the article.” So the date is now correct, 1965, in the on‐line copy. However, the original, a fax of which I later obtained via inter‐library loan, shows that the Village Voice had printed the erroneous 1966 date.

7. In 1999, for example, they ranked #5 in Rolling Stone's “Top 10 Rock Bands of the Century” (16–23 December 1999).

8. The overriding celebrity text of the Kinks, which fans tend to call love‐hate and the press terms sibling rivalry, focuses on the negative relations between the Davies brothers. Of course there have been numerous rock bands made up of brothers who famously fought with one another. Among them are John and Tom Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chris and Rich Robinson of the Black Crowes, and Oasis's Noel and Liam Gallagher. But how many bands with long careers have had brothers who got along rather well, who didn't pull that Cain and Abel bit? AC/DC (Angus and Malcolm Young with brother George as producer), the Allman Brothers (Duane and Greg Allman), Pantera (Dimebag and Vinnie Paul), Van Halen (Eddie and Alex Van Halen) are just a few. And how many seriously hostile band relations are between unrelated members? Think, for example, of the Ramones, where Joey and Johnny didn't speak with one another for the last two‐thirds of their long career.