Ray Davies: A Complicated Life - Softcover

Rogan, Johnny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099554089 ISBN 13: 9780099554080

Publisher: Vintage, 2016

Synopsis

The definitive biography of The Kinks' legendary frontman and one of the most tumultuous tales in Rock history.
     Ray Davies, legendary frontman of The Kinks, is one of the all-time greatest rock 'n' roll musicians -- and also one of its most troubled and enigmatic. 
     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 challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics -- 'All Day and All of the Night', 'Sunny Afternoon', 'Waterloo Sunset', 'Lola' -- that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last fifty years.
     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 for almost four years. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks' lead guitarist, 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, and promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life.

About this title

About the Author

JOHNNY ROGAN is the author of over twenty books, including highly acclaimed biographies/musical studies of the Byrds, the Smiths, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, John Lennon and Morrissey. His groundbreaking Starmakers & Svengalis: The History Of British Pop Management was adapted for a six-week BBC series. Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance was one of the best-selling and most controversial rock biographies of its time, receiving various music biography of the year awards, and has been in print continuously for over twenty years. More recently, Van Morrison: No Surrender was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of its Top 10 Music Books of the Year. He is currently completing an epic two-volume study, Byrds: Requiem For the Timeless.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099554089
• ISBN 13: 9780099554080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 588