God Save the Kinks by Rob Jovanovic

Author:Rob Jovanovic [Jovanovic, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781311370
Publisher: Aurum Press

Edwin Anthony had a very nasty accident.

And lost something very vital.

So they gave him Percy.

Now Edwin wants to know

where Percy’s been before.

Though the soundtrack wouldn’t be issued until the film was ready in the spring of 1971, sessions were completed in November 1970. Importantly for The Kinks, Percy would count as the final album in their contractual obligation to Pye. All thirteen tracks were Ray Davies originals. The opening, ‘God’s Children’, was used as the lead track on an EP from the film, but sank without trace. The song itself is a gentle piano-based tune, which, like the other music in the film, Ray Davies had carefully timed to fit the visuals.

An instrumental version of ‘Lola’ was far from just a version of the backing track with the vocals removed: in fact, it sounded more like an unfortunate outtake from the Larry Page Orchestra. Worse, it lasted for almost five minutes. Another gentle, piano-led song, ‘The Way Love Used To Be’, was altogether more appealing, with swooning strings which never become overly sentimental. Further instrumentals include the bluesy ‘Completely’, harmonica-led ‘Running Round Town’, the piano tinkering of ‘Whip Lady’, and the Latin-flavoured ‘Helga’. One of the album’s highlights is ‘Moments’, which closed side one on the LP. Showing Ray Davies at his poignant and nostalgic best, it uses strings as well as any Kinks song ever did.

‘Animals in the Zoo’, ‘Just Friends’ and ‘Dreams’ are the weakest Kinks songs on the record, but things improve with ‘Willesden Green’, a slow, bluesy rocker that saw John Dalton doing his best Elvis Presley impression – a pretty good one – complete with a spoken interlude. This was the only time that a Kinks song was sung by someone without the surname Davies.

No sooner had the Percy tapes been given to Pye than the label released their last ‘real’ Kinks album: Kinks Part One – Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround. This, The Kinks’ eighth album, was more varied than the band’s recent efforts, though it did continue their recent tradition of a long and almost unwieldy title. It was also a loosely assembled concept album, it’s vague theme being scorn for the record industry at the end of two years that had seen The Kinks’ popularity wane. ‘The LP was the struggle of a band really deciding to fight back,’ said Ray Davies in the liner notes to the 2004 CD reissue of the album.

Two Dave Davies songs were included, the plaintive ‘Strangers’ and the claustrophobic ‘Rats’, about the ‘pin stripes’ of the music business. ‘Denmark Street’, with barrel-house piano, recalled the base of their early operations with barely disguised bile. ‘Get Back in Line’ remains one of the better Kinks songs put to tape, confronting the working-class struggles that characterised their upbringing and suffocated the lives of their extended family. ‘Top of the Pops’ and ‘The Moneygoround’ continued the attack on their own industry in completely different styles, one approaching heavy rock, the other sounding like Leo Sayer, and very much of its time.

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