A visit to the Village Green
"It’s all in my head, probably.... Everybody’s got their own village green, somewhere you go to when the world gets too much." - Ray Davies
Hampstead Heath, not far from where Ray Davies grew up Image Source
Welcome to my world
A few months ago I bought the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society for my iPhone, where it joined my other two Apple Store purchases, Booker T and the MGs’ McLemore Avenue and Melting Pot. I knew The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by reputation, but had never heard the songs. Like the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, the critical consensus has moved gradually over the years from “ignore” to “masterpiece.” Released in 1968, it came a year after Odessey, and arrived at almost exactly the same moment as The Beatles (the so-called White Album).
I did not mean to start listening to it right away, or ever, if I’m honest. It just seemed like it would be nice to have. It was a little like my purchase of a nice edition of Ruskin’s Stones of Venice a few years ago: It is there, and perhaps, at some future point, I will pick it up and look into it. It is also quite possible that I will not.
It was my car that nudged me into paying attention. You see, when I plug my phone into it, the modern automotive electronics tell it to start playing the first song in its database, which in this case is “All of My Friends Were There” from Village Green.
It is a strange but interesting song, an awkward dramatic monologue describing a disastrous drunken musical performance (based on true events, according to Ray Davies). Hearing it repeatedly on my morning drive introduced me to Village Green’s idiosyncratic musical language, and to Davies’ lyrical style. The lyrics to “All of My Friends Were There” are almost recitative, and stacked in peculiar triplets:
My big day, it was the biggest day of my life
It was the summit of my long career
But I felt so down, and I drank too much beer
The management said that I shouldn't appear
I walked out onto the stage and started to speak
The first night I've missed for a couple of years
I explained to the crowd and they started to jeer
And just when I wanted no one to be there
All of my friends were there…
It’s not “Love Me Do”.
While “All of My Friends Were There” is the first song on my phone and in my car, it is not first on any official release of the album. So already I am doing it wrong. But it’s not a disaster, either: Davies thought the song was important for the album, and fought record company efforts to cut it. “If I'd done that song today,” he said in 2003, “it would have been A&R'd off the album. But sometimes you need minor gems like that to set up other songs.”
I still have trouble with the song, but I think I’m getting it. On the first ten hearings the opening lines sounded artificial - even labored - and the downbeat story is hard to understand without a lyrics sheet. At times the narrator is mocking himself (“oh, the embarrassment, oh, the despair”). But, but…when you get to “all of my friends were there” you do feel his anguish and almost without noticing have slipped, through a side door, into the mindscape of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
Ray Davies
The mind in question is that of young Ray Davies, aged 24 when he wrote most of these tunes. At this moment in time he was…
A big star in the UK
Already widely admired by other artists
The author of smart, stylish, and commercially-successful singles like “Sunny Afternoon”, “Dead End Street”, “Autumn Almanac”, and most especially “Waterloo Sunset”
Banned from performing in the U.S. because of fights, union disputes, bad attitude, etc.
Facing legal problems
Experiencing great anxiety
Concerned that the Kinks’ next album would likely be their last
Davies’ songwriting style is much-admired but hard to imitate. He always seems to be looking for dissonant effects. For example, on “Sunny Afternoon” he writes a McCartney-esque jingle with a decidedly Lennonist lyrical twist. Davies said: "The only way I could interpret how I felt was through a dusty, fallen aristocrat who had come from old money as opposed to the wealth I had created for myself…. [so] I turned him into a scoundrel who fought with his girlfriend after a night of drunkenness and cruelty."
This stylistic method can (often) turn Davies songs into guessing games, but also creates opportunities for moments of transcendent beauty, occasions where we feel joy and sadness, past and present, simultaneously. Like the Beatles, Davies was under constant pressure to write hit songs and got very, very good at it. And like the Beatles, he reached a point in the mid-60s where he wanted artistic, as well as commercial success.
Andy Partridge, who founded XTC and is (says Wikipedia) “regarded as the ‘godfather’ of Britpop,” credits Davies as a formative influence. But trying to get to Davies’ level has been a source of frustration his whole career. He goes further:
[Davies] has possibly written songs on his own that are better - I’m sorry about this, I’m committing heresy - that are better than Lennon and McCartney. I don’t think Lennon and McCartney have ever come up with something as poignant as “Waterloo Sunset”. I don’t think they’ve ever come up with a little symphony like “Autumn Almanac” or “Shangri-La”. I don’t think they’ve ever come up with quite the social commentary of “Sunny Afternoon” or the romance of “Days”…. I’m so sorry! But it’s got to be said.”
I can’t quite agree, but I think it is fair to say that Davies is fantastic, one of the best songwriters of his generation. When I think of the bands, the Beatles seemed preoccupied with love and transcendent experiences. The Zombies, I think, were primarily interested in aesthetics: gorgeous melodies, beautiful harmonies, sumptuous musical effects; similar in that regard to Brian Wilson. What Davies brought to the table was a searching, skeptical, observational intelligence, accompanied by a cynical sense of humor. He made his living as a rock star but by his mid-20s he was already bored with it. He was more than happy - consciously or unconsciously - to sacrifice some aesthetics and commercial appeal to bring these into play.
Davies songs invariably express an uneasiness with easy answers, an intellectual honesty that sometimes reads as evasiveness. I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt, just go with it. You can take some measure of the man from the following video, in which he addresses the simple question: was John Lennon a prick (2:00)?
This quality of reflection and intellectual humility is rare in pop music. Todd Rundgren once wrote a Beatles parody song called “Everybody Else is Wrong”, and the shoe fits all too well, not only for the Beatles but for most pop acts. Updike encouraged writers to “avoid the tone of being wonderfully right,” but my goodness how rock and roll encourages it. So Davies’ ethos makes him a singular figure, particularly for an era intent on replacing obsolete dogma with incontestable (and sometimes bizarre) new dogma.
It also means he is constantly managing the risk of being mis-understood. Suggs, the British singer-songwriter, likens it to walking along a precipice. It’s a high-risk, high-reward approach, and it doesn’t always work. A friend listening to “Village Green” with me threw up his hands and said “this guy won’t even commit to ambiguity!”
But at its best, Davies’ approach enabled him to call bullshit on fads, fashions, and hypocrisy of the era, and to draw attention to the things that should really matter. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is his magnum opus in this vein.
The Album
“It’s kind of created its own time, really. It doesn’t sound psychedelic, it doesn’t sound like the late 60’s…it doesn’t sound like anything else that was going around that time….and therefore I feel it’s timeless, really.” - Paul Weller
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society was not a commercial success. It reached Gold status (100,000 copies sold) in 2018, fifty years after its initial release. Davies sportingly turned up on ITV to accept the award:
It’s a funny old world, ain’t it Ray?
The album is sometimes described as a nostalgia trip. Like the White Album, it is full of snippets and memories. But some of the stronger songs don’t fit this pattern, and others are just random, frankly. There is even some controversy about which songs are on the album - an early pressing had just 12, and Davies insisted that they recall the records and add three more. Here is my scorecard for the 15 canonical tunes, along with some recommended cover versions and notes from various commentators:
Category 1 - 24 year-old rock star reflects on childhood memories, experiences, and characters
“The Village Green Preservation Society” - Kate Rusby (link)
One of the last songs written for the project. A fellow named Andy Miller has written a book about the album (linked below). For this song he correctly notes that “its structure is unorthodox and unpredictable, the arrangement is pin-sharp and the performances are self-assured.”
“Do You Remember Walter?” - Darian Sahanaja with the Wild Honey Orchestra* (link)
*In 2019 a group of Los Angeles musicians (“The Wild Honey Orchestra”) got together and did a charity benefit performance of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in Glendale, with an excellent group of guest vocalists. All of the performances are on Youtube, and they’re all worth a listen.
“Picture Book” - Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers from a van (link) <- I love this
A song “that I should have consigned to my private collection,” Davies wrote, “[‘Picture Book’ and ‘Muswell Hillbilly’] are inspired by my family and mention people that really existed.”
Glad he didn’t, it’s delightful.
“Johnny Thunder” - R.I.P.S. (link)
“Sitting by the Riverside” - Ira Kaplan (of Yo Lo Tengo) with the Wild Honey Orchestra (link)
“Sitting By The Riverside” is a slight, if charming, piano and accordion (i.e. Mellotron)” shuffle, two minutes to pause and cast your metaphorical eye on the waters before turning the record over.” (Miller).
But what about those cacophonic interludes, resembling the orchestral crescendoes of “A Day in the Life”? Crushing anxieties? Or just the rush of water?
“Animal Farm” - The 88 from their tour bus (link), also the Judybats (link)
A catchy song, and for my money Davies’ best vocal performance on the record.
Of course it has a dark side. Davies said “this was just me thinking everybody else’s mad and we are all animals anyway — which is really the idea of the whole album…”
Or does he mean country people are more natural, not ‘playing’ roles like city people?
Is it a bleak democratization or an egalitarian affirmation?
I have no idea.
“Village Green” - Ruth Fogg and her ocarina (link)
The estimable Miller gives us Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” -
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green . . .
Here, as I take my solitary rounds,
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin’d grounds,
And, many a year elaps’d, return to view
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
“It could be Ray Davies in a powdered wig,” says Miller.
“All of My Friends Were There” - Chris Price with the Wild Honey Orchestra (link)
“Monica” - Kinks live in 1968 (link)
A little calypso, in case you thought the Kinks were just a rock band.
“I didn’t actually say she was a prostitute.” (Davies)
“Monica was a real person….in fact, we walked just over there one night. But nothing happened.”
Category II - Previously-written songs that fit well with Category I
“Big Sky” - palbolt (link)
Davies has expressed discontent with his vocal performance of “Big Sky”.
This one is better (link)
The narrator’s voice is “almost like a vicar.” (Partridge).
“People Take Pictures of Each Other” - Kristian Hoffman (formerly of the Swinging Madisons!) with the Wild Honey Ochestra (link)
“Starstruck” - Dan Wilson with the Wild Honey Orchestra (link)
“[D]efinitely a song that should be on somebody’s solo album”. (Davies)
Category III - Songs that don’t fit the theme
“Wicked Annabella” - Dave Davies said “I just wanted to get one to sound as horrible as it could.”
“Phenomenal Cat” - The Strolling Scones (link)
I find the cover versions of these songs especially rewarding. Davies had a high level of collaboration with the band on this album, but the Kinks were basically a power pop outfit; some of these work better in other hands. Davies admitted as much in the early 1990s: “I’ve slipped all these oddball songs that don’t really fit the band on to the albums. It’s something I’m trying not to do now.”
The good old banger
There is one other tune. “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains” was the final song recorded for The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and the estimable Miller sees it as the capstone:
By the time he composed the song, Ray Davies had been writing Village Green material for two years, and ‘Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains’ reiterates its central dilemmas with wit and assurance. How do you reconcile your past and present? How do you stop the weight of experience from dragging you under? How do you keep rollin’ when all you want to do is stop?
This is how:
On on album full of light 2-3 minute vignettes, it is a full-bodied four-minute R&B number. Any resemblance to Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lighting” is purely intentional:
Davies’ vocal, meanwhile, violates the Britishness that inhabits the rest of the album. He starts off with an American accent so thick that the first verse could be an outtake from O Brother Where Art Thou? Partridge explains that “everybody in the mid-60s had to sound American. If you didn’t sound American you weren’t dealing in the correct currency.”
It is a point of pride for Davies that most of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is sung in his English accent, and as “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains” progresses, I think I’m hearing him gradually drop the American inflection and move toward his normal voice (in the final chorus it’s the lahst of the steam-powered trains). In the song “Village Green” Davies writes “I saw fame /And so I left the village green.” In the project’s final song his voice, at least, comes home.
The lyrics are brazen and brilliant, sending up the conventions of the blues without at all compromising on the defiant autobiographical message. On an album full of untrustworthy narrators, this is as close to the real Ray Davies as we’re going to get:
Like the last of the good ol' puffer trains
I'm the last of the blood and sweat brigade
And I don't know where I'm going … or why I came
I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains
I'm the last of the good old renegades
All my friends are all middle class and grey
But I live in a museum … so I'm okay
I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains
Like the last of the good ol' choo-choo trains
Huff and puff 'till I blow this world away
And I'm gonna keep on rollin' … till my dying day
I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains
Like the last of the good ol' puffer trains
I'm the last of the soot and scum brigade
And all this peaceful living … is drivin' me insane
I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains
I'm the last of the good old fashioned steam-powered trains
It’s bold to write a six-beat chorus line, and even bolder to put three big stresses at the end. And it takes a special artist to put the words “choo choo” into a blues song. But we know who we’re dealing with now. Each verse works like a mini-sonnet: the first two lines brag and build up tension, the third introduces ambiguity and slows the pace, before exploding with renewed force on the final two beats (“why I came”, “I’m okay”, “my dying day”, and “me insane” - all sung with conviction).
While the album is mostly concerned with Britishness and idealizations of Davies’ childhood, this song stands up for the vital power of the blues in the face of effete psychedelia. This stuff is why he left the village in the first place, and despite all the setbacks and distractions, he’s still a master of it. If the message doesn’t quite come across, play it again, louder.
Davies adds: “Oddly enough, I never did like steam trains much.”
The Kinks’ Echoes of the World - Sky Arts video on the album (link)
Andy Miller, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (link)
“The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” - Wikipedia (link)
“All of My Friends Were There” - Wikipedia (link)
Stones of Venice - Folio Society edition (link)