Kinks co-founder Dave Davies on his upcoming music film
classic rock dave davies dave davies rock 'n' roll journey martin davies rock documentary the kinks tour film
Legendary Kinks guitarist Dave Davies and his son Martin talk about their music documentary mixing Dave's upcoming tour with a look back at his early days.
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This year was Dave Davies‘ 50th in the music business, but that might not be the most important milestone 2013 brought the Kinks co-founder and rock icon. In May, the 66-year-old Davies returned to the concert stage for the first time since 2004, when he suffered a stroke that for a time wiped out his ability to play. That gig at New York’s City Winery and a short series of shows that followed coincided with the release of I Will Be Me, Davies’ sixth solo album, and mixed plenty of Kinks tunes in with the new material. Another clutch of US club dates is on tap in November.

The upcoming tour will be the focal point of Dave Davies’ Rock ‘n’ Roll Journey, a music documentary Dave is making with his eldest son, London-based filmmaker Martin Davies. The doc, currently fundraising on Indiegogo, will also look back at the Dave’s youth in the North London neighborhood of Muswell Hill, the early days of the Kinks, and their experiences in America riding the crest of the British Invasion.

As any good rock classicist knows, it wasn’t all sunny afternoons for the Kinks. Their body of work is as acclaimed and influential as any band’s – garage and punk owe a great deal to Dave’s furious riffing on early hits “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” glam and Britpop to his brother Ray Davies’ theatrical and quintessentially English songwriting sensibility. But the band rode though a series of commercial peaks and valleys before breaking up in 1996, and Ray and Dave might be rock’s all-time battling brothers.

The on-again, off-again reunion talk that has periodically swirled since the Kinks’ split has recently been on again, but in the meantime Dave is pursuing his own renewed musical path – happily and healthily, from the sound of things when we reached him a few days ago in New Jersey (he splits time these days between England and the New York area). In a dual Skype interview with Martin in London, father and son talked about the film project, Dave’s return to the road, and how his abiding interest in psychic research and spiritualism – partly born out of his love for old Hammer horror movies – have intertwined with his rock ‘n’ roll journey.

MFW: I saw the Kinks a couple times in the early ’80s at the Capital Centre outside DC, and those are two shows I cherish from when I was a kid. Did you enjoy that period, when the band was at their arena-rock peak? Do you miss aspects of that life, of being a rock star?

Dave Davies: I liked it. I don’t remember it that much [laughs]. No, of course it was great, I loved it. I loved touring and I loved playing big places. But I started to get a bit stressed out with the big shows, and I found it quite tiring. They all seemed the same – you get on stage and bang your drums, and the guitar sounds all mesh into a load of echoing. But it was fun for a while. When you get older it’s nice to interact with the audience more. I find it really helps me. I like small gigs because you can have more personal interaction with members of the audience.

Was it frustrating for you when you were ill, to have to give that up for so long?

DD: It was, but there was a point when I kind of resigned meself to the fact that I might not ever play again live. I wasn’t bothered, really, but once I got back onstage I found I really missed it. It was wonderful. Those shows we did back in end of May, June this year were great fun.

Why did you decide to do it? Was it the imperative of having a new record out?

DD: I was so excited to get the record together. It took two years on I Will Be Me, with writing, getting ideas, getting a producer on board. It was the impetus – a feeling that we had a really good album, something worth promoting. It was kind of, “Oh shit, why not?” I’m glad I did. On the first day at Winery, back in May, I was actually terrified [laughs]. I really was. And I got onstage, and in the first 10 minutes it all came – the feeling comes back. It was a very emotional gig. And the audience was so wonderful. I just felt overwhelmed.

Why did you decide to make a film of this tour?

Martin Davies: It’s something we’ve talked about for years. There hasn’t really been a recording, a video recording, of Dave playing live. And just watching a few other documentaries, I found them a bit more interesting when it’s not just a live performance – cutting in behind-the-scenes stuff.

DD: Also me and Martin worked on a film called Mystical Journey. It was more based on my mystical interests in the occult and people that have influenced me, in England, mainly. This film kind of grew out of that. We wanted to make something a bit more rock ‘n’ roll, in your face.

You describe it at the Indiegogo page as a road movie. Do you have any sense yet of what that’s going to mean in terms of what we’ll see?

MD: I think just quite informal. It’s like when Dave was over here [in England] last. You just go through a meal and a few beers and that’s when the good conversation happens, the good stories. Just a relaxed feel to it. I don’t know what you think, Dave. Just go with the flow, I guess.

DD: Yeah, exactly. We’ll go with the flow, the shows, talk to the fans, and any special guests that we meet along the way. We’ll have interviews with people that I knew back in the day, in the beginning, which we’ll do in London when we get back there. We’ve already contacted a few people from the old days, the ’60s, and they want to get involved.

As an aside, Dave, because of what’s happened over the weekend – did you know Lou Reed at all?

DD: I knew him a little. And I loved his music. I thought he was one of the most important New York poets and rock ‘n’ roll singers of that period. It’s very sad. I was talking to someone this morning and they were saying, out of a lot of people who come and go, performers who’ve died over the last few years, it seemed like Lou Reed was gonna be there forever. He’s always supposed to be there. I remember he used to come to a lot of Kinks shows, and there was a lot of mutual admiration society stuff [laughs]. He was a big fan of the Kinks, and of course we were big fans.

MD: I don’t know if it’s publicly available, but the Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies tour in ’71, there’s footage of Lou Reed backstage, hanging out with you guys.

DD: Yeah, I remember Ray archived it.

MD: Hopefully it’ll be released one day.

You and he definitely shared a love of loud guitars.

DD: Yeah, I love the guitar work on [the Velvet Underground's] early stuff. I love the guitar tone. It was a free or more open sound.

You’ve talked about the new album as being from the point of view of an older man looking back on his life – there’s even a song called “Livin’ in the Past.” The movie is going to have some reminiscing, looking back at your life and talking to old friends – is all that coming from the same place? Do you feel like you’re in a summing-up phase?

DD: No, no. I think I Will Be Me is about optimism, really. It’s about accepting and being happy about the past, but at the same time trying to move on and embrace the future, whatever it might bring, which might not be what we want. I think we have to be quite brave and accept the future. That’s the underlying message of the album. The film, it will be reflections of the past and what’s happening now. It’ll be many things, I hope.

I was struck on the song “Little Green Amp” with how much fun you seem to be having with your own past – quoting yourself musically and playing with some of the mythology of the Kinks.

DD: When I wrote that song I was trying to think of something that reminded me of “You Really Got Me,” the riff, without actually copying it. It came to mind that it might be fun to actually do the riff backwards, which is what “Green Amp” is. It’s “DA da da-DA da” instead of “da DA-da da DA” [laughs]. It just appealed to my sense of humor.

You told Rolling Stone several weeks ago there was a 50/50 chance the Kinks will get back together and tour next year. Are those still the odds?

DD: Well, Ray and I spoke recently – a few days ago, last Friday. We had a good conversation. It’s a pity Martin wasn’t there to film it [laughs]. That would’ve been something. That might yet happen. Martin could film us having an argument [laughs].

There’s this popular notion, I think, that you and Ray are so completely estranged you don’t even talk to each other. Does that get exaggerated?

DD: It is exaggerated. It is up and down. It’s been difficult for a long time. But it would be nice to do something. We haven’t agreed on exactly what yet. After these shows and I get back to England for a little bit, hopefully we can iron out any problems and try and do something. It would be nice doing something, even if it’s not the reunion that everybody keeps talking about.

Julien Temple has been working for quite some time now on a dramatized film about the Kinks. Are you involved in that?

DD: On a very intimate level. Me and Julien, and Ray, have been working on a script for about 5, 6, 7 – 8 years maybe.

It can’t be easy to be the director of a film where you and Ray are collaborating on the script.

DD: Very difficult [laughs]. But we think we have, not a shooting script, but we have a basis for a script. I don’t know when we’re gonna start filming it, but at least we’re moving ahead.

Martin, you decided to go into filmmaking and not music. What were the reasons? I know at least one of your brothers is a musician.

MD: A couple. My brother, Simon, was a drummer for years, and Russ is a musician. When I was 11 or 12 I got into Super 8 films at school, and me and Dave used to play around with the camera.

DD: We made horror films, do you remember that? It was really good. That was quite fun.

MD: I was probably a bit too meek to go into [music]. I did drum briefly, but I really didn’t have too much aptitude for making music. I’ve always been interested in film. I digressed [when] I went to university, and I kind of wish I’d done film stuff then, but I got back into it about 15 years ago. I did a postgraduate course down in Cornwall in television and broadcasting and set up an independent company with a friend. We did little documentaries, a lot of stuff to do with the wildlife down in Cornwall. About 11 years ago I came back to London and I worked at Konk [the Kinks' studio] for three and a half years. I did a lot of editing and some filming. I really had the urge to make my own projects, which is when I suggested to Dave we do this Mystical Journey thing.

Dave, spirituality and mysticism and Eastern thought have become major parts of your life. That’s something a lot of your peers were exploring in the mid to late ’60s. Is that when your interest was kindled as well?

DD: It really started when I had Martin. I tried to get interested in astrology when he was born [in 1967]. I wanted to find out all the planetary movements and what they all meant and how different things affected behavior. Astrology has always been a really important aspect of that path, if you like. It led to me to yoga, and meeting different psychics, and coming across great people like Rudolf Steiner and Israel Regardie.

MD: Also [Mystical Journey] covers our family. Dave’s mum and sisters were quite into spiritualist things.

DD: My mum and my sisters used to have seances, the Ouija board thing. We discussed that a lot.

Have you ever felt any conflicts internally between the metaphysician in you and the rock ‘n’ roller?

DD: Earlier on I did. In the ’70s I was really into spiritual healing. I was even thinking of packing it up – all this bloody touring, all the crazy people that are in the music business. But a guy, a medium I met in the Bronx, he persuaded me to stick at it. He said I was already doing healing with the music. This was an important turning point for me: rather than leave music behind I integrated the metaphysical side and the healing thing into the music. I think the music really benefited by the new input or emphasis. Martin and I often talk about energy and things that happen globally, and Martin has a deep interest in the philosophical aspects of teachings and various alternative sciences.

Do you feel like being in touch with those paths helped you in your recovery after the stroke?

DD: The spiritual stuff really helped me when I was ill. Without that knowledge of yoga and the broader philosophy of life it would have had a much more damaging effect on me than it did. Spiritual ideas and yoga and all these wonderful concepts do lift the spirit. It gives you tools to deal with all kinds of negativity, like sorrow and loss and upset and anger and all these negative emotions we continually have to deal with from day to day to day. There’s a lot of help out there, a lot of supportive philosophies and concepts, especially nowadays. People are much more open to the idea of life and the mind and thoughts as energy, working with energy, which I find very exciting, because music helps to channel these spiritual forces.

I was always interested – when I was a kid growing up in Muswell Hill, and there was a was a little cinema called the Odeon, I saw the first Dracula film there, with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. It was amazing! I used to sit in awe looking at all these great actors and these really strange stories. There was a guy called Dennis Wheatley, a writer, and they made a couple films in the ’60s and ’70s [of] his books – To the Devil a Daughter and The Devil Rides Out. Amazing stories. It was really Dennis Wheatley that started my interest in the occult. So it goes way back.

So the prevalence of that stuff, communicated through the medium of popular culture, the popular arts, made you more open to investigating it on a more serious level?

DD: Absolutely. That’s what art’s for, to get you thinking and wondering about things. Even though those movies were made very low-budget, and the people that were making them didn’t take the subject matter seriously. You can relate the idea or story, or myth if you like, of Dracula and vampirism to very prevalent things happening in modern society.

MD: It’s more of an allegory, rather than a strict blood ritual.

DD: That was a big interest of mine, the study of psychological states of being, and how psychic energy interacts with people. Some people are more parasitical in their nature and some people are more loving and giving. You can always tell when you’ve been in the presence of someone who’s kind of “vampirish,” if you like. The word sounds really dramatic, but it is a form of vampirism when people suck all your energy. It’s very prominent in politics – a lot of narcissists. I studied all this stuff, because I have weird people in my family [laughs]. There’s a lot of weird people in the music business, and in the arts. You meet people you think are great and they have great art, and they made me feel terrible. They have all these strange needs and wants. It’s not always healthy.

In the rock ‘n’ roll life you had a lot of opportunity to observe that, and to see that it can have a body count.

DD: It’s a very strange world to be in. I was thrown into it, really, as a kid. By the time I started to reach my manhood I was living in a strange world with lots of women and drugs. It was very confusing. When I got into the early 1970s I was kind of wiped out with this weird, negative energy that was around in that crossover period, the ’60s as they moved into the ’70s. It’s not an easy terrain to navigate. On the plus side it gave me a lot of experience with people, and traveling, and realizing that, underneath, most people want the same things out of life. It’s an amazing life I’ve had, and hope I’ll continue to have. It’s always important to look beyond your own life or ghetto or town or village and reach out to other people. That’s an important thing I’ve learned.

Dave Davies plays six US shows next month, starting November 12 in New York – check here for dates and ticket links. The crowdfunding campaign for Dave Davies Rock ‘n’ Roll Journey continues through November 3.