The Kinks further expanded their sound with the wry and melancholy English vignettes of this elegant and eclectic classic. 'Something Else By The Kinks' was recorded at Pye Studios London with Ray Davies on lead vocals, rhythm guitar, and harmonica; Dave Davies on lead guitar, 12 string guitar, backing vocals, and lead vocals; Pete Quaife on bass and backing vocals; and Mick Avory on drums and percussion with Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, piano, organ, and harpsichord; and Rasa Davies on backing vocals.
After some tension during the recording of 'Face to Face', Shel Talmy passed the reigns of production over to Ray Davies sometime during the sessions. Davies says that 'Waterloo Sunset' "was the first thing I was credited as producing, but I did a lot of stuff before that. But I think the deal was Shel had to get the credit whether he did it or not. I did ‘Dead End Street’, Shel did ‘Sunny Afternoon’ with me, but by then, you see, it was such a good team that he would listen to the way I wanted it. I think the real falling out came over ‘Dead End Street’, which I didn’t like at all. We waited ’til the session finished, waited until he left and then went in and re-recorded it, and that became the one that went out!...My idea of production was not as clear as Shel’s. I think there was a sort of clarity in a lot of his recordings, whereas I liked to bring in things like sounding off-mic sometimes, or double-miking, so it sounded like an old jazz sound rather than a clean pop sound, and that was the difference. But I’d like to think that I learned the quality control from Shel — in other words, saying ‘We could keep doing it but it’s not gonna get any better!’, things like that. I had good engineers: Bob Auger, Alan Mackenzie, Alan O’Duffy, Ray Prickett, all employees at Pye, all really good solid studio guys. I learnt a lot from those people. They had to know their sonics, those guys. It was a new music and they were using a lot of old equipment that had probably been used by the BBC, and there was a BBC kind of feeling about the rules still, but the Kinks came in and broke the rules. I remember the first time — I think it was the first time — there was feedback on a record, on ‘I Need You’. It was a mistake, but as I was doing the count-in, Dave’s guitar went off. Bob Auger was engineering it, and this man with all his experience just knew what to do and that was the take. It was a combination of new, young musicians like the Kinks coming through with radical ideas, and then very knowledgeable, experienced people who knew how to record it. There’s a real debt owed to a lot of those engineers working with us...Mic placement is a personal thing, and I guess instinctively I know what I want, but scientifically I’m not aware of what’s happening. I know what sounds right, but I think instinctively. Sometimes the rule book has to go out of the window, but there’s that saying: ‘You gotta know the rules before you break them!’... I feel that I shouldn't have been allowed to produce 'Something Else'. What went into an album required someone whose approach was a little bit more mundane"
'Something Else By The Kinks' also features Dave Davies on lead vocals and as songwriter on several songs. He says his compositions were based on his own experience: "It was a two-fold thing, really: the misery of going into a funny little studio that I didn’t like that much – it was an old Polydor demo studio or something – and writing songs when I didn’t really want to write anything. Whenever I got miserable, I’d always lean on my emotional experiences that I had with my first serious girlfriend. I fell in love with her when I was fifteen and we had a baby, which was a big thing in those days, for school kids to be taking care of little children. Now, it’s normal! But it was frowned upon and both of our parents tried to keep us apart, which caused great upset and I wrote songs based on that later, like 'Funny Face', 'Susannah’s Still Alive'...nearly everything I wrote was based on me and Sue."
With its diverse mix of psychedelia, music hall, baroque, bossa nova, proto-punk, and rhythm and blues, 'Something Else By The Kinks' only went to one hundred and fifty-three in the US and thirty-five in the UK. At the time, the Kinks were banned from performing in the US; and the album turned out to be their last to chart in Britain. Ray Davies explains that the band's changing styles of music also made things difficult for them commercially, especially when their record company wanted them to continue with the sound that had made them successful: "I think that you do fall into the rut willingly. I jumped off that at, like, the second or third single, because I was terrified of that happening. But I suppose it was bad for us. If we'd done more conforming to what people wanted, I think we would have sold a lot more records as a band, and been an easier commodity to sell. But unfortunately, The Kinks didn't make it easy for our record companies, because we chopped and changed. Then I made things like 'Waterloo Sunset', and before I made that, I made things like 'Well Respected Man'. If you think of the three different types of music, they're like three different artists. It was great for singles in England at that time, when singles really did drive the market. But for album people... I remember when we delivered 'Muswell Hillbillies' to RCA, they said, 'This is great. Now, can we have three more albums of the same?' The next thing I did was about show business; it was about glitter, whereas 'Muswell Hillbillies' was about gritty, working-class London. So I do chop and change. I approach my music a bit like a novelist, I guess, or an author, saying, 'Well, I've done this trilogy. Let me move on and do something else.' I do approach it from a writing perspective rather than as a career artist. I think I take myself as a performer second to myself as a writer."
http://www.thekinks.info/
"David Watts". Ray has revealed that "David Watts is a real person. He was a concert promoter in Rutland."
"Death of a Clown" was released as Dave Davies solo single; but was included on the album. Dave remembers: "One of our managers suggested that I go solo. I felt quite uncomfortable with it because I was so used to being in a family; in a band which was like an extended family. Then going out and touring all over the world, with the fans, that's another part of the family. So I didn't want to be stuck out there on my own. I like the cooperation and camaraderie of being in a group. My heart was in the group really. Ray was very much into analyzing things. Trying to build up his craft, his solo. If I was in the right mood, I'd always write something. The more I thought about it, the worst it got though." It went to sixty-eight in Canada, thirty-one in Australia, five in Belgium, three in Germany and the UK, and number two in the Netherlands. Dave says: "A lot of older people seem to think it is some kind of novelty record - rather like 'Cigarettes And Whisky And Wild Wild Women' - remember that? I'm quite pleased about that if it means we are getting a wider market...There are two ways you can take the song - one is obvious and the other is a very personal thing to me. The lion tamer, for example could be the bully at school ... I'd rather not talk about it!"
"No Return"
"Love Me Till the Sun Shines" was also inspired by his relationship with Sue: "That was tinged with it as well, knowing that I couldn’t be with her but also an 'as long as you love me, we can work it all out, whatever happens' sort of thing."
"Lazy Old Sun"
"End of the Season"
"Waterloo Sunset" went to fourteen in Sweden, eight in Belgium, seven in Germany and New Zealand, six in Australia, two in the UK, and number one in the Netherlands.
Ray says: "It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country... Liverpool is my favourite city, and the song was originally called Liverpool Sunset. I was inspired by Merseybeat. I'd fallen in love with Liverpool by that point. On every tour, that was the best reception. We played The Cavern, all those old places, and I couldn't get enough of it. I had a load of mates in bands up there, and that sound – not The Beatles but Merseybeat – that was unbelievable. It used to inspire me every time. So I wrote Liverpool Sunset. Later it got changed to Waterloo Sunset, but there's still that play on words with Waterloo. London was home, I'd grown up there, but I like to think I could be an adopted Scouser. My heart is definitely there... I didn't think to make it about Waterloo, initially, but I realised the place was so very significant in my life. I was in St Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill and the nurses would wheel me out on the balcony to look at the river. It was also about being taken down to the 1951 Festival of Britain. It's about the two characters - and the aspirations of my sisters' generation who grew up during the Second World War. It's about the world I wanted them to have. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife and all the dreams that we had."
Dave recalls: "We spent a lot of time trying to get a different guitar sound, to get a more unique feel for the record. In the end we used a tape-delay echo, but it sounded new because nobody had done it since the 1950s. I remember Steve Marriott of the Small Faces came up and asked me how we'd got that sound. We were almost trendy for a while."
bonus tracks:
"Autumn Almanac" charted at seventeen in New Zealand, thirteen in Germany, six in the Netherlands, five in Belgium, and number three in the UK. Ray said: "I like autumn things. I did a record called 'Autumn Almanac' - I drew pictures of it and everything. After I wrote it, for a whole month I was thinking about it. I wasted a lot time, really, because I was sweeping up dead leaves and putting them in the sack. I'm susceptible to that sort of thing - to walls and flowers. You can probably get something more from a wall than a person sometimes. It's just put somewhere. It's just put somewhere. It's in line, in order, it's in line with horizon. Ah, ridiculous."
"Wonderboy" charted at thirty-six in the UK, twenty-nine in Germany, and number six in the Netherlands.
Ray remembers: "I had a song which I liked, but which nobody else much liked called 'Wonderboy', and the lines went: 'Wonderboy, some mothers son/Turn your sorrow into wonder." I had to use 'some mother's son' again. It was just one line and it was gone and had to be explained, for me, I was interested in that line. And then I wanted to write about soldiers must have been frightened and killing each other, but they were some mother's son. Apart from the line 'head blown off by some soldier's gun', the song could be about executives in an advertising agency."
'Something Else By The Kinks'
full album:
All tracks written by Ray Davies, unless otherwise noted.
Side one
1. "David Watts" 2:32
2. "Death of a Clown" Dave Davies, R. Davies 3:04
3. "Two Sisters" 2:01
4. "No Return" 2:03
5. "Harry Rag" 2:16
6. "Tin Soldier Man" 2:49
7. "Situation Vacant" 3:16
Side two
1. "Love Me till the Sun Shines" D. Davies 3:16
2. "Lazy Old Sun" 2:48
3. "Afternoon Tea" 3:27
4. "Funny Face" D. Davies 2:17
5. "End of the Season" 2:57
6. "Waterloo Sunset" 3:15
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPAL315FJtRxvDKE-QBcsK4nxZn2GPHDT
Liner Notes:
Welcome to Daviesland, Where all the little kinklings in the magic Kinkdom wear tiny black bowlers, rugby boots, soldier suits, drink half pints of bitter, carry cricket bats and ride in little Tube trains. Here all the little lady kinklings wear curlers in their hair, own fridges and washing machines, fry bacon and eggs, and take afternoon tea.
Gulliver-like Ray Davies stoops to pluck a small mortal from his musical World -- turns him upside down to see where he was made -- and replaces him gently but firmly in that great class society where all men are equal but some are more equal than others.
Many of the songs on this album are the tails of those mini-people who keep rolling across his yesterday-mind and so we find Terry and Julie in "Waterloo Sunset" and "David Watts," who has not known that abominable golden school-boy? For his musical conjuring tricks Ray reaches into his stream of life and extracts a rusty Irish jig -- there were a few spokes missing and the saddle torn -- but with a few dabs of "Kinko," the wonder song ingredient, the handlebars are reversed and you have 'moonshine music' as good as himself could have asked. Further down the waters, and a soggy bossa nova, well-worn but still serviceable, is dragged from the river-bed but re-upholstered and tempered with a Ray of gentleness it becomes the beautiful "No Return."
Somewhere in the deeper waters down-stream he finds a water-logged show-tune, sung during the battle of 'Desert Song,' but renovated and re-equipped it becomes the jaunty little sloop "Tin Soldier Man." And finally another worn-out hulk rotting from the Vaudeville era is re-manned pushed, afloat to become the saddest comedy song of all -- "End Of The Season."
This album is important for another reason -- it showcases the song writing development of younger brother Dave whose "Death Of A Clown" proved so successful, and includes two other compositions here -- "Love Me Till The Sun Shines" and "Funny Face" on which he sounds like a wicked choir-boy. Neither should we forget the stalwart contributions of bass-Kink Pete Quaife or drum-Kink Mick Avory who combine to produce the solid root sounds which hall-mark the group.
One further word of advice on listening to these tracks -- never, never take a Davies composition at face value for so much goes on behind the words in the Wondrous World of the Brothers 'D' where a corner of the Kinkdom is forever England!
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