In the way of newspapers, just sometimes interviews get written and then something occurs and the copy lingers. So for all fans of Ray Davies, I thought I would post this which fell victim to the to-ings and fro-ings of the newspaper process. The show has obviously now opened, but Mr Davies and I met a few weeks ago when rehearsals were just underway...
The heavens have opened their sluice gates and under a giant white umbrella I am getting more up close and personal with Ray Davies of Kinks fame than I ever thought likely. The 64-year-old craftsman of classic English pop numbers like Waterloo Sunset, You Really Got Me and Lola has suggested a walk to discuss his new project, a musical, Come Dancing, which he has written and will perform for the Theatre Royal Stratford East.
When I nervously intimate that the traffic noise of Archway Road, where he has just finished the day's rehearsals, may not be conducive to an insightful discussion, he has compromised - a little - by strolling off the main drag and sitting on a concrete wall. As it starts to spit with rain he agrees to go back inside - to fetch the umbrella for us to to huddle beneath. And only when the torrential downpour combined with the rush-hour combines to make the interview farcically uncomfortable does he concede defeat. He is a driven, stubborn man. Though not, perhaps, as difficult as the songsmith of legend. His long face cracks into a smile when I mention his difficult reputation. "I am passionate, I have a sense of what I want to do," he counters. He even grins and protests, without much conviction, when I refer to his colourful personal life which includes three wives and four daughters. "I don't think it's been that colourful," he says. "I just don't know what it is with me. As soon as someone says they want to stay with me I get nervous. I'm very difficult to live with."
And while he has gripes about the inadequacy of his new show's budget, it was his decision to make the commitment to Stratford. "It started as a working-class theatre, a people's theatre, and that appealed to me," he says.
"This is a workshop production, scaled-down and put together on a shoestring. We have no money but we do have heart and we're going to get it on and give people a really good night out."
Set at the Ilford Palais in the 1950s when the Saturday night dance was the highlight of every young person's week, the show contains around 20 new songs written by Davies which he will perform with a small band. He also plays the storyteller, a figure not dissimilar to himself, while another character is based on one of his six older sisters.
"It was on the cusp of the period when the big bands were phasing out and rock was beginning to emerge. They were changing times and youth was struggling to find a voice. It was hard to find a voice that wasn't an American copy because the English charts in those days were dominated by covers of American songs. It was before my time but because of what happened, it helped people like me come through."
There is only one Kinks number in the show which is, obviously, the 1983 single Come Dancing, a song inspired by a photograph of a sister dressed up for a Saturday dance. "It's where they got dates, it's where they hoped to find their partners for life," he says.
"The sub-text is dance is like life, find the steps, find the right partner, improvise occasionally, break away from the conventional steps and hopefully keep the same partner for all time. That's the sentiment behind it."
Davies is no stranger to the stage. In 1981, he wrote - but did not perform - the musical Chorus Girls with Barrie Keeffe (who produced The Long Good Friday screenplay), again for the Theatre Royal. And for several years he toured a show of readings and songs based on his autobiographical book X-Ray, including runs at the Edinburgh Festival. Yet he is nervous about his performance in Come Dancing.
"I'm trying to steer away from acting, because I hate acting," he says. "It's a discipline I haven't really mastered. I did a Play for Today in the early Seventies but I didn't like the experience. So I'm finding it a little bit daunting." Where he is at ease is in writing songs. He is widely hailed a genius at creating compelling narratives in the three-minute pop number.
His younger brother Dave, with whom Ray often clashed when they were both in The Kinks, says Ray doesn't know who he is. Ray, of course, disagrees, but suggests what Dave has identified is that you can find a multitude of characters in his music. "The difference between a lot of what The Kinks records were as opposed to the Stones is I wrote character songs. Mick [Jagger] was always Jumping Jack Flash." None the less, the leap to a full-length stage show is considerable and he is keen to chat about the genre. By his own admission he doesn't really like musical theatre.
"I was given freebies to two or three shows in New York in the last year and I walked out of all of them. The theory on Broadway is if you throw enough money at it, it might land and find an audience. It's all becoming very X Factor. I'm not very fond of the trend to having compilation musicals, people getting a bunch of old songs and making a musical about it."
He wants to know whether I have seen Mamma Mia! which he has heard is the clever exception. (He also asks the budget for the recent, disastrous Gone With The Wind and stores away the answer: around £4.5 million.) And he confesses that despite his broad disapproval, he rather likes what he has seen so far of a planned Kinks musical, Sunny Afternoon, using the band's back catalogue. "I'm interested in this thing - me, the introvert one who wrote the songs, my brother who was outgoing, the very stable solid one in the drummer and a bass player who was publicity conscious and savvy."
Yet another venture is proposed under the title Waterloo Sunset. And there is even a feature film of The Kinks' story is in development. Does that not alarm him? "If they do justice to the material, why not?" he shrugs. You can see why the story might appeal. Ray Davies is the north London boy who created one of the most influential bands of the Sixties yet never quite found the fame and fortune of his contemporaries. He remains a slightly prickly figure, a perfectionist always slightly dissatisfied with his life or his work. "I'm not a great businessman, I'm not successful," he says. He is in a relationship but disputes the term settled, conceding: "I'm as settled as I will ever be."
Fans would like The Kinks, who split in the early Nineties, to re-form and Davies might it it was "done right" but remains resistant to trotting out the old numbers. "I know the other original members would like to do it. But I always have to have something new." Yet in one significant way, he remains rooted in the past. While all his extended family have moved away, he still lives in Muswell Hill within streets of where he was raised. "Of the people who do what I do, I'm one of the few who live exactly where I grew up. I haven't moved to LA like Rod Stewart who grew up in Highgate," he says.
He is tempted to move now, partly to be closer to his daughter from his last relationship who lives in Ireland though he thinks Ireland wouldn't suit him. "It's beautiful but you can't do anything there but fish," he muses. "I've got to have something to do wherever I go or there's no reason to go." Ray Davies is a workaholic. He toured north America immediately before starting rehearsals and wrote 12 new pieces of work for the show during three days in New York, 11 since discarded.
Once Come Dancing is over, he returns to the recording studio with the Crouch End Festival Chorus with whom he played at last year's BBC Electric Proms at the Roundhouse. He has a festival to play in Spain. And looking to the longer term, there is another, multi-media, project on the cards to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Games. "The Theatre Royal Stratford East is right by the Olympics area. It interested me," he says. "I just hope that the people who cheered and jumped up and down when we knew it was coming to London can still afford to live there in 2012. East London is changing, London is changing. It's going to have a dramatic impact on that area. I hope that the theatre itself will survive."
Yet he does think it is "wonderful" the Olympics are coming to Britain because he likes sport. "I was a runner, a sprinter [when younger], and I was very competitive. If I knew there was a runner faster than me I would train and beat them." The drive has always been there. But it moved up a notch four years ago when he was shot in a mugging in New Orleans, requiring emergency surgery to his right leg. It was, he says with wry understatement, "pretty awful".
He has always gone to the gym two or three times a week but now has special exercises for the injury and sees a physiotherapist. "Having an event like that does change you a bit. It was something that makes you think: 'Everything I do from now on has to count.' " So he works all hours and expresses astonishment that other people "actually take breaks and have weekends and take holidays". He rarely does. "I still feel that there's an elusive song or project that will excite me and make me want to get up and do it," he says.
* Come Dancing is at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 13 September to 25 October. Box office 020 8534 0310
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