The Kinks #1

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Original Kinks Bassist Pete Quaife Dead at 66

Pete Quaife, the original bassist in the Kinks who played with the British Invasion band from their formation in 1961 through 1969, has died, according to a source close to the band. He was 66. The exact cause of death is unknown, but he had been undergoing kidney dialysis for over a decade. Quaife played on all of the early Kinks classics, including "You Really Got Me," "All Day and All of the Night," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Waterloo Sunset," which also features his background vocals.

Quaife grew up in the same neighborhood as the Davies family and met Ray in music class at William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School in Muswell Hill, England. Ray was impressed by Pete's guitar playing and invited him to jam with him and his younger brother Dave. "After some jamming and loose rehearsals it was decided that Pete would team up with us," Dave Davies wrote in his memoir, Kink. "We drew lots to see who would play bass guitar and Pete lost."

In October of 1961 the group — with Quaife's friend John Start on drums — played their first gig at a school dance with a set that consisted of covers by the Ventures, the Shadows and Duane Eddy. They began playing gigs around town both as the Ray Davies Quartet and the Pete Quaife Quintet, depending on who booked the gig. By 1963 the group — now known as the Kinks — began recording with producer Shel Talmy, who got the group signed to Pyre Records. Their third single, "You Really Got Me," was a smash hit, instantly making the Kinks one of the biggest bands of the exploding U.K. rock scene.

Despite the Kinks' success, Quaife was never satisfied with his role in the creative process. "I would have been squished with a size 16 boot I had even suggested they listen to an idea from me," he said in a 2005 interview. "I felt like a session man most of the time. Ray wanted complete control of everything. He was a control freak." In June 1966 Quaife broke his leg in a car accident and briefly left the band. "It was a good break for me," he said in 2005. "The band was fighting all the time and I couldn't take it." He rejoined after a few months, but quit for good three yeas later. In a 1998 interview, Quaife pointed to the band's 1968 disc Village Green Preservation Society as his favorite. "For me, it represents the only real album made by the Kinks," he said. "It's the only one where we all contributed something."

Exhausted by the infighting, Quaife quit the Kinks in 1969. "The Kinks put on a happy façade to the outside world," he said. "Behind closed doors it was like the WWF. We hurt ourselves with the constant scraping." Quaife formed the country rock band Maple Oak later that year, but left the band just a year later and largely retired from music. In the 1980s he moved to Canada and began earning his living as a graphic artist. When he was diagnosed with renal failure in 1998, he began drawing cartoons about his experience undergoing dialysis treatment. He last played with the Kinks at their induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

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I am overwhelmed with emotion- I literally can't speak- we might never have done any of this without him- Pete was right there at the very beginning - he was a friend and a brother to me-family- me and Pete never argued about anything -WE knew - and he really got it-ALL of it-I Loved him so much- In my naivety I kind of thought we would work again together- - I am shocked beyond words - without Pete there would have been NO Kinks- we went to school together and shared the best times, growing up- we learnt music together as we went along , he was a great musician -you could always trust his playing, creative input, intuitive response to musical ideas-and we taught each other riffs and ideas and shared a common bond of Love, Loyalty and deep friendship-I am in a state of complete disbelief- I knew he was ill - but his cheeky inteligence and optimistic nature would make any one believe that he would Live forever- and in a way Peter Alexanda Greenlaw Quaife you will live in my heart and inner being FOREVER- God Bless you Pete- dear sweet generous - mad and Unique friend- I will never be the same-And I thank God for knowing and working with you - that you enriched and Blessed my LIfe with your sense of fun. wit, intelligence and passion; and optimism- A True musician- a True artist and an immensely gifted Man full of Life and Love -who was never really given the credit he deserved for his contribution and involvlement - - I Love You Pete ! The Kinks were never really the Kinks without you......

All my Love
Dave Davies

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Op vrijdag 25 juni 2010 21:43 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:
Oef, ik moet het topic kicken met droevig nieuws .
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Heb Pete Quaife ooit eens ontmoet tijdens een Kinks Fanclub dag in Utrecht. De laatste British Invasion band met alle originele bandleden nog in leven is niet langer.

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Op zaterdag 6 maart 2010 16:57 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:

[..] Slechter nieuws: Na het niet geheel geslaagde "The Kinks Choral Collection"-project van Ray Davies, is hij nu met nóg zo'n project bezig. Namelijk nieuwe versies van Kinks-nummers met andere artiesten. Onder andere een moderne versie van "Celluloid Heroes" met............... Jon. . Bon. . Jovi. .

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Ray Davies, one of the finest songwriters, releases "See My Friends" an album of classic Kinks songs turned into unique collaborations on Universal on November 1st.

On this one of a kind album, Ray collaborates with a stellar selection of artists on tracks from his incredible songwriting career, revisiting his back catalogue and crafting new versions of his classic songs. Everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Metallica features on this diverse collection of material.

"This project came about almost by accident," says Davies of the project, which was kick-started when he recorded a version of Till The End Of The Day in summer of 2009, with the late, great, Big Star singer Alex Chilton.

"With some tracks I had to appreciate the style of the other artists, otherwise it would have sounded unbalanced. And I wanted the album to work as an entire listening experience but each track had a life of its own," explains Ray.

Ray was happy to go where the music took him, in every sense: Oslo to record with Metallica, New York to record with Jon Bon Jovi, New Jersey for Bruce Springsteen, and his own north London base, the legendary KONK studios, for much of the rest. "This record is well-travelled already," explains Ray.

http://www.seemyfriends.co.uk/

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Op woensdag 22 september 2010 16:19 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:

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Soms vraag je je af...
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Waarom doet hij dit... ?

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Op woensdag 22 september 2010 18:03 schreef Baba-O-Riley het volgende:
Op zich vind ik dit best een leuk initiatief, maar pak dan ook louter écht bekende mensen. Bon Jovi, Metallica, Mumford & Sons, Bruce - akkoord. Maar wie zijn Paloma Faith, the 88, Spoon of Gary Lightbody? Dat vind ik dan weer een beetje jammer. Doe dan écht je best en haal - ik noem maar wat zijstraten - Bono, Robert Plant, Amy Winehouse of Bruce Dickinson er bij. Gewoon een knaller van een line-up, en niet een wel aardig maar had veel beter kunnen zijn-lineup.

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Op woensdag 22 september 2010 19:01 schreef Aisumasen het volgende:

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Ik zou juist zeggen dat het probleem zit in het eerste deel van die line-up, en die andere namen veel en veel interessanter zijn .

BON JOVI Celluloid Heroes London 2002

Bon Jovi Hallelujah

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A Kinks reunion? Never! Not since my brother Ray stamped on my 50th birthday cake

First off, Dave Davies wants to spell something out. There will not be reunion of The Kinks. Not now. Not in the future. Never. ‘I think the music is so beautiful it shouldn’t be tainted,’ he says. ‘It would be a shame. You don’t need to see silly old men in wheelchairs ­singing You Really Got Me.’ The problem is that there’s another ‘silly old man’ — fellow Kink and Dave’s older brother Ray — who thinks otherwise. Just a few weeks ago, he insisted Dave was ‘coming round’ to the idea of a reunion.

Dave sighs. ‘Ray’s an a***hole,’ he says . You see, Ray and Dave - the brothers behind one of the biggest rock bands of the Sixties, whose hits include Waterloo Sunset - don’t exactly see eye to eye. In fact, they never have. Their volatile ­relationship, littered with violent bust-ups, is one of the longest running feuds in rock ’n’ roll. And while this creative tension was ­responsible for much of The Kinks’ success, it has also driven both brothers half-crazy. Dave sought escape in drugs and more recently in spirituality. And Ray attempted suicide (he was later diagnosed with bipolar ­disorder, also known as manic depression).

Ray is now 66 and Dave 63, so isn’t it time to, well, let bygones be bygones? It seems not. They communicate - when they have to on business matters - by email and rarely see one another. This week, when asked how his brother was, Ray replied: ‘Don’t know, don’t talk to him. Dave’s a very proud man. I don’t know what his problem is apart from pride.’ For his part, Dave can’t remember if it’s two or three years since he last saw his brother.

‘You’ve heard of vampires,’ says Dave. ‘Well, Ray sucks me dry of ideas, emotions and ­creativity. It’s toxic for me to be with him. He’s a control freak. ‘I hate to say it, but it’s got worse since he met the Queen [Ray received a CBE in 2004]. In his mind, it’s given him more validity, more “I’m better than you”, more “I’m superior”. With him, it’s “me, me, me”. He thinks he is The Kinks.

‘When I think of all the beautiful music we made, it wouldn’t have been the same if I or Pete Quaife hadn’t been there.’ Quaife is the reason for the brothers’ latest bust-up. Ray wanted Dave to perform at a memorial for The Kinks’ bass guitarist, who died in June, insisting: ‘Even the Mafia get together and make up when someone dies. If only for the funeral.’ But Dave refused. ‘Ray wanting me to come back into the fold is to make him look good. He had an album coming out,’ he says. ‘He’s cancelled the memorial, which again will be my fault. But after Pete died, I had my own private service for him on my website. I asked Elizabeth, Pete’s girlfriend, and his brother David to join me in sending Pete our love and they were happy to. ‘I wrote a few prayers and made my peace with Pete. I wasn’t going to get involved in using Pete as a PR exercise to bolster Ray’s vanity.’

He lowers his voice. ‘We must be careful. We might be feeding Ray’s illness by making him think he’s more interesting than he is.’ What illness? ‘He’s a narcissist,’ says Dave. ‘I walked into a bookshop a month ago and picked up Tony Blair’s autobiography. I looked at the picture and felt sick. I thought: ‘‘Hello, he’s got the same thing [as Ray]. It’s some sort of ­grandiose disorder.’’ ’ Dave, you see, claims to be something of an expert on vanity and self-delusion. He has spent ‘a good part of my adult life studying metaphysics and psychology’. Since when exactly? ‘When I first started to realise what an a****hole Ray was. I thought I’m going to investigate this.’

Oh dear. Ray and Dave come from a close-knit, working-class family. They were the only boys out of eight children and had a contented childhood in North London. Wouldn’t their poor mum be turning in her grave now that her sons are at each other’s throats? ‘I should have listened to my mum,’ says Dave. ‘Three weeks before she died in the Eighties she said to me: “Make sure you get something for yourself because your brother’s never going to help you.” ‘I was thinking: “We’re family. We look after each other.” But I don’t think that now. You need to support yourself.’

Six years ago, Dave suffered a serious stroke that left him unable to speak. It has been a long road to recovery. Surely his brother was supportive then? ‘I’m undecided whether he was pleased I was ill or jealous I was getting the attention,’ says Dave. ‘I stayed at his house afterwards. I was ill in bed and could barely move, but he started saying: “I’m sick, I’m sick!” ‘He was screaming in pain from his stomach. A doctor from Harley Street came round at 3am and said: “There’s nothing wrong with his stomach.” He just wanted attention.’

I meet Dave in a West Country hotel, near the home he shares with Kate, his partner of 16 years. He’s in fine ­fettle and has just finished recording an album with Russell, the youngest of four children from his marriage to Lisbet, whom he divorced in 1990. (He also has four ­children from two other relationships). Dave tells me that he has little money - as the songwriter, Ray ended up with most of The Kinks’ royalties - but he insists this isn’t at the root of their feud. Still, I suspect it has its part to play. As Kate insists: ‘It was your music all the way through, Dave.’ Described as one of Rolling Stone ­magazine’s 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time, Dave was responsible for the famous riff on their first hit, You Really Got Me, in 1964.

Dave concedes that while the brothers could work creatively together, ­sibling rivalry was ­simmering away under the surface. ‘I think Ray has been happy for only three years in his life,’ he says. ‘And those were the three years before I was born.’ Ray was the spoilt first boy of the family and has admitted to being jealous when Dave came along. To make matters worse, he was shy while Dave ‘found growing up easy’. The boys were in constant ­competition for their parents’ attention, often through music. ‘I was gregarious,’ Dave says. ‘When I was younger, I just thought Ray was a silly s**.’ He recalls something his dad said to him at the age of nine. ‘He told me: ‘‘You’ve got nice, strong, little hands. You’re going to be all right. I worry about your brother, though, because he’s got really soft, thin hands.’’ That made me think: ‘‘Maybe I’ve got to look after Ray.’’

‘When you grow up in a big family that’s very close, everyone helps each other. Then suddenly at 16, we were thrown into being a band. ‘I treated the world - all our fans - as an extended family. They loved me and I loved them.’ And Ray? ‘He has this thing that he has to put me down. I was a cocky kid who always pulled more chicks than he did. I didn’t care so much about the money. I just loved what went with it. I’d get a girl, take her to my room, have a drink, smoke a joint and get her clothes off.’

Indeed, Dave had a reputation as a hell-raiser. ‘We were inventing rock ’n’ roll,’ he says. ‘People used to say I lived the life and Ray wrote about living it. Ray’s technique for survival was observing the scene. He’s never been any good at showing his ­feelings. If I got upset, I’d cry and shout. But Ray’s always been withdrawn. But he got a kick out of grinding me into the ground.’ Things began to crumble when Ray’s wife left him and their children on his 29th birthday in 1973. ‘I couldn’t blame her, but running off like that was cruel. I felt sorry for him. We tried to comfort him, but a month later he announced his retirement at a concert saying: ‘‘I’m sick of the whole thing.’’ ‘I thought he was joking, but later that night I got a call. Ray had taken a drug overdose and had to have his stomach pumped. After a month we decided to go back into the studio. I felt ­optimistic about the future.’

The Kinks continued, but so did the rivalry. ‘I began to realise I was only there to support him,’ says Dave. ‘I remember we were finishing an album in the Eighties and I’d been going crazy to get a song on it. It was called Perfect Strangers and it meant a lot to me. Ray knew that. ‘I went away for the weekend when Ray was mixing [the album], but came back early. The engineer played me the mix and I realised Ray had taken out great chunks of my guitar playing. ‘I said: ‘‘How am I supposed to express myself when all you do is take my energy? What do you want?’’ ‘He said: ‘‘I can do what I want because I’m a genius.’’ ‘I said: ‘‘You’re not a genius. You’re a f***ing a***hole.’’ We started ­fighting. The manager was crying. He said: “I’ve never seen two human beings go at each other like that.” ’

The last time The Kinks appeared together was in 1996 shortly after Ray had announced his decision to go solo. Dave says the split was a relief. ‘I didn’t care. I really didn’t. ‘The last time we were all together was at my 50th birthday party. Ray had the money and I didn’t, so he offered to throw it for me. ‘Just as I was about to cut the cake, Ray jumped on the table and made a speech about how wonderful he was. He then stamped on the cake.’

This jaw-dropping revelation comes at the end of our interview. I’ve never encountered such antipathy between brothers. But when I tell Dave this, he reacts with surprise. ‘Oh no, I don’t hate him. It’s impossible. Once an interviewer suggested The Kinks were old-fashioned. He said to Ray: ‘‘You’re not having any hits any more.’’ Ray said: ‘‘I don’t care what people think. I write songs for my dad.’’ ‘That’s the real Ray. I believe he’s still in there somewhere. I could never not love Ray. He’s my brother.

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