Kink: An Autobiography - Hardcover

Davies, Dave

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786861495 ISBN 13: 9780786861491

Publisher: Da Capo, 1997

Synopsis

The co-founder of the long-lived English rock group The Kinks recounts his turbulent life in the whirlpool of pop stardom, his notorious feuds with his brother and band-mate, Ray, and his long affair with singer Chrissie Hynde.

About this title

About the Author

Dave Davies still tours with the Kinks all over the world and is involved in various film and music projects outside of the band. In 1990 he and the Kinks were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

From the Back Cover

In this explosive account, Dave Davies reveals all of the inside stories of his exciting and turbulent years as the founding member and lead guitarist of the Kinks. In this uncut account of life on the edge, Davies delves into the turbulence of his own amazing life - from his inauspicious beginnings as a teenage dropout in the Muswell Hill suburb of North London to sudden and unbelievable stardom, plagued by an often volatile relationship with his older brother. Through Davies' eyes, we see how the evolution of that relationship is reflected in their music. And Dave Davies holds nothing back in describing their lifelong feud, including the time Ray tried to trade Dave to a wealthy gay concert promoter in exchange for his mansion. From his 1960s hedonism, Dave Davies' life as a rocker visited extreme lows and highs. In Kink, he looks at how he survived the cut-throat dealings of the record business, conquered alcohol and drugs, and overcame the tortures of paranoia and mental breakdown and his suicide attempts. And here, for the first time, Dave tells his remarkable story of personal spiritual awakening that profoundly changed his life.

Reviews

Davies's tale of drunkenness and cruelty on the road with the Kinks, the British rock band he and his older brother Ray formed in 1963, perfectly mirrors the band's own trajectory. The first several chapters (years) breeze along with stylish energy, but in time the compelling passage (hits) dry up and the book (band) loses its way. Released a year after Ray's own memoir, X-Ray, this autobiography showcases his long-overshadowed brother's own sharp eye for characters, while giving him a forum to claim credit for the band's signature guitar sound (as on "You Really Got Me"), and for this or that riff or idea. Davies recalls the paradigmatic rock star's life: rampant alcohol use; hanging out with Lennon, Hendrix and groupies; drug-fueled hotel trashings; bisexual encounters (with names named); wanton adultery; and the usual lamentations on greedy management types. Davies's notoriously violent relationship with his brother is fully explored, but recollections of never-famous people significant to the author prove equally engrossing. In dealing with the band's later years, however, Davies proves less interesting. Although the Kinks sporadically charted in the 1970s and '80s, Americans tuned them out after 1982?a reality Davies blames on record executives. His mystical spirituality also proves tough to swallow ("The intelligences poured a brilliant beam of white light through my forehead and out to the crowd"). Ultimately, readers of this Kinks chronicle must employ the same selectivity they've shown in consuming the band's music. Photos; discography.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hard on the heels of Kinks singer/songwriter/megalomaniac Ray Davies's own memoir, X-Ray (1996), here is the autobiography of the other battling Davies brother, the one who is not widely considered to be a genius. Dave's is a straightforward, clumsily jovial memoir bursting with tales of drunkenness and cruelty. The Davies brothers grew up in working-class London and dedicated themselves to music at a young age; guitarist Dave was only 17 in 1964, when ``You Really Got Me'' suddenly made the Kinks stars. As Dave tells it, while he and the rest of the band popped pills, drank themselves blind, and had sex with everyone (boys as well as girls, Dave cheerfully reveals), Ray brooded and watched his money. Dave says Ray denied him songwriting credit for his contributions to many Kinks songs; more generally, Ray is ``abusive . . . cruel and creatively draining . . . venomous, spiteful, and completely self-involved.'' One is left thinking that only Dave's forbearance has allowed the band to survive for so long. The Kinks have endured many creatively and commercially fallow periods, and the author suffered from depressions so severe that tours were cancelled. In 1982, though, he had a cosmic awakening, consisting of a visitation by five ``intelligences'' who gave him ``irrefutable knowledge of the `Etheric Planes.' '' The author's apparently unedited prose is more serviceable describing hotel-room trashings than when laying out his newfound spiritual system. With artless honesty, he discusses his favorite songs, touring adventures, spiky interactions with band members and management, and a complicated but fulfilling family life (two long-term relationships, both producing several children, which overlapped for a few distressing years). A far less ambitious but ultimately more satisfying account of Kinkdom than the colder, more evasive X- Ray. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Davies, lead guitarist of the Kinks and foil to the group's leader, his brother Ray, states up front that his "battles with Ray are notorious in the rock world." They also typify a common '60s rock-band dynamic, the lead singer^-lead guitarist rivalry-partnership, which in the Davies' case is complicated by being brothers. Their books' differences in style exemplify their personality differences. Ray's distanced narrative, X-Ray , in which he mentions himself only by name or initials, was reminiscent of that TV dream of alienation, The Prisoner. Dave's memoir, in the usual first person, is more direct, like the five-note hook of "You Really Got Me" that snared fame for the Kinks in 1964. The story of the brothers' collaboration on that song is just one of many gems of rock history Dave offers, and the fact that only Ray is credited for it is one example of the conventional wisdom Dave explodes. Davies and Davies produced edgy, often ingenious music, in part, apparently, because of their stormy personal relationship. Rock fans, particularly guitar-hero worshipers, need to read this book. Mike Tribby

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786861495
• ISBN 13: 9780786861491
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288