"I'm Not Like Everybody Else" / Dave Davies

I can't BELIEVE I haven't written before about this most iconic Kinks song.  It's been colonizing my earwaves ever since Monday night, when I was thrilled to see Dave Davies play his first US solo show in ten years at the City Winery. Okay, so he's not quite the unbridled raver anymore that he was in his prime -- but which of us is?

And despite the public feuding between the Davies brothers, Dave didn't try to distance himself from his Kinksian past -- he charged lustily into the classics like "You Really Got Me," "Till the End of the Day," and "All Day and All of the Night," among others. "Death of a Clown," of course, the song Ray wrote for Dave (to be honest, Dave probably co-wrote it, not that Ray would ever give him credit). I still remember Dave snarling at Ray when he was introduced as "Dave 'Death of a Clown' Davies" -- who but a brother could turn your solo hit into an insult?

Ray also says he wrote "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" for Dave, often introducing it at shows by saying -- fondly, in fact -- "You know, Dave really is not like everybody else."  Kinks fans have adopted this as their mantra, proudly asserting their misfit status, and we often use it to describe Ray as well.  But watching Dave sing it the other night brought home to me that he is the original rebel that the song celebrates.

Written somewhere at the end of 1965, recorded in February 1966, and released as the B-side of "Sunny Afternoon" (June 1966 in the UK, July in the US), "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" started off as a young man's howl of dissent, with lines like "I won't take all that they hand me down," "I'm not gonna take it all lying down," and "I don't want to live my life like everybody else." (Live, as I recall, the Davies brothers both throw in lines like "I don't want to get a job like everybody else" as well.) Fist pumping in the air, Kinks fans love to sing along on the defiant call-and-response refrains, trading shouts of "Like everybody else" with Dave (or Ray, whichever you're watching).

The song's a little more complex than that, of course. It dials down to a surprisingly tender second verse: "But darling, you know that I love you true, / Do anything that you want me to, / Confess all my sins like you want me to," until he reluctantly pushes back: "But there's one thing that I will say to you."  (Ominous retard, beat, beat,  then kick it out!) "I'm not like everybody else, I'm not like everybody else..."

Those pesky women, always trying to tame a wild man!  In the last verse, he's even more willful, rejecting her efforts to get him to settle down, stop all his running around, et cetera.  It's a brilliant sleight of hand, a love song that's at the same time a cry for freedom.  Compare this to the one-note snottiness of the Rolling Stones' "Get Off My Cloud" (not a bad song on its own terms, but still) -- the emotional depth of this one is light-years beyond.

Of course, we fans love to sing it out lustily, and we love the Davies brothers for continuing to keep it in their set lists.  The young man's howl of defiance is now an older man's rage against the dying of the light -- and you know, it's even more moving in that context.  Dave Davies was nearly sidelined forever by a stroke in 2004, but he taught himself to walk, talk, sing, and play the guitar all over again. He's back, and he's still busting out of the bonds of convention.  God save Dave Davies.

"Sunny Afternoon" / The Kinks

By chance it IS a sunny day today, although a little chilly for May. Still, that's not why this song popped into my head and will not be budged.

It began a few days when, someone asked me to list my top ten favorite Kinks songs. I realized that "Sunny Afternoon" is perhaps their only genuinely big hit (#2 in the UK, #14 in the US) that still makes the list for me, no matter how much it's overplayed. Then today, posting This Day In Kinks History on the Kinks fan forum, I discovered that today is the anniversary of the day, 47 years ago, when the Kinks went into Pye Records Studio #2 to record this song.

Or rather, re-record it -- in 1966 Ray Davies was just beginning to become the studio perfectionist who would later hold up their classic album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society for months, eventually releasing it by chance on the same day as the Beatles' White Album. Ah, the history of the Kinks is full of such disastrous decisions.

But in the case of "Sunny Afternoon," Ray knew what he was doing. He brought in session keyboard whiz Nicky Hopkins to add some plinky good-time sounds, played on a Hohner Melodica. Those iconic pub-sing-along backing vocals were dubbed in by Ray, Dave, and Ray's wife Rasa. "'Sunny Afternoon' was made very quickly, in the morning," Ray recalled in a Rolling Stone interview. "It was one of our most atmospheric sessions. . . . Pete [Quaife] went off and started playing funny little classical things on the bass, more like a lead guitar, and Nicky Hopkins was playing 'Liza'. . . .Little things like that helped us get in the feeling of the song."
   
At the time, Ray recalled, he was listening almost obsessively to two other artists -- Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan (now there's an odd couple for you).  I can hear Sinatra's impact in the campy croon Ray puts on; Dylan probably accounts for the sly satire on Britain's Wilson-era tax policies.  (George Harrison's "Taxman" was written the same year.) But as always, the whole is so much more than the sum of all these parts. And the minute that great bass line begins -- two notes plopped wearily on each step of a descending minor scale -- I'm hooked.

Just watch the Kinks cavorting in the snow. But, wait -- I thought this was supposed to be a sunny afternoon? Well, the song was a summer hit, but the Kinks didn't make this video until the following February, for a Belgian TV show. The contrast just underlines the delightful irony of this song.

"The tax man's taken all my dough / And left me in my stately home..." Beneath the satire, of course, Ray Davies was as always working out his personal issues. In 1966, Ray was up to his eyeballs in lawsuits to recover withheld royalties from music publishers and former managers; no wonder he felt a stab of sympathy for the property-rich, cash-poor singer of "Sunny Afternoon." And if that felt like a betrayal of his working-class roots, even more need to work out his anxieties in satire.

No wonder Ray had suffered a nervous breakdown only two months earlier, which explains the wail of "Save me save me save me from this squeeee--eeze" in the bridge. Nothing like turning your own  existential despair into comedy. And in the second bridge, he changes it to "Help me help me help me sail awaa-aay" -- the trademark Kinksian longing for escape. When conflicts and pressures pile up, introvert geniuses like Ray Davies often long just to run away.

I suspect there's another autobiographical hint in verse two: "My girlfriend's run off with my car / And gone back to her ma and pa / Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty"?  It would be seven more years before Rasa Davies would finally move out, taking their two daughters, but there's already probably a sting of truth to this detail. I picture Rasa in the studio, listening to Ray deliver those lines with a mocking flutter in his voice, and wince on her behalf.

So here we've got a song about lazing on a sunny afternoon, living a life of luxury -- it should be a mellow blissed-out song. Instead, it's built on a minor-key bass riff, with jerky rhythms and ping-ponging melodic intervals. This guy is at the end of his rope, moaning and miserable. In a way, this is the comic bookend of "Shangri-La" -- now that he's found his paradise, his reward for working so hard, why the hell is he unhappier than ever?   

And then here's the genius part. Ray Davies managed to pack all of that psychological complexity in this song -- and STILL made it one of the most delicious singalongs ever. The tongue-in-cheek humor, the bouncy arrangement, and the cheery harmonies turn it all into tailor-made for hoisting a pint. The Kinks may be dancing in the snow, the tax exile weeping in his beer, but all I want to do is croon along with a grin on my face.  Give Ray Davies life's lemons, and he'll turn them into the most delicious lemonade ever.

"Strangers" / The Kinks

It's not as if I haven't written about the Kinks before -- but here, for a change, is a Dave Davies original, which has been echoing in my brain ever since I saw the Wes Anderson film The Darjeeling Limited last weekend. The Darjeeling Limited is about three brothers and their complicated love-hate relationship, so how perfect is it to use songs by the warring Davies brothers. ("This Time Tomorrow" and "Powerman" are the other two Kinks tunes on the soundtrack.)

"Strangers" is one of those songs I tend to forget about, and not just because it's a Dave song -- with that heavy guitar strum, the distant echoing vocals, the lurching rhythm, it has a folky vibe I don't often associate with the Kinks. It could almost be a track from the Band; Dave's lonesome vocal here is distinctly Levon Helm-like. And the riddling question-and-answer lyrics definitely feel like a folk ballad: "Where are you going? / I don't mind / I've killed my world and I've killed my time / So where do I go, what do I see? / I see many people coming after me." I get a fugitive image there, for sure -- those people coming after him could easily be a posse riding him out of town. A classic folk ballad image, the exiled wanderer.

It's folky, yes, but apocalyptic too, and Dave is in truth-seeking mode here. Later on he says, "So you've been where I've just come / From the land that brings losers on / So we will share this road we walk / And mind our mouths and beware our talk / 'Till peace we find..." Whatever guru or messiah beckons at the end of this road, he's on some kind of a spiritual journey. (Though, as Owen Wilson says matter-of-factly late in the film, "We came here on a spiritual journey...but that didn't pan out.")

As the song lurches on, Dave begins to rebel against the whole spiritual shtick: "In a promised lie you made us believe / For many men there is so much grief / And my mind is proud but it aches with rage / And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die." That's more like the Dave I know. I think back to 1970, when this song was released on the album Lola Versus Powerman and the Money-go-round Part One (by the way, Dave and Ray, we're still waiting for Part Two), and I recall George Harrison and all the hazy Eastern philosophy going around London's music world at the time. And there stands bad boy Dave Davies, wanting to believe in all this peace-and-love stuff, yet at the same time hating the idea of jumping on anybody else's flower-festooned bandwagon. Powerman is an album full of songs that reject accepted orthodoxies --labor unions, record company executives, music promoters, lawyers, bankers -- so why not kick back against religion while you're at it?
Still, the plaintive way Dave sings the chorus make his yearning for connection seem totally geniune. The quest still beckons, and it isn't a quest anyone should undertake alone. "So I will follow you wherever you go / If your offered hand is still open to me," Dave declares, leading into the refrain, "Strangers on this road we are on / We are not two we are one." It's a gorgeous hook, with its fluid, rippling triplets morphing from one key to another; I love how the voices split into harmony on the line "We are not two we are one," finally resolving on a major chord. Of course it's about the brotherhood of man, but for some reason I've never been able to hear this line without also thinking of Ray and Dave and their intense love-hate bond. Like it or not, it's been the one constant in their turbulent lives.
So what in the end does this song mean? I haven't got a clue. But then, neither does the singer of his song; he's just sitting at the side of the road, rubbing his aching feet and musing wistfully. The drums slap wearily along, an organ sighs like an exhaled breath. And somehow, all of this manages to come out haunting and evocative and tender. The moment when it bursts into the film, about two-thirds of the way through --well, I won't give away the plot, but it's a beautiful moment of acceptance and enlightenment, and this is the perfect song for that moment. Kudos to Wes Anderson for an absolutely inspired choice.

Strangers sample