It's odd that after more than forty years in the music game -- and a decades-long feud with the other members of the Kinks -- prolific songwriter Ray Davies is just getting around to releasing his first solo album. And making his new masterpiece, Other People's Lives, was no easy process. "I had lost confidence in my own abilities to make records," says Davies, 61. So, in 2001, Davies moved to New Orleans, where he found the inspiration to write and record. But then he got hung up during the mixing process and almost shelved the project. In January 2004, Davies was shot in the leg after chasing down a thief who stole his girlfriend's purse. "That accident gave me the strength to come back and play," says Davies over lunch at La Bottega in Manhattan. "You know, this record is worth doing because it's better than doing nothing."
What's your first musical memory?
When I was three and a half, apparently, I sang the Perry Como song "Temptation" in front of an enraptured audience in our front room. [Sings] "You came/I was alone/I should have known/That you were temptation . . ." Aunt Dolly played the piano. We had a singing family. If we'd been in Appalachia, we would've been a country & western family. We had all that inbreeding, too -- the Second World War was quite a time.
What's the first song you ever wrote?
It was a country-western song called "Rocky Skies."
You used to have insomnia. Did you write most of your songs at night?
Yeah, that's when I wrote "Rocky Skies." Same with "Don't Lie to Me" and "Nothin' in This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" -- which ended up in the movie Rushmore. I wrote "All Day and All of the Night" in the morning, and "Sunny Afternoon" I wrote in the afternoon. Now I don't write songs during the night -- I just worry.
Where was the sloppiest Kinks show ever?
In Virginia, in the early Seventies. It was on a revolving stage, and during the first song I jumped in the air, fell on my head and knocked myself out, and was carried offstage. My brother [Dave] was drunk, so he had to sit down for the set [laughs]. The moment my brother could have taken over the band, he was too out of it! So Mike Cotton, our harmonica player, took over center stage and began doing "You Really Got Me." I had to fight the ambulance crew to let me back onstage, because they sounded terrible without me. I did the rest of the set with my head bandaged up.
Dave was known for playing at ear-shattering volume. Did you ever turn down his amp?
Yeah. We had a guitar tech who worked out a device on the side of my amp, so I could control his maximum volume. We had Dave well in control.
Are you kidding? Dave didn't know you were doing that?
He didn't notice. The guy that took the heat was the monitor guy. We lost a lot of monitor men during that period [laughs]. But it had to be done. Then Dave started to draw a line around the area where he played, and nobody was allowed to walk in that space.
Has the hip-hop community embraced you, now that you've taken a bullet?
[Laughs] I'll tell you, it's not cool -- it fucking hurts. But it's cool I got shot and we're here talking about it.
Does living in dangerous places help your songwriting?
I don't like danger, but the other option is just as horrible. No great work came out of living in total safety. I always relate back to The Third Man, when Orson Welles says, "Look at Italy. It had wars, revolution, great art, the Renaissance. Switzerland's lived with 2,000 years of peace, and what did it do? It produced the cuckoo clock!" Liverpool -- and the Beatles -- came out of postwar poverty to find its feet through music. I really respect a lot of rappers in New Orleans doing the same thing.
When you were living in New Orleans, where did you like to hear music?
There was a place called the Matador -- it's not there anymore. I liked New Orleans because of the musical mix. Even though my music is not riddled with the blues, there's a lot of Dixieland in it -- the chords and the inspirational specter of it. I felt comfortable with the music down there. And it's a nice flat place to ride a bike.
In 1969, you told Rolling Stone that you don't drive. Is that still true?
I do drive now, and I've become a real fucked-up individual because of it. I'm a bad driver, an irritable driver. I'm a stressed-out road-rage casualty. I used to be a real good person.
Is it annoying to hear people ask all the time, "When are the Kinks going to reunite?"
I can play my whole album for someone, sit there and talk about my new music, and all they can say is, "When are the Kinks going to be recording?" But it's touching. I met them all again last week and we had dinner. I hadn't seen them all in ten years. And I realized there was a chemistry there. At the end of the day, bands can have fights, argue all the time, battle through mishaps, brawls and lawsuits, and still come out with a string of great albums. And I got the feeling that there was still something special there.