God Save The Kinks

In August 1964 The Kinks released their third single. After a little noticed debut and a follow-up that had failed to chart at all, Pye Records were threatening to annul the group’s contract. But with its unforgettable distorted guitar riff, 'You Really Got Me’ went on to reach No.1, entering the US Top Ten later the same year. Followed by a string of hits, it marked the breakthrough of one of Britain’s most innovative and influential bands, and a turning point in the fortunes of two brothers whose troubled story is as tumultuous and characterful as the music they produced: Ray and Dave Davies. Born into a deeply musical working-class family in London’s Muswell Hill, Ray and Dave grew up in a city recovering from the bombs and privations of the Second World War. More than any other musicians of the Sixties, they crafted the soundtrack that made it swing again. In songs such as ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’ – which toppled The Beatles to become the hit of Summer 1966 – ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Days’ and ‘Lola’, they drew on music hall, folk and rhythm and blues to craft a peculiarly English pop idiom, inspiring generations of songwriters from David Bowie to Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn. Pocked by sibling rivalry, furious on-stage violence, walkouts, overdoses, a career-throttling ban from the US, gross self-indulgence, and the band's curious rebirth as eighties stadium rockers, the story laid bare in God Save The Kinks is one of the greatest in British pop history.

The Kinks singer recounts and reflects on his travels in America: “This is no tired rock story but something far more profound, funny, and disturbing.” —The Irish Times As a boy in postwar England, legendary Kinks singer/songwriter Ray Davies fell in love with America—its movies and music, and its culture of freedom, fed his imagination. Then, as part of the British Invasion, he toured the US with the Kinks during one of the most tumultuous eras in recent history—until the Kinks were banned from performing there from 1965-69. Many tours and trips later, while living in New Orleans, he experienced a transformative event: the shooting (a result of a botched robbery) that nearly took his life. In Americana, Davies tries to make sense of his long love-hate relationship with the country that both inspired and frustrated him. From his quintessentially English perspective as a Kink, Davies—with candor and humor—takes us on a very personal road trip through his life and storied career as a rock star, and reveals what music, fame, and America really mean to him. Some of the most fascinating characters in recent pop culture make appearances, from the famous to the perhaps even-more-interesting behind-the-scenes players. The book also includes photos from Davies’s own collection and the band’s archive. “The chapters on the New Orleans shooting [are] astonishing, really riveting.” —The New York Post “Davies is candid and honest about his personal and creative struggles.” —The New York Times

NOW UPDATED WITH A NEW EPILOGUE In the summer of 1964, aged twenty, Ray Davies led the Kinks to fame with their number one hit ‘You Really Got Me’. Within months, they were established among the pop elite, swamped by fans and fast becoming renowned for the rioting at their gigs. But Ray’s journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA. His relationship with his brother Dave is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies.

You Really Got Me is Nick Hasted’s illuminating biography of The Kinks, drawing on years of in-depth interviews with Ray and Dave Davies and shedding new light on a turbulent 30-year career scarred by suicide attempts, on-stage fights and recurring mental breakdowns. The Kinks’ distorted fuzz cut through popular music like a chainsaw and unexpectedly propelled two brothers from North London straight to the heights of stardom, to stand alongside The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. With exclusive interviews Nick Hasted untangles this turbulence: Why The Kinks became the only British group to be banned from America at the height of their success; why original bassist Pete Quaife quit in 1968; Ray Davies’ fraught relationship with Chrissie Hynde; how The Kinks’ later years rehabilitated their reputation in America. Updated to include details of the hit musical Sunny Afternoon and an up-to-the-minute report on the troubled relationship between the Davies brothers, You Really Got Me is the ultimate Kinks biography. “Keen eyed critique of a most contrary band” Uncut “Hasted is illuminating” Guardian

For more than twenty years- longer than any rock group in history except the Rolling Stones- God's been saving The Kinks. From dedicated followers of fashion, From demon alcohol. From vengeful governments. And mostly from each other. Alternately marked by intramural brawling and inexplicable banishments, transcendent brillance and shameless pandering, emotional collapses, punch-ups and sellouts, scandalous affairs and utter discretion, drunkenness and cruelty and failed attempts at fratricide, altruism, and greed, The Kinks' long history is among the most fascinating in rock.

Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else is a critical biography of Ray Davies, with a focus on his music and his times. The book studies Davies’ work from the Kinks’ first singles through his 2006 solo album, from his rock musicals in the early 1970s to his one-man stage show in the 1990s, and from his films to his autobiography. Based on interviews with his closest associates, as well as studies of the recordings themselves, this book creates the most thorough picture of Davies’ work to date. Kitts situates Davies’ work in the context of the British Invasion and the growth of rock in the '60s and '70s, and in the larger context of English cultural history. For fans of rock music and the music of the Kinks, this book is a must have. It will finally place this legendary innovator in the pantheon of the great rock artists of the past half-century. Thomas M. Kitts, Professor of English and Chair of the Division of English/Speech at St. John’s University, NY, is the co-editor of Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks, the author of The Theatrical Life of George Henry Boker, articles on American literature and popular culture, reviews of books, CDs, and performances, and a play Gypsies. He is the book review editor of Popular Music and Society and the editor of The Mid-Atlantic Almanack.