After years of silence, Dave Davies has confirmed that The Kinks are coming out of the woodwork and getting into the recording studio together.
Throughout decades of reunion pleas, The Kinks have remained a band that broke up and stayed broken up.
Apparent sibling rivalries and in-fighting has famously kept the boys apart, until around two years ago when we got inklings that they were getting back into the studio together after Ray Davies raised the possibility of a reunion.
In June of 2019, Ray exposed the trouble of inter-band quarrels in an interview with the BBC, revealing “the trouble is, the two remaining members — my brother Dave and Mick [Avory, the original drummer] — never got along very well. But I’ve made that work in the studio and it’s fired me up to make them play harder, and with fire.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dave Davies officially confirmed that they are indeed recording again.
“This has really been going on for a couple of years,” Dave Davies shares. “We keep going backwards and listening to a lot of old stuff. Some of that is very good, and some of it needs a bit of work.”
Much of their time in the studio has been devoted to finding tracks for a 50th-anniversary release of their landmark concept record Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), which is “virtually done”. Also set to feature on this record are other snippets from that time period, such as Dave’s solo song Hold My Hand. And if my maths is right, 1969 was 50 years ago so… we can be expecting this quite soon.
Sifting through their extensive musical archives has uncovered a lot of material from the band’s long history, some of which will hopefully see the light of day in the near future. Dave remarks “some we recorded but never used, others don’t have finished vocals or they need other embellishments.”
In amongst all of this Dave has also hinted at a brand new Kinks album, as a bunch of material is sitting as demos with the intention to be released.
What’s more, a Kinks tour is not out of the question?! When asked, Dave answered that “its not impossible… it would be fun though wouldn’t it?”
The band have since released a remastered version of their track ‘Lola, and it has left fans hanging for more.
