Me and The Kinks

I always liked the Kinks, although I didn't realize it until later. I was seven when "You Really Got Me" came out on the radio, going on eight, and I already loved pop music, paid attention to it, and remembered what I liked. I noticed the Beatles much more than the Kinks at the time, naturally. Everybody did, after all. Their songs were bigger, and they were all over the TV. And I loved the Beatles. I remember going to the movie theater in August (I think?) of 1965, when I was eight, with my Beatles-worshipping friend Debbie, to see Help, and sitting through the whole magical experience twice! Not only that, but Debbie had a little record player, and got enough money from her parents to buy 45's. She had some Beatles singles, a copy of the Stones' "Get Off My Cloud," and even an album, the Beatles' Second Album, which she slept with under her pillow. I swear, though, that I read a magazine article in LIFE, or LOOK, or one of the magazines that everyone in America subscribed to at the time that amazed me. It told of a pop group in England that was more popular there than the Beatles were, and was headed by a pair of brothers whose name I couldn't remember (Davis?). What intrigued me was that our two cultures could be so different that with Beatlemania in full swing here, somebody could be even more popular back in England, the very home of the Beatles. I wanted to hear what these guys sounded like. But I didn't pursue it at the time.

This is the point in the story where years pass.

It was in 1970 or 1971 that the Kinks re-entered my life, in a big way. I knew that "Lola" was by the Kinks, and I liked that song a lot. But I don't remember where its period of heavy radio play fell in relation to my introduction to Timothy Ray Reed (later to be known in music circles as the Reverend Fred Lane and art circles as T.R. Reed, Artiste Deluxe). Tim was at that time the significant other of a close friend of mine, and we ended up at his house one evening, an interesting experience in itself. Tim not only played The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society while we were there, but also Captain Beefheart's Clear Spot, which I surprised myself by finding I kinda liked. (Creepy organ music here, foreshadowing the re-entrance of the Captain into my life several years later, at the hands of the person with whom I would have a 30-year relationship, ultimately disastrous.)

Anyway, the next day at school, I could not get the songs from VGPS, which I had heard once, out of my mind. They played over and over until I had to buy the album for relief. Later, Mr. Reed graciously lent me his own copy of Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part 1, allowing the even more infectious songs on that album to take over my mind completely. I treated that LP like gold. It was no small thing to be trusted with a disc from Tim's bizarre and varied collection.

Lola vs. Powerman. I learned about the Kinks from that album. After I got my own copy, I played it as much as my sister allowed. (Only her records in her hearing when she was at home.) Listening to it today, I accept that the songs are in my DNA. I realized for the first time that there were two different people singing on this record, for instance; one lower and one higher voice. Usually they sang in harmony, but sometimes Higher Voice would sing lead, and I particularly liked those songs. Kinda like George Harrison with the Beatles.

I had no social life when I was in junior high and high school; I did my homework or produced massive art projects for my own satisfaction while listening to records which I bought with the scanty proceeds from occasional babysitting jobs. I took a trip to Mexico with my 10th grade Spanish class early in 1972 (also fairly disastrous); the first day or so was spent on a bus. Being isolated, I sat back with my eyes closed and played L vs. P, note for note, lick for lick, in my head. Over and over, in fact. Repetition and memory are said by neurological science to create new pathways in your brain; there is a Lola versus Powerman Boulevard in mine. It remains my favorite Kinks album by a small margin, and not just for the fond memories, though they can't be separated. It's the strength of the songs and the way they flow together.

Naturally, the next thing I did was to buy up the Kinks back catalogue and the new albums as they came out. I found one or two of the very oldest albums in the original mono, in clearance bins, at clearance prices. It took me the longest to find Face to Face. I guess it was scarce because "Sunny Afternoon" was a big enough hit that the pressing almost sold out, but not a big enough hit to justify pressing any more copies. It wasn't me, but the same older sister who located it in a 25-cent clearance box at a store somewhere and bought the only copy. Naturally, she couldn't sell it to me for that price, or even give it to me; no, she held out for the current price for a new album, the total four dollars. She knew she had me over a barrel. I think she was egged on by her evil boyfriend of the time; it was he who, in 1973, told me that Ray Davies had quit the Kinks (by which time he had probably already come back), and left me dangling, wondering if Preservation was ever going to have a Part 2, and not knowing what ultimately had happened until many years later!

I was turning into a serious fanatic by this time. I lurked in magazine stores and record shops, searching for articles, or even a mention, of the Kinks, or anything remotely related. I confused all my high-school classmates by writing "God Save the Village Green" in their yearbooks. I hung out in the University of Alabama library, using their state-of-the-art research facilities (don't laugh, children): the card catalogue for books, and the set of booklets that came out every year indexing magazine articles; looking for past mentions of the Kinks. I was looking for that article I had read about the band more popular in England than the Beatles, but it proved to be a chimera. I Xeroxed article after article when I did locate them: Billboard, Variety, the BBC Listener. (I did run across some great Peter Cook and Dudley Moore bits that way, too.) I began writing letters to the Kinks, although I didn't have any reliable addresses, and I never got any replies, not so much as a returned letter.

Meanwhile, back at radio station WTBC, 1230 AM in Tuscaloosa, I was making myself a reputation as the Kinks Lady of Northport (Northport being the suburb where I lived with my parents.) When I got tired of sitting by myself and listening to my records, late at night, I turned on the radio, and (pop AM radio still being listenable back then, and DJs in person still sitting by the phone), I called up the station and talk to whatever jock was on the air, asking them to play something by the Kinks. I began to notice, after a while, that they enjoyed talking to me, usually about music. I figured that I probably had more brains and better taste than the average teenybopper, but I figure being a young female who had a nice voice probably didn't hurt, either, when the guys were out there at night. Pretty soon, they all were calling me the Kinks Lady. WTBC had an Oldies hour at lunchtime with a particular favorite DJ of mine, and I'd call him on a pay phone (no cells!!!), and of course he had more latitude to play old records during that hour. He was reliable about playing old Kinks singles between noon and one. And when Schoolboys In Disgrace came out, I even caught a DJ playing the single "for the Kinks Lady" when I happened to have the radio on.

Now, remember: I was in college by this time, but I did not drive a car. I had barely enough money for records, stamps and copies. I lived in Alabama, and the Kinks did not play here. They didn't even wave as they passed by. I had no way of knowing where they will be playing, or when. I could't say I was the biggest Kinks fan in the world because I had been to all their concerts, because I hadn't the resources. However. I was by this time caught up in an extremely serious undiagnosed case of depression. I was not going to class; sometimes I didn't even recognize what class I was supposed to be in. Preservation Act 2 had come out, and this is what I did: I would stack the two LPs on my record player. I played them, turned them over, played them and turned them over again. I listened to Act 2 all the time. I have it better memorized than Lola vs. Powerman, even.

I talked to the disk jockeys. I mailed letters. One day, I found the address for Konk studios. Aha! I wrote a letter care of Konk, and got back a nice letter from a Kinks assistant, with a promotional Act 2 button enclosed. This is the closest I ever got to making contact by mail.

Since the last time I turned over the two LPs of Preservation Act 2, I've been afraid to hear it again. The Kinks have truly been the background music of my life for 40 years, but, like the particularly evocative background music for a movie that so shocked or moved you that you just can't watch it again, I just can't bear to find out what hearing that album would do to me today.

In the spring of 1975, I learned that the Kinks were going to play in Memphis, Tennessee. Of the few tour dates I'd managed to find out about, this was far and away the closest to me. I began to cook up a plot with my buddy and Kinks Konvert, Arlene. She was away at 2-year college with a sympathetic music fan who had a car and drove (which neither of us did), and relatives she wanted to visit in Corinth, Mississippi. We scraped together enough cash for round-trip bus fare from Corinth to Memphis, and for a cheap motel.

Upon arriving, we checked in at the across-from-the-bus-station seedy motel and hiked through the worst part of downtown, to the few renovated blocks where the concert venue was located. Along the way, we encountered a colorful group of the Children of God religious cult, who heard our story and informed us that our dedication to a cause would make us valuable members of their congregation. Amazingly, on the day of the show, we bought tickets at the window and landed on the 11th row on the floor. The Kinks were touring with A Soap Opera, with half the show the amazing theatrical from that album, and half of it a regular Kinks concert. It was unreal, one of the most incredible, happiest experiences of my life. My hands were red and swollen, and my throat was sore from screaming and singing along, the next day. We even managed to get a hamburger between us at the bus station cafe, with the key deposit we'd had to pay at the seedy motel since we'd had no luggage.

It had been especially enlightening to walk back through deepest downtown Memphis late, when the concert was over. Arlene and I hesitated for a moment, deciding which way to turn, and were stopped by a vision. A golden car, carrying golden ladies, dressed in gold, with gold makeup and fingernails and hair. The nearest one spoke to us and said, "Y'all workin' girls?" "No!" we said, and immediately chose a direction in which to stride off purposefully, which fortunately happened to be the correct one. Certainly not any competition for you, honey! I seem to recall that we had hesitated in front of an X-rated theater, so it was just as well that the ladies in gold had come along when they had.

(Thirty-one years almost to the month later, Arlene, my Kinks Kohort, and I went to see Ray Davies in Atlanta on his Other People's Lives tour. We enjoyed ourselves, and clapped and hollered and jumped up and down and whooped just as much as we had in Memphis in 1975. It was almost a flashback. And every bit as much fun.)

On the other hand, we went to Atlanta in my car.

I saw the Kinks again, in Atlanta in 1978, in the (fabulous) Fox Theater. They were touring behind Misfits at the time, and had both Blondie and Tom Petty opening for them. I don't remember this concert nearly as clearly nor as fondly as the earlier one. The sound was horrible. We were up in a far corner of the auditorium, and I don't know if that made it worse. A friend who was with me kept going down and begging the sound man to do something, to no avail. I can't even remember what the Kinks played, only that Debbie Harry kept pulling her dress up and Tom Petty kept tossing his hair. What you have to do to get attention when you're not the headliner!

I kept buying the Kinks' albums - and the 12" extended disco single of "Wish I Could Fly Like Superman" - for a while. I think the last LP I had was Give The People What They Want. But in the very late 70s and early 80s, I began to hear music that didn't sound like anything else I had ever heard: reggae, ska, New Wave. The Kinks were playing music by this time that not only sounded depressingly similar to what everybody else was playing, but not as good, as far as I could tell, as what they had played before. To someone who was just discovering their newer music, they might sound really innovative compared to, say, Journey; but to me, they weren't creating magical, fresh songs that stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. I couldn't tell you who played on their last few albums, what label they were on, what songs were on what album, or whether they only came out on cassette tape and 8-track. Elvis Costello has given Ray Davies great props as a songwriter - but, by that time, I had rather listen to Elvis Costello.

Whether or not I'm listening to Kinks music, it's in the back of my mind. Whatever other music I love, and I love a lot of music, the Kinks are the soundtrack to my life. It won't do just to say they are special or precious. They and their music, the whole concept of them, everything about them, has meant so much to me for so long, that it's impossible to think of how I as a person could exist without them, who I would be without them. They saturate my existence. I am no longer the obsessed fan that I once was; now, I and they are more like an old couple who have been married for untold years.

I first noticed Dave Davies singing, "Truly, oh, truly, there is nothing in this life without your love," and it sounded almost exactly as if he were saying, "Julie, oh, Julie." In one of my favorite songs of Dave's, he sings, "Truly, truly, trust your heart." My ex-husband heard that and said, "Is he saying 'Julie'?" I prefer to think so. That's why I always sign myself

Truly Julie