Were it not for the cheap amp set up in the Davies family’s Muswell Hill sitting room and young guitarist Dave’s willfulness to go at it with a razor blade in the early ’60s, the distorted, heavy metal riff that is known the world over as the heart of “You Really Got Me” may never have been born. But there are some additional, profoundly fateful moments in the Kinks story, like the point at which Dave’s older brother, Ray, joins his band. Of course, the combustible combination of styles and personalities is what makes the Kinks the Kinks: the yin, the yang—and the elegant chaos from which seemingly effortless rock ‘n’ roll has flowed for over 40 years. But it hasn’t been without a torrent of difficulties, strange turns of events, and mind-bending mayhem.

You could put it down to the rigors of rock ‘n’ roll or brotherly tension (like the type that’s fuelled dueling sibling acts from Creedence to Oasis), but it appears that it was Ray’s attempts to drive the band in a theatrical direction in the late ’60s and early ’70s that were partly responsible for driving a perfectly decent rock band to the edge of sanity and a near real breakup in 1973. Despite the massively creative, prolific, and influential output—from their distinctive guitar sound to the groundbreaking conceptual albums and theatrical production—all with a staunchly Anglocentric view (the very same approach that would later spawn Brit-pop), Ray simply would not rest until he successfully turned his rock into theater, while Dave was always more content to just rock.

In 1998, I spoke to both Ray and Dave in separate interviews about their band’s high times and low ebbs, and, in particular, to Dave about a period in the mid-’70s that yielded the conceptual albums The Kinks Present a Soap Opera, The Kinks Present Schoolboys in Disgrace, Sleepwalker, and Misfits. The experimentations in theatricality (Everybody’s in Showbiz and Preservation Act 1) and the disappointments surrounding them nearly cost Ray his sanity. In 1973 he checked himself into a hospital. As for Dave’s condition, he was seriously reconsidering his membership in the band, though he ultimately took a major role in nursing his brother back to normalcy post-breakdown. The resulting Soap Opera was conceived during Ray’s difficulties and concerned “a rock star” who craves an ordinary life; it also marked the edge of a very successful run for the band as a live act, especially in America.

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