For all the widespread acclaim that had been generated by a run of exemplary albums as the 1960s gave way to the 70s, by 1972 The Kinks, unlike their great contemporaries The Who and the Rolling Stones, were in urgent need of a commercially successful LP.
While they had maintained intermittent presence in the singles charts with 45s bearing the quality of ‘Victoria‘ (1969), ‘Lola‘ and ‘Apeman‘ (both 1970), the albums from which they were lifted ‘Arthur‘ and ‘Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround‘ cut little ice with the record buying public – the majority of whom felt they could do without the insightful observations of front man and guitarist Ray Davies on the English class system and his pithy overview of the music industry, the themes of the two most recent chart-shy Kinks albums.
Indeed, their last release the superb ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ (November 1971) where Davies paints evocative pictures of the North London neighbourhood where he and Kinks lead guitarist Dave, his younger brother, grew up, did not even have the consolation of yielding a hit single as it sank without trace. The Kinks therefore duly returned to undertaking extensive tours, particularly of the U.S., playing well-attended, often rowdy live shows – audiences attracted to concert halls in order to hear the brilliant mid-60s singles, written by Ray, by which the group had made their name.
But when it came to their next album, rather than offer a set of accessible tracks honed to engage with consumers of up-tempo rock (as they did to good effect much later in the decade), The Kinks conjured the type of contradiction at which they were becoming past-masters.
September 1972 brought forth the sprawling double-set ‘EVERYBODY’S IN SHOW-BIZ‘ – one disc being new studio material, the other an in-concert recording.
In itself this was no new concept, The Byrds among others had done something similar two years before. But here’s the rub. The live sides depicted the exuberance of a Kinks show, Ray reveling in his dual role as master of ceremonies and famous rock star, yet on the other record he dissects the whole notion of touring and fame, finding that below the surface lurks disillusionment and dour routine.
Not that the album is downbeat or dispiriting in any way. The atmosphere captured on the live segment (recorded at Carnegie Hall in March 1972) is positively raucous, while for the most part the tribulations facing a touring rock band that frequently inform the lyrics of the new material, are presented on top of melodies which at various times encompass folk, country, jazz and even vaudeville.
After making their presence felt on a number of ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ cuts, The Kinks (who for the third album in a row consist of Ray, Dave, original drummer Mick Avory, bass player John Dalton and keyboardist John Gosling), retain the services of a three-strong horn section. They are prominent across both the studio and stage performances, their constant input creating the overall effect of The Kinks sounding more native to New Orleans than N10.
If for some the constant references to being on the road became overbearing (when the album appeared the New Musical Express dismissed it as ‘American tour impressionism and live crowd pleasing‘), on the pair of tracks to truly stand out, namely the serene ‘Sitting in My Hotel‘ and epic ‘Celluloid Heroes‘, they showed Ray still in possession of a masterful turn of phrase – these two magnificent songs not bettered by anyone in 1972.
Ultimately, ‘Everybody’s In Show-Biz‘ is the remnants of a much grander plan that involved filming their spring 1972 jaunt across the United States for posterity, a film crew duly dispatched to capture the band travelling between shows, in restaurants, at hotels, along with the gigs themselves. As the costs began to soar their record label RCA, to whom The Kinks had signed the previous year, made significant cuts to the filming budget and then after all was said and done baulked at the idea of releasing a double-album – only to relent under pressure from Ray, one of the few people apparently, to have seen all the footage.
While editing what film there was he began writing songs to accompany the images, still working under the hope that a documentary with music might still appear, the new material emerging as a variable mix of sound rock music and patchy soundtrack.
The punchy opening cut ‘Here Comes Yet Another Day‘ does a useful job in setting out the premise of the studio album, the travelling-musician narrator waking up to twenty four hours that will be similar to the day just gone:
‘Here comes a new dawn, here comes a new day/Tune up, start to play, just like any other day/Can’t stop, can’t be late, mustn’t make the people wait/Can’t even comb my hair or even change my underwear/Here comes a new dawn, here comes a new day/Tune up, start to play, just like any other day.’
Stradling the line between wistful and ironic, something at which Ray had always been so adept, his ruminations are at times diluted by an instrumental passage centred on a trumpet or tuba, turning the song into something of a novelty, a fate that befalls several cuts – brass now filling the space into which Dave would once have fired an electric guitar break.
The same could also be said of ‘Maximum Consumption‘ and although Davies the younger does have opportunity to play with more abandon, his biggest contribution to a sprightly song on the mundane subject of stopping to eat while travelling, (‘The pace is continual, sure keeps running me down/Don’t you know that you gotta eat food?/Don’t you know that you gotta refuel?‘), is a nice turn on background vocals, the piece not dissimilar in structure to ‘Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues‘ from ‘Muswell Hillbillies.’
The previous album is also evoked on ‘Unreal Reality‘ which has similarities to ‘Complicated Life‘, Ray pondering if a confused mind is unique to him or whether others feel the same, ‘All around me is such unreality/Optical illusions as far as my eyes can see/Is the whole thing a fake, or the ultimate reality?’
Dressed up as roll along stomp, ‘Hot Potatoes‘ is an ode to the many ways the vegetable can be cooked (‘Boiled, French fried, any old way that you wanna decide‘), but also a plea from someone who would like more from the relationship than good cooking, (‘I want your lovin’ 60 minutes an hour/I want your lovin’ 24 hours a day/I want your lovin’ 7 days a week/I want your love, I need your love/But all I get is hot potatoes’).
Like the songs preceding it this is an amusing if unremarkable track, but all four pale in comparison to side one closer ‘Sitting in My Hotel‘, which stands as an authentic Ray Davies masterpiece.
Built on a captivating piano refrain, the writer considers what those back home must think, no doubt laughing at the thought of him being chauffeured around and doted on like a film star, ‘They would all be saying that it’s not really me/They would all be asking who I’m trying to be’.
With each line he builds the poignancy and sense of detachment, not only from the city streets below but from home and familiar faces:
‘Sitting in my hotel, hiding from the dramas of this great big world/Seven stories high, looking at the world go by-y/Sitting in my hotel room, thinking about the countryside and sunny days in June/Trying to hide the gloom, sitting in my hotel room.’
Davies receives sterling support from Avory and Gosling (who doubles on piano and organ), while a lone trumpet provides empathetic decoration. By the end of this sublime, superbly drawn fable on the isolation that can come with stardom, Ray cannot shake the thought what others think of the life he has chosen:
‘They would ask me what on earth I’m trying to prove/All my friends would ask me what it’s all leading to.’
On side two opener Davies has left behind the loneliness of his hotel room to be driving along a ‘Motorway.’ Set to another jaunty folk-rock melody, Ray laments the state of cuisine to be found at service stations that are stopped at during the course of a journey, such places having a terrible reputation for their low level of hygiene, (‘You’ve never seen loos like motorway loos/Thousands of people passing through/It’s enough to put you off of that motorway food’) and poor quality food and drink:
‘Motorway food is the worst in the world/You’ve never eaten food like you’ve eaten on the motorway/
Motorway food is the worst in the world/The coffee tastes weak and the cakes taste stale/And gasoline fumes are the worst to inhale/Your stomach rolls over and your face turns pale.’
For his only songwriting contribution Dave picks up on the feeling of alienation stemming from long hours spent traveling, penning a country-rock shuffle entitled ‘You Don’t Know My Name‘ that finds him trying to equate identity with reality:
‘I’ve been travelling on this road/I get the feeling it’s getting on/I keep moving on/I keep rolling on
But does anybody know my name?’
While his songs had virtually disappeared from recent albums, ‘Arthur‘ and ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘ all the work of Ray, (Dave in fact would not contribute another track to a Kinks album until 1977), ‘You Don’t Know My Name‘ was an agreeable way for him to bow out for five years – the writer experiencing the same level of tour-based resignation as his elder brother in coming up with the lines:
‘I see that life is such a simple game/I sit and watch it from my moving train/A bumpy ride to-day/I’m not alone this way/Does anybody know my name?’
With its calypso overtones, ‘Supersonic Rocket Ship‘, the first song to be recorded at the studio album sessions that took place at Morgan Studios, London between March and June of 1972, bears a passing resemblance to their ‘Apeman‘ hit of two years before. When issued as a single it did not do as well, ending its run on the UK charts ten places lower at number 16, which was a shame being an equally engaging song. Ray later explained he was aiming at greater depth than simply escaping the world for a while by jet-age means:
‘Supersonic Rocket Ship was actually about the Concorde aircraft that was launched that year. We’d had this period of classlessness where everybody could suddenly travel by air and so they immediately came up with this exclusive airliner which separated people again.‘
From being the rock group that invented ‘oomph’ with their incendiary 1964 debut single ‘You Really Got Me‘, eight years on with ‘Look A Little on the Sunnyside‘, The Kinks take the guise of an oompah band, the saloon bar piano and squelching horn section a curious base on which to build a song offering this somewhat cynical view of the rock industry:
‘Look a little on the sunny side/Even when they say you’re on the slide/And for a while they’ll say your records never make it/But in a while they’re gonna be showering you with praises/They’ll give you mediocre reviews/And put you in the underground for a while.’
From commenting on fame from a personal viewpoint, Ray then brings the second side to a close by writing about stardom from the ultimate perspective, evoking Hollywood and its golden age in the breathtaking ‘Celluloid Heroes.’
Inspired by time spent living in Los Angeles and wandering down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the lyrics to this extraordinarily inspired piano ballad mention a host of movie idols, but is not merely a celebration of famous actors, Ray describing the fate, often sad and inopportune, that befalls them. Being famous can warrant having a name ‘written in concrete‘ but is no guarantee of a contented life:
‘You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard/Some that you recognise/Some that you’ve hardly even heard of/People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame/Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain.’
In the end Davies finds there is a fine line between fact and fiction, not just in the bygone days of Tinseltown but in the illusion and self-delusion of everyday life, something he is only too aware of:
‘I wish my life was a nonstop Hollywood movie show/A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes/Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain/And celluloid heroes never really die.’
Edited down from six and a half minutes in order to be released as a single, it still seems absurd a song of such monumental accomplishment could fail to chart (‘It was our biggest non-hit, hit‘ Dave ruefully reflected years later). While it made frequent appearances in the concert set-list thereafter, very often it would be the 45 version played on stage, (imagine The Who playing a truncated version of ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again‘ at their shows?), The Kinks for whatever reason choosing to omit this resonant verse:
‘If you covered him with garbage George Sanders would still have style/And if you stamped on Mickey Rooney/He would still turn ’round and smile/But please, don’t tread on dearest Marilyn/’Cause she’s not very tough/She should have been made of iron or steel/But she was only made of flesh and blood.’
That records by Lieutenant Pigeon and Little Jimmy Osmond could top the UK charts in the same year a song as compelling as ‘Celluloid Heroes‘ made no impact is embarrassment of the highest order. It also emphasises once again 1972 was not all Bowie and Jackson Browne, despite what it might say elsewhere on this blog-site.
Five years on from the rush-released, poorly recorded ‘Live at Kelvin Hall‘, (the Glasgow audience captured in better fettle than the musicians), Kinks followers were due a decent document of the group in concert, the stage show and band themselves undergoing notable changes during the ensuing five years.
At the Carnegie Hall performance recorded for ‘Everybody’s in Show-Biz‘, where they were supported by genial Geordie folk-rockers Lindisfarne, everybody appears to be having a jolly old time. The Kinks, with brass section in tow, offer energetic versions of several songs to have appeared on ‘Muswell Hillbillies‘, the overall mood (‘Alcohol‘ already a firm crowd-pleaser) one of booze, bonhomie and bumptious rock.
The whole thing revolves around Ray from the lead vocals, to leading the audience in singing along, even throwing in renditions of standards ‘Mr. Wonderful‘, ‘Banana Boat Song‘ and ‘Baby Face‘ to cement his place as focal point of the show. With a combined running time of almost five minutes, RCA must have been scratching their heads at them being included at the expense of a recognised Kinks classic, particularly when ‘Lola‘ their most recent sizeable hit is restricted to a snatch of one minute forty seconds.
With the crowd suitably enthused and Ray in high spirits, perhaps the only one not enamored by the whole thing is Dave, whose playing is barely discernable. His demeanor is probably not improved when big brother, during the group introductions, describes him as ‘Dave ‘Death of A Clown’ Davies‘, Ray either reminding the fans of the solo hit Dave once had or it being his way of saying The Kinks success was all down to him.
Whatever the case it was hard to disagree with an assessment by the NME at this juncture of ‘the others practically acting as his support band.’
As if to enforce that argument, after ‘Everybody’s in Show-Biz‘ came and went to mixed reviews (‘excessive and inconsequential‘/’a delightfully varied album‘) while barely troubling the charts, Ray, undeterred by diminishing returns, took The Kinks headlong back into concept album country, each of their next four albums (one another double) having a conceptual theme.
Despite their reservations Dave and the other Kinks went with him, Ray not changing course even in the face of dwindling sales, lines from 1972 ‘Show-Biz‘ track ‘Look A Little On The Sunnyside‘ sounding like a manifesto for the next five years:
‘Look a little on the sunny side/Even when you feel you want to hide/You’ve gotta laugh, don’t let your critics ever upset you/’Cos for a while, the cynics will all be out to get you/You gotta be shrewd, you gotta be strong/You gotta convince yourself that you are not wrong.’
THE KINKS – ‘EVERYBODY’S IN SHOW-BIZ’ (released September 1 1972):
Here Comes Yet Another Day/Maximum Consumption/Unreal Reality/Hot Potatoes/Sitting in My Hotel/Motorway/You Don’t Know My Name/Supersonic Rocket Ship/Look a Little on the Sunnyside/Celluloid Heroes; (Live disc): Top of the Pops/Brainwashed/Mr. Wonderful/Acute Schizophrenia Blues/Holiday/Muswell Hillbilly/Alcohol/Banana Boat Song/Skin & Bone/Baby Face/Lola;
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.
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