The Kinks’ Dave Davies: ‘Ray and I have spoken about a reunion – it’s possible!’
In his new tell-all memoir, Living on a Thin Line, The Kinks guitarist Dave Davies writes movingly about his recovery from a stroke in 2004, his fractious relationship with elder brother and bandmate Ray, and his own years of rock star excess. Tabloid coverage of the book has, however, tended to focus on just one aspect. “Dave Davies: Aliens banned me from having sex,” ran a recent headline in the Toronto Sun, proving that you can be as candid as you like about your life, but mention just one alien sex ban and it’s all anybody wants to talk about. “F***in’ hell, it’s a cheap gag isn’t it?” says 75-year-old Davies, chuckling good-naturedly. “It’s like taking your trousers down to get a laugh.”
The curious incident in question occurred in 1982 at the Sheraton Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. Davies was on the road with The Kinks, the revolutionary British rock band he’d co-founded two decades earlier, when he began to hear otherworldly voices communicating via telepathy. “What you’re about to read might sound a bit crazy,” writes Davies in Living on a Thin Line. “I called these voices ‘the intelligences’ and I realised they had taken over complete command of my senses.” Among the messages he received was an instruction not to have sex. “The reason being, they told me,” writes Davies, “was they wanted to transmute my sexual energy to a higher vibrational level.”
Davies is well aware that this doesn’t sound entirely rational, but that’s sort of his point. Speaking over a video call from London, looking bohemian in a black beanie and red-rimmed specs with a string of beads slung around his neck, Davies makes the case for exploring the irrational and the unconscious mind. “Life can be hell for really sensitive people,” he says. “We have a hard time trying to work out what the f*** is going on, on a day-to-day basis. We have to formulate some kind of imaginative concept just to put our bleedin’ shoes on! What is this madness? Carl Jung spent all his life trying to work out what the f*** is going on in there, and he realised that we haven’t even begun to understand the mind. We can’t be afraid of new ideas. That’s what art is for!”
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