By Savannah Brown
It was the summer of 1965. The birds were chirping. The sun was shining, the wheat fields waving. The Kinks, a British Invasion band from Northern London, had just hit it big in the States (and everywhere else) with the rock earworm, “You Really Got Me,” peaking at #7 on the US rock charts and #1 in the UK. They were embarking on their first-ever American tour, almost one year after The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had crossed the pond. Back in those days, when an English band was doing great in the UK, there was only one more place to go to cement their legacy: The US of A.
However, this tour would not turn out to be the career-defining barrier-breaker that it was expected to be. While it had all of the potential to raise the Kinks up alongside their legendary contemporaries (The Beatles and the Stones), it instead scratched them right off the British Invasion map, nearly sinking them into obscurity anywhere outside of the UK. It also led them to produce the best music of their career.
The tour started off well enough.
That’s not true, it was chaos from start to finish. America was the third leg of their world tour, where the previous two were fraught with poor sound production, bad promotion, low ticket sales, and battling band members.
When they performed in Wales on May 19th, 1965, an onstage fight broke out between drummer Mick Avory and lead Guitarist Dave Davies. Dave’s brother and Kinks’ lead vocalist Ray Davies told Wales Online that the two musicians had drunkenly brawled during a show in a different city the previous evening, and this Wales fight was essentially round 2. Performing at the Cardiff Theater in front of nearly 5,000 fans, they had just finished playing their second song when Dave, ever-so-eloquently, said “Why don’t you get your c*** out and play the snare with it? It’ll probably sound better,” before kicking his drum set. Avory responded with the utmost British distinguishability. “I picked the hi-hat up and whacked him with the pedal end, but it was a rubber pedal, an old Premier thing,” he told Goldmine Magazine in 2019.
This “whack” led to an unconscious Dave getting rushed to the hospital for 16 stitches, and a terrified Avory running into hiding thinking he had killed him (and almost getting charged with attempted murder before Dave dropped it). Oh, and it was the end of the set for the night. And the end of the UK leg, because they canceled their last four shows while Dave recovered.
By the time they got to America, tensions were very high. Warring band members and onstage arguments became commonplace (Mick Avory aside, Oasis couldn’t hold a candle to Ray and Dave Davies in terms of British musical sibling rivalries). But more than that, because of the disappointing initial ticket sales, tour promoter Betty Kaye couldn’t pay the band in cash like they had agreed, so the angry Kinks started acting out. First, they played a shortened set (20 minutes instead of the contracted 40) to a very small crowd in Reno (the audience size being blamed on bad promotion). Then in Sacramento, their set consisted mostly of a very long rendition of “You Really Got Me.” When they skipped their San Francisco show, Kaye issued a formal complaint with the American Federation of Musicians–the musicians union that has the power to revoke work permits if musicians act unruly.
Everything came to a head on July 2, 1965, barely a month into their tour. The Kinks were set to perform on an afternoon variety show called “Where the Action Is” hosted by ‘60s TV personality Dick Clark. Before they performed, however…
Well actually, I’ll just let Ray explain himself in this excerpt from his memoir “X-Ray,”
“Some guy who said he worked for the TV company walked up and accused us of being late.”
“Then he started making anti-British comments. Things like, ‘Just because the Beatles did it, every mop-topped, spotty-faced limey juvenile thinks he can come over here and make a career for himself. You’re just a bunch of Commie wimps. When the Russians take over Britain, don’t expect us to come over and save you this time. The Kinks, huh? Well, once I file my report on you guys, you’ll never work in the U.S.A. again. You’re gonna find out just how powerful America is, you limey bastard!’ The rest is a blur. However, I do recall being pushed and swinging a punch and being punched back.”
If you didn’t catch it: Some guy backstage at the show called The Kinks “Commie Wimps” among a slew of other choice words, and Ray punched him. This guy just happened to be a union official, and the Kinks were banned by the American Federation of Musicians from playing in the States for four years, from 1965 to1969.
"It was a terrible blow for our careers. We couldn't tour, we couldn't play Woodstock... I was really hurt because America was the inspiration for our kind of music,” Ray said.
The Kinks’ hits like “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night” have been cemented as some of the original rock songs, while also being a major precursor to the Punk genre. But in 1965, they were thrust out of America and forgotten about in the States as other bands stepped into the scene, remaining as influences but never becoming as popular in America as they could have been.
In my opinion, this was the best thing for their career. Now that they didn’t have America’s sound to conform their music to, they had to focus on the only thing they now had: England.
“When we were banned from the United States there was probably no likelihood we’d ever get back to play here. [I] lost myself in being English, with no aspirations of ever coming back to America,” Ray told Magnet Magazine.
With their coming music, the Kinks embraced their British-ism and pumped out a string of beautiful, introspective (and their most popular) albums that delved into English emotions and ideals.
“The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society,” “Arthur,” “Face to Face,” and other albums from this era explore themes regarding everything from the false ideals of British life and the need to desperately cling to tradition regardless of its flaws, to satirizing English pompousness, to simply drinking tea and enjoying the sunset. Musically, these are not punk or rock, instead opting for more gentle sounds that portray the feelings that the songs are attempting to evoke. The mandolins and flutes transport the listener to a sunny English garden tea party, musing about quiet British life after a long game of croquet.
Yet, aside from the aesthetic, this music works for everyone (regardless of European citizenship) because it is deeply relatable. Everyone can connect to strong emotions tied to where they’re from. Everyone struggles with change. And everyone wishes things could be just a little bit different.
The Kinks would perform in America again, and in 1970 they released an (amazing) album scathing the music industry. They never cleaned up their behavior (Ray and Dave have a petulant on-off relationship), and they never recovered the fame in the States that they once had. But they left a strong musical legacy rooted in expressing values, dreams, and satirization that couldn’t have been articulated the same had things been different. And it was all thanks to the chaos of their 1965 US Tour, which Ray chalks up to being caused by “bad luck, bad management, and bad behavior.”