xi, 756 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : 25 cm

"Ray Davies, legendary frontman of The Kinks, is one of the all-time greatest rock 'n' roll musicians - and also one of its most troubled and enigmatic. In the summer of 1964, aged twenty, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit 'You Really Got Me'. Within months, they were established among the pop elite, challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and fast becoming renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next thirty years, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics - 'All Day and All of the Night', 'Sunny Afternoon', 'Waterloo Sunset', 'Lola' - and albums, such as The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur, that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last fifty years. But Ray's journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA for almost four years. He has been knocked unconscious mid-performance, detained by police for impersonating himself and shot, almost fatally, in New Orleans. His relationship with his brother Dave, The Kinks' lead guitarist, is surely the most ferocious and abusive in music history. Based on countless interviews conducted over several decades, this richly detailed and revelatory biography presents the most frank and intimate portrait yet of Ray Davies. Interwoven with vivid social history and authoritative interpretation of his lyrics and music, it promises to be the definitive biography of this most fascinating and complicated life."--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references, discography (pages 709-742), and index

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