Davies and Penhall's Sunny Afternoon

John Fleming

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138418141
• eBook ISBN: 9781315294674
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British Drama

When 'You Really Got Me' exploded on Swinging London in 1964, the Kinks forever changed the course of rock 'n' roll. Ray Davies and Joe Penhall's Olivier Award-winning Sunny Afternoon (2014) covers the band's formative years of 1964–7, when four working- class North London lads broke through to become one of the most unlikely and influential rock bands of the 1960s. Mixing the comic adventures of 'Dave the Rave' with the touching introspection of Ray's sometimes fragile psyche, Joe Penhall's script weaves Ray Davies' songs, both the hits and lesser-known works, into one of the finest jukebox musicals of the new millennium.

Drawing on a wealth of background material, John Fleming examines the blend of events and songs selected, reconsidering the relationship between biography and drama to shed new light on the Kinks and the musical that tells their story.

1

The principal players

Since Sunny Afternoon is based on actual people, this chapter examines the key figures portrayed in the musical as well as the show’s creative team. In the process it provides a broader context for understanding the piece, including an extension of the historical lives beyond the scope of the musical as well as a consideration of why this creative team had the appropriate background for making the show such a success. The presentation examines the Kinks, both as a group and as individuals, their management team, and also Sunny Afternoon’s creative team.

The Davies family and the beginnings of the Kinks

The action of Sunny Afternoon begins at a point when Ray and Dave were still living at home. As supporting characters, the parents and siblings are presented in bold strokes, and so a brief family history provides a greater sense of the role they played in shaping the Davies brothers path to the musical success depicted in the show.

The children of Fred and Annie Davies, Ray and Dave were the products of a large working-class family, with a strong influence exerted by the six older sisters. Rose was born in 1924, followed by Rene (1926), Dolly (1928), Joyce (1930), Peggy (1932), and Gwen (1938). (Though it is difficult to distinguish them as individuals, the latter three are named in the West End programme, while a fourth, presumably Dolly, also appears on stage.) Beyond being the only boys, Ray (21 June 1944) and Dave (3 February 1947) were the babies of the family, crowded into a small house at 6 Denmark Terrace in Muswell Hill, North London. For much of his adolescence Ray lived with Rosie, her husband Arthur and their son Terry; likewise, Dave was partly raised by Dolly. Ultimately, it was a shared love of music that brought the brothers together. In the early days of the band, ‘The house was so crowded that Ray and Dave slept in the front room, with their amps under the bed and gear all around them’ (Hasted, 2013: 4). In Kinks lore, that front room has taken on mythical connotations as the space that fostered the Davies brothers’ love of music. The Saturday night parties featured his parents’ music hall favourites, while on other occasions the sisters danced and played piano and banjo in the front room or listened to jazz, big bands, crooners, country, and early rock ’n’ roll. Eventually, it was in that front room where the Kinks’ first hits were written.

In addition to financial difficulties, the family endured its share of hardships. As revealed in Sunny Afternoon, Rene gave Ray his first guitar for his thirteenth birthday, and then died later that night in a dancehall. After Rene’s death he was sent to a child psychiatrist. In Davies’ words:

It was just a counsellor, just a child who was a little but troubled, and didn’t know how to fit in. More than anything else, I didn’t know how to communicate. That was something with music that helped me later.

(Hasted, 2013: 9)

In the end, it was music that paved the way out for the brothers. Never one for school, Dave got his first guitar when he was twelve. By the time Dave was fourteen, he and Ray were performing instrumental duets for family and friends as well as in the pub across the street, the Clissold Arms; by late 1961, Peter Quaife had joined them, and they were playing local halls and school dances (Dave Davies, 1996: 19). The nascent band went through various names (the Ray Davies Quartet (or RDQ), the Ramrods, the Boll Weevils, and the Ravens) and drummers (John Start, then Micky Willett); along the way Ray also branched out, playing with the Dave Hunt Rhythm and Blues Band and Hamilton King’s Blues Messengers band. In January 1964, the Ravens changed their name to the Kinks; that same month, the band’s first official recording session occurred at Pye Studios. That day they recorded four songs, including a cover version of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and three songs by Ray: ‘I Took My Baby Home’, ‘You Do Something to Me’, and ‘You Still Want Me’. These would be the A and B sides to their first two singles; ‘Sally’ briefly charted at #42, while ‘Do Something’ sank without a trace. Since the original contract was for three singles, when they went to record ‘You Really Got Me’ it was truly a make or break proposition.

The band

While the Davies brothers are the best-known members of the Kinks, Pete Quaife and Mick Avory were pivotal to the band’s early sound and success. While Sunny Afternoon makes some direct reference to aspects of their lives, it also includes subtle details that convey unstated attributes of the rhythm section and the ways they contributed to the band’s chemistry. In fact, purists such as film and video director Julien Temple believe the Kinks ‘were never the same after Quaife left, let alone following Avory’s departure’ (Rogan, 2015: 637).

Pete Quaife (31 December 1943–23 June 2010) was a founding member, bass guitarist, and backing vocalist for the Kinks. Born in Tavistock, Devon, his family later moved to the Muswell Hill area where he attended William Grimshaw secondary school with Ray and Dave; he also briefly attended Hornsey Art College with Ray and worked in the commercial art world. Described as ‘a sardonically funny extrovert’ and ‘a daring, hip dresser’ (Hasted, 2013:12), Quaife was the Mod member of the group who enjoyed exploring the fashion scene of Carnaby Street. While often overshadowed by the Davies brothers, he initially did a fair amount of press for the band and was known as being the peacemaker. Severely injured in a car accident, Quaife took a medical leave from the band in June 1966, then quit in September, only to return in November. In early 1969, during rehearsals for Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), Quaife permanently left the band. In later interviews he cited the continual fighting, the (then) dearth of touring, and the lack of creative input as reasons for his departure. After a brief stint with a band called Mapleoak, he left the music business in 1970. In a 1996 Goldmine magazine interview, the Who’s John Entwistle provided a perspective on Quaife’s sometimes unacknowledged expertise/contribution: ‘I’d say one of my favorite bass players was Pete Quaife because he literally drove the Kinks along.’

Mick Avory (15 February 1944) was the final one to join the Kinks. Born in East Moseley, Surrey, Avory is the only member who grew up outside the Muswell Hill area. He played for a variety of bands including ‘in the summer of 1962, playing in [or at least rehearsing with] an early, unnamed incarnation of the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones and Mick Jagger’ (Jovanovic, 2013: 59). According to Avory, the idea of being a full-time drummer was ‘a bit precarious’ and not ‘a good industry for regular work’ (Jovanovic, 2013: 59). In January 1964, after a string of manual labour jobs, Avory was ready to pursue music as more than just a weekend gig, and so when the Kinks, who had just recorded their first single, asked him to be their drummer, he quit his paraffin delivery job.

For the first year, Avory played the live shows, but producer Shel Talmy often hired session drummers for studio recordings, including ‘You Really Got Me’. Drumming-wise, Avory had jazz-oriented inclinations, and in retrospect Ray often attributed Mick as providing ‘those happy mistakes, those errors that make a band unique’ (Ray Davies, 2013: 28). In the early rhythm section ‘Avory seemed to slot into Pete Quaife, who had a certain flair on the bass’ (Ray Davies, 2013: 28). In band disputes, Avory often sided with Ray over Dave, and by 1984 the fissure between Mick and Dave resulted in Avory leaving the band; however, he stayed on to manage Konk Studios, the recording studio the Kinks created and where the Kinks recorded all their albums from 1973 through to their demise. Since the 1990s, Avory has performed with numerous bands, including the Kast Off Kinks (comprised primarily of former Kinks members) as well as various groups that feature other rock musicians who got their start in the 1960s.

The management team

A central plot point of Sunny Afternoon revolves around the band’s dispute with management. While some critics viewed it as almost a cliché, the conflict with management is not simply a stage device, but rather was a stark reality. The conflict’s roots can be found in the particular biographies of the management team, with the amateurs Wace and Collins ill-prepared to deal with the experienced Page and Kassner, individuals who knew how to capitalize on the situation. It would require Allen Klein’s forceful personality to resolve the management dispute.

Robert Wace, along with Collins, formed the early management team for the band. An upper-class product of old money, Wace was well-spoken, well-educated, and moved in very different social circles than the Davies brothers. Well over six feet tall, with a plummy voice, Wace met Mickey Willet, the then-drummer for the Boll Weevils, and they hatched the unlikely plan of working together; at a handful of gigs on the debutante circuit, Wace sang lead vocals, while the Boll Weevils served as his backing band. When they branched out of the society circles and played a club in East London, Wace was booed off stage and abandoned his singing career. Though only in their very early twenties with no experience in the music business, Wace and Collins were asked to stay on as the band’s managers. Wace formally left his father’s company and devoted his time to managing the band, a task he enjoyed until the end of 1971, when, after being asked to take a cut in management fee, he angrily resigned.

Grenville Collins was a stockbroker, but like his friend Wace, he longed for something more exciting than his middle-class career path. Jovanovic reports that initially Collins ‘continued to work the stock market, [and] agreed to make 50 per cent of his annual profits available to the venture in return for a percentage of the group’s earnings’ (Jovanovic, 2013: 45). While the band retrospectively lament their managers’ lack of music business acumen, there were times their professionalism and social sensibilities came in handy, such as when Collins rescued a violent, belligerent Dave from a Copenhagen jail following a riot at a 1965 concert; Collins needed to take control because the Kinks were performing later that night in London at the NME Pollwinners Party, where they were the closing act, playing after the Beatles (Hasted, 2013: 39–40). While Wace and Collins’ failure to accompany the band on their first American tour proved disastrous, their company Boscobel Productions Ltd served as the driving force to recruit Allen Klein, find a new publisher (Freddy Bienstock, head of Belinda Music), and break the contract with Page and Kassner. Ultimately, Collins stayed with the band until 1971; after the Kinks signed a new record deal with RCA, Collins amicably resigned and left the music business.

Forever linked as the unlikely duo managing the Kinks at their breakthrough, Wace and Collins shared many similarities, but also a few differences, with Avory stating: ‘Robert was funny because he did upper-class twit things. Grenville was really funny, a hooray Henry sort of bloke who came out with great one-liners. [Though both were about 6’5”] Robert was very thin, whereas everything was big about Grenville’ (Hasted, 2013: 77). One can hear Collins’ voice on 1966’s Face to Face where he delivers the voice introduction (‘Hello, who’s that speaking, please?’) to the song ‘Party Line’.

Larry Page (born Leonard Davis, 1938–) came aboard after Wace and Collins sought his advice on securing a record contract. Now head of Denmark Productions, Page had previously enjoyed some mild success in the 1950s as ‘Larry Page the Teenage Rage’, touring with Cliff Richard, and performing at the Royal Albert Hall and on TV shows such as Thank Your Lucky Stars. Ray describes Page as ‘tall, but not quite as tall as Wace and Collins. He had fair to blond hair and his face was framed by a pair of thick black-rimmed spectacles, which gave him the look of a cartoon character’ (Ray Davies, 1994: 97). More importantly, Page had strong musical instincts and because his background was closer to the Davies brothers he was seen as ‘a down-to-earth guy, [who] we felt we could trust’ (Ray Davies, 1994: 97). In addition to his connections to Kassner, Page provided the complement they needed to their management team: ‘Larry had the wheeler-dealer, street-wise expertise to find his way into meetings with record companies, and Robert and Grenville had the society contacts to get that person into any club in Mayfair’ (Ray Davies, 1994: 97).

It was Page who hired record producer Shel Talmy (1937–), who helped the band audition for record contracts and who produced their work through 1967’s Something Else by The Kinks. While Talmy would also enjoy success producing the Who, Page earned acclaim managing/producing the Troggs. (When he heard the Who’s ‘I Can’t Explain’ and the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’, Ray felt a sense of betrayal, that the Kinks’ sound had been stolen by these other bands.) While Page was the one member of the management team who accompanied the band on their disastrous North American tour, he abandoned them in California, shortly after he signed a deal for Sonny and Cher to record Ray’s ‘I Go To Sleep’. While Page accompanied the band on a 1966 European tour, his days with the Kinks were numbered; a lawsuit was waged against Page and Kassner, and when the appeal was resolved in June 1967, Page no longer retained his 10 per cent interest in the Kinks.

Eddie Kassner (1920–1996) was a music publisher of Jewish Viennese descent; while he narrowly escaped the Nazis, his parents died in Auschwitz. In London, Kassner married and in 1944 established the music publishing company Edward Kassner Music Co. Ltd. He wrote songs under the name Eddie Cassen, but his career took off in the 1950s when he decided to focus on music publishing, acquiring the rights to songs recorded by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole and others. For $250, he bought the rights to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, often cited as the biggest-selling vinyl rock ’n’ roll single of all time. When Page funnelled Ray’s songs to Kassner, the latter gained 10 per cent of the Kinks’ income as well as the lucrative royalty fees of being the songs’ publisher. Kassner played an odd role during the disastrous US tour as he was not officially with the band, but according to Ray, quietly followed the band across the country (Ray Davies, 1994: 244). Once the band reached Los Angeles, Kassner took on a more visible role; however,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The principal players
• 2 Act One
• 3 Act Two
• Appendix A: Sunny Afternoon fact sheet
• Appendix B: The songs of Sunny Afternoon
• Bibliography
• Index