Ray Davies og bandlysning af den Britiske Invasion i USA
21. december 2010
“In 1965, the Kinks were refused permits to tour the US by the American Federation of Musicians. The British invasion, at the time, was regarded by the US music business as a coup d’état. The Beatles were too big to be stopped, while the Stones were more than happy to play the game and cut their hair to go on the Ed Sullivan Show – so the Kinks were made the sacrificial lambs. “There was something in the air that a British band was going to be banned,” Davies told Q magazine in 2005, “and, with the way we looked and sounded, we were the ones.”
Listening to Davies, I finally understood how profound an impact that four-and-a-half year ban had actually had. Drawing on the songs of Noël Coward and the music-hall culture his father had loved, Davies turned his back on the riff-driven rock that had propelled his early hits and reinvented himself as wilfully English. From this rebirth sprang a miraculous run of hits, from A Well Respected Man to Waterloo Sunset, which still hold a mirror up to our lives.
It’s extraordinary how political these songs are. In a coded, nuanced way, they delivered messages of rebellion, couched in a wry humour that allowed them to fly under the radar to the top of the charts. I’m sure not many of those fans who broke into Sunny Afternoon on the Wembley terraces when England won the World Cup knew the song was a direct response to the devaluation of the pound.”
(Julien Temple, instruktør af en ny film – Imaginary Man – om Ray Davies i The Guardian)
Når vi ser billeder af den amerikanske udgave af Beatlemania – da den omsider startede – kan man let få det indtryk, at det var a piece of cake for de fire moppehoveder at indtage United Bluff. Men havde det ikke været for de unge, fansene, publikum, så havde det nok set sort ud for Beatles og dem, der kom i slipstrømmen. Den etablerede musikindustri var, for at sige det pænt, meget reserveret.
Så meget desto mere imponerende var det, at de engelske artister formåede at bryde igennem det kulturelle jerntæppe, der paradoksalt har beskyttet det amerikanske marked – og sådan set stadigvæk gør det. Hvor mange kunstnere har ikke siden hen forsøgt at bryde igennem uden held?! Spørg bare Kim Larsen, Savage Rose eller..
At udelukkelsen af The Kinks så blev kilden til nogle af Ray Davies’ bedste sange, det er vel en kraftig understregning af, at man ikke kan holde talent i ave. Undertrykkelse, eksklusion, censur og så videre kan – paradoksalt nok – være befordrende for kreativiteten.
