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50 free The Kinks trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Kinks were the British Invasion band that got thrown out of America. Two brothers from north London, a riff that changed guitar music, then four years locked out of the biggest market in the world, which is roughly when Ray Davies stopped writing about girls and started writing about village greens, tax bills, dance halls and a department-store Santa. These 50 questions follow the band from a school dance in 1962 to a knighthood: the Little Richard cover that flopped, the re-recorded single that did not, the onstage fight in Wales, the concept albums nobody bought at the time, the 1980s comeback on MTV, the punk and nineties bands who covered them and the brothers who could never quite stop feuding. Most of it is pub-quiz level for anyone who grew up with the hits; a handful of questions are for people who own the RCA albums. Play on your phone with instant answers and sources, or print it for a music night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ray Davies flew from New York to London mid-tour in 1970 to replace one brand name in Lola with what?
cherry cola
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.
Q 02Ray Davies first set his 1967 Thames ballad in Liverpool, then scrapped that idea after which Beatles single?
Penny Lane
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.
Q 03Come Dancing remembers Ray Davies' sister Rene, who died the night she gave him which birthday present?
A Spanish guitar
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.
Q 04Which company's 2004 camera advert pulled the 1968 Kinks track Picture Book out of obscurity?
Hewlett-Packard
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.
Q 05Producer Terence Winter has called Dave Davies' Living on a Thin Line the most asked-about song on which TV drama?
The Sopranos
The Sopranos gave the 1984 album track a second life; Dave Davies later borrowed its title for his second autobiography, published in July 2022.
Q 06Which Doors hit is routinely likened to the Kinks' All Day and All of the Night, a debt Robby Krieger denies?
Hello, I Love You
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.
Q 07Weird Al Yankovic's 1985 parody of the Kinks' Lola is sung about which Star Wars character?
Yoda
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.
Q 08Larry Page said the You Really Got Me riff appeared as the Kinks picked out the chords of which Kingsmen hit?
Louie Louie
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.
Q 09Which rival LP came out the same November 1968 day as The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society?
The White Album
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.
Q 10Which future star, also a William Grimshaw pupil, sang at least once with the Ray Davies Quartet in 1962?
Rod Stewart
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.
Q 11Before the Kinks, drummer Mick Avory rehearsed twice in 1962 with musicians who were about to become which band?
The Rolling Stones
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.
Q 12Whose 1989 cover of the Kinks' Days peaked at UK number 12, precisely where the original had landed in 1968?
Kirsty MacColl
Kirsty MacColl's version, taken from her album Kite, charted seven places higher than the Kinks' original in Ireland, reaching number nine there.
Q 13Which band's debut single, from January 1979, covered the Kinks' 1964 album track Stop Your Sobbing?
Q 21The Kinks' first single, released in February 1964 and almost wholly ignored, covered which Little Richard song?
Long Tall Sally
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.
Q 22Which Kinks song did Ray Davies perform at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games?
Waterloo Sunset
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.
Q 23Dave Davies' 1970 album track Strangers, never a single, found new fans through which Wes Anderson film?
The Pretenders
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.
Q 14Which band's 1978 cover of the Kinks' David Watts had bassist Bruce Foxton singing lead instead of its frontman?
The Jam
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.
Q 15Which Kinks number one of July 1966 is sung by a ruined aristocrat grumbling about Harold Wilson's Labour taxes?
Sunny Afternoon
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.
Q 16Which 1966 Kinks single, a UK number four, pokes fun at the Carnaby Street mods of Swinging London?
Dedicated Follower of Fashion
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.
Q 17The Kinks' 1972 ballad Celluloid Heroes strolls along which Los Angeles street with stars set in its pavement?
Hollywood Boulevard
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.
Q 18In the Kinks' 1977 Father Christmas, poor kids rough up a store Santa and demand what instead of toys?
Money
Money is the demand, along with jobs for their parents; toys, the kids argue, are impractical and belong with richer children.
Q 19In which year's New Year Honours was Ray Davies knighted for services to the arts?
2017
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.
Q 20In which year were the Kinks inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their first year of eligibility?
1990
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 Darjeeling Limited
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.
Q 24After a rowdy 1965 US tour, which body refused the Kinks permits to perform in America for the next four years?
American Federation of Musicians
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.
Q 25Which city's seaside chanting, heard on a 1965 tour stopover, inspired the drone of the Kinks' See My Friends?
Bombay
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.
Q 26The Kinks wrote 1969's Arthur as the score for a play commissioned by which broadcaster, then never made?
Granada Television
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.
Q 27In which city did drummer Mick Avory knock Dave Davies out with his hi-hat stand during a May 1965 concert?
Cardiff
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.
Q 28The live disc of the Kinks' 1972 double album Everybody's in Show-Biz came from two nights at which venue?
Carnegie Hall
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.
Q 29Pete Townshend wrote which song to mimic You Really Got Me so the Kinks' producer might take on the Who?
I Can't Explain
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.
Q 30Which Manchester band, fronted by Mark E. Smith, took the Kinks' Victoria into the UK Top 40 in 1988?
The Fall
The Fall's version charted 19 years after Victoria opened Arthur, the Kinks' 1969 concept album about the decline of the British Empire.