The Kinks Trivia
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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 replaced Coca-Cola, because the BBC would not play a song that named a brand; the transatlantic dash to re-record two words 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; they are often linked to the actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, a casting he floated himself in 1967.
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; Krieger credits its beat to Cream's Sunshine of Your Love, while Ray Davies said that rather than sue he just wanted the Doors to own up.
Q 07Weird Al Yankovic's 1985 parody of the Kinks' Lola is sung about which Star Wars character?
Yoda
Yoda was written in 1980, when The Empire Strikes Back was in cinemas, but stayed off record for about five years until both George Lucas and Ray Davies had given permission; it finally appeared on Dare to Be Stupid.
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 arrived the same day, 22 November 1968, and eclipsed its sales; Village Green became the Kinks' first LP to miss the charts in both 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 label wanted Days as the first single from her album Kite, but she insisted on leading with a song she had written herself, so the cover came out second.
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 was suggested by promoter Arthur Howes, who had just heard the Beatles play it in Paris; it flopped despite a publicity push, and the Ray Davies original that followed, You Still Want Me, was passed over too.
Q 22Which Kinks song did Ray Davies perform at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games?
Waterloo Sunset
Waterloo Sunset was sung by Davies after he rode into the stadium in a London black cab; viewers in the United States missed it, because NBC left the performance out of its broadcast.
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 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 takes a walk down which Los Angeles street?
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 19Which American band's 1978 debut single covered the Kinks' You Really Got Me?
Van Halen
Van Halen had played Kinks songs in their club days, and their producer hurried the single out after hearing that a rival band, Angel, was recording its own version.
Q 20Dave Davies slashed his amplifier's speaker cone with what to get the sound of You Really Got Me?
A razor blade
A razor blade did it: Davies said he cut up the cone of his small Elpico amp out of frustration and was shocked and excited that it worked, then showed the sound to the band.
The Darjeeling Limited
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) used three songs from the Kinks' 1970 Lola album; Dave Davies wrote Strangers about an old school friend who had died of a drug overdose.
Q 24After a rowdy 1965 US tour, which body refused the Kinks permits to perform there 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 fishermen, chanting as they carried out their nets at dawn, gave See My Friends its drone; the single came out in July 1965, months before the Beatles put a sitar on Norwegian Wood.
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 show was cancelled at the last minute when its producer could not secure financial backing.
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 the producer they wanted; Townshend later admitted it 'can't be beat for straightforward Kink copying', and the producer agreed the song had been written to catch his ear.
Q 30Which Manchester post-punk band took the Kinks' Victoria into the UK Top 40 in 1988?
The Fall
The Fall, led by Mark E. Smith, reached number 35 with it, their second Top 40 hit; the first, a year earlier, was also a cover, of R. Dean Taylor's There's a Ghost in My House.