Before Lollapalooza, before Coachella or Burning Man, and contemporaneous with the legendary California Jams was the 1983 US Festival held near San Bernardino CA over Memorial Day weekend. It was promoted by a concert industry outsider, Steve Wozniak of Apple Computers, and was innovative in that Wozniak divided each day of the four-day event by bands which reflected the stylistic diversity of early Eighties music. Home state heroes Van Halen headlined the day of Hard Rock May 29.
Tag: “You Really Got Me”
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Van Halen- US Festival 5-29-83
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The Kinks- Lola 55th Anniversary- Sir Ray Davies
In Autumn 1970 The Kinks presented the all-powerful, very conservative British Broadcasting Corporation with their new single, “Lola”, which sang of a transvestite lover who “walks like a woman but talks like a man…” and whose sweet kisses “taste just like Coca Cola…”.“Well now, that simply won’t do,” said the BBC censors. “You are banned from radio airplay unless you change the offending lyrics.” So composer Ray Davies re-recorded the shocking lyrics, this time singing about a trans lover who tasted not of Coca Cola but “cherry cola” instead.
“Much better,” replied the BBC. You can’t make this stuff up.
Fifty-five years ago The Kinks’ lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies kast a keen eye on his kompatriots in the music business with the koncept album Lola vs Powerman and the Money-go-Round, sending up not only their peers The Beatles and the Rolling Stones but us in the music press taking it all so seriously. Sir Ray joins me here In the Studio for a droll, witty, incisive look back at the hits “Lola” (Top Ten in both US and UK), and “Apeman” (#5 UK).
My dear friend Patrick Moore, a retired Inspector with the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) as well as a guitarist and keen music fan, writes,”My personal and professional experience of Sir Ray Davies was his being cantankerous and willfully contrary (though I still love the Kinks’ music). As a Londoner, I think they produced the best collection of ‘London songs’...”
Patrick’s assessment of Sir Ray notwithstanding, the relative importance of The Kinks as somewhat less than The Who and Small Faces may be a prevailing one for the UK, at least in the US the band’s import musically is absolutely seminal. This inspired me to share one of several classic rock interviews I’ve had with Ray Davies about the essential band, The Kinks’ earliest years, and their musical legacy on the double-nickel anniversary of Lola vs Powerman…. –Redbeard
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Kinks- One for the Road- Ray Davies
The Kinks finally were able to mount a sold-out headlining American tour following the late Seventies triple crown of studio albums Sleepwalker, Misfits, and Low Budget, and the recordings from that tour were released as the double album One for the Road. “When we’re on stage is the only time when it’s not serious,” muses Kinks kingpin Ray Davies, the seminal band’s lead singer and masterful songwriter. “There’s so much recording nowadays that’s gotten to be so high tech and so intense. (Recording live) took some of the pressure off of it, because the guys in our band, they’re pretty good. I’m probably the worst musician in the band…”“The Kinks have always been a very good live band,” continues Sir Ray, now officially a “Well Respected Man” after being knighted by (then Prince) King Charles. “We’re not fond of studio recording, we never have been, because we started off as a dance band, really, getting gigs at colleges and things. We find it boring recording tracks.”
One of the best features of the Kinks’ 1996 double live/unplugged album To the Bone was the balance of material, across the distinct eras and multiple record labels, by the veteran British Invasion band that became harbingers of heavy metal with “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night”, progenitors of punk rock with “Lola” and “David Watts”, and purveyors of perfect pop with “Waterloo Sunset” and “Celluloid Heroes”.
“I think there’s an energy in The Kinks’ shows that goes kind of a step further,” continues Ray Davis in my In the Studio classic rock interview. “The audience is very much a part of what we do. It’s a subliminal thing that goes on. The audience is a very important factor in what we’re doing. It’s not just us going out, (you) seeing bands, you like their hits and (hearing them ) duplicate their hits, ‘Thank you and good night’, and go home. There’s more to it than that. There’s something else that goes on in a Kinks show. Sometimes it’s nice, and sometimes it’s hell out there! But you never know until we’re on stage. It’s similar I think to going to a football game,” the Poet Laureate of Rock points out. “You know who might win, but you never can tell until the final whistle. It’s a bit like a Kinks concert.”Part one of two. –Redbeard
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Kinks- Sleepwalker/Misfits- Ray Davies
The Kinks were probably a lock for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction for their British Invasion Sixties output alone. But then the first half of the Seventies was tough sledding for them until reclaiming their rock bona fides, starting with February 1977’s Sleepwalker, the Kinks’ sixteenth (!!) studio album, and much of what turned up on 1978’s Misfits. The Kinks’ leader and poet laureate of rock, Sir Raymond Douglas Davies, joins me In the Studio for the stories behind “Juke Box Music”,”Sleepwalker”,”Live Life”, “Rock and Roll Fantasy” (the best Ray Davies ballad since “Celluloid Heroes”), and the title song on Misfits.
Historically lumped into the mid-Sixties British Invasion bands with The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and The Who, London’s lovable Kinks nevertheless took a considerably different, albeit unintended, path into the Seventies, particularly in America. At the era-defining iconic rock events from 1967 to 1977…Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, Altamont, Isle of Wight Festivals, Watkins Glen, Day on the Green…where were The Kinks?
Inexplicably, this band who had reeled off a string of Top Ten hits in both the UK and US with “You Really Got Me”,”All Day and All of the Night”,”Tired of Waiting for You”,”Sunny Afternoon”,”Victoria”,”Apeman”, and the timeless “Lola“, all which had helped to define rock’n’roll on radio in the latter half of the Sixties, went MIA there, seemingly sleepwalking through much of the Seventies. But it certainly was not for lack of trying. The exquisite “Celluloid Heroes” appeared on The Kinks’ 1972 album Everybody’s in Showbiz, yet still had disappointing US sales. Ray Davies then wrote a series of musical shows, including 1973’s Preservation Act 1 (a double album, no less); Preservation Act 2 followed a year later; and Soap Opera bubbled up in 1975. Not a one broke into the US Top Fifty sales.
When the opportunity to record for veteran record man Clive Davis’ Arista label appeared in 1976, it came with a corporate caveat: no concept albums. Songs including “Sleepwalker” and “Juke Box Music”, with Ray Davies giving the good-natured nod to critics who felt that his preceding five year output had been too precious for rock’n’roll, helped to put The Kinks back on influential US rock radio in 1977, which in turn permitted them to headline major US arenas for the first time. The momentum continued into the legendary band’s Misfits in early Summer 1978. –Redbeard
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Van Halen- Alex, David Lee Roth, Michael Anthony, the late Eddie Van Halen
The list of the most popular debut albums in rock history is a real head-turner, but towering like a giant redwood more than forty-five years after its February 1978 release remains the first Van Halen album. Not since the debut by Montrose five years earlier (interestingly produced by the same veteran sonic sorcerer, Ted Templeman) had hard rock been written, played, and captured this hot, including “Runnin’ with the Devil”, “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, “Jamie’s Cryin’”, “Ice Cream Man”, and a scorching cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”.The four original members of Van Halen, guitarist/songwriter Eddie Van Halen, big brother drummer Alex Van Halen, lead singer/lyricist David Lee Roth, and ex-bass player/backing vocalist Michael Anthony are all unanimous in their recollections of their unaided efforts before signing their record deal and releasing that now-legendary debut, Van Halen, in February 1978. Just like countless other bands before and since, for five lean years the band members papered fliers on every public blank space from Pasadena California to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, promoting themselves for untold scores of club gigs while humping their own equipment. But once Warner Bros label president Mo Ostin and A&R head Ted Templeman signed Van Halen and recorded their first album, that all changed.
Apparently there was an unprecedented commitment from the label to this untried baby band, a belief that Van Halen was going to break big right out of the box. The first indication of this appeared a full three months prior to the full album’s February 1978 release when Warner Bros distributed one of the coolest, most memorable promotional records ever to U.S. rock radio stations: a four song sampler of “Runnin’ With the Devil”, the band’s electrifying cover of The Kinks’ “Eruption/You Really Got Me”, “Jamie’s Cryin’ “, and an obscure blues song, “Ice Cream Man” in a shiny black 12″ sleeve. This new Van Halen sampler was pressed on bright red vinyl, with a label on one side only of the classic Warner Bros film studio’s Looney Tunes cartoon logo with Elmer Fudd!
Then when the full Van Halen album followed in February 1978, the band rejected the standard record industry practice of skimping on debut album cover photography and artwork (labels had always made the bands pay for the album cover designs out of their production budgets, which is why so many first albums have such lackluster eye appeal). Instead Van Halen’s first volley looks way big time, sleek and sassy with pro photography and effects. Inside, Ted Templeman’s crisp production announced that a new world class hard rock band had arrived. With more than ten million in U.S. sales, it would be another five albums and six years before Van Halen would equal that hard rock benchmark with 1984.
Eddie Van Halen was very much like Albert Einstein in that both were so all consumed by their respective interests that they would literally forget to eat, sleeping in their clothes. “I made those first four Van Halen albums in that same blue shirt,” Eddie once told me here In the Studio . Eddie did not talk that much about making music, but rather was totally action-oriented. So rather than the Muhammad Ali of music, Eddie Van Halen was the Jerry Rice of rock, simply outperforming everybody while changing the course of his field of endeavor by raising the bar to a new height to which others could only aspire. The reporters all shoved microphones in the faces of prodigal peacock David Lee Roth and later the feisty Sammy Hagar for colorful quotes , but the name of this band is Van Halen, and with all due respect it ain’t because Alex is such a great drummer, OK? Sure, Joe Montana deservedly got all the press conferences and photos, but when you looked for the guy who actually crossed the goal line with the football and put up six points standing in the end zone, it was Jerry Rice. So when history writes the story of the greatest American rock band of the last half century, it won’t be because of Sam or Dave. It was Eddie Van Halen. Just look at that grin! – Redbeard
