London
9th July 2012
From our archives:
The Kinks are 50 this year and Ray Davies knows the inevitable question is coming.
“Don’t!” he sighs, as if in anticipation of a migraine.
Nagging talk of a reunion has been in the ether all year. His brother Dave is well on for hooking up. Drummer Mick Avory is not averse. Only bassist Pete Quaife wouldn’t attend, having died in 2010. But The Kinks have always been a spontaneous combustion waiting to happen. For reasons lost in the mists, until recently Ray and Dave hadn’t spoken for the best part of a decade, roughly since the former was shot by a burglar in New Orleans and the latter had a stroke. And that’s not even the main stumbling block.
“I really can’t play with my brother as that name, the Kinks, and not have Mick in,” says Davies. “Mick will work with him but Dave doesn’t want to work with Mick. Sibling rivalry is nothing on their rivalry. I have no idea what’s wrong with them.” Dave first kicked over Mick’s drum kit onstage in 1965, and Mick retaliated by knocking him out with a drum pedal, so it’s a long history. And insuperable?
“Yeah. This week it is.”
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