Americana: The Kinks, the Road and the Perfect Riff by Ray Davies

Author:Ray Davies [Davies, Ray]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Music, Composers & Musicians, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General
ISBN: 9780753555231
Google: TaPTAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1402778910
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-10-02T11:00:00+00:00

13

LOW BUDGET

“Cheap is small and not too steep

But best of all cheap is cheap

Circumstance has forced my hand

To be a cut price person in a low budget land.

Times are hard, but we’ll all survive

I just got to learn to economise.

I’m on a low budget

I’m on a low budget

I’m not cheap, you understand,

I’m just a cut price person in a low budget land.

Excuse my shoes they don’t quite fit

They’re a special offer and they hurt me a bit

Even my trousers are giving me pain

They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn’t complain

They squeeze me so tight so I can’t take no more

They’re size 28 but I take 34….

I’m on a low budget

I’m a cut price person in a low budget land.”

RECORDS COME ABOUT by curious twists and turns sometimes. The title of an album is usually decided, in our case, when the tracks are played back after they are all recorded and mixed. The stand-out songs are chosen to lead the promotional campaign, and then a decision is made as to which cut will be the single. With Low Budget there was no option—one song dominated the style and content of the album almost from the start, although the song itself came about in a curious way.

It started as a bit of a lark. We’d finished our touring campaign to promote Misfits and I was putting some ideas together to start writing the next record for Arista. I thought it might be amusing to go back to the old single format where I could record songs that fit the time rather than just write for the album concept. In the early days of the Kinks I had cut my teeth on writing and recording three to four singles a year, sometimes with totally different sounds, style, and subject matter. After the profound message of songs like “Misfits” and “A Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy,” this next song could only be described as a musical and cultural cross-dresser. It was a dance track conceived and inspired by America, but written and recorded in London.

It originated from a few evenings spent at Studio 54, where Bob Feiden and Michael Kleffner sometimes took me to see what, in their opinion, was “happening.” I joked with them that I might write a disco song that could be played there. I understood some of the cultural origins of disco, but I really was not a fan of pure pop disco music. Yet it was in vogue at the time and I thought it would be fun to take a stab at it, more for my own amusement than anything else. Feiden and Kleffner had thrown down the challenge, so when I got back to England for our next recording session and rehearsals for the upcoming UK tour I wrote “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” with a disco beat straight out of Saturday Night Fever. The lyrical content, however, was different. The lyrics reflected the political situation in England. The “winter of discontent,” the three-day week, the power strikes, the lorry strikes—everybody seemed to be on strike.

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