Back when the Rolling Stones were proud to be the voice of revolt and Mick Jagger was as far away from his knighthood as Zayn Malik is from a seat in the House of Lords, they were, very occasionally, modest, not to say humble. A couple years after cutting their eponymous first album in 1964, chock full of covers of blues and rhythm and blues songs by black artists including a buzz-toned slice of anthropomorphism about our favourite honey-making insect, Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine: “You could say that we did blues to turn people on, but why they would be turned on by us is unbelievably stupid. I mean what's the point in listening to us doing ‘I’m a King Bee’ when you can hear Slim Harpo do it?”
It’s a wonderful irony that the two lyricists who most embodied punk’s libertarian role in helping banish the last vestiges of straight-laced Victorian values in the mid-70s were the two who most resembled a Dickensian nightmare. Johnny Rotten and Ian Dury both sought release from a social system designed to keep working class oiks like them in their place, and although one approached the task through head-on confrontation and the other with art school nuance, the message was the same: Think For Yourself.
A sumptuous if loose concept LP that valiantly attempted to emulate SGT. PEPPER…
Exclusive 2005 interview the main man behind the Kinks, Ray Davies. Topics include Ray’s song writing process, hearing the Beatles for the first time, Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders and lots more.