You Really Got Me by Nick Hasted

Author:Nick Hasted [Hasted, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-991-8
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2013-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The Unabomber of Rock

The Kinks’ RCA years started promisingly. “There was a lavish launch in New York, and a lavish party at the Hyatt House [in LA] as well,” Ray remembers. “We all thought it was funny. Because the band never took anything seriously. On my own, I probably would have taken it a little bit seriously. But not with the characters I had.”

Warhol, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and transvestite theatre mavericks and Kinks super-fans The Cockettes attended the New York party at the Playboy Club on November 18, which cost a then huge $10,000. Reporters from Melody Maker, NME and London’s Evening Standard were also flown in and put up at the exclusive Plaza Hotel for three days, adding considerably to the expense. But The Kinks’ fortunes hadn’t really changed. “On the second night we all went to The Kinks’ party,” remembers Chris Charlesworth, there for the MM. “During the course of the three days in New York I repeatedly asked if I could interview The Kinks but the request was turned down. I discovered that on the last night we were there they were playing a gig in upstate New York, but they couldn’t organise me attending that either. I thought this was absurd. I’d come all this way, and all I could report was a few lines about a knees-up. Here was an opportunity for me to do a big spread on The Kinks in MM – circulation 200,000 in those days – and nobody was interested. Also at The Kinks’ party were Moon and Entwistle from The Who, on the eve of a tour, and their manager arranged tickets for me for the next day. So I flew down the East Coast with The Who and they got a big spread in MM and The Kinks missed out, even though they’d paid for me to go to the US in the first place. In hindsight, this was symptomatic of all that ailed The Kinks in those days. No one in charge to make snap decisions that would help them.”

This soon became literally true. Grenville Collins, increasingly exhausted by The Kinks’ behaviour, and according to Dave having just married an heiress, amicably quit once the new deal was signed. On December 30, Robert Wace resigned in a bitter row with Ray, who had asked him to reduce the management fee, now he was the only manager left. “The problem [of exiting],” Wace sighed in Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, “is that you create these people and then, sooner or later, you get fed up with them or they get fed up with you, and then the bugger of it is that you can’t go on stage and play the guitar. I mean, they’ve got the residual.”

The last of the odd group of men who had gathered round the teenage Kinks in 1963 was suddenly gone. Ray thought they were no longer needed. The Kinks could manage themselves now. He at last had total control.

The first RCA album, Muswell Hillbillies, suggested what he might do with it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.