First songs
I have been thinking back to the first rock songs I registered as child. It’s a tricky business, memories can’t always be trusted. But there are memories and there are memories. On some important events in my life - a friend’s wedding, or first day at college, I draw a more or less complete blank. But others are in the bones. If you’re trying to track down a half-remembered song from your childhood, and stumble across it, you might shout (as I did) “that’s it!” and dance about the room. I am inclined to grade such recollections as authentic.
One piece of music that has this effect on me is the theme from the original “Batman” series, composed by Neil Hefti. If psychologists one day seek the foundation stone of my psyche, it might well be this, heard and moved about to dozens of times before grade school:
Hefti, one of the immortals for his many film scores and work with Basie, gets credit for several other earworms that have followed me over the years, notably the theme from the “Odd Couple”, and “Splanky”, a composition for Basie that George Gee revivified during the Swing Revival, and still plays for packed houses today. These are fantastic, triumphant, but are they rock? Not quite.
What was the first rock song I heard?
I remember “Crocodile Rock” when it came out in 1972, my dad and friends loved it. Before that? “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees, but maybe that’s really a pop song. The B-side, “Stepping Stone”, would be more the pure play. It came out in 1966, but I would have heard it around 1970, when a friend got the record and played it for me. I’d have heard everything from the Beatle’s “Hard Day’s Night” around that time as well, because it was running on Alaskan TV periodically. “Can’t Buy Me Love”, with its Python-esque chase scenes, made a lasting impression.
I did not listen to the Kinks. It was hard to get their music in the States, and, oddly, it is the only band I remember my parents specifically warning me about. The Beatles were ok for kids, but The Kinks got an asterisk from day one.
Nevertheless the first rock song I ever registered - probably only heard once on the radio - was a 1967 Kinks song called “David Watts”. It has a distinctive opening, and when I ran across it again a few weeks ago, the shock of recognition was almost physical:
On first hearing it seems rowdy, and crowds often react accordingly. But it’s not raw, its a finished commercial product. The arrangement is carefully done and the production is good. The band is organized, and, as Ray demands at the beginning, plays it “nice and smooth.” Like many Kinks efforts from the 60s, it is far more complicated than initial impressions suggest.
If you start thinking about things you’d change or improve from that performance - well, there’s not much. Lead vocal? Great. Backing vocals? Properly-arranged and performed. The bass? Quaife is all over the job, it’s excellent.
You could play it more aggressively, I suppose. With Quaife’s stylish bass and the drums mixed down a little, the piano is often running the show on the original recording. You could get rid of the piano and turn up the drum and bass, an idea that occurred to The Jam in 1978. This turned out well, thanks mainly to bassist Bruce Foxton, who carried both the rhythm and the lead vocal. The studio recording is good, but the live performances (quite a few on Youtube) are more in the spirit of the thing:
If it’s starting to sound like a punk song there, that’s not exactly an accident. Many punk and new wave bands heard The Kinks growing up, and got some of the sound (and attitude) into their own music. There was also a vogue for grabbing a sixties song, speeding it up, and rocking it out - The Dickies were recidivists in this area. The man who did this to “David Watts” - not altogether successfully - was Ray Davies:
This approach often works wonders (e.g., The Dickie’s “Nights in White Satin”) but here not much of value is gained. What is lost is an ability to appreciate those brilliant lyrics.
I am a dull and simple lad
Cannot tell water from champagne
And I have never met the Queen
And I wish I could have all he has got
I wish I could be like David Watts
And when I lie on my pillow at night
I dream I could fight like David Watts
Lead the school team to victory
And take my exams and pass the lot
(Wish I could be) Wish I could be like David Watts
(Wish I could be) Wish I could be like David Watts
(Wish I could be) Conduct my life like David Watts
(Wish I could be) I wish I could be like David Watts
He is the head boy at the school
He is the captain of the team
He is so gay and fancy free
And I wish all that money belonged to me
I wish I could be like David Watts
And all the girls in the neighbourhood
Try to go out with David Watts
They try their best but can't succeed
For he is of pure and noble breed
Wish I could be like
Wish I could BE like…
etc.
Davies loves juxtaposition in his songwriting, and here he steals a move from Shakespeare’s sonnets and idolizes not one, but two people. David Watts, says Davies, was a real person, a concert promoter who had some kind of dalliance with Dave Davies.
He is so gay and fancy-free
And all the girls in the neighborhood
Try to go out with David Watts
The try their best but can't succeed
For he is of pure and noble breed
But there is another. Ray Davies says "it was based on the head boy at my school. He was captain of the team, all those things, but I can't tell you his real name as I only spoke to him a few months ago."
Here’s a lovely cover by Mikaela Davis - nice and smooth - that takes the song out of the club, and helps us hear some of the lyrical nuances:
I tried counting up the number of deadly sins endorsed in “David Watts” and get four:
Envy, of course, but give credit Davies for recognizing it in himself, acknowledging it, and making a bit of art from it. Most of us never get to Step 1.
Greed, no doubt - “I wish I had all he has got”, “I wish all the money belonged to me” &c.
Pride. Debatable. Our narrator declares himself to be a “plain and simple lad.” But isn’t that the hallmark of a con man? After his funeral oration Shakespeare’s Antony avers that
I am no orator, as Brutus is,
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man
…a claim that would be more credible had he not just delivered one of the greatest feats of sophistry in world literature.
Lust is a bit trickier - we live in an age where any man who openly admires another is assumed to be in flagrante delicto down at the bathhouse on a regular basis. We consider placing Davies’ hero worship more in the vein of Shakespeare “desiring this man's art and this man's scope”…but in both “David Watts” and the later “Johnny Thunder” there is an emotionality that goes beyond mere ambition. Another juxtaposition. Can we simultaneously envy someone’s proficiency, but also feel….?
Um, yeah. Since we know this is all leading up to “Lola”, I’m leaving lust on the board for now.
So…four out of seven, in one song? No wonder my parents warned me about them. Too late now.