New Wrinkles from the Kinks

By JAY COCKS

A hardy British perennial blooms once more

The Beatles reached for the sky. The Rolling Stones aimed at the crotch, and the Who went for the throat. The Kinks, shaking their collective cap and bells, drew a bead on the funny bone.

And endured. Indeed, flourished.

Their new album, One for the Road, a loopy, hard-driving souvenir of a 1979-80 concert tour, has settled down comfortably in the higher altitudes of the Top 40, and these hardy perennials of British rock's golden age have just embarked on a two-month concert tour of the States. All this is ample testament to the surprising staying power of their antic stagecraft, disheveled musicianship and--particularly --to the cheeky satire and sideways poignancy of Ray Davies' music.

Davies, lead singer, composer and prime mover of the Kinks, has always been a jester who sings as if he enjoys a good joke, a long cry and a stiff drink, sometimes all at once. Early Davies songs such as A Well Respected Man and Dedicated Follower of Fashion were sardonic assaults on both sides of what was then called the generation gap and what now seems less like a chasm than a split but sewable seam.

While the appropriate stitching was begun in the late 1960s, Davies and the Kinks (including his brother Dave on lead guitar) turned to more reflective projects that became overly elaborate. In his patented style of calculated offhandedness, Davies set to musing on that S.R.O. spectacle, the sunset of the British Empire. This is the longest twilight in recorded history, and Davies caught a little of its irony and much of the social contradiction and poignancy in songs like Muswell Hillbilly and Victoria, which voiced such self-mocking nostalgia as "Long ago life was clean/ Sex was bad and obscene/ And the rich were so mean/ ... Victoria was my queen." But the subject was ultimately too vast, too tough to focus and hard to contain. A three-record concept album called Preservation, released in 1973 and 1974, showed Davies burrowing into already familiar territory with a concentration that smacked of desperation.

"I was experimenting with new songs and ideas and shows on the road," Davies says now. "We found ourselves virtually going out with a theater show called Preservation. It was a hit show, but the album wasn't. I was really writing original cast albums, not rock albums." When the Kinks switched record labels four years ago, they decided, in Davies' words, "to become a rock band again and let the music tell the story." His more recent tunes, like (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman, Low Budget and Catch Me Now I'm Falling, have the same spiky stance and cutting edge as the best vintage songs, with a new infusion of energy.

This music has found a wider, warmer audience of late in the U.S., a curious state of affairs when Davies' songs still seem so much like contemporary pub anthems. "We've really worked hard in the U.S.," he explains. "Played everywhere nearly. Built up a following of new fans without discarding the old." The loyalists sometimes reflect their affection in typically eccentric Kink fashion. A group of Cleveland fanatics bought a block of tickets, then, as Davies suggests, deliberately missed the show just to keep the band humble.

Ray and his wife Yvonne now spend much of their off-time in a New York City apartment. Brother Dave is still British-based and still the archetypal younger brother smarting under the domination of his sibling. "I had him down the other day, and he was understanding of my situation," Ray reports. "But it's the fact that it might all erupt at any moment that keeps us going." But prosperity does not bring complacence. "I'm a bit down on my songs at the moment," Davies grouses. "I don't like them at all." Kinks concerts are perfectly in tune with this restless, never satisfied spirit. The Kinks are notorious for playing footsie with disaster, often featuring various combinations of festering fraternal rivalries and chaotic musicianship. Kinks fans love it all. "It is something in the band they can all relate to," Davies says proudly. "Flaws."

The best thing about One for the Road may be that--flaws and all--it is even better to watch than listen to. Hi-fi meets scifi. Kink crazies can snap up a record, then clip the coupon that comes with it and send off for a video tape that shows the lads in full cry.

Recorded during a live performance in Providence, the tape is, in fact, a visual precis of One for the Road. Good shooting, good sound and dexterous editing (supervised by Ray Davies) make it not so much a companion to the record as a necessary adjunct: music that you can see. There could be a lot more of it to come.

The Kinks package is not the first to link vinyl and video tape, but it is the first to reach the market. A previous try spotlighting Blondie, the only socially acceptable punk outfit, was withdrawn when union negotiations prevented release of the tape. The new tape, marketed by TIME-LIFE Video, costs $39.95 retail. For anyone with the ante, and a taste for some high-spirited, high-stepping rock, One for the Road is one of the more notable music events of the year. It is a tidy audiovisual chronicle of fierce, reckless endurance, a gone-to-hell charm that is distinctively, and triumphantly, Kinky. --By Jay Cocks

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