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MUSTHEAR REVIEW: |
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| Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks once desperately, memorably sang of "nostalgia for an age yet to come," expressing a yearning for a simpler, happier time that actually never really existed. Now, Shelley may be one the finest pop lyricists the U.K. ever spawned, but it was a previous British generation's staggeringly gifted songsmith who best captured this sense of bittersweet longing and loss of innocence. That man was the genteel, smarmy-charmy Ray Davies, who in the Kinks' jaunty songs pined intensely for the romanticized, storybook Merry Olde England of his boyhood. But while his seemingly rosy-spectacled odes to the Golden Age Of Britain were populated with quirky, Dickensian characters and self-consciously clever anecdotes, it wasn't all tea and crumpets and cricket games in Ray's imaginary world, oh no. As was the case with the eternally vitriolic Shelley, behind Davies' jolly Briticisms lurked a deep-seated sense of regret and mortality far too leaden for a man so young. Davies was a mere 24 years old when the Kinks released his ultimate masterwork of olde-world nostalgia, The Village Green Preservation Society—a concept album that announced its intentions to save Tudor houses, china cups, custard pies, Sherlock Holmes, and virginity from obsolescence within the space of its first singalong track--yet he already sounded like a weary old soul. It may seem odd that a privileged, pampered rock star with every imaginable luxury at his well-manicured fingertips would sadly sing, "I miss the Village Green, and all the simple people…the church, the clock, the steeple/I miss the morning dew, fresh air, and Sunday school." But by age 24, Ray had experienced so many of stardom's infamous ups and downs--all of which ought to be familiar to any regular Behind The Music viewer--that his obvious disillusionment in both "Starstruck" ("Watch out or else you'll be ruined/'Cause once you're addicted to wine and champagne, it's gonna drive you insane") and "All Of My Friends Were There" (a fantasy about leaving the spotlight for good, in which he declares with relief, "Thank God I can go back to normal again") made perfect sense. In his professional life, an injunction on the Kinks from touring America from 1965-69 had greatly damaged their once-skyrocketing career; on the personal side, Ray had accidentally impregnated his barely-legal immigrant girlfriend, resulting in their hasty shotgun marriage (that's how it was done in those days). So surely the man had much to reflect upon before his 20s were even half over. It's no wonder that he was prone to looking back fondly on sunny bed-and-breakfast vacations in "those days when you were happy, a long time ago" ("Picture Book") and penning such wistful lyrics as "Isn't it a shame the way our little world has changed?" ("Do You Remember Walter?") and "Oh, how I love things as they used to be" ("People Take Pictures Of Each Other"). Life in Carnaby Street's fast lane had obviously become too complicated for him. The U.S. touring ban had also isolated the Kinks from the rock music world's largest market—a country that exercised a larger influence on international pop culture than almost all other nations combined—so it was inevitable that he became more introspective, more wistful, and definitely more English. And of all the 1960s' original British Invasion bands, the Kinks were certainly the most British-sounding. (This is probably why they never sold as many records in America as some of their peers, since bands that sound "too English" never fare too well over here—-note the lack of U.S. success for, say, Pulp, compared to a grunge band of Nirvanabes like Bush.) While the Who were splintering their guitars to bits, the Beatles were turning into bearded hippies, and the Stones were expressing sympathy for the devil, the Kinks were eschewing the true lust and raunchy feedback fuzz of their early hits like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day And All Of The Night" for gauzy-lensed tales of sweet puppy-love kisses by old oak trees and more pastoral musical influences like folk, country, and dancehall/swing. In an era of free love and Kool-Aid acid tests, this certainly couldn't have seemed very hip or swinging. And so, not surprisingly, Village Green was hardly a massive chartbuster, not even in Britain—but like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Stones' later masterpiece Exile On Main Street, both of which were commercial disappointments when first released, Village Green has come to be heralded as its creators' crowning achievement, the Kinks' one must-have, touchstone album. And with good reason. While it may not be very rock 'n' roll to yearn for the simpler times of yore, Village Green isn't really a rock 'n' roll album per se. It's more than that. It's a labor of love—and of loss. It's a Dickens novel, a family photo album, a vaudeville musical, and a book of memoirs all rolled into one. It's a true peek into another world. Ray Davies so perfectly and lovingly recreates the long-lost London he remembers (or chooses to remember)—brimming over with unabashed, sometimes borderline-embarrassing sentimentality—that we, the listeners, don't just wish we'd been there, we feel like we actually were. By the album's end, we too are filled with nostalgia for an age yet to come. --Lyndsey Parker (email) March 5, 2002
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