The Kinks

History

Formation (1962–1964)

The Davies brothers, Ray and Dave, were born in suburban North London on Huntingdon Road, East Finchley, the youngest and the only boys among their family's eight children. Their parents, Frederick and Annie Davies, moved the family to 6 Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green, in the neighbouring suburb of Muswell Hill. At home, the brothers were immersed in a world of varied musical styles, from the music hall of their parents' generation to the jazz and early rock and roll their older sisters enjoyed. Both Ray and his brother Dave, younger by almost three years, learnt to play guitar, and they played skiffle and rock and roll together.

The brothers attended William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School (later merged with Tollington Grammar School to become Fortismere School), where they formed a band, the Ray Davies Quartet, with Ray's friend and classmate Pete Quaife and Quaife's friend John Start (although they would also be known as the Pete Quaife Quartet if the bass player landed a gig for them instead). Their debut at a school dance was well received, which encouraged the group to play at local pubs and bars. The band went through a series of lead vocalists, including Rod Stewart, another student at William Grimshaw, who performed with the group at least once in early 1962. He then formed his own group, Rod Stewart and the Moonrakers, who became a local rival to the Ray Davies Quartet.

In late 1962, Ray Davies left home to study at Hornsey College of Art. He pursued interests in subjects such as film, sketching, theatre, and music, including jazz and blues. When Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated played at the college in December, he asked advice from Alexis Korner, who recommended Giorgio Gomelsky, the future Yardbirds manager, who put Davies in touch with the Soho-based Dave Hunt Band, a professional group of musicians who played jazz and R&B. A few days after the Ray Davies Quartet supported Cyril Stapleton at the Lyceum Ballroom on New Year's Eve, Davies, while still remaining in the Quartet, joined the Dave Hunt Band, which briefly included Charlie Watts on drums. In February 1963, Davies left Dave Hunt to join the Hamilton King Band (also known as the Blues Messengers), which had Peter Bardens as a pianist. At the end of the spring term, he left Hornsey College with a view to studying film at the Central School of Art and Design. Around this time, the Quartet changed their name to the Ramrods. Davies has referred to a show the fledgling Kinks played (again as the Ray Davies Quartet) at Hornsey Town Hall on Valentine's Day 1963 as their first important gig. In June, the Hamilton King Band broke up. However, the Ramrods kept going, performing under several other names, including the Pete Quaife Band and the Bo-Weevils, before (temporarily) settling on the Ravens. The fledgling group hired two managers, Grenville Collins and Robert Wace. In late 1963, former pop singer Larry Page became their third manager. American record producer Shel Talmy began working with the band, and the Beatles' promoter, Arthur Howes, was retained to schedule the Ravens' live shows. The group unsuccessfully auditioned for various record labels until early 1964, when Talmy secured them a contract with Pye Records. During this period, they had acquired a new drummer, Mickey Willet; however, Willet left the band shortly before they signed to Pye. The Ravens invited Mick Avory to replace him after seeing an advertisement Avory had placed in Melody Maker. Avory had a background in jazz drumming and had played one gig with the fledgling Rolling Stones.

Early years (1964–1966)

The Kinks' first single was a cover of the Little Richard song "Long Tall Sally". A friend of the band, Bobby Graham, was recruited to play the drums on the recording. Graham would continue to occasionally substitute for Avory in the studio, and he played on several of the Kinks' early singles, including the hits "You Really Got Me", "All Day and All of the Night" and "Tired of Waiting for You". Released in February 1964, "Long Tall Sally" was almost completely ignored, despite the publicity efforts of the band's managers. The group's second single, Ray Davies' original "You Still Want Me", was also passed over by the public.

The Ray Davies song "You Really Got Me", influenced by American blues and the Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie", was recorded on 15 June 1964 at Pye Studios with a slower and more produced feel than the final single. Davies, who hated the recording, feeling that the guitar was too buried and the echo too prominent, wanted to re-record the song, but Pye refused to fund another session; Davies was adamant, so Collins and Wace broke the stalemate by underwriting the session themselves. The band used an independent recording studio, IBC, and completed the recording in two takes on 15 July. The single was released in August 1964; supported by a performance on the television show Ready Steady Go! and extensive pirate radio coverage, it entered the UK charts on 15 August, reaching number one on 19 September. Hastily imported by the American label Reprise Records, where the band was signed by executive Mo Ostin, "You Really Got Me" also made the Top 10 in the United States. The loud, distorted guitar riff and solo—played by Dave Davies and achieved by a slice he made in the speaker cone of his Elpico amplifier (referred to by the band as the "little green amp")—helped with the song's signature, gritty guitar sound. "You Really Got Me" has been described as "a blueprint song in the hard rock and heavy metal arsenal" and as an influence on the approach of some American garage rock bands. After its release, the Kinks recorded most of the tracks for their debut LP, simply titled Kinks. Consisting largely of covers and revamped traditional songs, it was released on 2 October 1964, reaching number four on the UK chart. "All Day and All of the Night", another Ray Davies hard rock tune, was released three weeks later as the group's fourth single, reaching number two in the UK and number seven in the US. The group's first EP, Kinksize Session, and their next three singles, "Tired of Waiting for You", "Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy", and "Set Me Free", were also commercially successful, with "Tired of Waiting for You" topping the UK singles chart.

The group opened 1965 with their first tour of Australia and New Zealand, with Manfred Mann and the Honeycombs. An intensive performing schedule saw them headline other package tours throughout the year with acts such as the Yardbirds and Mickey Finn. Tensions began to emerge within the band, expressed in incidents such as the on-stage fight between Avory and Dave Davies at the Capitol Theatre in Cardiff, Wales, on 19 May. After finishing the first song, "You Really Got Me", Davies insulted Avory and kicked over his drum set. Avory responded by hitting Davies with his hi-hat stand, rendering him unconscious, before fleeing from the scene, fearing that he had killed his bandmate. Davies was taken to Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where he received 16 stitches to his head. To placate the police, Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at one another.

Critical success (1966–1972)

The satirical single "Sunny Afternoon" was the biggest UK hit of summer 1966, topping the charts and displacing the Beatles' "Paperback Writer". Before the release of The Kink Kontroversy, Ray Davies suffered a nervous and physical breakdown, caused by the pressures of touring, writing and ongoing legal squabbles. During his months of recuperation, he wrote several new songs and pondered the band's direction. In June 1966, Quaife was involved in an automobile accident, and after his recovery, he decided to leave the band. Bassist John Dalton, who was initially hired to fill in for the injured Quaife, subsequently became his official replacement. However, Quaife soon had a change of heart and rejoined the band in November 1966, with Dalton returning to his previous job as a coalman.

"Sunny Afternoon" was a dry run for the band's next album, Face to Face, which displayed Davies's growing ability to craft musically gentle yet lyrically cutting narrative songs about everyday life and people. Hopkins returned for the sessions to play various keyboard instruments, including piano and harpsichord. He played on the band's next two studio albums as well and was involved in a number of their live BBC recordings before joining the Jeff Beck Group in 1968. Face to Face was released in October 1966 in the UK, where it was well received and peaked at number eight. When it was released in the US in December, the album was tipped as a potential "chart winner" by Billboard magazine. Despite this, it managed only a meagre chart peak of 135—a sign of the band's flagging popularity in the American market.

Released in November 1966, the Kinks' next single was a social commentary piece entitled "Dead End Street". It became another UK Top 10 hit but reached only number 73 in the US. Bob Dawbarn from Melody Maker praised Ray Davies's ability to create a song with "some fabulous lyrics and a marvellous melody [...] combined with a great production", and music scholar Johnny Rogan described it as "a kitchen sink drama without the drama—a static vision of working-class stoicism". One of the group's first promotional music videos was produced for the song. It was filmed on Little Green Street, a small 18th-century lane in north London, located off Highgate Road in Kentish Town.

The Kinks' next single, "Waterloo Sunset", was released in May 1967. The lyrics describe two lovers passing over a bridge, with a melancholic observer reflecting on the couple, the Thames, and Waterloo station. The song was rumoured to have been inspired by the romance between actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, two British celebrities of the time. Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography and claimed in a 2008 interview, "It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country." Despite its complex arrangement, the sessions for "Waterloo Sunset" lasted a mere ten hours. Dave Davies later commented on the recording: "We spent a lot of time trying to get a different guitar sound, to get a more unique feel for the record. In the end, we used a tape-delay echo, but it sounded new because nobody had done it since the 1950s. I remember Steve Marriott of the Small Faces came up and asked me how we'd got that sound. We were almost trendy for a while." The single was one of the Kinks' biggest UK successes, hitting number two on Melody Maker's chart, and became one of their most popular and best-known songs. Critic Robert Christgau called it "the most beautiful song in the English language", and AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine cited it as "possibly the most beautiful song of the rock and roll era". Ray Davies was chosen to perform "Waterloo Sunset" at the closing of the 2012 London Olympic Games, 45 years after the song's release. In August 1967, the Kinks' first live album, The Live Kinks, was issued in the US, though it would not appear in the UK until the next year under the title Live at Kelvin Hall.

Theatrical incarnation (1973–1975)

In 1973, Ray Davies dived headlong into the theatrical style, beginning with the rock opera Preservation, a sprawling chronicle of social revolution and a more ambitious outgrowth of the earlier Village Green Preservation Society ethos. In conjunction with the Preservation project, the Kinks' line-up was expanded to include a horn section and female backup singers, essentially reconfiguring the group as a theatrical troupe.

Ray Davies's marital problems during this period began to affect the band adversely, particularly after his wife, Rasa, took their children and left him in June 1973. Davies became depressed; during a July gig at White City Stadium, he told the audience he was " sick of the whole thing" and was retiring. He subsequently collapsed after a drug overdose and was taken to hospital. With Ray Davies in a seemingly critical condition, plans were discussed for Dave to continue as frontman in a worst-case scenario. Ray recovered from his illness as well as his depression, but throughout the remainder of the Kinks' theatrical incarnation, the band's output remained uneven, and their already fading popularity declined even more. John Dalton later commented that when Davies "decided to work again [...] I don't think he was totally better, and he's been a different person ever since."

Preservation Act 1 (1973) and Preservation Act 2 (1974) received generally poor reviews. The story on the albums involved an anti-hero called Mr Flash and his rival and enemy, Mr Black (played by Dave Davies during live shows), an ultra-purist and corporatist. Preservation Act 2 was the first album recorded at Konk Studio; from this point forward, virtually every Kinks studio recording was produced by Ray Davies at Konk. The band embarked on an ambitious US tour throughout late 1974, adapting the Preservation story for the stage. Author Robert Polito: "[Ray] Davies expanded the Kinks into a road troupe of perhaps a dozen costumed actors, singers and horn players. [...] Smoother and tighter than on record, Preservation live proved funnier as well."

Davies began another project for Granada Television, a musical called Starmaker. After a broadcast with Ray Davies in the starring role and the Kinks as both backup band and ancillary characters, the project eventually morphed into the concept album The Kinks Present a Soap Opera, released in May 1975, in which Ray Davies fantasised about what would happen if a rock star traded places with a "normal Norman" and took a 9–5 job. In August 1975, the Kinks recorded their final theatrical work, Schoolboys in Disgrace, a backstory biography of Preservation's Mr Flash. The record was a modest success, peaking at number 45 on the Billboard charts.

Return to commercial success (1976–1985)

Following the termination of their contract with RCA, the Kinks signed with Arista Records in 1976. With the encouragement of Arista's management, they stripped back down to a five-man core group and were reborn as an arena rock band. John Dalton left the band before finishing the sessions for the debut Arista album. Andy Pyle was brought in to complete the sessions and to play on the subsequent tour. Sleepwalker, released in 1977, marked a return to success for the group as it peaked at number 21 on the Billboard chart. After its release and the recording of the follow-up, Misfits, Andy Pyle and keyboardist John Gosling left the group to work together on a separate project. In May 1978, Misfits, the Kinks' second Arista album, was released. It included the US top-40 hit "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy", which helped make the record another success for the band. The non-album single "Father Christmas" has remained a popular track; driven by session drummer Henry Spinetti's drumming and Dave Davies' heavy guitar, it has become a classic seasonal favourite on mainstream radio. For the following tour, the band recruited ex-Argent bassist Jim Rodford and ex-Pretty Things keyboardist Gordon John Edwards. Edwards soon left, and the band recorded 1979's Low Budget as a quartet. Keyboardist Ian Gibbons was recruited for the subsequent tour.

Beginning in the late 1970s, bands such as the Jam ("David Watts"), the Pretenders ("Stop Your Sobbing", "I Go to Sleep"), the Romantics ("She's Got Everything"), and the Knack ("The Hard Way") recorded covers of Kinks songs, which helped bring attention to the group's new releases. In 1978, Van Halen covered "You Really Got Me" for their debut single, a top-40 US hit, helping boost the band's commercial resurgence (Van Halen later covered "Where Have All the Good Times Gone", another early Kinks song which had been covered by David Bowie on his 1973 album Pin Ups). The hard rock sound of Low Budget, released in 1979, helped make it the Kinks' second gold album and highest-charting original album in the US, where it peaked at number 11. The live album One for the Road was produced in 1980, along with a video of the same title, bringing the group's concert-drawing power to a peak that would last into 1983. Dave Davies also took advantage of the group's improved commercial standing to fulfil his decade-long ambitions to release albums of his solo work. The first was the eponymous Dave Davies in 1980. It was also known by its catalogue number "AFL1-3603" because of its cover art, which depicted Dave Davies as a leather-jacketed piece of price-scanning barcode. He produced another, less successful, solo album in 1981, Glamour.

Decline in popularity and split (1986–1997)

In early 1986, the Kinks signed with MCA Records in the US and London Records in the UK. Their first album for the new labels, Think Visual, was released later that year with moderate success, peaking at number 81 on the Billboard albums chart. Songs like the ballad "Lost and Found" and "Working at the Factory" concerned blue-collar life on an assembly line, while the title track was an attack on the very MTV video culture from which the band had profited earlier in the decade. Think Visual was followed in 1987 with the live album The Road, which was a mediocre commercial and critical performer. In 1989, the Kinks released UK Jive, a commercial failure that made only a momentary entry into the US album chart at number 122. MCA Records ultimately dropped them, leaving the Kinks without a label deal for the first time in over 25 years. Long-time keyboardist Ian Gibbons left the group and was replaced by Mark Haley.

The Kinks were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, their first year of eligibility. Mick Avory and Pete Quaife were present for the award. The induction did not lead to a revival of the group's stalled career. A compilation from the MCA Records period, Lost & Found (1986–1989), was released in 1991 to fulfil contractual obligations, marking the official end of the group's relationship with the label.

The Kinks then signed with Columbia Records and released the five-song EP Did Ya in 1991, the title track of which charted at number 48 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. The Kinks reverted to a four-piece band for the recording of their first Columbia album, Phobia, in 1993. After a sellout performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Mark Haley departed the band, and Gibbons rejoined them for a US tour. Phobia managed only one week in the US Billboard chart at number 166; as had by then become usual for the band, it made no impression in the UK. The single "Only a Dream" narrowly failed to reach the British chart. The album's final candidate for release as a single, "Scattered", was announced and followed up with TV and radio promotion. However, the record was unavailable in stores—several months later, a small number appeared on the collector market. The group was dropped by Columbia in 1994.

The band continued without the support of the major record label and released the first version of the album To the Bone on their own Konk label in the UK in 1994. This live acoustic album was partly recorded on the highly successful UK tours of 1993 and 1994 and partly in the Konk studio in front of a small, invited audience. Two years later, the band released a new, improved, live double-CD set in the US, which retained the same name and contained two new studio tracks, "Animal" and "To the Bone". The CD set also featured new treatments of many old Kinks hits. The record drew respectable press but failed to chart in either the US or the UK.

Solo work and recognition (1998–2017)

The band members subsequently focused on solo projects, and the Davies brothers both released their own studio albums. Talk of a Kinks reunion circulated (including an aborted studio reunion of the original band members in 1999), but neither Ray nor Dave Davies showed much interest in playing together again. Meanwhile, former members John Gosling, John Dalton and Mick Avory had regrouped in 1994 and started performing on the oldies circuit along with guitar player and singer Dave Clarke as the Kast Off Kinks.

In 1998, Ray Davies released the solo album Storyteller as a companion piece to his book X-Ray. Originally written two years earlier as a cabaret-style show, the album celebrated his old band and estranged brother. Seeing the programming potential of his music/dialogue/reminiscence format, the American music television network VH1 launched a series of similar projects featuring established rock artists titled VH1 Storytellers. Dave Davies spoke favourably of a Kinks reunion in early 2003. As the 40th anniversary of the group's breakthrough neared, both the Davies brothers expressed interest in working together again. However, hopes for a reunion were dashed in June 2004 when Dave suffered a stroke that temporarily impaired his ability to speak and play guitar. Following his recovery, the Kinks were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in November 2005, with all four of the original band members in attendance. The induction helped fuel sales for the group; in August 2007, a re-entry of The Ultimate Collection, a compilation of material spanning the band's career, reached number 32 on the UK Top 100 album chart and number one on the UK Indie album chart. Quaife, who had been receiving kidney dialysis for more than ten years, died on 23 June 2010, aged 66. On 20 January 2018, long-time bassist Jim Rodford died at the age of 76. Keyboardist Ian Gibbons died of cancer on 1 August 2019. aged 67. Gosling died on 4 August 2023, at the age of 75.

Aborted reunion (2018–present)

In June 2018, the Davies brothers said they were working on a new Kinks studio album with Avory. In July 2019, the band again said they were working on new music. However, in a December 2020 interview with The New York Times, Ray Davies gave no indication that much, or indeed any, work had been done, saying, "I'd like to work with Dave again—if he'll work with me." When asked about a reunion in an interview published in January 2021, Dave Davies said, "We've been talking about it. I mean there's a lot of material and, you know, it could still happen."

In March 2023, Avory laid to rest rumours of a reunion, citing differences between the Davies brothers: "I don't think it's possible now – one thing, health-wise. And I don't think we could ever work it out because Dave wanted to do it one way, and Ray wanted to do it the other – which was quite normal thinking for them. [...] Ray thought [of] doing it as an 'evolution tour' – you have different people who came into the band and what songs they recorded on and what songs affected them. I thought that would be more interesting. But I think Dave just wanted 'a band' – not particularly with me in it. Just reform something like they had when I left – just a band with him and Ray in it, really."

Live performances

The first live performance of the Ray Davies Quartet, the band that would become the Kinks, was at a dance for their school, William Grimshaw, in 1962. The band performed under several names between 1962 and 1963—the Pete Quaife Band, the Bo-Weevils, the Ramrods, and the Ravens—before settling on the Kinks in early 1964.

The Kinks made their first tour of Australia and New Zealand in January 1965 as part of a "package" bill that included Manfred Mann and the Honeycombs. They performed and toured relentlessly, headlining package tours throughout 1965 with performers such as the Yardbirds and Mickey Finn. Tensions began to emerge within the band, expressed in incidents such as the on-stage fight between drummer Mick Avory and Dave Davies at The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, Wales, on 19 May. After finishing the first song, "You Really Got Me", Davies insulted Avory and kicked over his drum set. Avory responded by hitting Davies with his hi-hat stand, rendering him unconscious, before fleeing from the scene, fearing that he had killed his bandmate. Davies was taken to Cardiff Royal Infirmary, where he received 16 stitches to his head. To placate police, Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at each other. Following their summer 1965 American tour, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts in the US for the next four years, possibly due to their rowdy on-stage behaviour.

In April 1969, Davies helped negotiate an end to the American Federation of Musicians ban on the group, which allowed plans for a North American tour. However, over the next few years, Davies went into a state of depression, not helped by his collapsing marriage, culminating in his onstage announcement that he was "sick of it all" at a gig in White City Stadium, London, in 1973. A review of the concert published in Melody Maker stated: "Davies swore on stage. He stood at The White City and swore that he was 'F...... [sic] sick of the whole thing' [...] He was 'Sick up to here with it' [...] and those that heard shook their heads. Mick just ventured a disbelieving smile, and drummer [sic] on through 'Waterloo Sunset.'" Davies proceeded to try to announce that the Kinks were breaking up as the band were leaving the stage, but this attempt was foiled by the group's publicity management, who pulled the plug on the microphone system.

Musical style

According to Jeff Mezydlo of Yardbarker, the Kinks combined the "pop-rock feel of the British invasion with a bluesy tint". The band started out playing the then popular R&B and blues styles; then, under the influence of the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" recording, developed louder rock and hard rock sounds. Due to their pioneering contribution to the field, they have often been labelled as "the original punks". Dave Davies was "really bored with this guitar sound—or lack of an interesting sound", so he purchased "a little green amplifier [...] an Elpico" from a radio spares shop in Muswell Hill, and "twiddled around with it", including "taking the wires going to the speaker and putting a jack plug on there and plugging it straight into my AC30" (a larger amplifier), but did not get the sound he wanted until he got frustrated and "got a single-sided Gillette razorblade and cut round the cone [from the centre to the edge] [...] so it was all shredded but still on there, still intact. I played and I thought it was amazing, really freaky." The jagged sound of the amplifier was replicated in the studio; the Elpico was plugged into the Vox AC30, and the resulting effect became a mainstay in the Kinks' early recordings—most notably on "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night".

From 1966 onwards, the Kinks came to be known for their adherence to traditions of English music and culture during a period when many other British bands dismissed their heritage in favour of American blues, R&B and pop styles. Ray Davies recalled that at a distinct moment in 1965, he decided to break away from the American scene and write more introspective and intelligent songs. "I decided I was going to use words more, and say things. I wrote 'A Well Respected Man'. That was the first real word-oriented song I wrote [...] [I also] abandoned any attempt to Americanise my accent." The Kinks' allegiance to English styles was strengthened by the ban placed on them by the American Federation of Musicians. The ban cut them off from the American record-buying public, the world's largest musical market, forcing them to focus on Britain and mainland Europe. The Kinks expanded on their English sound throughout the remainder of the 1960s, incorporating elements of music hall, folk, and baroque music through the use of harpsichord, acoustic guitar, Mellotron, and horns in albums such as Face to Face, Something Else by the Kinks, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), creating some of the most influential and important music of the period.

Beginning with Everybody's in Show-biz (1972), Ray Davies began exploring theatrical concepts on the group's albums; these themes became manifest on the 1973 album Preservation Act 1 and continued through Schoolboys in Disgrace (1976). The Kinks were less commercially successful with these conceptual works and were dropped by RCA, which had signed them in 1971. In 1977, they moved to Arista Records, which insisted on a more traditional rock format. Sleepwalker (1977), which heralded their return to commercial success, featured a mainstream, relatively slick production style that would become their norm. The band returned to hard rock for Low Budget (1979) and continued to record within the genre throughout the remainder of their career, combining this with pop music in the 1980s with albums such as Give the People What They Want and songs such as "Better Things".

Legacy

The Kinks are regarded as one of the most influential rock acts of the 1960s and early 1970s. Stephen Thomas Erlewine called them "one of the most influential bands of the British Invasion". They were ranked 65th on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" list.

Artists influenced by the Kinks include punk rock groups such as the Ramones, the Clash, Blondie, and the Jam; heavy metal acts including Van Halen; and Britpop groups such as Oasis and Blur. Craig Nicholls, singer and guitarist of the Vines, described the Kinks as "great songwriters, so underrated". Pete Townshend, guitarist with the Kinks' contemporaries the Who, credited Ray Davies with inventing "a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning". Jon Savage wrote that the Kinks were an influence on late 1960s American psychedelic rock groups "like the Doors, Love and Jefferson Airplane". Music writers and other musicians have acknowledged the influence of the Kinks on the development of hard rock and heavy metal. Musicologist Joe Harrington stated: "'You Really Got Me', 'All Day and All of the Night' and 'I Need You' were predecessors of the whole three-chord genre [...] [T]he Kinks did a lot to help turn rock 'n' roll (Jerry Lee Lewis) into rock." Queen guitarist Brian May credited the band with "plant[ing] the seed which grew into riff-based music."

They have two albums on Rolling Stone magazine's 2020 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (No. 384) and Something Else by the Kinks (No. 478). They have three songs on the same magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list as updated in September 2021: "Waterloo Sunset" (No. 14), "You Really Got Me" (No. 176), and "Lola" (No. 386). A musical, Sunny Afternoon, based on the early life of Ray Davies and the formation of the Kinks, opened at the Hampstead Theatre in April 2014. The musical's name came from the band's 1966 hit single "Sunny Afternoon" and features songs from the band's back catalogue.

In 2015, it was reported that Julien Temple would direct a biographical film of the Kinks titled You Really Got Me, but as of 2021, nothing had come of the project. Temple previously released a documentary about Ray Davies titled Imaginary Man.

Members

Past members

Ray Davies – lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, harmonica (1963–1997)

Dave Davies – lead guitar, backing and lead vocals, occasional keyboards (1963–1997)

Mick Avory – drums, percussion (1963–1984)

Pete Quaife – bass, backing vocals (1963–1966, 1966–1969; dies 2010)

John Dalton – bass, backing vocals (1966, 1969–1976)

John Gosling – keyboards, piano, backing vocals (1970–1978; died 2023)

Andy Pyle – bass (1976–1978)

Jim Rodford – bass, backing vocals (1978–1997; died 2018)

Gordon John Edwards – keyboards, piano, backing vocals (1978–1979; died 2003)

Ian Gibbons – keyboards, piano, backing vocals (1979–1989, 1993–1997; died 2019)

Bob Henrit – drums, percussion (1984–1997)

Mark Haley – keyboards, piano, backing vocals (1989–1993)

Discography

The Kinks were active for more than three decades, between 1963 and 1996, releasing twenty-four studio albums and four live albums. The first two albums were released in different formats in the UK and US, partly because of the contrast in popularity of the extended play format—the UK market liked EPs, the US market did not, so US albums had the EP releases bundled onto them—and also because the US albums included the hit singles, while the UK albums did not; after The Kink Kontroversy in 1965, the UK/US album releases were the same. There have been somewhere between 100 and 200 compilation albums released worldwide.

The Kinks had five top 10 singles on the US Billboard chart and nine top 40 albums. In the UK, the group had seventeen top 20 singles and five top 10 albums. The RIAA has certified four of the Kinks' albums as gold records. Released in 1965, The Kinks Greatest Hits! was certified gold for sales of 1,000,000 on 28 November 1968—this was six days after the release of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which failed to chart worldwide. The group did not receive another gold record award until 1979's Low Budget. The 1980 live album One for the Road was certified gold on 8 December 1980. Give the People What They Want, released in 1981, received its certification on 25 January 1982 for sales of 500,000 copies. Despite not selling at the time of its release, Village Green was awarded a gold disc in the UK in 2018 for selling more than 100,000 copies. For the hit single "Come Dancing", the performing rights organisation ASCAP presented the Kinks with an award for "One of the Most Played Songs of 1983".

Studio albums

Live albums

Live at Kelvin Hall (1967)

One for the Road (1980)

Live: The Road (1988)

To the Bone (1994)

BBC Sessions: 1964–1977 (2001)