Ray Davies

Trivia

Rock musician (The Kinks).

Brother of Dave Davies

Elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Kinks) in 1990.

Fathered a child, Natalie Rae Hynde, with Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.

His song "Apeman" was covered by former Marillion singer Fish on his album "Songs From The Mirror" (released 1993).

Sadly, he has barely been on speaking terms with his brother and musical collaborator Dave since they recorded their last album as The Kinks in the early 1990s.

He was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the order of the British Empire) in the 2003 Queen's New Year's Eve Honours List for his services to music.

In 2003, when a mugger stole his girlfriend's purse, he valiantly chased the man but was then shot in the leg by the thief.

He has another daughter with dancer, Pat Crosby.

He is the uncle of writer/producer, Lawrence Kane, who helped Ray recover from his gunshot wound in New Orleans.

Davies was in many ways unique among the front men in British rock bands from the 60s. He never got into drugs or affiliated himself with "hippie" culture (nor did his band), although The Kinks did present themselves as hard- drinking. Davies was also never a Lothario in the ranks with his contemporaries, and he married at a very young age. By all accounts a quiet, unapproachable type off stage, Davies had a series of nervous breakdowns as a young man, which led to him being hospitalized twice.

Director Wes Anderson originally intended to have the whole of Três é Demais (1998) set to songs by The Kinks. Anderson changed his mind when he wanted to use a series of songs by other bands from the "British Invasion", although he kept the Davies/Kinks song, "Nothin' In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl".

Pete Townshend has said that Ray Davies' is probably his favorite songwriter of all time.

The Kinks' single, "See My Friends", was the first British songs (and possibly Western) to integrate a Indian, sitar-like sound. This song and, shortly thereafter, the similarly sitar-based "Fancy" preceded the first Beatles song with an Indian feel, "Norwegian Wood", by a year.

Probably the best known of covers of Kinks songs are The Jam's cover of "David Watts", The Pretenders' take on "Stop Your Sobbing," and Van Halen's version of "You Really Got Me", but The Kinks have been covered literally hundreds of times by hundreds of artists.

When The Kinks opened a show on the same bill as The Beatles, The Beatles (in particularly John Lennon) behaved rudely and dismissively towards them. However, when The Kinks released their more introspective album "Face to Face", Lennon was said to have listened to it obsessively.

The original name of The Kinks was The Ravens.

The Kinks were voted the 64th Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Artists of all time by Rolling Stone.

With four to five band members at one time, there have been 11 members of The Kinks, with only Ray and his brother Dave Davies having belonged since the founding of the group. They have gone through two drummers (Mick Avory and Bob Henrit), three keyboardists (John Gosling, Gordon Edwards, and Ian Gibbins), and four bass-guitarists (Peter Quaife, John Dalton, Andy Pyle, and Jim Rodford).

In an early stage of The Kinks, before Davies was willing to be the lead singer, they recruited Rod Stewart (who grew up in the same area as the Davies brothers, Muswell Hill) as a singer. After a couple weeks of trying to be a band, Stewart and the future Kinks found that they didn't get along that well, with their musical tastes being too different, and parted ways.

"Very Gothic, creepy and silent. Uptight and fearful of everyone." -Marianne Faithfull's description of Davies and The Kinks.

Winner of the 2006 Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution To British Music.

His song "Waterloo Sunset" won the 2005 Q Classic Song Award.

The Kinks were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame for their outstanding contribution to British music and integral part of British music culture. (16 November 2005).

He is a big fan of and considers himself in the tradition of William Blake.

Despite its heavy guitar sound, he actually wrote "You Really Got Me" on his parent's piano.

Personal Quotes

If I had to my life to do over, I would change every single thing I have done.

We had a singing family. If we'd been in Appalachia, we would have been a Country & Western family. We had all that inbreeding, too - the Second World War was quite a time.

When in doubt, trust your paranoia.

The Kaiser Chiefs are funny, Employment was good, though I'm not quite sure whether they're supposed to be The Pretty Things or The Rolling Stones.

Keep you nose clean and your chin up, even if it requires surgery.

Obviously the person who shot me, I think he was a career criminal, he knew what he was doing it was premeditated, he knew what he was doing. It made me really sort of think about the issue of gun control. I'm not a violent person. I'm an athletic person, I'm a competitive person. That kind of violence is abhorrent to me. I get passionate, I get angry but I wouldn't think of doing that to anybody. I went through a phase in the hospital, I nearly died at one point because of complications with my heart. But I actually felt sorry for him to have actually reached that point. He wasn't a desperate guy but he kind of looked scared. We had eyeball contact. It made me think, not so much about gun control but what actually drives humans to actually do that, to get in that spectrum. It's a bigger, bigger bigger spectrum than this. It leads to warfare, why people fight, why people have wars, all these horrors going on in the world, it just opened up all these questions that are still unanswered and I still haven't come to terms with it yet. I was very lucky to escape.

Every song has its own voodoo attached to it.

Where Are They Now

(May 2009) Crouch End, London, England