Ray Davies: Americana

There is some surprise that after all these years Ray Davies has turned his attention to America. He is the most quintessentially English of pop musicians, a witty and acute observer of the British way of life whose best tunes were drawn from music hall and calypso — even while, with his brother Dave, he was inventing that most doggedly, turgidly, horribly English of genres, heavy metal. And yet The Kinks most famous hit, ‘Lola’, had a real American swagger about it, in the wonderful rolling rhythm, as Davies expressed his profound confusion at meeting a transgendered lady in a Soho bar. It was the first record I ever bought, at the age of ten, much to my parents’ disgust and consternation. Come to think of it, even ‘Waterloo Sunset’ had a whiff of San Francisco in the melody.