2012
First Published
3.76
Average Rating
228
Number of Pages
In the first ten years of their career, the Kinks underwent a creative explosion that was almost unparalleled in popular music. Starting with simple but potent garage rock tracks like You Really Got Me, the band, and lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies, quickly became one of the most idiosyncratic bands of the 60s, recording classic singles like Days and Waterloo Sunset, and albums like The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, widely regarded as one of the best albums of all time. In this book, Andrew Hickey analyses every studio recording by the Kinks from their first album in 1964 through to the epic triple concept album Preservation a decade later, looking at what influenced the songs, their subject matter, and the stylistic changes the band went through. Hickey takes a critical look at what makes songs like Lola, Sunny Afternoon and All Day And All Of The Night work, in a book that is full of forthright and sometimes controversial opinion.
Avg Rating
3.76
Number of Ratings
21
5 STARS
33%
4 STARS
19%
3 STARS
38%
2 STARS
10%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Andrew Hickey
Author · 13 books
I had a biography here but it was very out of date. Currently my main work is my podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The New Yorker compared that to the Bible, Oxford English Dictionary, and the works of Gibbon and Pepys, and said it "will eclipse every literary project in history". So that's nice.
