In those bygone times of lively nightly carousing, I usually ended up at Dingwalls Dancehall in Camden. Back then, it was one of the few places in London you could get a drink after normal closing time, and so a favourite of the pub rock crowd, most of whom would, in a couple years, find a home at Stiff Records. On any given night, you’d run into, say, Jake Riviera, Dave Robinson, Nick Lowe with Dave Edmunds in boisterous tow, Dr Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux (if he was in town), Ian Dury with his minder, Fred “Spider” Rowe, and sundry other notorious bar jockeys, including Mick Farren, Larry Wallis, Boss Goodman, Sean Tyla and Lemmy.
On this night, I turn up with my friend of colourful reputation, BP Fallon. Beep is a legendary Sixties scenester who I ran into backstage at a Roy Harper gig at Kingston Polytechnic in southwest London about a month before. I recognise him from a photo in Melody Maker showing him interviewing John and Yoko at the Amsterdam Hilton, where they were holding their first Bed-In. This resulted in Lennon digging Beep enough to later invite him onto Top of the Pops as a member of The Plastic Ono Band, with Beep ‘playing’ bass on ‘Instant Karma!’. That night, backstage with Harper, I introduce myself and very quickly I’m regaled by many hilarious tales of Beep’s time as “media consultant” for King Crimson, Marc Bolan at the height of T Rex-mania, and Led Zeppelin – stories he tells in a hipster Esperanto of his own sublime invention, quite unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Anyway, on this particular night at Dingwalls, most of the usual crowd are there and also, on his own, standing at the end of the bar – and I get very excited about this – is Ray Davies.
“Do you want me to introduce you?” Beep, who I have come to realise knows everybody, asks. I do! And so we make our way down the bar to Ray, who has the distracted air of someone trying to remember where he is and what he’s doing there.
“Ray!” Beep says, hand outstretched for a handshake that doesn’t come as Ray instead regards us somewhat warily, but at least without fleeing the premises as a victim of unwanted attention. Finally, he looks at Beep and smiles, as if he’s recognised someone he hasn’t seen in a while, and Beep introduces me as a new writer on Melody Maker, only a few months on the job, and a great admirer of The Kinks and all their works. To my spluttering surprise, Beep’s now telling Ray how wonderfully cool it would be if Ray did an interview with me for Melody Maker – or as Beep puts it, “Get together for a spot of verbal”.
Ray gives this some thought, and says, “Why not?” He scribbles something on a scrap of paper and hands it to me. “Call this number and ask for Claire,” he says. “She’ll sort something out.”
I’m lost for words, so mutely thank him and Beep and I are about to head back down the bar when Ray, clearly curious, says to Beep, “What was your name again?”
“BP Fallon,” Beep says. “At your service,” he adds, with a gallant bow.
Didn’t Beep say he knew Ray? It now strikes me they’ve never met before.
“I didn’t say I knew him,” Beep says. “I just asked if you wanted me to introduce you to him.”
I’m not sure it’ll get me anywhere, but still I call the number Ray’s given me and speak to Claire, as instructed. A couple of days later I turn up at Konk, The Kinks’ north London studio, expecting to find Ray. Just before I arrive, however, he goes out for a walk, promising to return shortly. It’s the last anyone sees of him that day. I’m luckier on my next visit. Ray’s waiting for me in a basement room, looking washed-out, fretful and unhappy after a long day in the studio. He’s leaning against a snooker table as big as a football field.
“Fancy a game?” Ray says. I’ve never played, and tell him as much.
“What a sheltered life you must’ve led,” he says, as if I’m now in his eyes some lisping little Fauntleroy when he would have much preferred me to have grown up surrounded by whippets and Woodbine smoke.
“Not to worry,” he says, encouragingly. “I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly enough.”
I accept his invitation to ‘break’, badly miscue the white ball, which hits three separate cushions but misses every other ball on the table and disappears into what apparently is called a ‘pocket’, one of six on the table.
“That’ll be four away, then,” he says, clearly dismayed by my ineptitude. Anyway, it seems I’ve handed Ray an advantage he now exploits ruthlessly, ‘breaking’ the reds, and racing into an early lead before missing an easy ‘pot’, allowing me back on the table.
While he’s been knocking balls hither and yon on the smooth baize, we’ve been talking about his rock musical Starmaker, recently broadcast by Granada TV to poor reviews from people who these days regularly bemoan Ray’s theatrical ambitions and just want him to get back to what he’s always been so great at, which is the writing of classic, three-minute pop singles.
He’s back on the table now, following another of my disastrously errant shots, and he quickly dispatches a red, followed by the black. He then stares at the table for what seems a very long time.
“A lot of people think I’m completely on the wrong track these days,” he says, potting another red. “They think I should never have stopped writing three-minute story-songs like ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Autumn Almanac’ and ‘Dead End Street’. But I’ve written so many of them,” he says, sinking the blue. “I mean, like, 18 or 20 hit singles. I’ve lost count. But you can’t keep doing that. People are going to lose interest in you if you just keep doing the same thing, over and over, which is what I felt I was doing. The formula begins to reveal itself. The magic goes. It did for me, anyway.
“I have a talent, I know,” he says, re-spotting the blue, “for writing a certain kind of song. I think I’ve learned enough about the craft of song-writing to always be able to write a song. They may not always be hits, but they’re usually pretty good. But where do I take that talent? I need to take it somewhere else, hence my little efforts like Starmaker. I know I’m upsetting a lot of people who want something else from me. Some of them are in my own band. One of them is my own brother. They think I should be writing two hit singles a year and a hit album we can take on the road. But that’s not what I want to do anymore.
“I wonder these days what my place is,” he says. “Our band’s never really fit in. We’re not a pretty band. We’re not really a heavy rock band. We’re not flash musicians. I don’t know what we are. I don’t know who I am. Sometimes I feel I don’t even exist. There are just so many questions I don’t know the answers to,” he says. “Right now, I don’t even know if I’m winning or losing,” he goes on. And I know he’s not talking about the game we’re playing, which he goes on to win by clearing the table before laying down his cue and telling me he has nothing more to say for the moment.