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