A Kink in his style

Band broke up, but Davies still experiments with music

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 6, 2006 at midnight

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As Ray Davies lay bleeding after being shot in the leg during a robbery in New Orleans, his life didn't exactly flash before his eyes.

"I still wonder - something that worries me - where are my pants that I was wearing? I was wearing a new pair of brown cords, and I really liked those so much, and the jacket and the shirt I was wearing," Davies says. "Everything that I was wearing has disappeared. I remember they were cutting at my trousers to get my pants off and get to the wound. I said, 'These are new pants,' and he said, 'Sir, we don't give a (expletive).' "

Davies can kid now about the January 2004 incident that laid him up for a while, but it shook him to the core. His new album, Other People's Lives, was written and recorded before the shooting incident, but going back to those songs during mixing was uncomfortable.

"None of the songs were written after the shooting, but they were all mixed after the shooting, and that's the hard part because some of the songs sound like they were written in response (to it), you know, The Tourist and some of the other tracks," Davies says during a conference call with a handful of reporters.

"It's like a prediction, an eerie prediction in some of those lyrics. So that was the hardest part, to confront all those songs. I couldn't play The Tourist as a song for like six months. It was one of the last songs that we mixed, because it . . . was like the little demon inside me saying, 'See, I told you so. Don't do that.' "

Incredibly, after 40 years with the Kinks and huge hits like You Really Got Me and Lola, Other People's Lives is Davies first solo album. He's at the Paramount Theatre tonight to play songs from throughout his career.

"I do Kinks songs . . . but the more they hear the new stuff, they realize I have an identity . . . I hate using the word, but I can't think of any other - educating an audience," Davies says.

Even though the Kinks informally disbanded in the mid-'90s their music is everywhere, thanks to TV commercials. Hewlett-Packard used Picture Book for commercials for their printers. Pete Townshend recently remarked that history would judge Davies to be one of the best songwriters of the modern era, yet the Kinks still aren't viewed as highly as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin and others.

"I'm not as visible as my peers. . . . I'm talking about Mick Jagger and people like that. I don't do much press. . . . This is the most press exposure I've had, oh, I'd say for 10 years. I was a member of a band, and a great band that's more known as a name than the faces. The name is known. Every rock fan knows of the Kinks, and the stature of this is not that with the Rolling Stones, and - or for the Beatles for that matter, or it could be argued even the Who," Davies says.

"I don't really sort of care about what other people do. You know, I think that is a key to maybe the Kinks' longevity because we experiment. We weren't afraid to fail."

Other People's Lives is a spectacular solo album, full of songs that sound like the Kinks and others that are wildly different.

"The songs have evolved over a 10-year period. Mainly, the thing is, I guess, 2001, 2002 was when I started doing the demos and started recording. So it's a long process. They rejected lots of songs that weren't right for this record," he says.

He was drawn to New Orleans because it's "so open to new musical ideas, and there wasn't - there weren't partitions between jazz and blues and pop and whatever type of music. It was just music, and I kind of liked that. The city had a musical collaborative spirit that appealed to me more than anywhere else I had been to in the States at that point."

He had the luxury of time and convenience in recording the album. He returned to his roots for recording and for inspiration, with many of his songs living up to the title Other People's Lives.

"I'm living now in my studio (in London). Where I work is probably less than a mile from where I grew up. So I'm very close to my origins . . . coming back from the studio and walking around here, where have all these neighbors gone that I grew up with, you know, all these people? Very few of them are still there. Most of them have moved on, and some have passed on," he says. "I think they are the basis of all my early work. . . . This album is about getting away from the origins, leaving, going to a new place."

Observation has always been a strong part of his songwriting, from Well Respected Man to Better Things.

"I can hone in on detail with people, all right. I do go for the details. You know, it's like little things people do, habits that people have, the way they walk. I do love that sort of observation with my writing, which leads to be sometimes a bit quirky," he says.

"I think that's one of my skills is knowing that it's always a new inner palette, new landscape every time I write a song, and I think experience teaches me, anyway, has taught me to be aware of that fact, that I can't just phone them in," he says. "They have to be researched."

He hears echoes of the Kinks in modern work today (The Gorillaz owe a particular debt) and is tickled.

"The same as my music was influenced by people like Chuck Berry and the blues people, and I do hear it, and how does the work go down? You know, in America too, and certainly with the independent music scene, those bands are inspired by the Kinks' work," he says.

He and brother Dave Davies may get together later this year to discuss a reunion, he acknowledges.

"We took chances, and we failed a lot, and (other artists' careers) would've been ended by some of the bold and stupid things we did on record," Davies says. "I've got a 9-year-old daughter now, and . . . she wants to hear my songs in the car. I find it really hard to explain some of the weird diversions I've taken in my music over the years."

He produced Other People's Lives himself but may go with a "name" producer for some other songs he has.

"I'm not ruling it out in the future, but this is such an important record for me to make, I don't want anybody else to get blamed for it. So I take the blame, I take the flak . . . I'm proud to have finished it. It's been a really difficult record to make and to promote, but I'm proud of it and I stand by it, and I should take all the flak for it."

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