Library Rock's Backpages

Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan

Chris Charlesworth, Rock's Backpages, February 2015

WELL RESPECTED certainly but hardly a flower to be looked at and most unlikely to laze around in the afternoon, sunny or otherwise. The life of Ray Davies that Johnny Rogan puts under his all-seeing microscope is indeed complicated, involving a relentless tug of war between The Kinks and his personal ambitions, a brutally toxic relationship with his younger brother Dave, obduracy that time and again stymies professional advancement, workaholic propensities that scupper three marriages and a penny-pinching miserliness that, as Kinks producer Shel Talmy drolly puts it, "makes Rod Stewart look like a philanthropist".

Total word count of piece: 1938

Subscribe

Becoming a member is easy. Membership gives you access to all the thousands of articles in the library.

Click here to go to Subscribe page.

Click here for academic and other group subscriptions.