50 Fun Facts About The Kinks

Ray Davies flew from New York to London mid-tour in 1970 to replace one brand name in Lola with what?

The generic cherry cola got Lola past the BBC's ban on product placement; the 6,000-mile round trip on 3 June 1970 interrupted the Kinks' American tour.

Ray Davies first set his 1967 Thames ballad in Liverpool, then scrapped that idea after which Beatles single?

Penny Lane had already staked out Liverpool nostalgia, so Davies moved his two lovers to a bridge over the Thames; in 1967 he said they could be Terence Stamp and Julie Christie.

Come Dancing remembers Ray Davies' sister Rene, who died the night she gave him which birthday present?

A Spanish guitar was Rene's present for Ray's 13th birthday on 21 June 1957; that evening she suffered a fatal heart attack dancing at the Lyceum ballroom, and the song reached number six in the US in 1983.

Which company's 2004 camera advert pulled the 1968 Kinks track Picture Book out of obscurity?

Hewlett-Packard's digital-camera spot made Picture Book one of the Kinks' most popular songs; Green Day had already lifted its riff for their 2000 single Warning.

Producer Terence Winter has called Dave Davies' Living on a Thin Line the most asked-about song on which TV drama?

The Sopranos gave the 1984 album track a second life; Dave Davies later borrowed its title for his second autobiography, published in July 2022.

Which Doors hit is routinely likened to the Kinks' All Day and All of the Night, a debt Robby Krieger denies?

Hello, I Love You has drawn the comparison since 1968; Dave Davies says he once played All Day and All of the Night on stage and slid a piece of the Doors song into it.

Weird Al Yankovic's 1985 parody of the Kinks' Lola is sung about which Star Wars character?

Yoda appeared on Dare to Be Stupid in 1985; the original Lola had reached number two in Britain and number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970.

Larry Page said the You Really Got Me riff appeared as the Kinks picked out the chords of which Kingsmen hit?

Louie Louie gave the band its starting point, though the song itself began on the upright piano in the Davies family's front room as a lighter, jazzier tune.

Which rival LP came out the same November 1968 day as The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society?

The White Album sold two million copies worldwide in its first week while Village Green failed to chart anywhere in Europe, the Kinks' first LP to miss the charts in Britain and America.

Which future star, also a William Grimshaw pupil, sang at least once with the Ray Davies Quartet in 1962?

Rod Stewart soon formed Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, a local rival to the Davies brothers' group, which passed through the Ramrods and the Ravens before settling on the Kinks in 1964.

Before the Kinks, drummer Mick Avory rehearsed twice in 1962 with musicians who were about to become which band?

The Rolling Stones were still forming when Avory sat in at the Bricklayers Arms pub in mid-1962; the Kinks found him in January 1964 through an advert he had placed in Melody Maker.

Whose 1989 cover of the Kinks' Days peaked at UK number 12, precisely where the original had landed in 1968?

Kirsty MacColl's version, taken from her album Kite, charted seven places higher than the Kinks' original in Ireland, reaching number nine there.

Which band's debut single, from January 1979, covered the Kinks' 1964 album track Stop Your Sobbing?

The Pretenders earned their first Top of the Pops appearance with it in February 1979; frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, a longtime Kinks fan, later had a daughter with Ray Davies.

Which band's 1978 cover of the Kinks' David Watts had bassist Bruce Foxton singing lead instead of its frontman?

The Jam's version reached number 25 in Britain and sat on All Mod Cons; the real David Watts, Ray Davies said, was a concert promoter in Rutland.

Which Kinks number one of July 1966 is sung by a ruined aristocrat grumbling about Harold Wilson's Labour taxes?

Sunny Afternoon was written at Ray Davies' house while he was ill, and it sat beside the Beatles' Taxman that year in mocking the top rates of Wilson's government.

Which 1966 Kinks single, a UK number four, pokes fun at the Carnaby Street mods of Swinging London?

Dedicated Follower of Fashion reached number four in Britain after the band tried the arrangement, diction and guitar sounds several times over before settling on a take.

The Kinks' 1972 ballad Celluloid Heroes strolls along which Los Angeles street with stars set in its pavement?

Hollywood Boulevard's Walk of Fame amused Ray Davies because the stars were on the street and you could walk all over them, an irony he built into a song about success and failure.

In the Kinks' 1977 Father Christmas, poor kids rough up a store Santa and demand what instead of toys?

Money is the demand, along with jobs for their parents; toys, the kids argue, are impractical and belong with richer children.

In which year's New Year Honours was Ray Davies knighted for services to the arts?

2017 brought the knighthood; the CBE had arrived in the 2004 New Year Honours for services to music, and in 2015 he had collected an Olivier Award for his West End musical.

In which year were the Kinks inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility?

1990 saw all four original members inducted; the UK Music Hall of Fame followed in November 2005, again with all four founders in attendance.

The Kinks' first single, released in February 1964 and almost wholly ignored, covered which Little Richard song?

Long Tall Sally flopped despite the managers' publicity push, and the Ray Davies original that followed, You Still Want Me, was passed over too, leaving the third single to make or break the band.

Which Kinks song did Ray Davies perform at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games?

Waterloo Sunset got its Olympic airing 45 years after its 1967 release, which peaked at number two in Britain; Davies' first wife Rasa sang backing vocals on the original.

Dave Davies' 1970 album track Strangers, never a single, found new fans through which Wes Anderson film?

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) also used two Ray Davies tracks from the same record, This Time Tomorrow and Powerman, all three drawn from Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround.

After a rowdy 1965 US tour, which body refused the Kinks permits to perform in America for the next four years?

The American Federation of Musicians cut the band off from the main rock market at the height of the British Invasion, and Ray Davies flew to Los Angeles in April 1969 to negotiate an end to the ban.

Which city's seaside chanting, heard on a 1965 tour stopover, inspired the drone of the Kinks' See My Friends?

Bombay's sound gave See My Friends its tambura-like guitar drone four months before the Beatles' Norwegian Wood, and some historians call it the first Western rock song built on Indian raga sounds.

The Kinks wrote 1969's Arthur as the score for a play commissioned by which broadcaster, then never made?

Granada Television approached Ray Davies in January 1969 and he built the storyline with novelist Julian Mitchell, but the programme was never produced and the songs stood alone.

In which city did drummer Mick Avory knock Dave Davies out with his hi-hat stand during a May 1965 concert?

Cardiff's Capitol Theatre was the venue on 19 May 1965; Davies needed 16 stitches at Cardiff Royal Infirmary, and the blow was payback for the guitarist kicking over the drum kit.

The live disc of the Kinks' 1972 double album Everybody's in Show-Biz came from two nights at which venue?

Carnegie Hall hosted the Kinks for two nights; from this album on, Ray Davies steered the band into theatrical concept pieces that surfaced fully on Preservation Act 1 in 1973.

Pete Townshend wrote which song to mimic You Really Got Me so the Kinks' producer might take on the Who?

I Can't Explain got the Who, then still the High Numbers, the producer they wanted; he went on to make My Generation and the Easybeats' Friday on My Mind.

Which Manchester band, fronted by Mark E. Smith, took the Kinks' Victoria into the UK Top 40 in 1988?

The Fall's version charted 19 years after Victoria opened Arthur, the Kinks' 1969 concept album about the decline of the British Empire.

Which British group had the 1966 American hit with Ray Davies' Dandy, reaching number five on the Hot 100?

Herman's Hermits also took Dandy to number one in Canada, while the Kinks' own version was only issued as a single in continental Europe, where it topped the German chart.

Which calypso-flavoured 1970 follow-up to Lola was the Kinks' last UK Top 10 hit, peaking at number five?

Apeman stalled at number 45 in America; its calypso style was one Ray Davies had first tried on I'm on an Island in 1965.

Which 1979 album, cut largely in New York, became the Kinks' best-selling studio record, peaking at US number 11?

Low Budget was cut mostly at the Power Station and Blue Rock Studios in New York; it did poorly in Britain, where no Kinks album had charted since 1967.

Which Arista founder's demand for a club-friendly record produced the Kinks' disco-beat 1979 single Superman?

Clive Davis got his dance record despite Ray Davies' hatred of disco; the song, inspired by Superman: The Movie, reached number 41 in America and is often played live as hard rock.

Come Dancing's US number six in 1983 tied which 1965 single as the Kinks' highest-charting American hit?

Tired of Waiting for You had reached number one in Britain and number six in America in 1965; the 1983 tie owed much to a Julien Temple video in heavy rotation on the young MTV.

Which 1981 Kinks single reuses the All Day and All of the Night riff and brings back the character Lola?

Destroyer has its paranoid narrator bringing Lola home; Record World dubbed it perhaps the first heavy metal rap song, and it led off Give the People What They Want in America.

The 2014 Kinks jukebox musical, winner of four Olivier Awards, premiered at which London venue?

Hampstead Theatre opened it on 1 May 2014 and the show moved to the West End's Harold Pinter Theatre that October, with a book by Joe Penhall and Ray Davies' songs.

Ray Davies was shot in the leg in January 2004 while chasing purse-snatchers in which American city?

New Orleans saw him return in 2011 to play the Voodoo Experience festival; the shooting came in the French Quarter, the same year he was made a CBE.

Which 1967 single, credited to Dave Davies alone though co-written with his brother, reached UK number three?

Death of a Clown began as three notes plunked out on the out-of-tune piano at the Davies family home, and its success pushed Dave to consider a solo career.

Which bassist first deputised for Pete Quaife after his June 1966 car crash, then replaced him for good in 1969?

John Dalton stood in until Quaife returned in November 1966; when Quaife finally quit in April 1969 the others only believed him after reading about his new band in a music paper.

Jim Rodford and Bob Henrit, the Kinks' 1980s rhythm section, had both played in which earlier band?

Argent was formed in late 1968 by Rod Argent, Russ Ballard, Rodford and Henrit; Henrit took over the Kinks' drum stool from Mick Avory in 1984, six years after Rodford arrived.

Which 1993 album, the Kinks' only studio release for Columbia, was the last they made before the band broke up in 1997?

Phobia was made by a four-piece and managed a single week on the Billboard chart at number 166; Columbia dropped the band in 1994 and their last public show came in 1996.

Which producer bowed out with 1967's Something Else, after which Ray Davies produced the Kinks himself?

Shel Talmy, an American working in London, had produced the Kinks since 1964 and the Who's My Generation; the change gave Something Else a new sound and production style.

The carpet-layer hero of the Kinks' 1969 album Arthur was based on a brother-in-law who emigrated where?

Australia took the Davies brothers' older sister Rose and her husband Arthur Anning in 1964; Ray later told Anning he felt guilty using him as a subject, and Anning said he was flattered.

Which 1967 Kinks single, a UK number three, was inspired by a hunchbacked gardener in Ray Davies' neighbourhood?

Autumn Almanac's gardener worked in Muswell Hill, Davies later explained on VH1 Storytellers; the single failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 at all.

Before the Kinks took off, Ray Davies spent 1962–63 as a student at which London art school?

Hornsey College of Art's Christmas dance is where Davies asked Alexis Korner for advice and got an introduction to Giorgio Gomelsky, the future Yardbirds manager.

Ray Davies has disputed which honorific, pinned on him for the nineties guitar-pop revival led by Blur and Oasis?

Godfather of Britpop follows from lyrics steeped in English culture, nostalgia and social satire; the Kinks' profile rose sharply in the mid-nineties as that boom took hold.

The BBC refused to play which 1969 Kinks single because its lyric used a mildly rude word for the backside?

Plastic Man was meant to put the band back on the charts but stayed off American shelves until 1973, surfacing there only on a contract-filling compilation.

Ray Davies' 1994 memoir, pointedly billed as an unauthorised autobiography, carries what title?

X-Ray came two years before brother Dave's own book, Kink; Ray followed with Americana in 2013, a memoir he later turned into an album backed by the Minnesota band the Jayhawks.

Dave Davies' 1980 solo album, on which he played every instrument himself, took its title from what?

Its catalogue number, AFL1-3603, served as the title; the one-man record reached number 42 on the Billboard chart, his highest solo placing.