He might be one of the definitive British songwriters, but as with most consequential musicians, there’s a complex psyche behind the eyes of Ray Davies. While The Kinks leader represents the very pinnacle of art inextricable from the idiosyncracies of this tiny rock, his story is filled with the ups and downs inherent to rock ‘n’ roll, with things coming to a particularly fraught head for him one day in 1973.

On Sunday, July 15th of that year, The Kinks leader found himself at a personal crossroads. Filled with the anguish of his wife Rasa leaving him and taking their two daughters with her, this was a new low that he could not escape. It was one that he only saw one way out of.

The gloomiest of days weather-wise, in the most typically British way, did not help Davies’ mood and instead provided a tangible bit of pathetic fallacy. That day, The Kinks played at The Great Western Express Festival in London’s White City, but in a reflection of how the times had changed for The Kinks, they were no longer headliners, lodged in the middle of an assorted line-up.

Naturally, the issue taking up most of Davies’ mental space was that Rasa had left him less than three weeks prior with his two children. According to his bandmates, including brother and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, he had been acting strangely all day, with it unknown to them at the time that he had taken a lot of pills.

When he walked onstage, Davies knew this was it; he was done with music and life itself. Only four songs in, the worn-out frontman swore into the microphone, telling the audience: “I’m fucking sick of the whole thing. I’m sick up to here with it.” Only a few songs later, Ray kissed his brother on the cheek and told the crowd: “I just want to say goodbye and thank you for all you’ve done.”

In his book, X-Ray, Davies – who was legally known at the time as Raymond Douglas – says: “There was obviously a lot of self-pity involved, but he could not escape these emotions, there was no escape, this was the real world come tumbling down on Raymond Douglas’ fantasyland.”

He continued: “At the end of the concert, he announced that this was the final concert by the Kinks, but the PA company accidentally turned off the sound system, and so nobody heard the resignation speech. It would have ended with ‘The Kinks are dead, I am dead.’ Well-meaning people helped R.D. away from the stage, but he wished that he had just died.”

The following day, the news made it seem like yet another hero from the 1960s had combusted in a flurry of ego. However, something more serious was going down behind the scenes. Only a few hours after The Kinks’ set, Davies’ girlfriend noticed that he acted oddly; then, he produced an empty bottle of pills. Luckily, road manager Ken Jones was on hand to rush him to Whittington Hospital, where the signer declared on arrival, “I’m Ray Davies… and I’m dying.”

Strangely, one nurse responded by asking for an autograph, but this was not a joke. After collapsing in the hospital’s hallway, Davies was rushed into a room to have his stomach pumped. He would survive and, years later, after the dust had settled, explain what had actually happened. This trip to the hospital wasn’t an accident.