In the aristocracy of English rock groups of the sixties , the protocol order has always been Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who and Kinks. It was time for the training of the Davies brothers to benefit from a documentary worthy of the name, a task that our colleague Christophe Conte fulfills with passion, this Friday on Arte at 10:25 pm.
Everyone says so: the Kinks knew how to do everything, and their conductor, Ray Davies, was one of Albion's most gifted songwriters. These “English rock spoilers” , who had everything to please, do not have the reputation they deserve. Bad luck played: they were not signed on a label of first division, and, especially, were too turbulent.
Outcast and Godfather
Their ban on playing on American soil from 1966 to 1969 worked against them. While the Who triumphed in Monterey and then in Woodstock, the Kinks spun the circuit of British cinemas . They drew from it an anglophilia which enabled them to distinguish themselves: Davies cultivated his accent from north-west London, and refined his writing, never far from social chronicle. At least until Village Green Preservation Society , cursed album which waited fifty years before being classified in the charts. Richly documented, full of anecdotes and relevant analyzes (Jon Savage, Michka Assayas and Bertrand Burgalat at the head), this film full of love gives the measure of the originality of this group. And makes Ray Davies, a pariah of Muswell Hill who ends up being knighted by Prince Charles in 2016, an endearing antihero. From the first guitar offered by his older sister, who died the same day, to his status as godfather of the English scene (Madness, Blur and Arctic Monkeys owe him a lot), going through the fratricidal war with Dave Davies, the youngest who usurped his place as a unique boy, man appears in all its complexity and genius.