50 Fun Facts About The Kinks

Ray Davies flew from New York to London mid-tour in 1970 to replace one brand name in Lola with what?

The generic cherry cola replaced Coca-Cola, because the BBC would not play a song that named a brand; the transatlantic dash to re-record two words interrupted the Kinks' American tour.

Ray Davies first set his 1967 Thames ballad in Liverpool, then scrapped that idea after which Beatles single?

Penny Lane had already staked out Liverpool nostalgia, so Davies moved his two lovers to a bridge over the Thames; they are often linked to the actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, a casting he floated himself in 1967.

Come Dancing remembers Ray Davies' sister Rene, who died the night she gave him which birthday present?

A Spanish guitar was Rene's present for Ray's 13th birthday on 21 June 1957; that evening she suffered a fatal heart attack dancing at the Lyceum ballroom, and the song reached number six in the US in 1983.

Which company's 2004 camera advert pulled the 1968 Kinks track Picture Book out of obscurity?

Hewlett-Packard's digital-camera spot made Picture Book one of the Kinks' most popular songs; Green Day had already lifted its riff for their 2000 single Warning.

Producer Terence Winter has called Dave Davies' Living on a Thin Line the most asked-about song on which TV drama?

The Sopranos gave the 1984 album track a second life; Dave Davies later borrowed its title for his second autobiography, published in July 2022.

Which Doors hit is routinely likened to the Kinks' All Day and All of the Night, a debt Robby Krieger denies?

Hello, I Love You has drawn the comparison since 1968; Krieger credits its beat to Cream's Sunshine of Your Love, while Ray Davies said that rather than sue he just wanted the Doors to own up.

Weird Al Yankovic's 1985 parody of the Kinks' Lola is sung about which Star Wars character?

Yoda was written in 1980, when The Empire Strikes Back was in cinemas, but stayed off record for about five years until both George Lucas and Ray Davies had given permission; it finally appeared on Dare to Be Stupid.

Larry Page said the You Really Got Me riff appeared as the Kinks picked out the chords of which Kingsmen hit?

Louie Louie gave the band its starting point, though the song itself began on the upright piano in the Davies family's front room as a lighter, jazzier tune.

Which rival LP came out the same November 1968 day as The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society?

The White Album arrived the same day, 22 November 1968, and eclipsed its sales; Village Green became the Kinks' first LP to miss the charts in both Britain and America.

Which future star, also a William Grimshaw pupil, sang at least once with the Ray Davies Quartet in 1962?

Rod Stewart soon formed Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, a local rival to the Davies brothers' group, which passed through the Ramrods and the Ravens before settling on the Kinks in 1964.

Before the Kinks, drummer Mick Avory rehearsed twice in 1962 with musicians who were about to become which band?

The Rolling Stones were still forming when Avory sat in at the Bricklayers Arms pub in mid-1962; the Kinks found him in January 1964 through an advert he had placed in Melody Maker.

Whose 1989 cover of the Kinks' Days peaked at UK number 12, precisely where the original had landed in 1968?

Kirsty MacColl's label wanted Days as the first single from her album Kite, but she insisted on leading with a song she had written herself, so the cover came out second.

Which band's debut single, from January 1979, covered the Kinks' 1964 album track Stop Your Sobbing?

The Pretenders earned their first Top of the Pops appearance with it in February 1979; frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, a longtime Kinks fan, later had a daughter with Ray Davies.

Which band's 1978 cover of the Kinks' David Watts had bassist Bruce Foxton singing lead instead of its frontman?

The Jam's version reached number 25 in Britain and sat on All Mod Cons; the real David Watts, Ray Davies said, was a concert promoter in Rutland.

Which Kinks number one of July 1966 is sung by a ruined aristocrat grumbling about Harold Wilson's Labour taxes?

Sunny Afternoon was written at Ray Davies' house while he was ill, and it sat beside the Beatles' Taxman that year in mocking the top rates of Wilson's government.

Which 1966 Kinks single pokes fun at the Carnaby Street mods of Swinging London?

Dedicated Follower of Fashion reached number four in Britain after the band tried the arrangement, diction and guitar sounds several times over before settling on a take.

The Kinks' 1972 ballad Celluloid Heroes takes a walk down which Los Angeles street?

Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame amused Ray Davies because the stars were on the street and you could walk all over them, an irony he built into a song about success and failure.

In the Kinks' 1977 Father Christmas, poor kids rough up a store Santa and demand what instead of toys?

Money is the demand, along with jobs for their parents; toys, the kids argue, are impractical and belong with richer children.

Which American band's 1978 debut single covered the Kinks' You Really Got Me?

Van Halen had played Kinks songs in their club days, and their producer hurried the single out after hearing that a rival band, Angel, was recording its own version.

Dave Davies slashed his amplifier's speaker cone with what to get the sound of You Really Got Me?

A razor blade did it: Davies said he cut up the cone of his small Elpico amp out of frustration and was shocked and excited that it worked, then showed the sound to the band.

The Kinks' first single, released in February 1964 and almost wholly ignored, covered which Little Richard song?

Long Tall Sally was suggested by promoter Arthur Howes, who had just heard the Beatles play it in Paris; it flopped despite a publicity push, and the Ray Davies original that followed, You Still Want Me, was passed over too.

Which Kinks song did Ray Davies perform at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games?

Waterloo Sunset was sung by Davies after he rode into the stadium in a London black cab; viewers in the United States missed it, because NBC left the performance out of its broadcast.

Dave Davies' 1970 album track Strangers, never a single, found new fans through which Wes Anderson film?

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) used three songs from the Kinks' 1970 Lola album; Dave Davies wrote Strangers about an old school friend who had died of a drug overdose.

After a rowdy 1965 US tour, which body refused the Kinks permits to perform there for the next four years?

The American Federation of Musicians cut the band off from the main rock market at the height of the British Invasion, and Ray Davies flew to Los Angeles in April 1969 to negotiate an end to the ban.

Which city's seaside chanting, heard on a 1965 tour stopover, inspired the drone of the Kinks' See My Friends?

Bombay's fishermen, chanting as they carried out their nets at dawn, gave See My Friends its drone; the single came out in July 1965, months before the Beatles put a sitar on Norwegian Wood.

The Kinks wrote 1969's Arthur as the score for a play commissioned by which broadcaster, then never made?

Granada Television approached Ray Davies in January 1969 and he built the storyline with novelist Julian Mitchell, but the show was cancelled at the last minute when its producer could not secure financial backing.

In which city did drummer Mick Avory knock Dave Davies out with his hi-hat stand during a May 1965 concert?

Cardiff's Capitol Theatre was the venue on 19 May 1965; Davies needed 16 stitches at Cardiff Royal Infirmary, and the blow was payback for the guitarist kicking over the drum kit.

The live disc of the Kinks' 1972 double album Everybody's in Show-Biz came from two nights at which venue?

Carnegie Hall hosted the Kinks for two nights; from this album on, Ray Davies steered the band into theatrical concept pieces that surfaced fully on Preservation Act 1 in 1973.

Pete Townshend wrote which song to mimic You Really Got Me so the Kinks' producer might take on the Who?

I Can't Explain got the Who the producer they wanted; Townshend later admitted it 'can't be beat for straightforward Kink copying', and the producer agreed the song had been written to catch his ear.

Which Manchester post-punk band took the Kinks' Victoria into the UK Top 40 in 1988?

The Fall, led by Mark E. Smith, reached number 35 with it, their second Top 40 hit; the first, a year earlier, was also a cover, of R. Dean Taylor's There's a Ghost in My House.

Which British group had the 1966 American hit with Ray Davies' Dandy, reaching number five on the Hot 100?

Herman's Hermits also took Dandy to number one in Canada, while the Kinks' own version was only issued as a single in continental Europe, where it topped the German chart.

Which calypso-flavoured 1970 follow-up to Lola was the Kinks' last UK Top 10 hit, peaking at number five?

Apeman needed a fix before radio would play it: Ray Davies re-recorded the line about air pollution 'a-foggin' up' his eyes, because the word sounded too much like a swear word.

Which 1979 album, cut largely in New York, became the Kinks' best-selling studio album in America, peaking at number 11?

Low Budget was cut mostly at the Power Station and Blue Rock Studios in New York; it did poorly in Britain, where no Kinks album had charted since 1967.

Which label boss's request for a club-friendly record produced the Kinks' disco-beat 1979 single Superman?

Clive Davis, who ran the Kinks' label Arista, got his dance record from a band that was no fan of disco; Ray Davies has called the song a joke at his boss's expense.

Come Dancing's US number six in 1983 tied which 1965 single as the Kinks' highest-charting American hit?

Tired of Waiting for You had reached number one in Britain and number six in America in 1965; the 1983 tie owed much to a Julien Temple video in heavy rotation on the young MTV.

Which 1981 Kinks single reuses the All Day and All of the Night riff and brings back the character Lola?

Destroyer has its narrator take Lola home and turn paranoid; Record World called it 'perhaps the first heavy metal rap song', and it was the first American single from Give the People What They Want.

The 2014 Kinks jukebox musical, winner of four Olivier Awards, premiered at which London venue?

Hampstead Theatre opened it in 2014 and the show then moved to the West End's Harold Pinter Theatre, with a book by Joe Penhall and Ray Davies' songs.

Ray Davies was shot in the leg in January 2004 while chasing purse-snatchers in which American city?

New Orleans saw him return in 2011 to play the Voodoo Experience festival; the shooting came in the French Quarter, the same year he was made a CBE.

Which 1967 single, credited to Dave Davies alone though co-written with his brother, reached UK number three?

Death of a Clown began as three notes plunked out on the out-of-tune piano at the Davies family home, and its success pushed Dave to consider a solo career.

Which member of the Kinks' original line-up was the first to leave for good, quitting in April 1969?

Pete Quaife's bandmates only believed he had gone when a music paper ran a story on his new group, Mapleoak; John Dalton, who had covered for him after a 1966 car crash, took over on bass.

Jim Rodford and Bob Henrit, the Kinks' 1980s rhythm section, had both played in which earlier band?

Argent was formed in late 1968 by Rod Argent, Russ Ballard, Rodford and Henrit; Henrit took over the Kinks' drum stool from Mick Avory in 1984, six years after Rodford arrived.

Which 1993 album, the Kinks' only studio release for Columbia, was the last they made before the band broke up in 1997?

Phobia was made by a four-piece and managed a single week on the Billboard chart at number 166; Columbia dropped the band in 1994 and their last public show came in 1996.

Which producer bowed out with 1967's Something Else, after which Ray Davies produced the Kinks himself?

Shel Talmy, an American working in London, had produced the Kinks since 1964; Davies took over with misgivings, later saying he felt he should not have been allowed to produce Something Else.

The carpet-layer hero of the Kinks' 1969 album Arthur was based on a brother-in-law who emigrated where?

Australia became home to the Davies brothers' older sister Rose and her husband Arthur Anning; a later visit to their new home there helped inspire the album's song Shangri-La.

Which 1967 Kinks single, a UK number three, was inspired by a gardener in Ray Davies' neighbourhood?

Autumn Almanac proved the end of a run: after it the Kinks went almost three years without another UK top ten single.

Before the Kinks took off, Ray Davies spent 1962–63 at which art school near his north London home?

Hornsey College of Art's Christmas dance is where Davies asked Alexis Korner for advice and got an introduction to Giorgio Gomelsky, the future Yardbirds manager.

Music writers often give Ray Davies which honorific, a title he has himself disputed?

Godfather of Britpop reflects the debt that bands such as Blur owed to his songs of English life, nostalgia and social satire; Davies himself has disputed the title.

The BBC refused to play which 1969 Kinks single because its lyric used a mildly rude word for the backside?

Plastic Man was written and rushed out as a sure-fire hit, so the ban undid the whole plan; American buyers did not get the song until The Great Lost Kinks Album in 1973.

The elder Davies brother's first memoir, pointedly billed as an unauthorised autobiography, carries what title?

X-Ray is no straight memoir: its narrator is a nameless 19-year-old hired by 'the Corporation' to interview an aged Ray Davies, which lets Davies tell his own story from the outside.

Dave Davies' 1980 solo album, on which he played every instrument himself, took its title from what?

Its catalogue number, AFL1-3603, served as the title; the one-man record reached number 42 on the Billboard chart, his highest solo placing.