Only certain acts manage to capture the essence of their era in technicolour detail. One group that have done this better than most is The Kinks. Fuelled by the imagination and songwriting aptitude of Ray Davies and his brother Dave’s potent guitar lines, the band established an oeuvre that bottled the spirit of England on the verge of modernity.
From the candid ode to their hometown that is ‘Waterloo Sunset’ to ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, a song which has always divided opinion over whether it sought to “preserve” certain aspects of English culture for posterity or parody the insular nature of the greener parts of the land, Ray Davies incisively drew on his lived experiences and brought to life the many strange idiosyncracies of this small rock.
It seems that the latter track was indeed a means of preserving English institutions. The 1968 album on which it is featured, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, saw the band’s principal songwriter explicitly reinforce his pride in English cultural traditions. Inspired by famed writers such as Dylan Thomas and William Blake and his childhood in Muswell Hill, the record is brimming with aspects that most from this land, even if not from the post-war generation, can recognise.
In 1966, The Kinks vocalist explained: “We have so much that is great, compared with other countries, and people just don’t realise it. I want to keep writing very English songs.”
Of course, this statement underpins the claim that the 1968 album is nothing more than a patriotic celebration of England. Another song from the record that brings to life an element of British culture at the time is ‘Johnny Thunder’. According to Ray Davies, it was motivated by a local cockney he knew who was inspired, ironically, by the great American actor Marlon Brando, a man inextricable from his home nation’s popular culture. However, the actor’s reach was universal, and he made a mark on many young men of The Kinks’ generation.
Maybe Davies viewed the local rebel negatively, given this other comment from the same 1966 interview: “I hope we don’t get swallowed up by America”.
Reflecting on the making of the album in Rolling Stone in 2018, The Kinks frontman recalled the nature of the cockney biker, whom he described as “a Neal Cassady-type character”, inferring his dedication to the major Beat Generation and counterculture figure. He added: “All rebels look like Marlon Brando on a motorbike, but they don’t wear a bowler hat”.
However, in proper form, Dave Davies’ memories of the biker differed slightly. “There was a guy that I knew that I thought Ray modelled Johnny Thunder after,” he told the publication. “He was a loner, and he’d drive around and didn’t say much. In the middle of Muswell Hill, there’s a big roundabout, where you go ’round just before the hill itself. It’s very steep. This guy used to speed on his bike ’round the roundabout, and the story has it one day, his footrest hit the road, and he toppled, and that was the end of Johnny Thunder. But Ray has different memories of that.”
Listen to ‘Johnny Thunder’ below.