The Kinks Biography

The Kinks were an English rock group, formed in the mid-1960s by Ray Davies and his brother Dave Davies. They first gained prominence in 1964 with their hit single "You Really Got Me" and continued to record and perform for over thirty years. The band's name came from their "kinky" dress sense of leather capes and boots worn on stage. The group's original lineup consisted of lead singer/guitarist Ray Davies, lead guitarist Dave Davies, drummer Mick Avory and bassist Peter Quaife. In the United States, they are included in the Big Four of the British Invasion bands: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who.

While they were never as commercially successful as their mid-1960's peers, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or The Who, the band is frequently cited as one of the most important and influential acts of the 1960s. Their early hard-driving singles set a standard in the mid-1960s for rock and roll that reverberated for decades. Albums such as Face to Face, Something Else, Arthur, Village Green and Muswell Hillbillies are highly regarded, by fans and peers alike, and are considered amongst the most influential recordings of that era. Since then the band has experienced a popular fan revivals in the late 70s and early 80s followed by a painful commercial collapse in the late eighties continuing until their disbandment in the early 90s.

After their last tour in the middle 90s, for their latest again-commercially unsuccessful album, the band has been largely inactive. The relationship between the Davies brothers seems to have deteriorated completely around then and both of them had embarked. Rumours of a Kinks reunion are persistent but still vague. Since the exit of longtime drummer Mick Avory (serving in the band's first two decades) in 1984, the latter has been a manager of the band's Konk Studios, where most of the band's material since 1973 has been recorded. As the band are still disbanded, in recent years Avory has been promoting Kinks material with former Kinks members of the 70s John Dalton and John Gosling, including Dave Clarke on guitar and vocals in the formation "Kast off Kinks". He also have joined the veteran supergroup called "The Class of 64" – refering to the year the British Invasion took America by storm (with members from The Tremeloes and The Hollies) – who are also promoting Kinks material among their other bands' material.

Whatever the bands fortunes, their influence on emerging artists has been a constant. During the Punk rock and New Wave era The Jam and The Pretenders both covered Kinks songs and Britpop acts such as Blur, Oasis and Supergrass have cited them as a major influence. As self-professed Kinks fan Pete Townshend said for 'The History of Rock 'n' Roll': "The Kinks were much more quintessentially English. I always think that Ray Davies should one day be Poet Laureate. He invented a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for Pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning."

In The Simpsons, Marge listens to You Really Got Me played on a frying pan radio. The episode is The Canine Mutiny.

In Jason Mordaunt's 2003 novel Welcome To Coolsville[3], bandleader Slide Benson concludes a medley dedicated to another of the characters with an orchestration of the opening line of The Kinks' 'Dedicated Follower Of Fashion'.

In the hit ABC series, Lost, The Kinks song, "He's Evil" was sung by Charlie while he was fishing with Jin, in the episode The 23rd Psalm.

A cover version of The Kinks' "See My Friend" was played during the second season finale of the UPN series Veronica Mars when Beaver jumps from the roof. It is performed by British band Gravenhurst.

Several of the Kinks songs also feature in the cult Channel 4 comedy 'Green Wing'. "You Really Got Me was sung by Caroline in an effort to win over Mac, a massive Kinks fan, and "Tired of Waiting for You" was played at the beginning and end of series 2, episode 8.

Songs by The Kinks have also figured prominently in The Sopranos. "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" plays during the closing scene and credits of the Season Five episode "Cold Cuts," and in the Third Season, the episode "University" features the song "Living on a Thin Line" during the first scene at the Bada Bing, and then again during the final scene, also at the Bada Bing.

Green Day covered Tired Of Waiting For You. This tune could be found on Shenanigans compilation.

Green Day recycled the Picture Book riff for their smash hit Warning, taken from the same-titled album, strongly influenced by The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society LP.

UK glam-rock female star Suzi Quatro covered Tired Of Waiting For You for the If You Knew Suzi album.

Ray Davies produced the last album by The Turtles called Turtle Soap in 1969. The Turtles' members were hugely impressed with The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society album and asked Ray for this collaboration. Turtle Soap turned to be a less commercially successful album than the predecessors, however received positive critics greetings. This was the first and the last time Ray Davies used to produce someone else record.

David Bowie recorded the version of Where Have All The Good Times Gone, it was included in Pin-Ups album.

The song Big Sky is covered by the American band Yo La Tengo on their 1986 debut album Ride The Tiger. Also Big Sky was covered by the band Flop on their debut album Flop & The Fall Of The Mopsqueezer! on Frontier Records in 1992, a band extremely influenced by The Kinks sound that oddly emerged from the Seattle grunge scene albiet not sounding anything like what was heard then. Their version is a pumped up rocking raver, but listening to the band one can't help but hear The Kinks kry just pouring through. Fans of power-pop and post punk will find Flop's sound energetic and powerful.

The band Boss Hog, a sort of pre-alter ego band of the John Spencer Blues Explosion (both of the infamous seminal art-noise punk band Pussy Galore) covered I'm Not Like Everybody Else in 1996 for the film soundtrack of Suburbia on DGC Records. Probably the most bizarre noisey twisted cover of this song with Cristina Martinez's spastic vocal delivery and husband John Spencer's fuzzed out guitar. The song was also a favorite of the San Jose mid 60's psychedelic garage punk band The Chocolate Watchband released on their Feburary 1968 album The Inner Mystique with it's thundering beat perhaps beating Ray Davies at his own game.

A Kinks tribute compilation entitled Give The People What They Want was released in 2001 on Sub Pop records. It includes such great bands as Mudhoney, The Fastbacks, The Makers, Young Fresh Fellows, Mark Lanegan (of Screaming Trees fame) and the stand out track, a manic cover of This Man He Weeps Tonight by The Fallouts. This song was also covered by Metal Mike Saunders of the infamous mind twisted punk rock band the Angry Samoans on his solo album compilation entitled Next Stop Nowhere on Triple X Records in 1994 with a very compassionate result.

Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine covered "Come Dancing" at one of their live shows.

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps regularly use a modified version of "All Day and All Of The Night" as a marching cadence.