(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Wed 17 September 2025 19:30, UK
When a rockstar makes it, sometimes something happens. Sometimes, they seem to get stunted right there and then, doomed to forever live in the era they belong to and forever be bitter or uncaring about anything that comes after. Dave Davies escaped that curse.
It would have been an easy one to fall into, though. As one of the most defining groups of the 1960s and ‘70s, The Kinks played an essential part in defining British rock and roll with tracks like ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ‘You Really Got Me’ that were hits both at home and abroad as part of the British invasion.
But what the Kinks did always manage was ingenuity. By the time 1968 rolled around, they were already helping to pioneer the form of the concept album with their record, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. From then on, they seemed committed to treating their records as something, as something with a thorough story to tell, chapter by chapter, track by track. As they pushed the limits of the actual form, the limits of their music was pushed too, ensuring they were always evolving and outrunning the curse of being captured by their times, never to be released.
With that energy and dedication to pushing forward, it makes sense that Dave Davies also escaped the trap of rockstars struggling to praise their contemporaries. We see it happen time and time again where older artists outright reject new genre, or struggle to celebrate new stars, but Davies never fell into that.
Instead, he found new acts that gave him hope and made him excited for the future. “I didn’t mind the Sex Pistols when they came out,” he said as the first band. Back in the mid-1970s when punk suddenly broke out in the UK, Davies was intrigued even if he was a little suspicious at the start.
“Even though it was a bit of a hype, I thought it was refreshing. There was so much crap going on at the time, it was a relief to hear something new and unabashed,” he said, adding, “Their sound was real.”
But there can’t really be newness without an acknowledgement of the past, and Sex Pistols themselves acknowledged the impact of Davies’ band. “I was on Steve Jones’ radio show some years back and he said that The Kinks were a great influence on his guitar playing,” he said as he clearly had a part to play in building the future he was interested in.
The other band feels like a more left-field one for a man who’s legacy involved writing completely foolproof, iconic rock and roll riffs. “Another band I was torn about mentioning instead of the Sex Pistols is Devo,” he said, picking out American new wave band.
A far cry from classic rock and roll or the music Davies made, Devo still appealed to him as he said, “I like the fact that Devo were different and funny,” adding as high praise for the left-field act, “it made rock stand up.”
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