Ray Davies

Ray Davies served as lead vocalist, primary composer, and rhythm guitarist for the Kinks, among the longest-surviving British Invasion bands to emerge in the 1960s. Essentially the Kinks functioned as little more than his supporting ensemble, since he composed and performed nearly every track they issued, aside from sporadic input by his sibling Dave on lead guitar. Over time Davies occasionally floated the possibility of disbanding the unit to launch a solo career, yet the nearest he came for years was claiming sole billing on the score to Return to Waterloo, the 1985 movie he both scripted and helmed, even though those pieces closely resembled typical Kinks material.

Throughout the 1990s the Kinks slowly wound down their activities while Davies turned to fresh endeavors, beginning with the partly autobiographical volume X-Ray issued in 1995. He promoted that work through a run of Storyteller live shows in which he revisited signature Kinks numbers, excerpted passages from the text, recounted anecdotes, and introduced original material. Those performances directly inspired VH1’s ongoing Storyteller television franchise. Davies subsequently brought out a collection of short fiction also titled Storyteller along with a matching record that documented one of his unaccompanied acoustic performances; issued in spring 1998, the album marked his initial solo outing since Return to Waterloo.

Near the end of 2005 he issued the charitable EP Thanksgiving Day, directing all proceeds to music-education initiatives in New Orleans. Other People’s Lives followed in full-length form the next year, succeeded by Working Man’s Cafe in 2008. In 2009 he unveiled The Kinks Choral Collection, featuring orchestral and choral reinterpretations of several of his well-known compositions. He next concentrated on See My Friends, an album-length project that revisited his earlier catalog alongside contributors including Bruce Springsteen, Metallica, Alex Chilton, Black Francis, Jackson Browne, and Spoon.

In 2013 Davies completed a second memoir, Americana. He subsequently shaped its contents into song form, enlisting the Jayhawks for sessions throughout 2016; the resulting Americana album reached stores in April 2017. That same year Prince Charles bestowed a knighthood upon him. A companion piece drawn from the same autobiographical source, Our Country: Americana Act 2, surfaced in 2018.