| February 1st, 2006 06:04 AM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
RAY DAVIES PLANNING PORN MUSICAL
THE KINKS star RAY DAVIES is brushing up on his pornography knowledge for a new stage musical based on his 1970s hit LOLA.
The WATERLOO SUNSET singer fears he doesn't know enough about the world of porn movies to make a start on the provocative stage show, and so he's planning to research the genre thoroughly.
He explains, "I'm going to write a porn musical called Lola... I'm not a porn actor, so I have to do a bit of research, but I believe that society is so graphic that it's going to be my first Broadway hit."
01/02/2006 09:21
contactmusic.com
DAVIES PLANS KINKS REUNION
British music icons THE KINKS could be heading for an unlikely reunion - if an upcoming meeting produces results.
Frontman RAY DAVIES has pledged to get together with former bandmates, including his feuding brother DAVE, who recently suffered a heart attack, in a bid to see if the WATERLOO SUNSET rockers are still "relevant".
Davies tells style magazine GQ, "If The Kinks want to have a meeting, get together and play music, and if we feel it's relevant to go in and make a record, we shall do it.
"I do not want to do a golden-oldies tour, just there for nostalgia. We were never nostalgic, and I don't want us to do it in a sad way.
"If we can't be relevant to the times, or at least our times, it's not worth doing."
31/01/2006 21:31
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| February 1st, 2006 06:16 AM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
'Love ends, but songs are for ever'
(Filed: 26/01/2006)
Arts Telegraph
Former Kinks frontman Ray Davies tells Neil McCormick about the crisis he overcame to record his first solo album
Next Door Neighbour is a song on Ray Davies's new CD, his first ever solo album. It is quintessential Davies, a bittersweet encapsulation of a certain lost quality of English life, in this case a fond reminiscence of a community that has drifted apart.
Ray Davies: I thought 'things are going great' - then I got shot
"It's about the ordinary Joes I grew up with, who weren't flamboyant enough to be dedicated followers of fashion," he says. "But if you listen to the characters, I've been through all of it myself. I ran off with an Essex blonde, threw the television through a window. It's all me, really." The former Kinks frontman laughs at the idea, as if it has just occurred to him.
The title of the album, Other People's Lives, might be deliberately misleading. Now 61, Davies is known as an observational writer, but the life he has been most closely observing appears to be his own, a theory supported by a detailed break-up song, All She Wrote. "A relationship song has to be about a relationship," acknowledges Davies, who has been married once and divorced, and who has children with three different women.
"I haven't had that many relationships in my life, but they've all been catastrophic." The song reminisces about a lover who left him with a note scribbled on the back of a brown envelope. "The poor thing couldn't convey it any other way. 'It's over for us. To tell you the truth, I've actually met somebody in a disco, he reminds me of you.' That's the ultimate put-down. Because you don't remind her of you any more."
Mining his personal life for material can have unwelcome consequences. Davies recounts social occasions when old friends and former lovers have attacked him out of the blue. "If I protest, 'What's that all about?', they'll say, 'You wrote about this, you wrote about that'. I said to one woman, 'That was a song. That's not the real world.' She said, 'But the songs are the only real part about you.' "
A couple of hours with Davies reveal him to be a complex individual. "People are always astonished by how dull I am," he states, almost by way of introduction. Then, as an afterthought, he adds: "Or how mad."
His self-assessment is not wildly inaccurate. While I wouldn't go so far as to describe him as dull, on first impressions the Sixties rock legend certainly seems more ordinary than you might imagine. He has a long, careworn face and a slightly apologetic manner. While he talks with candour and self-deprecating wit, he also has a tendency to wander off the subject in meandering, over-detailed monologues delivered in a mumbling, vaguely distracted voice.
At one point, he even apologises for his "poor communication skills". I think, on the basis of Waterloo Sunset, Lola, Sunny Afternoon, Victoria and all those classic songs, I am prepared to forgive him. He is, as he says, at least a little bit mad. But more of his curious alter ego, Max, later.
In his time with the Kinks, Davies was one of the key songwriters of the British beat boom in the Sixties, although his group never quite achieved the global status of his peers the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who. His often brilliant concept albums of the Seventies might have been overly complex and even, in their examination of Englishness, a touch parochial for a mass audience.
A huge influence on Britpop, Davies collected a CBE for services to music in 2004 and the Kinks picked up a gong at the UK Music Hall of Fame last year. "I'm not the obvious person to give awards to," he says. "There are others in line in front of me, so when I get one, I'm kind of knocked out."
At the Hall of Fame ceremony, he was serenaded by former paramour Chrissie Hynde and her band the Pretenders, playing two of his songs. It was surprising to see them share a stage, because, although they have a daughter, judging by insults exchanged in the media there is not a lot of love lost between them. They did once try to get married, only to be turned down by the registrar because they were fighting
so much. "She only sang. I didn't have to talk to her," says Davies. "I was quite uncomfortable, but I thought it was a nice moment. Love ends, but songs are for ever. They capture a moment and an emotion. You can have two human beings who should not be in the same house, or possibly even the same country, but the music tells you that it really could have been for ever. In those three minutes, there are no hard feelings."
The Kinks last released an album of original songs in 1993, and had effectively ground to a halt by 1996. Davies has since written a semi-fictional memoir, X-Ray, and an associated album, Storyteller, based on readings and acoustic performances of old songs. It is not a great return on 10 years.
Sitting in his labyrinthine north London studio complex, Konk, he surprisingly claims there has been no lack of material. "I had lots of English-rooted songs that, in a sense, I could phone in. It's really difficult to write anything new, though I tend to think if there's one ingredient that takes what you've done before a step further, that justifies doing it. Ten seconds of brilliance makes it all worthwhile."
There were multiple reasons for the long gestation of the album - management and label changes, but also, he concedes, a paralysing crisis of confidence.
"I've been in a band and I was part of the machinery. When you go in the studio without the usual musicians around and it's you and a click track, it's frightening. I was so nervous I couldn't even tune my guitar properly. I was going through tremendous personal and psychological issues. I had to justify why I was doing it to myself again. Why couldn't I just retire or get a day job?"
A trip across America with his Storyteller show in the immediate wake of 9/11 proved a watershed. With many flights cancelled, he was forced to criss-cross the country by road. "All the music that first inspired me came from America, so I used that trip to discover what it was about the place that I liked." He started to write and record new material, although not obviously American in flavour. "I think Americans really appreciate the English sensibility, perhaps more than the English do."
He relocated to New Orleans to finish the album, but, with a personal relationship on the line, was still beset by doubts. "The private turmoil culminated at the end of 2003 in a horrible crisis for me. I decided I would change and be a different kind of person, let the fire die, let the creative urge go, not be so passionate about what I was writing. I thought, 'Now things are going to be great for me.' Then I got shot. So I thought, 'F*** it, I'm going to be really intense.' "
Davies was wounded in the leg during a street robbery in January 2004. The incident has not dimmed his enthusiasm for New Orleans. "The guy who shot me was from Atlanta," laughs Davies. "He's still in Atlanta, I think. They are working on an extradition, but it's interstate and they had a bit of a hiccup after the hurricane and couldn't track him down. I might be playing Atlanta in April. Maybe he'll come to the gig."
Davies spent a long time recuperating and still suffers pains, but seems remarkably philosophical about the experience. "It was a signal to me to stop worrying, the record's done. And it let me know I could not be this person who's lost the fire. Your work is the only thing that keeps you alive."
This was also when he met his alter ego. "When I was recovering in New Orleans he would come and visit me," reports Davies. "I said, 'You've always been with me.' He said, 'Yeah, I'm Max. I'm your best friend.' He's a bit of an unruly sort. He sang a lot of the songs, but when I had the band it was kind of hidden. Now I'm on my own, he's suddenly felt the urge to come forward and say, 'It'll be alright. Don't f*** around. Do the job.' "
It is hard to determine just how serious Davies is about Max. There is a sense in which he understands him as a creative device, but engages with him as something more tangible. Davies says Max sings a song on the album. As I ask more questions, Davies starts mumbling under his breath, apparently telling his invisible companion to keep quiet while I am talking.
"You know when the Romans would come in triumph on the chariot? They used to have a guy tap them on the shoulder and say, 'Thou art only a man. Thou art not a God.' Max started off like that, but now he's getting abusive. I might have to have him deported. But Max is very important in my life because he's keeping me level and in touch with reality."
I tentatively suggest that the idea of dividing off a part of his personality into a separate entity isn't quite what most people would define as being in touch with reality.
"No," Davies sweetly agrees. "But it's my reality and I'm stuck with it."
|
| February 1st, 2006 06:23 AM |
|
|
| Jumacfly |
porn music is somtimes great...check "behind the green door" or "deep throat"!! |
| February 1st, 2006 09:45 AM |
|
|
| gimmekeef |
Hopefully he doesnt get Pete Townshend to help with the research..... |
| February 1st, 2006 09:46 AM |
|
|
| RollingstonesUSA |
 |
|
