A Rock N' Roll Fantasy

Flashing back 40 years to my first Kinks show

Though I don’t usually repost things from my Big Hair and Plastic Grass blog on Jagged Time Lapse, this particular post (written on April 9, 2022) is definitely of a piece with the other musical flashbacks I’ve been having over here. Plus, today marks the 40th anniversary of the concert recounted in this post — which of course can’t be right, since I still feel very much like that 16 year-old kid who attended it — so I felt it deserved another airing…

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The ticket stub for my very first Kinks show came up in my "Facebook Memories" this morning, and immediately unleashed a vivid torrent of thoughts, images and emotions. I promptly reposted it, calling it one of the,"Top 10 happiest moments and/or most life-changing events of my high school existence," but upon further consideration I think that heady description may have actually sold it somewhat short...

I don't think I was ever more fully, organically, ecstatically pumped up for a concert than I was for the Kinks' appearance at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion in the spring of 1983. I'd seen Springsteen at the height of my Bruce fandom in September 1981, but those tickets had fallen into my lap at the last minute. I'd seen The Who, another all-time favorite band, in the fall of 1982; but even going in I was aware that they were past their prime, and I'd sat impatiently through songs from It's Hard and Face Dances while waiting to hear more classic material. And while there have certainly been many, many subsequent shows I was excited about attending, I was never more ready to see a particular band than I was this night.

I'd been a Kinks fan for about four years at this point. "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman," which was all over AM radio in the spring of 1979, had made me aware of them, and "Lola" — which I heard on FM radio soon after — made me want to learn more. (I'd actually really liked "A Rock N' Roll Fantasy" the few times I heard it on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 in the spring of '78, but for some reason didn't learn that it was The Kinks until a few years later.)

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My fandom was forever solidified in the summer of 1980 by the high-energy concert album One For The Road, which introduced me to a number of choice cuts from their back catalog, including "Celluloid Heroes," "20th Century Man" and "David Watts," as well as clued me in to their excellence as a live act. A few months later, I casually mentioned to a music-loving friend of my mom's that I was a Kinks fan. "Oh, you like the Kinks? Then you need to get The Kinks Kronikles," he said. (Thanks again, Joe; you've been gone for years, but you surely deserve a place in eternal paradise just for that recommendation alone.)

By the spring of 1983, The Kinks had officially become my favorite band. The brilliance of Ray Davies' songwriting has been dissected and celebrated countless times elsewhere, but the band's sardonic humor and "Yes we're a mess but let's ROCK" attitude really spoke to me as well, and the little veddy British details in Ray's lyrics reminded me fondly of the chunk of 1974 that I spent living in Leamington Spa, England with my father and sister. I'd become fascinated with mod culture in the early Eighties via The Jam and the early Who, and loved that The Kinks were both "of" that world sartorially (at least for a time), but had also transcended it.

(Much as I dug the mod look, I was always firmly of the belief that one could and should put a personal spin on it; arguing over the "proper" amount of eyelets on a desert boot with parka-clad Quadrophenia clones always seemed like a colossal waste of time to me.)

While I would later experience some misgivings about The Kinks’ early-Eighties albums, largely due to their dated, arena-riffic production, they sounded fantastic to me at the time, and repeated viewings of their One For the Road home video convinced me that they were still very much in their prime as live performers. I'd missed that tour and the one for 1981's Give The People What They Want, but I swore to myself that there was no way they'd come through Chicago again without me being there.

The UIC show was announced in early March, and I immediately notified my high school friend Brian; aside from being a huge Kinks fan himself (and one who'd generously allowed me to tape several of their older albums from his collection), he had a sweet concert ticket connection who always seemed able to get him good seats. Even though State of Confusion, the album they were ostensibly touring to promote, wouldn't actually be out for several more months (yet another brilliant move by Arista Records), they were currently enjoying a surprise Top 10 hit with "Come Dancing," so I knew that the demand would be high. "Brian, call your guy NOW," I pleaded. He did, and promptly procured us four seats that, while not as "up close" as I might have preferred, would give us an excellent view from stage right while still putting us in reasonable proximity to Ray and the boys.

Unfortunately, we still had the problem of how to get to the show. Neither Brian, myself, nor our friend Jason (also a huge Kinks fan and a no-brainer addition to our party) had access to a vehicle, and for whatever reason taking the CTA down to Circle Campus (or "Cample Circus," as the late Mayor Daley had memorably called it) from the North Side didn't occur or appeal to us. I embarked upon a "Kinks Charm Offensive" with our friend Jim, hoping to convince him to be our fourth and our chauffeur — he had full use of his mom's early-Seventies Buick LeSabre, which was so fearsomely large that we referred to it as "Das Car" — but while he loved the song "Better Things," the rest of the records I played for him didn't impress him enough to commit. Finally, with a week to go before the show, a schoolmate of ours named Jackie overheard us discussing our predicament in the high school hallway; she offered to take the ticket, and give us a ride as well. None of us knew her well enough to have even guessed that she was a Kinks fan, so this came as a welcome surprise, especially since she had a really sweet car; I can't remember now if it was a Mercedes or a Saab or a BMW, but it was definitely something on that level. We would be riding to the concert in style!

Me in "casual mode" on the back stairs of our Chicago apartment, spring 1983.

Now then… what to wear for it? There are many moments from my youth that I wish had been commemorated photographically, but perhaps none more so than this particular evening. I know that Jason and I must have been looking exceptionally sharp for the occasion — we wouldn't have had it any other way — but try as I might I can't retrieve that night's outfit from my battered memory banks. My best guess is that it would have involved a dark, narrow-lapeled thrift store suit jacket; a tab-collared shirt; a narrow blue and silver tie with a shiny, Art Deco-like pattern that I'd picked up at LA's Aardvark's over February break and was especially fond of; pink or purple cotton socks; and either white buck oxfords or two-tone wingtips. And pants, of course, though I can't for the life of me remember which ones. (But whichever pair it was, I can assure you that a lot of thought went into choosing them.) 

But however I arrayed myself, there was no way I'd be the best-dressed man there that night — not with Ray Davies in the house. He must have changed jackets four or five times during the course of the set, each one more eye-catchingly striped than the last. Most of these, I later learned, were known as "boating blazers," and that night I wanted one with every fiber of my being. They were nicely set off by a pair of skin-tight rose-colored pants, which somehow remained intact despite Ray doing all manner of crowd-pleasing kicks, leaps and jumping jacks throughout the show. (I can still hear myself shouting with amazement to my friends, "Can you believe that guy is almost thirty-nine?!?" God, how ancient I truly thought that was.) 

Ah yes, the show — how was it? The setlist for that night at Setlist.FM is woefully incomplete, and pretty much looks like someone's basic guess for what would be played at a 1983 Kinks show. Yes, they played those songs, and the bulk of the set consisted of recent material — songs from the forthcoming album (I heard "State of Confusion," "Don't Forget to Dance," "Bernadette" and probably "Definite Maybe" that night for the first time), as well as a handful of their "oldies" in the now-standard One For The Road arrangements. Ray hadn't yet got the memo that many of their American fans wanted to hear deep cuts from their Sixties albums, so we didn't get anything from, say, Village Preservation Society (hell, I don't think they even played "Waterloo Sunset" on that tour), but I didn't care. The show opened with "Around the Dial," one of my favorite cuts from GTPWTW; the stage lights went on full blast for the song's portentous introduction, then dramatically cut out to leave just a single spotlight on Ray as he pumped out the song's opening two-chord guitar riff. I just about lost my goddamn mind at that point.

I would see many "better" Kinks shows over the next decade-plus, in which I would be surprised by the inclusion of such lesser-known wonders as "Too Much On My Mind," "Brother" and "Sweet Lady Genevieve". I would witness memorably dysfunctional moments like Dave hurling a full cup of beer across the stage at Ray, after catching his older brother miming a "bored-to-the-point-of-yawning" gesture during a lengthy guitar solo. I would even make it backstage after a show in '93 and have a lovely conversation with Dave about ruffled shirts, one of which I happened to be wearing at the time. (Honestly, if you'd told me back on this night in 1983 that Dave Davies would one day say to me, "You look great, man — where did you get that shirt?", I would have promptly tied up all my teenage worries in a 32-gallon trash bag and set them out by the curb, never to bother with them again.) And I've certainly had friends scoff at me when I tell them that an early-Eighties Kinks arena show was a life-changing experience, because a show so mainstream or arena-oriented or campy or whatever couldn't possibly have the life-changing powers of seeing [insert massively influential punk or indie band here] at [insert dingy, claustrophobic venue here]. And yeah, I get it — I'm a snob, too, especially when it comes to music...

And yet, the utter elation I felt that evening cannot be denied. It was such a thrill to be in the same room as my favorite band for the first time, to watch Dave Davies rip one wild (and yet still totally tasty) lead after another, to watch Ray bouncing around the stage like he had springs in his pointy-toed shoes, to watch bassist Jim Rodford dancing like a diminutive dervish between them, to watch original drummer Mick Avory pound the skins on what would be his final tour with the band, to hear them play so many songs I deeply loved, and to feel their energy surging out at us from the stage. Though obviously not a punk band, The Kinks in this period played with a fury (and, let's be honest, a lack of polish) that didn't feel so different to me from what the likes of The Clash and The Jam had harnessed. There was no anger here, though, only sheer exultation and good-time rock and roll — as well as an object lesson from a master showman in forging a connection with every single person in the house, even if it's 8,000 people in a sterile basketball arena. 

(Speaking of which, a quick side note on Shoes, the evening's opening act, who unfortunately provided an object lesson in how not to engage an arena audience. They came off that night as competent but charisma-challenged, and they kept saying "Hey, we're Chicago's own SHOOZE?" — well, it sounded like a question from where we were sitting — between songs, a gesture which won them exactly zero support from the audience. I would go on to enjoy many of their albums, but for years afterwards "Hey, we're Chicago's own SHOOZE?" was a running joke between me and several other friends who'd been in attendance that night.)

If you've made it this far into this piece, you're probably wondering, "Hey, you were a high school kid at a big concert — did you guys get totally wasted? Did you make out with some random girl you were sitting next to at the show? Did you go out and vandalize some pay phones or flip over a cop car because you were so hopped up on that demon rock n' roll?" And the answer, perhaps disappointingly, is no.

None of us were big partiers at the time, and the idea of getting wasted before or during the show (and thereby potentially missing a single note of it) was absolutely anathema to me. I certainly wouldn't have minded a random makeout session, but all the excitement that night for me was wrapped up in the anticipation of the concert and the experience of the show itself; for once in my teenage years, I was too laser-focused on what was happening in front of me to even idly scan the place for attractive girls. And as for afterwards, there were no shenanigans of any sort to report; we simply piled back into Jackie's Benz (or whatever it was) and she drove us all home.

I lived farther north than everyone else, so I was the first to be dropped off. My cassette of GTPWTW was playing in the tape deck, and I vividly remember us double-parking outside my building on Buckingham and waiting for "Add It Up" (another favorite from the album, but one they didn't play that night) to finish before I ejected the tape and bid goodnight to everyone. It was well before midnight on a Saturday night, and I'm sure I could have gotten into some kind of trouble if I'd wanted to, but I simply wanted to savor and luxuriate in the memory of what I'd just experienced. I floated up the two flights of stairs to my family's apartment, closed the door to my bedroom, carefully hung up my clothes, and fell asleep with a big smile on my face while listening to the rest of that cassette.

I often think of the summer of 1977 as the last truly happy period of my life, that last blissful stretch of late childhood before adolescent hormones and angst kicked in, to be followed by the challenges of dealing with new schools, new cities, new family situations (one of them extremely toxic), and then the myriad stresses and pressures of college and adulthood. But when I think back to that Kinks show in April 1983, I remember just how happy I was during the second half of my junior year of high school. After a miserable sophomore year where I'd failed a couple of classes, I'd gotten back into the academic groove, and was getting good grades again while genuinely enjoying most of my classes. I was surrounded by great and loyal friends (most of whom I still know and adore to this day), whose love, support and humor had helped me get through the aforementioned toxic family situation, from which my mom had by now thankfully extricated us.

For the first time in my life, I also had money in my pocket. At least, I had enough saved up from my job the previous summer to buy records and shoes and vintage clothes, as well as the occasional concert ticket. And for the first time in my life I actually felt okay about how I looked, even if one of the things I liked about my mod suits was that they disguised what I thought was an embarrassingly skinny frame. It would be another few months before I had to start thinking about college applications, running the school newspaper, or grappling with "the future" in general. For once, I didn't even dread Mondays that much, because Monday meant that I could wear whatever vintage prize I'd found over the weekend to school. Looking back, I was more or less living in the moment, at least as much as it's possible to do when you're sixteen and seventeen.

Dealing three-card monte in the high school hallway, Spring 1983. I’m dying to know what that lapel button says.

But while my high school years provided me with no shortage of life-altering experiences, for good or ill, that Kinks concert of April 9, 1983 really stands out to me now as a major turning point. I'd already loved music to the point of obsession for years, but that show was the first moment where I thought, "Hey, I could actually do this!" Not that I could ever hope to be as brilliant a songwriter as Ray or as dazzling a guitarist as Dave, but the way they presented themselves and performed their music was distinctly human and down-to-earth; they weren't rock gods to be placed upon pedestals, but rather misfits and showbiz survivors whose devotion to music and deep bond with their fans had sustained them through tough times, and improbably brought them back for their biggest stretch of commercial success since the mid-Sixties. I wanted to feel that same connection with an audience; I wanted the powerful vibration of amplified guitars to fill up my slender ribcage; I wanted to experience that same shot of adrenaline that can turn even a thirty-nine-year-old man into a human pogo stick for two hours. (That Jackie had pronounced Ray "the sexiest man I have ever seen" during our walk back to the parking lot was not something unnoticed by me, either.)

Within two weeks of the show, I was down at the local pawnshop pricing used guitars; within three, my mom was buying me a red no-brand Korean-made Strat clone (albeit with only two pickups and a short-scale neck) for my birthday, and I slowly began learning the instrument — a process which ultimately had a far greater impact on my life than any class I took in high school. (That's not hyperbole at all; to name just one example, the essay that got me into college was a humorous recounting of my dogged if occasionally wayward attempts at teaching myself how to play.)

A couple of months later, while spending the summer working at my dad's office in New York City, I saw Ray's face staring out at me from a newsstand on Lexington Avenue. He was on the cover of Musician magazine, a publication I'd never heard of but now had to immediately grab. Obviously, the immediate attraction was the interview with Ray, but as I paged through the mag I fell in love with the whole thing. I was already an avid reader of Rolling Stone and CREEM, but this was the first music magazine I'd ever read where musicians honestly discussed songwriting, an art form which up to that point had seemed about as mysterious and remote to me as sculpting from marble. Musician made me think about music and the people who create it in a whole new way, as did the magazine's detailed discussion of gear and its many colorful ads for things like effects pedals, which I'd never been aware of before. (I literally thought that a distorted guitar sound was the result of being a really good player, rather than something you achieved via a pedal or an overdriven amplifier.)

Four decades later, I'm the one asking musicians questions about their gear and their songwriting process, a job I didn't even know existed until I ran into Ray at that NYC newsstand. And I would have a whole lot less of a clue about what to ask them if I hadn't actually picked up a guitar and experienced the joy and frustration of playing in bands for myself...

(I've never actually interviewed Ray, btw, but I have interviewed Dave a couple of times, including this chat from 2018.)

So yeah, you could say I owe a lot to The Kinks. Or maybe I should blame them — maybe if it wasn't for that April 9, 1983 show, I would have done something sensible like become a lawyer or a psychologist or an archaeologist or anything else with a steadier income, a straighter career track and a promise of a comfortable retirement. But if you'd only seen The Kinks with me that night forty years ago, maybe you would understand why I chose the path I took, and why I'm still living in this rock and roll fantasy.

God Save The Kinks.

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