The Greatest Rock Star of the 19th Century: Ray Davies, Romanticism, and the Art of Being English

Abstract

This essay considers Ray Davies in the context of the English Romantic art tradition. By connecting Davies with Romantics like William Wordsworth, John Keats, William Blake, and Charles Lamb, this essay explores Davies's language, characterizations, themes, development of a personal mythology, use of antitheses, and sense of “negative capability.” The influence of the English art school on Davies is also explored as is his work in later years which suggests Blake's apocalyptic vision and Shelley's spirituality.

Notes

Michael Kraus, who passed away in 2003, delivered a version of this paper at the joint conference of the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations in San Antonio, TX, 1997.

1. The Kinks' studio albums—Low Budget (1979) and Give the People What They Want (1981)—are probably the closest the group has ever come to Pattison's vulgarly Romantic rock, which is essentially, in this case, what is commonly called arena or stadium rock. And the Kinks weren't that close to vulgar Romanticism. Low Budget, for example, is basically a step closer to punk than Misfits; the Americanisms are turned up a notch, but so are Cockney affectations. In many ways, then, Give the People What They Want is part of a pair with Low Budget—both albums are unique in the Kinks' canon—more aggressive in sound and stance, more American, and more borderline vulgar Romanticism and less obviously refined Romanticism.

However, the title track “Give the People What They Want” is actually an anti‐vulgar Romanticism song—its sympathies are far closer to those of what Pattison calls refined Romanticism. The vulgarity of the masses, and of the elite, in fact, is described throughout the song. Whether it be Roman bread and circuses, modern media sensationalism, or the French Revolution public bloodbath, all appeal to the common vulgar side of the masses and is seen as distorting human values (“Hey mum, there goes a piece of the president's brain”), in every way an actual losing of humanity rather than an intensifying of experience.

2. Pattison argues that what “separates elite from popular culture is its unwillingness to embrace the vulgarity inherent in its own premises” (xi).

3. For approximately a year and a half, Davies attended first the Hornsey School of Art and then Croydon Art College.