The Kinks returned to their roots and delivered their sixth consecutive classic with this country rock concept album. 'Muswell Hillbillies' was their first album for RCA Records; they signed a five album deal with them after their contracts with Pye and Reprise expired. Reprise had refused to release their soundtrack album 'Percy' earlier in the year, which made it easier for them to make the move. The million-dollar advance didn't hurt either; and the band put that money into creating their own studio in Hornsey, a mile away from their home territory of Muswell Hill. That was part of the inspiration for the album concept, since it is the place the Davies family had to move when Ray and Dave were kids as part of an urban renewal project. The lyrics deal with paranoia, disillusion, and despair in a world where the working man is exploited and disenfranchised by bureaucracy and gentrification. The music takes a stripped down, largely acoustic approach with lots of slide and steel strings, taking the hillbilly joke as far as it will go into Americana with touches of blues, rock and roll, southern folk, ragtime, bluegrass, and country music, as well as vaudeville and cabaret.
They recorded at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London, not too far from the hill. Ray Davies and engineer Mike Bodak used old microphones on many of the tracks to give the record an antiquated feel. The album was their first to include The Mike Cotton Sound, which included Mike Cotton on trumpet, John Beecham on trombone and tuba, and Alan Holmes on clarinet.
'Muswell Hillbillies' was the last in a series of exceptional albums that comprise the golden age of Kinkdom: 'Face to Face', 'Something Else', 'The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society','Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)', and 'Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround'. It didn't even chart in the UK; but in the US, it made three different charts: spending fourteen weeks on Billboard, peaking at number one hundred; twelve weeks on Cash Box, peaking at number fifty; and thirteen weeks on Record World, peaking at forty-eight.
'20th Century Man' sets the scene for the theme of disempowerment. A shortened version was released as a single; but only made it to number one hundred and six on the US pop chart.
"I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in gray
Got no privacy got no liberty
Cause the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me
Don’t want to get myself shot down
By some trigger happy policeman
Got to keep a hold on my sanity
I’m a twentieth century man but I don’t want to die here"
'Holiday'
"Lookin' in the sky, for a gap in the clouds,
Sometimes I think that sun ain't never coming out,
But I'd rather be here than in that dirty old town,
I had to leave the city cos it broke me down"
'Alcohol'
"Here's a story about a sinner,
He used to be a winner who enjoyed a life of prominence and position,
But the pressures at the office and his socialite engagements,
And his selfish wife's fanatical ambition,
It turned him to the booze,
And he got mixed up with a floosie
And she led him to a life of indecision.
The floosie made him spend his dole
She left him lying on Skid Row
A drunken lag in some Salvation Army Mission.
It's such a shame. "
'Have a Cuppa Tea'
"If you feel a bit under the weather,
If you feel a little bit peeved,
Take granny's stand-by potion
For any old cough or wheeze.
It's a cure for hepatitis it's a cure for chronic insomnia,
It's a cure for tonsillitis and for water on the knee. "
'Oklahoma U.S.A.'
"All life we work but work is bore,
If life's for livin' what's livin' for,
She lives in a house that's near decay,
Built for the industrial revolution,
But in her dreams she is far away,
In Oklahoma U.S.A.
With Shirley Jones and Gordon McRea,
As she buys her paper at the corner shop,
She's walkin' on the surrey with the fringe on top,
'Cause in her dreams she is far away,
In Oklahoma U.S.A."
'Muswell Hillbilly'
"They're putting us in little boxes,
No character just uniformity,
They're trying to build a computerised community,
But they'll never make a zombie out of me.
They'll try and make me study elocution,
Because they say my accent isn't right,
They can clear the slums as part of their solution,
But they're never gonna kill my cockney pride."
'Muswell Hillbillies'
full album:
All tracks written by Ray Davies.
Side one
1. "20th Century Man" 5:57
2. "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues" 3:32
3. "Holiday" 2:40
4. "Skin and Bone" 3:39
5. "Alcohol" 3:35
6. "Complicated Life" 4:02
Side two
1. "Here Come the People in Grey" 3:46
2. "Have a Cuppa Tea" 3:45
3. "Holloway Jail" 3:29
4. "Oklahoma U.S.A." 2:38
5. "Uncle Son" 2:33
6. "Muswell Hillbilly" 4:58
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