Musicals don’t tend to be my cup of tea, although there are
exceptions. Sunny Afternoon, featuring
the music of The Kinks, is such an exception.
I’m biased of course; I happen to be of the opinion that The
Kinks are one of the greatest bands ever to have existed, and that their lead
singer-songwriter, Ray Davies, is some sort of genius. I’m pretty sure that
there’s more to this than the North London factor.
They were highly innovative, for example – the distinctive
intro to ‘You Really Got Me’ was the first use of distortion sound (see below),
and when they moved away from
hard-driving rock, Ray Davies developed a flair for social commentary
(as seen in ‘A Well Respected Man’ and ‘Dead End Street’ – for which they shot the
promotion film, a precursor to the modern-day music video, in Kentish Town), a
decrying of increased urbanisation (‘Village Green’ and the subsequent album The Kinks Are The Village Green
Preservation Society), a sense of British
post-imperial malaise (the album Arthur
(Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)) and the startlingly modern
(‘Lola’). Their influence has resonated down the years; ‘You Really Got Me’ was
particularly influential on heavy metal and punk rock, while The Jam (who
covered ‘David Watts’), Blur and Oasis all cited them as
a major influence. More recently, their music has been used in films like Hot Fuzz and The Darjeeling Limited and, a couple of years ago, Ray Davies
released an album called See My Friends
in which he had re-recorded a number of old Kinks tracks with various artists.
That said, one does get the distinct impression that they
boys from Muswell Hill have been overlooked in favour of the likes of the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones; no doubt the mid-Sixties ban on playing in the
USA at the height of the British Invasion is a factor here, but even the band’s
on-stage squabbling – Dave Davies getting knocked out by Mick Avory during a
gig, anyone? – seems, when seen through the prism of history, to pale in
comparison to the bust-ups of Mick ’n’ Keef, to say nothing of the trail of
on-and-off-stage destruction left by the likes of Keith Moon.
Last year, someone (presumably inspired by musicals based on
the works of, among others, Queen and Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons) had
the idea of putting together band’s songs in a musical; this premiered in
Hampstead (not far from where the Davies brothers grew up) before transferring
to the West End.
The plot – I believe that in musicals, the technical term
for this is ‘book’ – was about the band’s formation and how they – particularly
Ray and Dave – dealt with fame and money-grubbing hangers-on. The story of how
Dave (who was only 17 when the band made it big) sliced open the speaker-cone
of his amplifier and then plugged it into another amp to get the distortion
sound for the guitar track of ‘You Really Got Me’ (just one of the band’s many
ground-breaking innovations) is retold, as is the band’s hedonistic rock ’n’
roll lifestyle (including the on-stage fights) and their getting banned from
playing in America.
As well as the famous songs – ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Waterloo
Sunset’, ‘Lola’ and (or course) ‘Sunny Afternoon’ (accompanied by shameless
Union Jack-waving) were all present and correct, as were social commentary tracks
like ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’, ‘A Well Respected Man’ and ‘Dead End
Street’ – lesser-known tracks like ‘This Strange Effect’ and ‘This Time
Tomorrow’ were also woven into the plot. None of them felt like they’d been
crow-barred into it, which is the feeling one gets with some musicals. The
decision to sing the somewhat fragile ‘Days’ without instrumental accompaniment
was a bold one that paid off, while the last twenty or so minutes felt like a
particularly raucous gig (as the best ones should be, of course), with the
audience singing along and thoroughly enjoying themselves.
During the interval, Dad wondered out loud whether anyone
else in the theatre had actually seen The Kinks live, as he did a couple of
times at the Wembley Arena back in the day. “Wimbledon Palais,” quipped a man
standing near us; this exchange led to a discussion about the relative merits
of Something Else and the Kwyet Kinks EP. No-one minded; in fact,
several passers-by looked like they wanted to join in.
It was that sort of evening.
