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Dave Davies

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Dave Davies: Kinks Reunion Possible
Thursday April 24, 2003 @ 04:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Dave Davies
Dave Davies

Bug. That’s the name of The Kinks guitarist’s new album, a record that has Dave Davies and band pushing on another tour of "past, present and future" with a Toronto date as the first show of the jaunt, set for Club 279 on April 30.

"Well, primarily it's a tour to promote my Bug CD," says the famous axe-slasher behind "You Really Got Me." "But also what I'll be doing is that I'll be trying out a couple of new things. And there will be a few of my favourite Kinks songs mixed in with my own songs; so yeah, past, present and where I am heading musically as well. It’s also a bit of a concept album. The album’s a mixture of the hard rock sound I like but also with a lot more delicate songs. I like the juxtaposition between melody and crunch, gentleness... I like all the different elements.

Davies seems darn upbeat about the prospects of touring. It's refreshing from a guy who's spent nearly 40 years churning out some of rock’s biggest classic tracks. Was this positivity always the case?

"Well, it was up-and-down really. Through the years, I’ve hated touring and then I've missed it. Then I get back on the road again. It's a love/hate relationship with the road.

That positive vibe seems to be extending to his music writing, too.

"I think it's hard NOT to write about anything these days. There's so much chaos and there's so much anger and weird stuff going on in the world, it's a writer's paradise, really. Although emotionally, the world is in a terrible turmoil. But I'm a bit of an optimist. I always try look for the other side of the coin. I think that ultimately good will prevail over negativity; that's kind of what drives me along."

When asked about his well-documented spiritual pursuits, Dave says, "Well, I'm interested in oneness, really; I suppose that's a very broad term. I've studied yoga and metaphysics for a long time and it's always been a subplot of my life, or the main part of my life, really. I think I'm still searching for ways and means of trying to create harmony in an inharmonious world. Which is really the artist's job, in a way."

Equally well-documented is the brotherly strife between Dave and chief Kink, Ray. It doesn’t sound like there’s much residual animosity though, with a possible project (reunion?) in the wings.

"Maybe there were too many ideas," reflects Dave on the infighting. "That was the cause of a lot of emotional creative pressure. There was just too much to deal with. I wanted to do this and Ray had his ideas and a lot of it was just bumping heads with too many ideas. But I think it worked at its best when it was complementary, when there was a fusion of our ideas. I think that's when it all worked the best, when it all came together in these peaks like 'Come Dancing' and 'All Day And All Of The Night;' there were these peaks between. You know, we've been talking about doing something. We're not sure exactly what. I think we're going to do something but we just need to define the details a little bit. It would be nice."

—Martin Popoff