Ray Davies and Dave Davies didn’t see eye-to-eye for decades – their relationship was so fractured that it in fact broke up The Kinks.
During their time in the influential band, things were continually tense between the two brothers, but their creative powers still flourished.
Ray’s witty, quintessentially British lyricism captured imaginations, writing era-defining songs like ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ‘Sunny Afternoon’.
Dave’s guitar mastery conjured riffs like the timeless ‘You Really Got Me’ their first hit in 1964, and a sound which brought opened the door for distortion to revolutionise pop music.
Together they brought The Kinks to the fore of British music throughout the 1960s and 1970s, despite it being “a constant state of screaming and shouting at each other” as Dave recently revealed to the Daily Express.
Even after the band split, the brothers’ rift deepened, with Ray infamously stamping on Dave’s 50th birthday cake in 1997.
They’ve softened over the years however, and have learned to appreciate each other’s work, with a reunion long been mooted.
“We spoke about it only last week,” Dave told The New Cue earlier this week. “We’re going to meet up again this week and see where the journey might take us.
“We’ve had loads of stuff in the can for ages so who knows. Stuff we’ve had in demo form or things we didn’t use. There’s quite a few songs we’ve either revamped or done slightly
Asked outright if new Kinks music was on the way, Dave replied: “Let’s hope so, eh!”
It’s not the first time the band have hyped up a comeback recently with Dave telling the Express last month: “We’ll try to get back on stage”.
So The Kinks getting back together has never seemed closer, with Ray telling NME recently that they have around “20 songs” for a new album.
It’s been on-off-on-off and on-off again between the Davies brothers – Dave seemed to pour cold water on the prospect in 2022 by branding Ray “a megalomaniac”.
But it seems the tide has turned, with both brothers wanting to remind the world of how great The Kinks truly were.
“We spoke the other day and we’re meeting up in a couple of weeks,” Dave said. “We’ll try to get back on stage. I won’t tell you what it is until it’s ready, but I want us to talk about doing something based on our lives.”
Their only public reunion since The Kinks’ demise in 1997 was when Ray joined Dave on stage at London’s Islington Assembly Hall in 2015 to perform ‘You Really Got Me’.
Ever since then tongues have been wagging for them to finally get the band back together, and now their relationship has healed, it looks likely.
Dave spoke fondly of his brother to the Express, saying: “I look forward to it whenever I see Ray and we talk about stuff, because Ray has got such a way with words.”
The band’s primitive nature was the reason they became to successful, paving the way for heavier, distortion-indebted rock that followed.
But Dave feels like The Kinks’ continuous fallings out have been blown out of proportion by the media.
“The Kinks’ fights have been blown up out of proportion over the years,” he insisted. “Me and Mick wanted to kill each other – but I love him too.”
“Ray and I were so different. We still are. When you look back, you see how those differences complemented each other.”
“You sometimes need things to go wrong before they go right. It didn’t always work, but when it did? Boom, we had something,” he continued.
He was quick to praise the impact that Ray Davies’ songwriting had on pop culture and the band’s initial success too.
“Ray was able to take anything people said – even me telling him, ‘Shut the hell up!’ – and write it down in a way that made you think, ‘Wow, that’s clever’. Ray shaped cultural advances through our music.”
In their latter years, with their brotherly love back intact and a 60th anniversary since their formation on the horizon, a reunion seems imminent.
“Inside, I still feel 15,” added Dave. “I still don’t really know what I’m doing. But music has taught me more about the world than I’d ever thought possible.”
