compared2what? wrote:Ray Davies, to all appearances having fun while doing a promotional 1970s TV appearance with the Kinks.
I've gotta say, you just don't see that too often.
The happiest I've ever seen him (on the telly) is after he got shot by that guy in New Orleans. It was as if getting shot and surviving had vindicated his whole life up to that point, and made it all worthwhile. Which I suppose it did.
He still looked and sounded miserable, of course, but slightly less so than usual. Cos he'd been shot. It had cheered him up.
Muswell Hill, the birthplace and early stamping ground of the Davies' brothers, was later gentrified beyond all recognition, and in the eighties became the stamping ground for the equally withdrawn and depressive and inscrutable serial killer Dennis Nilsen. I know it's cheap to say this, but they seem like similar characters to me, except that Ray Davies probably hasn't killed 17 young men. You can never be totally
sure that he hasn't, though, can you?. He might've. We just don't know for certain.
He's not like anybody else.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."