It’s one of the great sibling enmities in rock, but the relationship between Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks appears to have thawed in recent years. Now, Dave has given an interview with The Times in which he talks about how art has drawn them closer.
“It’s miraculous, really, how we’ve become so bonded,” says the younger Davies brother. Things, it seems, changed after his 2004 stroke, which led to a return to painting for him. “Art saved my life, really,” he says. “It was very exploratory and I found I could do things I couldn’t do before. It was a real liberation.”
When Davies posted some of his abstract works on Instagram, Ray commented and, in the words of Dave’s partner, Rebecca Wilson, who is also interviewed: “It kind of brought them together.”
Now both brothers have collaborated with the artist Christian Furr on an exhibition, The Kinks: Brothers, which collects a number of paintings that Furr has made based on photos of Ray and Dave, which have then been painted on once more by Dave.
And it seems to have further eased the tensions in that fraternal relationship. “We enjoy each other’s company,” says Dave. “We were getting on great. We have fluctuated between getting on really well and not getting on at all over the years but there’s always been telepathy, since childhood.”
The animosity between Ray and Dave has always had several layers to it. Aside from mere sibling rivalry, there was the fact that, while Ray was clearly the better songwriter, Dave was more adept musically. “Music was always really easy for me,” Dave says. “I could work out harmonies really easily. I managed to weave in and out of what Ray was doing.”
But it was Ray who was seen to the leader of the band and the songwriting genius. Dave says it was “terrible” trying to escape that shadow – “But then I realised that he had to find himself [as a musician]. I was his help and I didn’t realise it. The horrible things that happened - it’s all there for a purpose. You need that bonding of difference.”
The Kinks may not even have had a career had it not been for Dave’s moment of genius. Famously, he created that serrated guitar tone on You Really Got Me by slashing his amp cone with a razor blade, arguably creating the template for hard rock, metal and punk in the process. “It’s nice to be recognised,” he says modestly of that innovation. “When we created it, nobody liked it.”
And that eternal question of whether Dave (79) and Ray (82) will ever return as The Kinks or even share a stage again? “I don’t know, but never say never,” is all the guitarist says.
