Interview with DAVE DAVIES

November 2024

The most underrated of legendary guitarists, with popular myths even denying him the honor of having played the familiar riffs he didn’t write but gave edge to, Dave Davies never really cared about securing his legacy outside of THE KINKS, the ensemble he and his older brother Ray formed in the early ’60s to become quite a formidable force on the global level. Content to be a bon vivant, if not without sporadic existential plunge, a string of sentiments first vented off in “Death Of A Clown” that would serve as the younger Davies’ calling card for years, yet then embracing a spiritual aspect of life.

All the while knowing the world still listens to “You Really Got Me” and “All Day And All Of The Night” and enjoys the jagged sound he invented ages ago, Dave found a personal, highly individual voice after suffering a stroke in 2004. What followed the tragic event and the veteran’s recovery was an impressive array of albums which built a fresh, albeit just as edgy, narrative on the tentative solo foundation of earlier decades, and there’s no stopping him now when living on a thin line turned from an old lyric to impetus to create, the desire we discussed at some length in a quieter moment of the artist’s current reality.

– Dave, please allow me to quote a line from one of your songs, “Trust Your Heart”: “trust your place in time, though you have won and lost” – so do you trust your place in time at this point of your life?

It’s funny because sometimes you have to – and so maybe I’m here for a reason. We have to have faith and hope to see the reason why we’re going through shit, but I’ve always tried to be optimistic.

– And your smile, so familiar from old videos, seem to remain optimistic. How much of that young boy is still there in you?

Growing up, we all have difficult lives in some way, but I always kept a lot of enthusiasm for childlike ideas, or notions, about things, because sometimes problems aren’t solvable, so you have to just move on and hope, and that’s why we hang on to that child inside us. Maybe it knows more than we do. I was very fortunate, because I had a great career with music and everything, but life is difficult, so sometimes you have to smile, even though you feel like shit. (Laughs.)

– It’s basically how this old Charlie Chaplin song goes.

Ah, I love Charlie Chaplin! (Sings.) “Smile, though your heart is aching…” Yeah, only sometimes life is weird, but I like to think that if you put on a smile and have a good attitude, things change. I just have to be myself, because I don’t know what else to be, and to hope that it works out. Growing up in a big family, with so many people around, teaches you that you have to get on, to use whatever you can to get on, or it doesn’t work. But we were lucky because we had a lot of musical relatives and we learnt a bit of music.

– But does the myth-making around the band feel larger than life or smaller than life?

Oh, good question! It can help lift your ego and make you feel good about yourself, but it also can be a responsibility and make you do things you don’t want to do. Many years ago, I went to a therapist in England, when I was having heart problems, and she was really good; she said that people like me are hypersensitive, and it’s easier for them to stand in front of people than it is to mix with people. I learned a lot from that because I spent so many hours in front of strangers, in front of audience and crowds, that I feel more comfortable with this than having everything in my face. But I felt very lucky that I do what I do and still can do it, thank God. It’s hard. Show business is not easy. But I don’t think anything is easy these days, so we all need the support of our friends.

– Is that why people hang on to their past and want THE KINKS to reunite?

Well, maybe we could do something. (Laughs.) I’m going to see Ray at Christmas. I’m going to sing a few songs and have a nice time.

– No, I mean, why do people want you to reunite? Is that nostalgia for the nostalgia that was in your songs? A recursive nostalgia?

Maybe an element of nostalgia is good. I think some of it, if it makes you lift your spirit, that’s good. And sometimes nostalgia is all you got, and thinking about good things that have happened in the past is sometimes supportive to yourself, to your heart. We all need a little bit of that, of whatever it takes to get up in the morning.

– Was that the reason behind your soft-focusing the past in “Living On A Thin Line” as opposed to how “Kink” described it? Was this difference between your autobiographies, especially where they concerned Ray, intentional?

Yeah, it was deliberate. You can’t keep complaining about situations – they drive you mad! – and you have to trust that you can deal with it. I love my brother, although it’s been difficult. He’s a very difficult person, but he’s very talented. And talented people aren’t always nice, so you have to work at it. It’s like a painting – sometimes you start painting and you say, “Oh shit, what am I doing this for?” And then, all of a sudden, it’ll take shape, and then, “Oh, it’s not bad, it’s okay,” so you keep going. I find a lot of things in my life have been like that. It takes effort to work with difficult problems, but you have to persevere – with people, with ideas, with paintings, with relationships.

– What was more soul-cleansing for you: writing the books or painting?

I think painting, because there’s no consequence – or no obvious consequence – in your mind to see without your ideas but you paint ideas down. It may sound terrible, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but sometimes when you don’t really know what you’re doing, you get answers in the picture. And music’s a bit like that, too: you seem to not be going anywhere, and then, with a bit of luck and god willing, you come up with a little riff or a shape, or a form, or an idea, and you keep trying, even though perseverance is hard.

– You persevere with making records, but what do you think those who buy your next album expect of it: more riff-based numbers like “All Day And All Of The Night” or more introspective, melodic songs like “Death Of A Clown”?

I don’t know, but I like to try and put positive energy or laughter into music, ideas that help me and maybe others who’ll think, “Oh, that’s sweet!” It’s part of our job as artists, be it painters or musicians, to help people. I know in this day and age it sounds a bit weird, but we have to help each other because that’s all we’ve got. And we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. Why throw away good feelings when you don’t need to? If I support Ray in a song and it helps him write it, we’ve both done something to help everybody, so I find works like that for me.

– You’re saying that this sibling dynamics was important to the band’s songs?

Yeah, oh yeah. Even though I hasted it a lot of times. As a young man, I had a terrible temper, I was full of rage, and when you’re like that you can’t always articulate and put it into words, but when you learn meditation it can sometimes remove you from that turmoil and that pressure, so you can sit back rather than react, you can take a few moments and think, “Hang on, it’s an old idea!” That’s always helped me, because meditation puts your soul in a quiet place.

– But you still prefer your records to be very noisy, in a positive sense. How do you balance that contradiction?

The thing is, I’ve got feelings and I’ve got to get them out somehow, and sometimes it’s better to get them out than not get them out at all. Sometimes when you’re trying to express the way you feel, it’s not easy, so you have to shout. The angst or the rage can help you do things: instead of hitting someone, you can write a line or a song.

– So how do you react when people say that you invented heavy metal?

On one hand, it’s nice, but on the other hand, do I really want to put my name to that? I don’t know. I’d like to think it’s a good thing.

– Did you think that was a good thing when, before you went solo, fans compiled things like “The Album That Never Was” for you – instead of you?

At the time, I didn’t really like it, but you get used to it and then you realize it’s better if people listen to your music than if they don’t. So it’s a bit of both.

– Was self-producing your albums a daunting or liberating experience?

When I first recorded a solo album on my own, I thought, “If I fuck up, I can’t blame anybody else!” And then, “That’s not cathartic, that’s not helpful!” I tried recording with other people and it wasn’t working: because I’m not a trained musician, I found it difficult to relate ideas in my head, so the best way to do it was to do it myself, and I’ve found it a lot easier when I had that mindset.

– But wasn’t it intimidating to be playing drums or keyboards that you didn’t really played before?

No, I didn’t – but I’ve always had a fairly good sense of timing, which is really important. If you’ve got timing and a few licks, you’re halfway there.

– Didn’t you find that you were, in some way, exposing your vulnerability by doing everything yourself?

Yep. Absolutely. It’s a double-sided coin, because sometimes if you can’t get the basis of the feeling of something, isn’t that quite horrible? You can’t get to the right place in your head, so half the time you think, “Oh, fuck it!” But I also found that it’s hard to do everything – you can’t do everything!

– However, there are two pieces on “AFL1-3603” – “Where Do You Come From” with its multilayered harmonies and long instrumental intro, and “Run” with its almost flamenco passages – that sound as if you were trying to establish yourself as a guitar hero. Were you?

Yeah, but it wasn’t the conscious thing. Obviously, I always liked guitar – it’s my main love, playing the guitar – so it seemed logical to use it as a first instrument. When Ray and I worked together, it didn’t always do what I wanted it to, it clashed sometimes, but when I went solo play I could do virtually everything what I liked, with a different feeling and different approach.

– Just recently, THE KINKS “Misfits” and “Sleepwalker” were reissued, so I decided to watch your concert on “The Old Grey Whistle Test” from 1977, and what caught my attention was how fusion-like your solos were at that period. Were you into jazz rock then?

Yes. But when you play an instrument, you get influenced by everything. When I first started, I was very influenced by people like Big Bill Broonzy and a lot of other black blues guys, and a guy called Davey Graham. He was the English white folk singer who had a different approach to guitar – it was like oriental music, Indian-style playing, but there was also blues and then it was country, a good mixture. That’s what I liked about Davey Graham: that he was a great guitar player and that he brought in different elements. What I didn’t like was when he would sing out of tune, but then I realized that it was a nuance you sometimes need, so I started to listen to music differently and try and hear more honesty in other people’s work. We can learn by everything from everyone.

– Talking about singing… I assume that your high voice came from singing harmonies with Ray, correct?

Yeah.

– But you seemed to have finally found your real voice twenty years ago, after the stroke. So, looking at it philosophically, could we say that something good came out of something bad?

Ah, that’s interesting. I didn’t think about it, but you’ve always got to hope everything’s going to be okay in the end. When I had my stroke, after a day or so, I was lying on my back and I realized that, though I couldn’t do anything – I couldn’t move or play – I could try and write! That’s when I got ideas for “Fractured Mindz” which was a lot of fun to make. Luckily, my vocal cords and my ideas were not affected too badly, because the brain doesn’t forget things. We just have to keep reminding it constantly about everything, keep reminding and reminding.

– When you recorded your first solo album, was it all new songs or songs that you had been accumulating for years before that?

Both. But there was a song I’ve always wanted to do and I never finished it. It starts off, (sings) “I see mountains high, da-da-da!” and the bridge part is really good, but I don’t like anything else in it. Still, I keep going back to it, and I was talking to my son Martin about it, and we found an old version of it, so maybe I could finally finish it. I’m never throwing such things away.

– And why should you if it feels relevant? And that’s how I feel about your “Glamour” album. But do you think that it’s stood the test of time?

Yes. Because I like to write about things that are important, about things that I care about, and I care about the world blowing up, so that worry or concern is obviously going to be a part of me.

– Another relevant record of yours is “Bug” which not only saw you return to riffs but also to concept works. Weren’t you afraid to fall into that same trap as Ray did with “Preservation” or “Soap Opera”?

The concept was an accident! I woke up one day and thought of somebody I met who thought they had a bug in their head, and that gave me a great idea. Sure, I’ve seen movies about it, as I love science fiction movies – not all of them, but those that give you ideas about real life, as I think they can’t always be dismissed as just weird shit, so I liked the idea of a bug in your head. And then I got to fight the same bug to try and work. It sounds a bit crazy, but sometimes that’s what happens in your mind: I thought the “Bug” riff, and the whole album grew out of it. What was a big driving force on “Bug” was the idea that we’re being controlled by other powers – or maybe by our own weird side of us. It is like paranoia. It’s schizophrenia, man!

– By the way, the title track of “Fractured Mindz” and “D-Bug” which closed “Bug” were kind of rave cuts, and to me they sort of brought you to the beginning, when you were a raver and when there were THE RAVENS before THE KINKS. So did you listen to contemporary music or was it an influence of your kids when you went for these two pieces?

(Laughing and nodding.) It was influenced by my son Russell, who was an electronic guy, and it helped me think differently about the music I was doing. I got a lot of inspiration from Russell for that album, but I look back on it with humor because I had made an album about a person who’s got a bug in their brain and I would like to make a film of it – and there’s me, on my back, having a fucking stroke, which was a bit funny but, obviously, not a pleasant thing. It was horrible, and I thought that was it, that that was the end. Lights out.

– What did you feel the first time you were recording with Russ?

I loved it. It was great! And I was trying hard not to be a bossy bitch – it was me who needed bossing around. We all do, sometimes. Russell was really helpful on that album, and he wrote some good stuff.

– How did the two of you arrive at THE ASCHERE PROJECT’s “Two Worlds”?

It’s a story that I wanted to make a film of – I still want to make a film of it one day – the story that touches on so many themes regarding our planet and what is out there. But is there anything out there? There are many aspects to my interest in spiritual things, crazy things, because sometimes the only way to work through stuff is to use imagination. Russell and I wrote it together: I’d draw a passage and send it to Russ, and he would adapt it and put into a different landscape, because music to me has always been a visual thing. When you can get the visual ideas, it helps the whole tone of the piece, and I think Ray tends to write visually as well. Not for nothing THE KINKS had an album called “Think Visual”! (Laughs.) That’s where the imagination and the mind really come together: when you’re in that creative process of trying to gather ideas together. (Intones his old song.) So imagination’s real.

– Did working on that project remind you in any way of working with John Cameron on the “Village of the Damned” soundtrack?

Yeah, because I had a great time then too. John Carpenter is a funny guy, and I found it really nice to work with someone who had a good sense of humor. As I mentioned, I love science fiction anyway, and the original story of “Village of the Damned” was always inspiring to me: it’s an unusual concept and a sad and tragic story, but maybe it’s real, because we don’t know where we come from, and I was so glad to work with John on that. I enjoyed that very much.

– Since we’re speaking about imagination… What did you think of Ray, who often wrote songs based on your experience, living vicariously through you?

Yeah, school boys are indescribable! (Laughs.) Ray’s always had that knack of thinking up something, which actually happened. He writes about people, but changes scenery and moves people around. And that’s what you do when you’re writing: you conjure up different ideas about where you are in time because, when you write, it’s devoid of real time. It’s hard to know what time and space we’re in, when we’re in a highly creative space in your mind. Sometimes you look around and think, “Did we do that?” That’s a place I enjoy! I like imagination, working with themes and musical nuances. I love it. It’s wonderful. I’ve always got ideas. I don’t want to say too much about it, but I’m trying to work on some mime ideas. I met this great guy [Grigory Gurevich] who was giving me good ideas about it and how to utilize it with music, so it’s something to be working on.

– Given that THE KINKS could only exist when both of you, yourself and Ray, were there, did you ever regret that you didn’t insist on including more of your material in the band’s records?

It was difficult with me being a younger brother in a big family. My sisters were all into music, and I was so influenced by them and their presence that that affected the way I thought and felt about the world. I often felt that I was around to help my family first, and other people second, and I felt that it was important for Ray to find his feet, as he learned music himself, and that it was my job to help him.

– And you were clearly writing about your family in songs like “Front Room” and “In The Old Days” on "Rippin' Up Time": can we expect this full-on nostalgic album of you?

As I said, I like nostalgia, and it’s often good to reflect on the past, but I don’t like it too much, as it makes me think, “It was good then, wasn’t it? But what about now?” So there cannot be a full album of songs like this – I wouldn’t do that, and if I did I’d probably get depressed.

– You mention at least one unreleased song in your books, “Georgie Was”: do you have many pieces like that in your archives? Enough to go for a box set?

A few, but I’m not going to release this one, no. I want to try and knock into shape the music that I’ve already done, or thought of. I’d like to work on the reissues of albums like “AFL” and “Chosen People” – there were songs in there that I really enjoyed, including “Cold Winter” which I always loved: it was a personal favorite that Martyn Ford arranged and helped me with the score. There’s a few songs on the album I want to explore more, so they can take me somewhere else, and I’d like to work more on other projects that I haven’t really explored enough.

– I found it fascinating that “Little Green Amp” and some other pieces on "I Will Be Me" evoke and quote old songs. Why did you decide to go so meta on your past with the help of young musicians?

Sometimes you’re racking your brain trying to think of ideas, but sometimes they come from the weirdest place, and sometimes when you’re trying to create things you’re glad to get anything. You’re not always conscious of it, but working with different people and seeing how they interpret your ideas was interesting – and when you’re working with talented people, everything is cathartic as it helps you find out who you are, and what you’re doing.

– Was recording acoustic versions of your old songs helpful as well?

Yeah, because it gave me a different perspective, a different way of looking at the same thing.

– One of those unplugged pieces was “Death Of A Clown” which rather recently struck me as rather Dylanesque in terms of vocal inflections. Was it deliberate?

No, not really – but it was just the nature of that time to sound so and it reflected the nature of the song. I’d always been a bit scared of clowns when I was a kid, not sure what they were going to do, and I’ve always found that interesting – and not only that. It was a time in my life when I was young and experimenting with stuff all over the place, so it was a good time to take stock of what I was doing. I thought, “What am I doing? Fucking around with all kinds of parties!” It seemed like a circus: that’s why I had the idea to write this song.

– And it was around the same time you delved into spirituality and started listening to classical music. Did it ever amaze you that you, who left school at fifteen, turned out to be a sophisticated adult?

The world and the universe are so vast and so mysterious that we can’t take ourselves seriously. People get spiritual ideas from everything, but I didn’t really have a school life to find it there, so I got interested in the universe and in things like psychometry only when I left school. I found that the whole universe is a mesh of incredible information that we haven’t even started digging into. We’re so troubled and so worried about trying to integrate with this strange world, but the universe is vast in the mind as well. I remember, when I had my stroke and I was lying thinking about what the fuck I was going to do, I felt happy. There are signs that we need certain experiences to move forward, and sometimes they seem not pleasant, but when you look at it they help, and it’d be a shame if we allowed ourselves to be swept up in a serious notion. There are too many ideas going around for it to be bad, and I don’t like negativity because it drags me down. When I feel happy, I feel like I can do things. When I feel motivated, I feel like, “Oh, I can play that chord!” When I was young, I used to play a game: we had a wireless radio and I would make up radio stations. They had a great show on English radio, when I was a kid, called “Journey Into Space” – a programme about astronauts who got lost in space – that fascinated me.

I was really taken by these ideas, but also when I was playing with my wireless radio I came across a piece of music by César Franck, a lesser known classical composer, and it resonated with me as being not of this world. I thought a part of me understood Symphony in D minor, but it transported me into another world, and it rekindled my interest in classical music. Of course, you can’t talk about classical music without talking about two great pioneers Beethoven and Mozart. Beethoven had to be a bit mad to think about this incredible stuff. Sometimes I play his Pastoral Symphony, and it’s so moving, although it’s not very complicated – it’s fast and deep, and it’s prophetic, but it’s not complicated – that’s what fascinating. And then, Mahler was an incredible composer, too.

– You were talking about not taking oneself seriously, so how serious was this line from “Strangers” that you wrote for THE KINKS’ “Lola”: “if I live too long, I’m afraid I’ll die”? What’s your current take on mortality?

It’s pretty serious, but I haven’t gotten a say it in the matter. I try not to think about it, because if you think about it too much you go a bit crazy. But maybe we don’t really die, maybe we go on to a different level of consciousness, of being! I like to think that life is multifaceted, and maybe there’s a lot of people who think like that.