Mad Dogs and Englishness

Popular Music and English Identities

Lee Brooks, Mark Donnelly, Richard Mills, Lee Brooks, Mark Donnelly, Richard Mills

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781501311277
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Música

Mad Dogs and Englishness connects English popular music with questions about English national identities, featuring essays that range across Bowie and Burial, PJ Harvey, Bishi and Tricky. The later years of the 20th century saw a resurgence of interest in cultural and political meanings of Englishness in ways that continue to resonate now. Pop music is simultaneously on the outside and inside of the ensuing debates. It can be used as a mode of commentary about how meanings of Englishness circulate socially. But it also produces those meanings, often underwriting claims about English national cultural distinctiveness and superiority. This book's expert contributors use trans-national and trans-disciplinary perspectives to provide historical and contemporary commentaries about pop's complex relationships with Englishness. Each chapter is based on original research, and the essays comprise the best single volume available on pop and the English imaginary.

PART ONE

English heritage

CHAPTER ONE

‘Rosy, Won’t You Please Come Home’:

Family, home and cultural identity in the music of Ray Davies and the Kinks

Carey Fleiner

Introduction

The image of the Kinks as the most English of the British Invasion bands was a conscious creation on the part of the Kinks’ management on the one hand, and a result of Ray Davies’s lyrical wit and observation on the other. Formed more or less in 1964 by four young men from London, the Kinks first stormed up the charts with distorted power chords and teenaged angst with ‘You Really Got Me’, and over the next thirty-two years they drew on their upbringing to create songs about the ordinary and absurd in English life. The image of the Kinks’ Englishness outlasted initial gimmicks. It was reinforced by the band’s pastoral themes and storytelling songs of the mid-1960s combined with the distinctively ‘English’ character of the band itself: their witty homeliness, working-class backgrounds and defiance of authority while maintaining a cheeky respect for respectability.

This chapter addresses particular qualities that make the Kinks an English band – from obvious signposts to nuanced characteristics that make them appeal to both English and non-English audiences. Their appeal as English comes not from flag-waving or tea-drinking, but rather a combination of social observations, self-deprecating humour and their own obstinate struggles against corporate authority. This chapter considers first the early image of ‘Englishness’ created by the band’s management, and then it looks at the brief trend in the mid-1960s for rock groups to celebrate old-fashioned English music and character. It examines how the Kinks continued to fashion so-called parochial music even as this novelty among mainstream bands wore off, and why their persistence contributed to the band’s commercial failure by the end of the decade. The next section considers why the Kinks in fact contribute to a long tradition of ‘nostalgia heritage’ notable in English music and literature from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through to the present day, and how their output, which includes references to family, home and working-class solidarity, has created a sense of inclusion between themselves and their fans both in England and overseas. The principal era examined here covers the Kinks’ early days of the band’s success in 1964 and 1965 and the initial look created for them, and then focuses mainly on their pastoral work between 1966 and 1970.

Much has been written on the Kinks in the past twenty years, both popularly and academically. Following the earliest biographies of the band by Savage (1984) and Rogan (1984), the 1990s saw the publication of diverse works on the band including autobiographies of Ray Davies (1994: 2014) and Dave Davies (1995) and a multivolume fictionalized story of the band by bassist Peter Quaife (2010, 2014). Kitts published a scholarly study of Ray’s life and work in 2012; encyclopaedic works on the Kinks’ output include those of Hinman (1994, 2004) and Rogan (1998). The band’s versatility as well as their inextricable working-class character has made them the subject of studies on the influence of music-hall in popular music and aspects of working-class character in popular music (e.g. Baxter-Moore 2006; Gildart 2012; Simonelli 2013); the influence of family, childhood and growing up in post-war England, and dedicated collections of essays have appeared on their output, character and associations with English life and leisure (e.g. Gildart 2013; Geldart 2003; Sullivan 2002). This is supplemented by a number of recent popular biographies (e.g. Hasted 2011). Finally, there are the myriad interviews, reviews, media articles (print and online), blogs, message boards, fanzines and internet social networking sites – the Kinks are, in a word, well-documented men.

A common theme running through much of this media is the Kinks as an English band – without actually defining what is meant by ‘English’. One should not, however, find fault with this omission: the codification of ‘Englishness’ (or Britishness) has challenged if not confounded for years philosophers, commentators and politicians ranging from Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling, J. B. Priestley and George Orwell, and Kate Fox and Jeremy Paxman through to former (2016) home secretary, now Prime Minister Theresa May and the Conservative government’s determination to codify ‘British values’ via school curriculum and citizenship tests in the wake of mass immigration into the UK. It becomes further complicated as such behaviour smacks of distasteful displays of patriotism – too American at best and too fascist at worst. That said, the English will grudgingly admit that they like their country and like being English – but they’ll reply with understatement when questioned; as Bill Bailey noted in his recent show Limboland (2015–16), in response to queries on any experience, accomplishment or health, no matter how good or disastrous, an Englishman will reply, ‘Not bad … given the circumstances.’

Therefore, one must suss out ‘Englishness’ in a roundabout fashion, not unlike trying to get from Portsmouth to Brighton via the A27. English character does not fit a paradigm; it is shaped instead from an evolving set of cultural institutions on the one hand (Clarke 2009: 89–92), and how those cultural institutions are defined against outsiders on the other. The Kinks’ music describes a number of the former, which will be discussed below, including family, particular moral values, self-depreciating humour and an appreciation for the past – without necessarily drowning in nostalgia or desiring to avoid the present by escaping into a rose-tinted past. Ray Davies has noted on a number of occasions in the past few years (e.g. Simpson 2015) that neither he nor the Kinks are about living in the past, as a lazy interpretation of tracks such as ‘Days’ or the collection of songs on Face to Face, Something Else, or Village Green might suggest. The Kinks look to the past not for a reconstruction of times lost, but instead for particular emotions that can be brought into the present to cope with current problems (R. Davies 2015b), shaped by common cultural experience. As for the latter, Ray has remarked he has been most aware of his Englishness when he has been away from Britain (R. Davies 2014: 142, 149, 174).

Superficial signposts of Englishness

The Kinks jumped onto the money-go-round in the wake of rising successful bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Their original professional management was a pair of young middle-class men called Grenville Collins and Robert Wace. Collins and Wace not only introduced these scruffy, working-class rhythm and blues enthusiasts to a world of debutantes and Noel Coward, but in early 1964 secured the band a commercial recording contract with Pye Records, ultimately bringing them under the auspices of several hardened music professionals: Shel Talmy, who initially produced their records, Larry Page (‘The Teenaged Rage’), who managed them along with Wace and Collins, Edward Kassner, who locked them into a draconian publishing contract ( R. Davies 1995: 95–7), and Hal Carter, who was charged with improving their image (ibid., 117–21: 139–43).

The band initially struggled in the face of steep competition among all of the wannabes and try-hards of the early 1960s; their performances could be shambolic, and they scrapped like cats both on and off the stage. Their management sought to improve their image to make them stand out: Page, for example, changed their name from the Ravens to Kinks as an attention-getter (especially as they were usually bottom-of-the-bill) (ibid., 102–4). Abandoning the whips and leather that the band had initially draped themselves in, Page shoved them first in matching, stiff green hunting jackets (‘evoking Robin Hood!’ according to a suit in Joe Penhall’s Sunny Afternoon; cf. R. Davies 1995: 103–4); after Carter smartened them up, they were taken to a theatre costume shop and acquired their famous Edwardian hunting-pink jackets to show off frilled white shirts ruffled at the wrist and throat. As Ray noted, by the summer of 1964, ‘We had started to get a reputation as Dickensian-type characters’ (120) – a reputation that preceded their first proper chart hit with ‘You Really Got Me.’ What started as an act finally clicked as their scrappy yet impishly insolent behaviour gelled with their performance and, especially, the new look. They were photographed at iconic London sites such as Tower Bridge or stood with horses in the park, and these original stage clothes left their mark – even in 2016 Kinks’ media still use images from this photo shoot in their copy. Such expectations were not unique to American audiences; Ray spoke in 2015 of sweltering inside those heavy woollen coats in the middle of an Australian summer tour in 1965 (R. Davies 2015a).

The Beatles had primed US Anglomania from late 1963 in anticipation of their February 1964 arrival: American fans adored how different the Fab Four were compared to American pop idols (if not their male classmates) (Perone 2009: 82–3; 84–6; Stark 2006: 20–1: 68; cf. Seago 2000: 123). British bands were irreverent towards adults in a way unlike the sneering American delinquent of Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild One; instead, they couched their anger against authority with sharp wit rather than grunting hooliganism. British bands also brought to the United States exotic aspects of the Old World: European artiness, mod ennui, adult sophistication and an exotic sexiness lacking in wholesome contemporary American pop and cinema (Perone 2009: 101–6, 115–7; Gildart 2013: 91–3; Clayston 1995: 177). Not only were the Kinks sexy and dangerous (not necessarily mutually exclusive), but they stood out from the delicately feminine, Pierre Cardin–besuited Beatles’ Euro sophistication or the Stones’ sloppy, leering misogyny. Moreover, neither the Beatles nor the Stones – or most of the British Invasion bands – intentionally played up their Englishness in the early days – if anything, they revelled in their love of American blues, rock and roll, and Motown, aping American singers’ accents and sound in their performances (cf. Stark 2009: 133–3). The Kinks were just as keen on American blues, but appeared as quaintly English with their romantic if not Dickensian jackets and Chelsea boots (Perone 2009: 144). This look screamed English (if not fancy-dress Victoriana) not only to their countrymen, but also fit the picture of what Americans, the key commercial target of the British Invasion, expected of a land that they knew mainly from James Bond, Mary Poppins, and Roger Miller’s ‘England Swings’. Ray Davies may have had the same sort of art school background as a number of his contemporaries, but the Kinks’ working-class attitude further set them apart from the more Euro-centric mod bands. Finally, they also had strong London accents – not only did Ray demand that his girl stay by his side all day and all of the night, but he did so dressed like Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights and with a much better cockney accent than Dick Van Dyke.

In addition to creating the Kinks’ initial image as English gentlemen, management also cranked up the ‘English whimsy’ surrounding the band’s publicity. Consider, for example, the evolving ersatz eccentricity on the band’s LP sleeve notes. On their first LP Kinks (1964), for example, every word with a hard ‘c’ is spelt with a ‘k’. Generic reference to Carnaby Street comes into play with Frank Smyth’s notes on Face to Face (1966), but by 1967 the Kinks’ particular Englishness has become singled out as something distinctive: the sleeve notes on the album Something Else focus on Ray’s imagination specifically.

Welcome to Daviesland, where all the little kinklings in the magic Kinkdom wear tiny black bowlers, rugby boots, soldier suits, drink half pints of bitter, carry cricket bats and ride in little tube trains. … Gulliver-like Ray Davies stoops to pluck a small mortal from his musical world – turns him upside-down to see where he was made – and replaces him gently but firmly in that great class society where all men are equal but some are more equal than others.

The increasing tweeness could be attributed to marketers’ desire to latch on to the drug-fuelled dream imagery proliferating in the charts in 1967 and 1968 (Faulk 2010: 125), especially as Something Else did not sell well, and Ray’s sardonic title showed that they were not willingly playing ball with the marketing. The Kinks certainly delivered whimsy on their next LP, Village Green Preservation Society, but tracks such as ‘Wicked Annabella’, ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Phenomenal Cat’ owed more to English fairy tales and Kenneth Graham than to lysergic-acid-fuelled dreams.

Just an English boy on holiday …

The Kinks may have abandoned the costumes fairly ea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE English heritage
• PART TWO Spaces of identity
• PART THREE Performing discrepancy
• Index
• Copyright