Entertainment

ROCK MUSIC: Ray Davies, leader of the British group, has a new outlook since getting shot

11:40 AM CDT on Thursday, July 20, 2006

By THOR CHRISTENSEN / The Dallas Morning News

Ray Davies doesn't recommend getting shot to anyone. But the ex-Kinks leader says taking a bullet in the leg in 2004 had one welcome side effect: It finally got him thinking clearly.

"All that time in the hospital and the recovery process made me realize where I am as a person," the 62-year-old singer says from the San Francisco stop of a tour that arrives Friday at the Gypsy Tea Room.

Lawrence Watson

Ray Davies has always been a songwriter in search of his psyche: His 2004 shooting in New Orleans only served to intensify his quest. Today, he's on better terms with his brother and former bandmate.

"When I first became successful, I was an incomplete adult, and in many respects, that had been put on hiatus for me. But the accident gave me a stronger fix on who I am, than if I'd just stayed in the tunnel vision of making records."

Self-analysis crops up throughout Other People's Lives, his first solo album since he broke up the Kinks in 1996. Of course, it isn't a new subject for the British rocker: Self-described as "openly manic-depressive," he's been dissecting and cataloging his own psyche since 1966's "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?"

But his moment of clarity came on Jan. 4, 2004, in New Orleans, where he'd been living and writing songs.

The day before, he'd gotten some good news – a phone call telling him the queen of England had named him a Commander of the British Empire. But the next day, as he and his girlfriend walked through the French Quarter, a thief grabbed her purse and Mr. Davies ran after him.

Big mistake. The thief promptly spun around and shot him in the leg. Mr. Davies wound up at the public Charity Hospital, and while the experience wasn't life-threatening, it was definitely eye-opening.

"It was the poorest place I've ever been to," he says. "I was coming from a seemingly privileged position of staying in nice hotels, and then I witnessed firsthand what it was like for these people in the horrific conditions of a public hospital system. I kept a diary and I remember writing, 'How can (America) expect to run the world when they can't even look after their own? How can they send troops everywhere when there's a battleground on their own doorsteps?' "

Although he declines to talk specifics, he calls the shooting "the deciding factor in many issues of my life – relationships, business situations, career issues. It all came to a head, and then I found myself having to move back to England [to recuperate], when I was trying to be away from England."

Mr. Davies has always been the most Anglo-centric of the British Invasion rockers. He chronicled the English class system in songs like "A Well Respected Man" and "Mr. Pleasant," and wrote detailed portraits of British life in "Come Dancing" and "Waterloo Sunset." While his British rock peers were busy perfecting their fake Mississippi accents, Mr. Davies wore his cockney dialect with pride.

But by the late '90s, "I was discontented with England, with the new government trying to control people, putting cameras everywhere, trying to train people like laboratory rats," he says.

"Subconsciously, I was trying to get away from the things I was writing about in England. So I came to America to find the music that inspired me in the first place, which was everything from Dixieland jazz to Big Bill Broonzy."

Living in New Orleans provided fodder for "The Tourist," a harsh commentary on the divide between rich and poor in the Big Easy. But he also wrote more universal songs, such as "Other People's Lives," a tune about rampant celebrity gossip in which he sings "Excuse me, I just vomited."

The lyrics pick up a thread he began on "Celluloid Heroes," his 1972 classic about the danger of confusing fame with happiness. Nearly 25 years later, nothing's changed, he says.

"'Celluloid Heroes' was inspired by the odd phenomenon of walking down Hollywood Boulevard and walking on stars and knowing a lot of them did get walked on in their lives," he says.

"And now you have Pop Idol and Big Brother, with people willing to be humiliated for their 15 minutes of fame. Audiences expect to see people built up and then crushed. They demand it."

He's been singing "Celluloid Heroes" on his current solo tour – one of a handful of times he's performed in the U.S. since the Kinks broke up. (Friday's show marks his first Dallas concert since the Kinks played Reunion Arena in 1985.)

The split was long brewing, thanks to the often nasty rivalry between Ray and younger brother Dave, the guitarist who practically invented hard rock with his riff on "You Really Got Me."

At times, the singer has made light of his sibling squabbling, most notably on the Kinks' 1993 single, "Hatred (A Duet)." But it's also been a perpetual thorn in his side.

In the late '80s, after I interviewed Dave Davies for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ray was so incensed he called the newspaper to complain and to say he was on the verge of kicking Dave out of the band. That night, the singer went onstage in Milwaukee and attacked your humble scribe with several unprintable names.

Today, Mr. Davies says he doesn't remember that incident. But he says his relationship with Dave has improved slightly since his brother suffered a stroke in June 2004. "He's on the road to recovery, he's got his speech back and he's playing a bit now. One of my causes is to get Dave back feeling creative and to make a record, either with me, or hopefully, without me," he says.

But there's still plenty of bad blood left over from the early '60s when they formed the Kinks as teenagers.

"If I have any criticism of Dave, it's a lack of understanding of why I do this: I'm doing it because I love doing it, not to make him feel bad," he says.

"All those issues you have when you're growing up, it doesn't go away. People evolve, but not very much."

E-mail tchristensen@dallasnews.com

Ray Davies performs Friday night at the Gypsy Tea Room, 2548 Elm St. Doors open at 8 p.m. $25. Front Gate Tickets.