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Ray Davies, legendary frontman of The Kinks, is one of the all-time greatest rock n roll musicians and also one of its most troubled and enigmatic. In the summer of 1964, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit "You Really Got Me." Within months, they were challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of classics, including "All Day and All of the Night," "Sunny Afternoon," "Waterloo Sunset," and "Lola," securing his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last 50 years. But Ray s journey was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, lawsuits, punch-ups and a ban from the U.S. for almost four years. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks lead guitarist, is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies, and promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life."
Review Quotes
1. "As definitive a view of the man as anyone could hope for." Times"
2. "[Rogan is] adept at relating the social history of the 1950s and 1960s to Davies s brooding character and lyric obsessions . . .He uncovers psychological traumas everywhere and is fascinating on the bitchy rivalries between 1960s pop titans. . . .Such tales make this . . . oceanically researched biography go with a swing." Sunday Times"
