Dedicated followers promised a treat in Shoreham

Hot on the heels of the BBC’s Kinks night, the Kast Off Kinks – featuring long-time Kinks drummer Mick Avory – play Shoreham’s Ropetackle Arts Centre (Saturday, November 3, 8pm, 01273 464440).

The hits include You Really Got Me, Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset, All Day & All of the Night, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Lola, Come Dancing, Tired of Waiting, Apeman and Days – songs which sum up what The Kinks were all about.

“It went through different phases,” says Mick. “It didn’t all go down one road all the time. But really it was all about (singer) Ray Davies’ songs. He used to get influenced by one thing and then another. We started off with the aggressive stuff and then mellowed down into things like Sunny Afternoon.

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“Ray painted pictures with songs. He could describe a picture or a situation in his mind. The lyrics are so important in Ray’s songs. They were just written as he saw things. I always thinks of songs such as Sunny Afternoon and Dead End Street as modern blues songs, pointing out what was bad in society and how depressed things can be, but not in a real down-home miserable blues-type way.”

Those were the Days indeed – exciting days: “You don’t really realise it at all at the time, but in retrospect you could say that it was a time of change. People had a bit more freedom. The women had the pill. That wasn’t a bad thing at all! It was just the idea that in the 50s things were a bit more suppressed and then in the 1960s, there was a lot more freedom and self-expression.

“It wasn’t particularly wild, but we were young and we were learning new things and having new experiences. It was a great time. I was 19 (when he joined The Kinks). I had been at work for five years. I had seen what the other side of life was like and what you could end up doing if you carried on that course.

“My brother was into draughtsmanship. I wasn’t like him. I was more on the artistic side. My father was a good artist. He was a modeller and a sculptor at Shepperton Studios working on films. He was never lost for ideas for something artistic, and that was my bent.”

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But significantly, young Mick was also drumming – at one stage even going drumming for the fledgling Rolling Stones. A guy used to get Mick gigs, and the Stones were looking for someone.

Mick remembers Stones founder Brian Jones as being “a bit full of himself, a bit conceited but not in a mouthy way”; Mick Jagger was “all right; he was pretty friendly”; but it was the Stones’ keyboard player Ian Stewart that he spoke to most.

“He was the one talking about the music and about the band’s prospects. It became obvious that they wanted a regular drummer. I said I would do the gig, but didn’t want to join the band. I had a day job. I’d made my mind up I wasn’t going to (be in a band) for a living. I didn’t think I was good enough!”

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