Ray Davies: A Complicated Life - Hardcover

Rogan, Johnny

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847923178 ISBN 13: 9781847923172

Publisher: Bodley Head, 2015

Synopsis

Ray Davies, legendary frontman of The Kinks, is one of the all-time greatest rock ‘n’ roll musicians – and also one of its most troubled and enigmatic.

In the summer of 1964, aged twenty, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit ‘You Really Got Me’. Within months, they were challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics – ‘All Day and All of the Night’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Lola’ – that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last fifty years.

But Ray’s journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA for almost four years. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks’ lead guitarist, is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies, and promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life.

About this title

Review:

"As definitive a view of the man as anyone could hope for" (The Times)

"In the tradition of the most interesting biographies, a troubled subject makes for a gripping read" (Evening Standard)

"Rogan is exceptionally good at painting a picture of the moment he is exploring ... engrossing ... you're left with a sympathetic understanding of [Davies'] ways and motives" (New Statesman)

"It’s [Ray Davies’s] quirks that make him a worthy study, and Johnny Rogan is the man for the job, a writer renowned for going to extraordinary lengths to research his subjects ... a social history as well as character study. Rogan illuminates the labyrinth of Swinging Sixties record labels, managers, bookers and pluggers, and spares no blushes in his depiction of the young Kinks" (Irish Times)

"Masterfully teases out the warring impulses wrestling in [Davies’s] psyche ... [Rogan is] adept at relating the social history of the 1950s and 1960s to Davies’s brooding character and lyric obsessions ... He uncovers psychological traumas everywhere and is fascinating on the bitchy rivalries between 1960s pop titans ... Such tales make this ... oceanically researched biography go with a swing" (Sunday Times)

"Meticulously researched, crafted with a near-obsessive passion and boasts abundant original interviews ... the many fans of [Davies] have never been served this well; Rogan interviews major players and delves deep into the archives to emerge with the ultimate account of Davies’ life, times and idiosyncrasies ... Rogan never loses sight of Davies’ position as a quintessentially brilliant English songwriter and pop-culture commentator, resulting in his own personal masterpiece and another benchmark for music biographies" (Record Collector)

"Definitive ... impressive ... Nary a character or event of even minor importance in the Davies story is left undisturbed by the author’s flair for asking the right questions of the right people (including Ray himself) and plundering archives ... The wonder is that with so many facts and opinions to assemble, this tome remains so eminently readable" (Mojo *****)

"A terrific insight into one of Britain's greatest artists" (Shortlist)

"Monumental ... shining through the violence, the personality clashes, the litigation with former management, the volatile relationship with women, even a mental breakdown, are the songs" (Daily Mail)

"Rogan chooses to delve deep into the period that will most interest potential readers of this book ... defiantly non-sensationalist ... dogged, even-handed and punctilious in his research ... scrupulously fair in his assessments of his subject’s work and character, while also conceding that, in several ways, Davies remains an enigma ... a valuable account of the working life of a complicated man" (Spectator)

Book Description:

The definitive biography of The Kinks’ legendary frontman and one of the most tumultuous tales in Rock history.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bodley Head
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1847923178
• ISBN 13: 9781847923172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 768