I left my apartment and went straight to the studio. I had still not recovered from the nightmare. I had been so terrified that I had bitten deep into my tongue, and this had slightly impaired my speech. I was also afraid, yet in a strange way excited, by what revelations R.D. would make about America. I pressed the buzzer and announced myself in the usual manner. The robotic female secretary’s voice allowed me access. I arrived in the studio to find R.D. playing an old upright piano in a small overdubbing booth next to the mixing room where he and I usually sat. It was strange to see him actually being a musician. He was singing a slow version of a song called ‘Sweet Lady Genevieve’. It was clear that he was in a mood to confess.
‘Once under a scarlet sky,
I told you never-ending lies.
But they were the words of a drunken vagabond
Who knew very well he would break your heart before long.
Oh, forgive me, Genevieve.
Now I’ve come back to see, sweet Lady Genevieve.’
As he sang the last line he paused and looked straight ahead. This little-known song from his second attempt at making Preservation obviously meant a great deal to him.
‘This song always reminds me of my birthday in 1973.’ His voice begged me to ask the question.
I complied. ‘Has anything strange ever happened on your birthday?’
He laughed, then paused to reflect. The world wasn’t waiting, but I was and R.D. knew it. He stretched his fingers out before him and I could see the signs of age. ‘Yes. They always leave you on your birthday. Birthdays are the days they realize that they can’t put on false emotions any more, they can pretend to be happy but inside they are crying to get out. It’s also like that on Christmas, it’s like any anniversary; it means they have to be with you and be happy.’
‘They?’ I inquired.
‘Women, wives, lovers, musicians, even,’ he replied. ‘I was, going to tell you about America and I will, because over the years America has been the source of great triumphs and failures, and somehow it has always had this corrupting effect on me. This song, “Sweet Lady Genevieve”, was my last desperate attempt to apologize to my wife for all of the wrong I had done.’
‘What wrong?’ I asked.
The trouble with starting a relationship because of a mistake is that a mistake is like a lie, you just keep building on it to cover up the previous one. As you can imagine, this is difficult for me to confront. That’s why I almost have to step outside of myself to explain.’
R.D. looked around the old decrepit building, drawing on past memories of triumphs and failures. He looked at every tiny crack and crevice as if it were his own life.
‘In 1972 the Kinks had purchased this building which later became Konk Studios. It was a run-down factory on the slopes of Alexandra Palace in Hornsey.
I suppose I wanted this studio to symbolize artistic freedom. Some kind of retaliation to the frustration I had encountered at art college. The college itself was just up the road, and it seemed appropriate that here was I years later, after virtually being thrown out of that college, forming my own creative institution, less than a mile away, on my terms, with my money, and, of course, with the help of Mick and Dave.
Konk was to be the place where the band could hang out together, play snooker, table-tennis, rehearse and eventually record albums. We’d always been stuck with the recording bills since the Pye contract and we thought, why? Instead of buying expensive cars, or wasting our money after tours, why not just buy a tape-recorder and gradually build up a recording studio? It was a fine idea in theory. That’s when a band was a band. We were still a united group of people. Just. John Dalton was firmly established as the bass player, and we had taken on a keyboard player called John Gosling, who I understood had been recommended to Grenville by John Peel, at BBC Radio. We had always used keyboards on records, but had never taken a player on the road full time, and I decided that it was time to turn the Kinks into a five-piece band. Gosling became known as ‘Baptist’, because he looked like the biblical character who had fallen foul of Salome’s seven veils. Baptist was a strange mixture of the preacher and the comedian John Cleese. He joined the band just as we had recorded ‘Lola’ so he played on that, and on our subsequent recordings.
We had delivered Lola v. Powerman and the Money-Go-Round. We left Pye Records and moved to RCA after lengthy negotiations, which I had insisted on attending. Colin Wadie sat with me throughout these negotiations, which were in early 1971, and was somewhat taken aback by the amount of input I had into the contract itself. To be fair, it was easy: RCA really wanted us very badly, and we got virtually every concession we wanted in the contract. The RCA attorneys had come to London to finalize the contract and, the day we signed, Ken Glancy, the head of RCA International, gave me what I thought at first was a box of chocolates. In fact it was a box of Montecristo cigars. This seemed to bring about a change in me; I had experienced my first big deal as a do-it-yourself businessman.
Yet, ironically, the first record we gave RCA was Muswell Hillbillies, our most working-class album to date. This was not a cruel joke, planned deliberately by the Kinks, but a coincidence – the songs just came out that way. But it did seem odd for a band who had signed for a prestigious label and for what was then a large advance.
Muswell Hillbillies was a homage to the family that used to be. All the songs, like ‘Uncle Son’, ‘Holloway Jail’, ‘Oklahoma USA’, were songs about people who actually existed in the lives of my parents. I really had an Uncle Son. My mother actually had a childhood friend called Rosie Rooke, who is named in the song ‘Muswell Hillbillies’. I rate the Muswell Hillbillies album up there with Preservation. The song ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ was about a family similar to my own that was brought up in inner London. My parents had grown up in Islington and Edmonton and had later moved out to the suburbs called Finchley, Highgate, Muswell Hill, away from the inner city and the Victorian factories. It must have been unrecognizable then. There were green fields, fewer back-to-backs – it must have seemed like a new world. But on the album the songs are nostalgic for the old life. You have to take on a new set of values and adapt accordingly when you re-locate. People change. They lose touch with their roots.
The few years before the release of Muswell Hillbillies in 1971 were fraught with conflict in my personal and professional life.
The Boscobel management team was breaking up. Larry Page was long gone after I had reluctantly settled the Kassner dispute for a small lump sum, and a reduction in royalties due me as writer of all those early hits. It was, however, a relief to get this dispute out of the way. Kassner had threatened to appeal to the House of Lords if necessary, and while we all felt we were in the right, there was always the possibility that we might lose, and suffer the ensuing financial risks involved in protracted litigation.’
Raymond Douglas, for I must consider him to be a changed person by now, took this very hard. I knew this part of his story but I was not going to let it show.
After Muswell Hillbillies was released in 1971, the Kinks parted company with Wace and Collins. Instead of replacing them, they managed themselves and set up an office in north London. Their former press agent, Marion Rainford, came to work for them full time and Ken Jones stayed on as tour manager.
R.D. needn’t have run through all the intimate facts about this part of his life. It was obvious at this time that he was successful but bitter. There he was, living in a suburban house in north London, with in many ways a perfect family life – two beautiful children – but at the same time trying to hang on to his marriage, which was suffering from all the attendant problems emerging as a result of post-1960s paranoia. Feminism, monogamy and the family unit were being held up and questioned by a society desperately trying to hang on to its identity. All the time R.D. was struggling with the thought of what might have been if he had gone back to America and allowed himself to go with the flow. R.D. looked younger as he told me the next part of his story. He was becoming another person.
‘Muswell Hillbillies itself had been in a way inspired by a girl I had met on one of my visits to LA. I had been taken to a nude dancing club called the Rat Trap, near the studio where I was working. Its name was appropriate as inside the pot-bellied punters sleazed around the bar like rats as they waited for the girls. The climax of the act (if climax can be used in this context) was when each girl lay down on the floor, legs wide open, so that the punters could shine flashlights up them to get the optimum view. There was a pool table opposite the stage in case some of the good ol’ boys got bored. It was there I met Savannah Molloy, an outstanding looking redhead with high cheekbones, bright white teeth and a slim, tall figure. She said she had grown up somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains and had lived in Louisiana, Paris, New York, and had once been the common-law wife of an Eskimo in Alaska. I didn’t believe the name Savannah any more than I believed most of the other baloney, and the only connection she had with Ireland seemed to be her thick red hair which hung down over her shoulders. Savannah was slimmer and more agile than most of the big-titted women who paraded in the nude around the stage. The first time I met her she was naked. She had a grin that said both ‘thank you’ and ‘fuck you’ at the same time. Savannah was a class act.
Ultimately one thing led to another and Savannah and I became friends. I suppose you could say more than friends. Let’s settle for relationship, or even affair. How drab and tawdry reality can be. I was very concerned about this relationship, because by now I was over most of my grieving for lost loves and searching for other girls, because deep down I wanted my marriage to work. But after a while I ended up at Savannah’s place. The following morning she said I was a pretty good lay for poor white trash. Her southern drawl never faltered, even though our conversations got heated when we drank. These are the moments of real emotion when people forget that they have covered up their origins by acquiring accents and revert back to their native tongue. As well as being a class act, I was in no doubt that Savannah was an authentic Appalachian belle who had found herself dancing in a nude bar due to a series of lapsed loves and tragic misfortune.
The American Federation of Musicians had lifted the ban imposed years earlier, and the Arthur album had helped to rebuild our status as a cult act in North America. Although our career as a dominating musical force was in a decline, we were being taken seriously as rock innovators and so, on the surface, everything seemed to be picking up again. I was in LA and a musician friend said that Savannah wanted to ask me out for dinner. I thought nothing of this at the time and anyway, it was the era of love and peace and people often shared boy and girlfriends with one another. Savannah used to drive me to Ben Frank’s diner on Sunset after she finished work and we sat around talking and laughing at the characters we saw in there. Ben Frank’s was open twenty-four hours a day; and by the time we arrived it was one or two in the morning, and a lot of night owls and creeps were arriving.
On one of Savannah’s nights off I went to pick her up earlier than usual. She was staying in a house full of people; a commune-like love and peace hang-out, and the only place we could find some privacy was in the bathroom. I guess that was a big error on my part. Before we knew it, well, one thing led to another, and we were both in the shower. I asked Savannah what she was going to do to me. She said, ‘I’m going to take you for a meal, then we’re going to have a few drinks, then I’m gonna drive you up to the Hollywood Hills, bring you back to my room and I’m going to give you some head, then, who knows, maybe I’ll let you fuck me.’
Here I was, Raymond Douglas, far from home with a little spare time on my hands, and while there was a genuine friendship between the two of us the offer was there; my resistance was low. This was the era of love and peace, even though Charles Manson had just been arrested for mutilating Sharon Tate and others in a sadistic ritualistic mass murder in Beverly Hills, and America was becoming an ever-more terrifying place. The trips to LA became more frequent, particularly after ‘Lola’ was released and was in the US charts. And, when I went to LA, I always ended up back at the Rat Trap.
In 1970, our first excursions into the United States had been in short bursts of tours which took no more than three weeks each. Grenville was still with us at this time and Ken Jones was tour manager. America had changed, it had become a different animal. Kennedy’s Camelot was a thing of the past, it was post-Woodstock, sex and rock ’n’ roll and lots of it. Colin the Scrap, a school friend of Mick’s, accompanied us on these tours as a bodyguard-cum-party organizer. On one notable occasion we encountered the famous Plaster Casters of Chicago. Scrap, who, when in a state of sexual arousal, became part man, part donkey, decided to service several stray groupies who were hanging around the hotel lobby. The hotel security guards were called to our floor after a girl was heard screaming out, ‘No more, Scrap, no more!’ But it transpired that these were screams of pleasure rather than fear. (Like many beasts of burden, Scrap preferred the rear end.)
I found myself being seduced by the sheer ‘Americanness’ of it all. Britain was still coy and innocent by comparison to LA in particular. America had tentacles that gradually wrapped themselves around you until you were trapped. America was also the first nation that elevated debt to what was almost a status symbol. It also advocated free love as part of the package, but never allowed you to forget another Americanism – there is no such thing as a free lunch.
This came back to haunt Raymond Douglas, who I must say should be referred to as another person in order for me to retain a certain amount of objectivity about myself. I can’t talk about him, me, myself in first person any more, because that person no longer exists.
In 1972 while Raymond Douglas was recording ‘Everybody’s In Showbiz’, he accused Rasa of having a romantic fling with a mutual friend. Rasa denied it, but while Raymond Douglas was at home in the semi-detached house writing ‘Celluloid Heroes’, Rasa was at a pop festival with a crowd of people, including the ‘mutual friend’. What really pissed R.D. off was the fact that Louisa and Victoria were there as well. What followed was a series of vicious arguments ending in the inevitable marital discord.
A continual shouting match began to emerge, and made the little suburban house a nightmare to live in. The kids started waking up to the sound of the shouting. The usual story: there would be Rasa and R.D., shouting at each other, usually in the bedroom, and they would look over to see Louisa crying by the door, holding Victoria’s hand. Scenes like this continued right through the year. The only happiness R.D. remembers from that time was when he was playing the back-track to ‘Celluloid Heroes’ while he watched Victoria playing on the floor. There were no words on the song yet, no lyrics written, but as the first musical chorus came in, ‘You can see all the stars as you walk down Hollywood Boulevard’, Victoria turned and smiled at Raymond Douglas, telling him almost telepathically that the song would be wonderful and that everything would be all right. It was the sight of Victoria smiling that inspired Raymond Douglas to write the lyrics.
Life in suburban London with Rasa had long since ceased to be a source of inspiration to his songs. Instead he flew to LA more often, to stay with Savannah in a small apartment block on Hollywood Boulevard. R.D. watched Savannah perform at the Rat Trap and they walked home along the Hollywood walk of fame, with the names of famous movie-stars set in their own gold stars on the pavement.
R.D. started writing a script for a film about himself and Savannah called Darrel and Becky. The story was about two drifters from completely different parts of the world who come to Hollywood to become famous. They both ultimately fail and end up in dead-end menial jobs. However they still live in the hope that one day stardom will come for them. In the first draft of the story, Becky dies and, overnight, Darrel becomes successful. Darrel and Becky was about two people in love but who were a fatal combination. They always seem to destroy each other’s talent.
It was also true of R.D. and Savannah. Savannah took R.D. up to the Palomino Club in north Hollywood, where they danced to genuine Country music. Savannah was tall and had tied up her hair to make her look like a boy. She dressed up in some of R.D.’s clothes, and some of the other patrons thought they were a couple of male gays. They drank tequila and danced to the Country music, and in the middle of the floor they stood and kissed, which infuriated the redneck element at the club, so much so that one night a pot-bellied cowboy asked R.D. if he could take Savannah outside and ‘suck her dick’. R.D. explained to the cowboy that Savannah was a girl but if the cowboy would care to step outside, R.D. might oblige. The fat cowboy explained to R.D. that he was a closet queen who was after some rough homo action and considered R.D. too effeminate for this purpose. This confused R.D. and hurt his ego to such an extent that he took Savannah home and made love to her while insisting that she stay dressed in her man’s suit.
R.D. walked around during the day and drew inspiration from some of the ridiculous, sad characters on the Boulevard, and at night he wrote his script while he watched Savannah sleep.
Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star.
And everybody’s in movies, it doesn’t matter who you are.
Raymond Douglas returned to London and his marriage to Rasa recovered some of its old happiness over the following Christmas, more because of the children than anything else. The Davies family was moving further away from north London and starting families of their own. R.D.’s dad was trying to keep the family parties together, but he was losing some of the spring in his step and the Cab Calloway impressions were less energetic. Soon R.D. heard that Savannah had arrived in London and was working as an erotic dancer in a seedy Arab nightclub off Berkeley Square. Eventually the two met up and for a while the relationship was rekindled, but eventually R.D. backed off when he heard that Savannah was married.
People are like wine. Some of them don’t travel very well without losing their flavour. In any event I felt as though Savannah and I were like Darrel and Becky in my story. They were a fatal cocktail for each other.
As far as my marriage was concerned, I have since learned from other experiences. You always know when it’s all over when you know they don’t care any more. You just get that feeling. You may as well be dead. No emotion. False smiles. No nothing.
Nothing was ever the same after 1973. 1973 was when the world really started to shake. The Arab oil embargo started, Nixon floated the dollar, the Watergate hearings were about to erupt and bring about the first cracks in the hitherto superficially perfect world of America. The uneasy feelings I had when I first went to the States in 1965 were starting to show themselves again.
The Kinks had just done a tour of North America and arrived back near the end of spring 1973, where they had finished up the tour at Bill Graham’s Winterland Theater in San Francisco with Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks as their support act. R.D. arrived home jet-lagged, to find nobody to meet him at the airport, nobody at home. In an emotional crisis, any time of emotional upset, jet-lag has a worsening effect. Raymond Douglas waited up till two in the afternoon and Rasa was still not home. He went to bed and woke up at seven-thirty at night to discover that Rasa had been and gone while R.D. was asleep. There was a note on the table: ‘The girls are in bed, I have gone out to meet some friends in a club.’
R.D. sat in bed and watched Pot Black, a snooker game. He had been home for nearly a day and hadn’t seen Rasa. He remembers every shot played in that game. Suddenly, he put two and two together and remembered that Rasa’s brother-in-law ran a nightclub in Chelsea. Raymond Douglas put all his cash in his pocket and went down to the club. He walked in right on cue and saw a big burly fellow with his arms around Rasa. Raymond Douglas laughed. He sat down and asked them all if they’d had a good time. They had been to see Last Tango in Paris and were calling it the most erotic film they had ever seen.
Raymond Douglas told them about a film called Deep Throat, and while it was undoubtedly pornographic, certain American film critics considered it to be the most artistic thing they had ever seen. One had even compared it with Citizen Kane. R.D. went into great detail and explained the plot of Deep Throat. This infuriated Rasa’s friends so much that after a short scuffle Raymond Douglas was frog-marched out of the club, but not before he was knocked unconscious. Someone had decided to take a potted plant and smash it on the back of R.D.’s head. Rasa reluctantly took Raymond Douglas to hospital where he had X-rays for a possible fractured skull. He looked at the large picture of his skull and saw the small crack in his head. Rasa did not care anymore. ‘Let’s go home, let’s get out of here, you make me feel ashamed. You have embarrassed me in front of my friends.’ R.D. tried to rationalize about this sad time.
On reflection, nobody was really to blame. ‘You slept with someone, so I’ll sleep with someone.’ It was all so petty. So meaningless, so modern.’ The real problem was not the crack on the outside but inside the head of Raymond Douglas Davies. Rasa was practical. She knew she had got everything emotionally she could get out of him, she had no idea that he could possibly continue to make hit records. It was time for her to get out while there was still time and money enough to start a new life.
During the late spring R.D. started to write ‘Sweet Lady Genevieve’. He was about to start work on a more complete version of The Village Green Preservation Society to take on tour to America. The Kinks had made the original record during their ban by the American Musicians Union, but this had been at the height of flower-power and Woodstock. The band felt that they had missed out on not being at Woodstock, but perhaps if they had been there, they wouldn’t have made The Village Green. In many respects, that ridiculous ban took away the best years of the Kinks’ career when the original band was performing at its peak. The only way the ban could have been lifted was for the Kinks to sign a document apologizing for things that either they didn’t do or didn’t know about. That’s the first sign of being corrupted. R.D. would never have done that a few years earlier. The Kinks had no choice but to sign it because their records were not selling and their advisers said that they had to be more visible in the States. Common sense, I suppose, but why apologize for something they never did? To appease bureaucracy or stroke the ego of a faceless official in a tiny office.
At the beginning of June 1973 the Kinks played a concert at London’s Festival Hall. Then another at Drury Lane. These gigs were somehow connected to something to do with the Common Market, which the British government was about to join. At the Drury Lane concert Raymond Douglas tried to put on a first version of The Village Green album he had been preparing. He was writing too many new songs and staying up all night trying to make them better. Rasa looked at him and said, ‘Why are you trying so hard? All you have to do is play.’ R.D. knew that she was right, but he also knew that deep down time was running out in every sense.
The Drury Lane concert featured not just the Kinks but a full blown back-up orchestra and session singers to perform a new work which had yet to be recorded. R.D. had the lyrics to most of the songs on idiot boards at the front of the stage so that he would get them right. The concert worked because, as rough as it was, it conveyed his sense of loss about the final decline of The Village Green – Britain. Call it what you like.
After the concert, Rasa was driving Raymond Douglas over Waterloo Bridge when he said that he couldn’t take this new band any further. She slammed on the brakes, nearly causing an accident, then lit up a cigarette before continuing on. She looked drained, the same as R.D. must have looked. She had never heard him talk like that before. She knew that he was coming to the end of this creative road and she was not sure whether or not she would continue down the next one with him. R.D. continued to write the songs for the new album and recorded most of the songs from the Drury Lane show, but he later abandoned them and started recording again at the half-finished Konk studio. He tried to keep himself and his marriage together, but he knew that something was going to happen that would change his life for ever. On 20 June 1973 he returned home after a day in the studio to discover that Rasa and the children had left. There was a note which simply said: ‘I’ve gone, please contact my solicitor.’
Raymond Douglas knew it, but he couldn’t accept it. Living in a house where suddenly the people aren’t there anymore. They leave personal effects behind, little clues in each corner, cups on sideboards, pieces of themselves scattered around, an ashtray full of cigarette ends. Smells. Pictures. Memories. The children’s bedroom was exactly the same, they had left everything except their favourite toys. They were certainly travelling light in Rasa’s Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
R.D. wandered round the house, made a few phone calls. He was not sure what was really happening to him, he was in some kind of bewildered daze. Why was this happening? He felt elation one minute – he was actually free, alone, the person he wanted to be – and then total despair as darkness came, there was nobody in the house. There were some of the children’s clothes left behind in the bedroom, Rasa’s perfume in the bathroom. There was something ghostly about the house. Eventually it started to haunt him, he got out, went to a pub, met some people, went to a party and then the most absurd thing happened. There were some gay people clustered around Raymond Douglas. Some guy stuck his finger up R.D.’s backside while he was trying to pour himself a drink. R.D. couldn’t believe it. He smacked the guy round the face and ran out of the building. They shouted, ‘Bye-bye, Kinky!’ That name. The Kinks returned to haunt R.D. He went to another pub and got blind drunk.
Relatives tried but couldn’t help. Gwen and Brian came to see him and all R.D. could do was cry – what a dumb, sick fucker, crying as he stood at his piano where he had written all his songs. He looked out on to the garden at the back of the house. The garden used to be a source of inspiration, but now it just looked like an empty piece of lawn that needed cutting. A rat ran across the bottom of the garden. Raymond Douglas always considered that the sight of magpies and rats was an evil omen. He went to see his family doctor. How ironic. What a fool. Old Dr Aubrey would have advised R.D. to take a cold shower, then leave England to become a preacher and set up as a missionary in Africa. This GP only prescribed Valium. Marian Rainford, the Kinks’ secretary, decided that Raymond Douglas should get out of the house and moved him into the office in Highgate. Raymond Douglas’ despair took a new comic twist when he suddenly decided to become a playboy. He bought five cases of Dom Perignon champagne and had parties every night, but the parties usually ended up as sad affairs with Raymond Douglas in a crumpled heap of depression in the corner of the room. The Valium and the Dom Perignon, like the fictitious Darrel and Becky, did not make for a happy cocktail.
Ken Jones moved into the semi in Fortis Green with his own family. The house had to be lived in, and Raymond Douglas thought that with new people in the house, the evil spirits might be driven away.
There was a gig offered a month later at the White City Stadium, in Shepherds Bush, London. Everybody thought that if the Kinks played a concert then perhaps Raymond Douglas would shake himself out of the doldrums. The Kinks were also still recording another version of the Preservation album. This didn’t help matters because R.D. was having to be creative while in this emotional, unreal state. This was not good. The mind was over-stressed, the pills were going in one end, the Dom Perignon was coming out the other, but their combined effect was staying inside him. This certainly didn’t help his recovery. During this period of extended drunkenness, R.D. asked Mick to find Savannah for him. After bringing R.D. a map of the US and pointing out the city, Avory, who had met Savannah in Los Angeles, said he would ask around the Speakeasy Club in Mortimer Street, where he usually spent his evenings. He looked in all the usual clubs and bars, but he was unable to locate her.
Instead Roxy, a friend of Savannah’s, turned up on R.D.’s doorstep. Roxy had known both R.D. and Savannah from the Rat Trap days in LA, and while not as striking as Savannah the fact that she came from Richmond, Virginia, almost made her a more authentic hillbilly. Roxy had dyed blonde hair with black roots unashamedly exposed; she looked like she had put her make-up on as an afterthought, except for her shiny red lipstick, which never seemed to be spoiled. She had a classic 1950s look, curvaceous apart from her thighs, which should have been hidden beneath a large Victorian dress rather than tightly squeezed into a pair of Levi’s. Her face was a little bloated from her bouts of drink and drugs but her features were finely chiselled. When she smiled she exposed her slightly nicotined-stained teeth. There was an air of cheapness about Roxy, but her common sense and down-to-earth honesty was a life-saver.
Because of her R.D. learned that beauty need not always be contained in a perfect exterior, and love doesn’t always have a filter over it in order to smooth out the imperfections. Roxy was a willing companion who arrived by sheer chance. If R.D. had seen her in a crowd he probably wouldn’t have given her a second glance. Now she was a central part of his recovery. She was a life-line and as they walked around Waterlow Park in Highgate Village R.D. began to feel as if he and Roxy might even be compatible. He had cast Savannah as Becky in his celluloid hero’s dream movie, but the real star should have been Roxy. As a rule, in real life people don’t live up to their screen image. Savannah was always in R.D.’s mind and dreams, but Roxy was real. They spent very little time actually sleeping together. R.D. spent very little time sleeping at all. When he wasn’t haunted by his own loss of family, he watched Roxy sleep in her own troubled world. She never complained to him about it. She was an angel.
By now Colin Wadie had heard from Rasa’s solicitor, who had laid all the matrimonial cards on the table. There was a preliminary hearing some time the following month. Raymond Douglas decided that he wanted custody of his children. Colin sensed that this was a very emotional issue, which would be difficult to resolve amicably. R.D. had started writing about experiences in a world that did not relate to the world his parents knew. He had always played them the first pressings of his records, before they came out, but now he was losing touch with them too. The whole Davies family was moving away from the neighbourhood, losing touch. The source of much of his material was vanishing.
Times being what they were, and advisers being what they were, it was natural that Rasa decided to go for broke – why not? Raymond Douglas’ life was dedicated to his music, however, this time he was having to produce and write a new album while his nerves were stretched and everyone in the small Kinks organization was uncertain of what it was going to be like. He knew he had created this character, partly from his own experience, called Mr Flash. Mr Flash was someone who had come from a very humble background. After a traumatic childhood experience, he had turned into a petty criminal, then a cruel dictator. Mr Flash became R.D.’s super villain. But that was in Preservation land. In the real world, Rasa’s side were shaping themselves up into believing that Raymond Douglas was some sort of irrational sex-crazed tyrant. If R.D. was going to be accused of participating in drug-induced orgies in LA and Muswell Hill, why not be this person and invent a character called Mr Flash? Perfect casting. At the photo session for the album cover, he dressed up like the vaudeville comedian Max Miller, in a dressing-gown bought at the Harrods sale and a borrowed hat from the comedian Roy Hudd. The fictitious Mr Flash would then take over R.D.’s stage persona.
Fiction was fine but the thought of the upcoming concert at the White City was emotionally a little bit too much to take. Raymond Douglas had accidentally taken an overdose of Valium and Dom Perignon a few weeks earlier, and was found unconscious in the bath by Marian Rainford. She took him to a local hospital and they pumped out his stomach. R.D.’s attempts on his life turned into an almost farcical comedy as the daily excursions to doctors and solicitors increased. The White City concert was for Raymond Douglas a chance to reunite himself with his daughters. Before the split, Lousia and Victoria had become a central part of R.D.’s life; he often played new songs to them and even did rewrites based on their reactions. There had been a brief meeting at his mother’s house a few weeks earlier, accompanied by a detective, and the two children, particularly Louisa, became nervous and upset. Raymond Douglas wanted them to see him at his best, in concert. The deal was, the idea was, the dream was, that Rasa would bring the kids to see him play for the last time. Then R.D. would quit the music business. He wanted to announce to the world that this was going to be the last Kinks concert. The scene was set for a melodramatic finale in a draughty stadium in Shepherd’s Bush.
Before this ‘Last hurrah’, Raymond Douglas had been sent to a doctor in Chelsea, who prescribed some sort of ‘uppers’ to keep him elated rather than sedated, in order to get him through the concert. Everywhere Raymond Douglas went, he was accompanied by Roxy. She had become more of a minder than anything else, watching R.D. so that he didn’t try to do anything irresponsible like kill himself. She made sure he had a meal every day, just to keep him going, keep the machinery going so the band could fulfil their contract. Ken Jones drove Roxy down to the White City with Raymond Douglas, who was already dressed in his flamboyant stage gear. Black blazer with red braiding and trimmings, white shirt with red flower especially made for him by Deborah and Claire in Beauchamp Place and a large floppy bow-tie and white flared trousers.
The concert was running late and rather than sit around backstage R.D. decided to sit on Shepherd’s Bush Green. He looked at the fast-food shops, that were beginning to spring up. All the burger and pizza houses would soon replace the fish-and-chip shops. The little shops of old England would soon be taken over by the big conglomerates. The supermarkets. The fast-food chains. The big combines and corporations.
Eventually it was time for the Kinks to go on stage. All the way through the concert Raymond Douglas was laughing one minute and then crying the next as he swallowed the pills prescribed by the doctor, hoping that they would make him feel better. But every song was like a bitter pill. Each lyric had a new meaning. The rest of the band thought this was one of R.D.’s better performances, but in truth he didn’t want to be on stage at all. He was only there to see Rasa and the kids but they had not come. She was playing the perfect tactical game. Over the years she had learned her husband’s weaknesses. Every song seemed to resonate inside Raymond Douglas. He sang songs like ‘Holiday’, ‘Celluloid Heroes’, ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘All Day and All of the Night’. Each song had a meaning about his own life. There was obviously a lot of self-pity involved, but he could not escape these emotions, there was no escape, this was the real world coming tumbling down on Raymond Douglas’ fantasyland. At the end of the concert he announced that this was the final concert by the Kinks, but the PA company accidentally turned off the sound system, and so nobody heard the resignation speech. It would have ended with ‘The Kinks are dead, I am dead.’ Well-meaning people helped R.D. away from the stage, but he wished that he had just died.
As he left the stage at the White City he was still chewing the pills given to him by the doctor. He sat motionless in the car afterwards with Ken Jones and Roxy. Roxy had fortunately had some experience with people who had taken drugs and she noticed that Raymond Douglas was clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth. ‘What the fuck have you been taking?’ she said. He calmly lifted up the empty vial of pills, ‘Oh, these.’ These were dangerous drugs, and Raymond Douglas had taken the whole bottle during the show. They immediately rushed to the same hospital that had saved R.D. a few weeks earlier. Raymond Douglas walked into the casualty department, still dressed in his flamboyant stage gear and with his stage make-up on.
‘Hello, my name is Ray Davies. I am the lead singer of the Kinks. I am dying.’
The staff nurse laughed as if checking in a regular customer. ‘Mr Davies, can I have your autograph, please?’
‘But I am dying.’
‘Well, fill out this form, tell us what is wrong with you. You look very well to me, and, please, afterwards will you give me your autograph?’
As he filled out the form he gradually saw it distort: he couldn’t see his name, he couldn’t see the faces of the people around him. He collapsed on the floor, still in full stage-gear and make-up. Next thing he knew he was flat on his back being attended to by nurses with tubes and stomach pumps.
Before R.D. passed out he saw ambulance men wheel in a man on a trolley. A nurse said the man was a drug addict. All R.D. remembered was the man’s biker boots – oily, poor boots with holes in them – a real OD case. For a moment he heard the doctors debating which person to attend to first.
Raymond Douglas was fortunate; he got treated first. The man in the boots was not there when R.D. regained consciousness.
Later, still not out of danger, in intensive care, Raymond Douglas was approached by a stern-faced doctor. He looked down at Raymond Douglas in disgust. ‘Tomorrow you will have some analysis.’
Raymond Douglas looked up at the doctor and tried to climb out of bed. ‘Not if I can get out of here.’
The doctor smiled cynically. ‘You’ll only get out of here if you can write your name on the piece of paper which says you are well enough, and discharge yourself.’
Roxy stood by the bed, shaking, knowing that if R.D. left the hospital he might die. Raymond Douglas defiantly took the pen and paper from the doctor and signed his name, got up and staggered out to the amazement of the doctor and nurses. The doctor shouted, ‘Tomorrow they’ll bring you back, this time in a box. You haven’t recovered yet. You’re going to die if you leave.’ Raymond Douglas turned and shouted back, using the voice of Jimmy Wheeler, an old music-hall comedian: ‘Ta-ta for now, folks. Aye-aye. That’s your lot.’
That night, Roxy took Raymond Douglas to Dave’s house in Barnet, where Lisbet gave them both tea, and put Raymond Douglas to bed. The hallucinations Raymond Douglas experienced that night were grotesque distortions of all his fears, and guilty feelings which were coming back to haunt him. It was R.D.’s journey into hell. He saw faces mixed together – solicitors, Rasa, Kassner, Page, Roxy. Rasa suddenly became a vampire with razor-sharp teeth as she bit into his neck. Suddenly Raymond Douglas heart felt as though it was going to jump out of his body. He felt it pumping faster and faster as the drugs still in his system took full effect. The only way to save his life, he thought, was to think slow, count slow, one, two, three, bring down the heart-rate. Roxy sat by the bed, and when he woke the next morning she was still there. ‘We nearly lost you last night, but your will was too strong,’ she said. He had beaten all his nightmares but could feel only shame. He had nearly beaten himself.
Now it was time for R.D. to get ready for the fight in the law courts. They love to see somebody like him pulled down and put back in his place. He was determined to get back his daughters whatever the cost. Marian Rainford had seen a house advertised in Country Life that fitted Raymond Douglas’ requirements perfectly. It had a large garden, was detached, and had an annex where a nanny could live with them when he won custody. They went down to the house by train from Waterloo and found the house perfect for these requirements. Marian did the negotiating while R.D. went round tapping the walls, pretending to be the surveyor, as he felt a little strange about buying such a large house. Raymond Douglas offered them what they were asking provided they left all the furniture. He wanted to avoid having any remnants of his own past around him. These people were happy, and he hoped to have part of their happiness, maybe it would give him good luck, and a much-needed new start to life. The deal for the house was done quickly and pushed through, much against the wishes of R.D.’s solicitor, who had wanted R.D. to stay ‘liquid’, as the fact that he had property made him an easy target when it came to the court case. Nevertheless R.D. moved into the house on the August bank holiday in 1973 accompanied by his mum and dad and sister Joyce. Lisbet arrived late in the evening to wish him good luck. Ray slept in a small single room, knowing he wouldn’t really feel comfortable in the house until his daughters could be there with him.
In the world of solicitors and divorce lawyers there was a battle to fight. Colin Wadie was too emotionally involved for R.D.’s comfort and had been replaced by the solicitor who had won Dave’s paternity case years before. David Sarch looked like a burly sea-captain, displaying a large ginger beard to match his protruding beer-belly. He was an experienced criminal lawyer and adopted a hardball approach to the case. He tried to explain to R.D. that this was for his own good: divorce is one of the dirtiest jobs a solicitor has to deal with. Sarch gave R.D. a lift in his old Jaguar car and considered the position. He said that because R.D. had become famous, he was classless and difficult to define. This enabled him to break away from the establishment, but R.D. knew that once they had him firmly by the balls they were not going to let go. He could expect little sympathy. Sarch also indicated that the costs would be enormous. Later he engaged the services of Margaret Mitchelson, one of the most prominent divorce barristers in practice at that time. She had earlier indicated that she thought it might be possible to obtain custody of the children, but at the doors of the court the woman barrister had disappointing news. ‘There is no way you are going to get the children. I couldn’t tell you before now. I am terribly sorry, Mr Davies. This particular judge will not allow it. It is in your best interests to push the divorce through as quickly as ppssible. The other side would fight on this issue and it would inevitable harm the children.’
R.D. sat through the hearing impassively as Rasa gave a carefully rehearsed speech. The judge did most of the talking. ‘How did he act, unreasonably?’ ‘Yes.’ The judge spoke as he wrote, ‘Unreasonable conduct.’ ‘Would you say that this marriage has irretrievably broken down?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Irretrievably.’ ‘Do you feel that the children’s interests would be best served by staying with you and not your husband?’ ‘Yes,’ Rasa meekly replied as she sniffled into her handkerchief. The judge made a swift pronouncement: ‘Children to remain with the mother. Decree nisi – granted to the wife.’ Divorce was passed through within minutes. Everybody left the court; Rasa’s side seemed quietly triumphant. Raymond Douglas sat like a prisoner in the dock. He was officially, legally, alone.
Later he went back to the house in Surrey that now seemed larger and emptier. Now the house truly symbolized all his unfulfilled dreams; all his lost hopes and ambitions. Soon Roxy would realize that whatever unfulfilled ambitions R.D. had, she was not going to be part of them, and soon she would be gone. R.D. purchased a bicycle and cycled down a country road towards a pub. He knew that part of his life was over. As he cycled he looked up through the trees at the clear blue sky. For once he was free from all the lawyers, private detectives and even musicians, and he laughed out loud to himself. A giant lorry approached from the opposite direction, swerved over and brushed R.D. off his bicycle into a ditch. R.D. thought how wonderfully poetic and fitting it would have been if the lorry had collided with him head on and he had been killed. How flamboyant to die such an extravagant death. R.D. fell into a ditch. After brushing himself down he cycled on up the road and stopped outside a little church school. Inside there was a young woman schoolteacher getting ready for the new term. She was pretty ordinary to look at, but seemed the sort of person you could depend on. The schoolteacher and Raymond Douglas made eye contact as he sat back and rocked on his bicycle, contemplating the future. She smiled at him and, after closing the window of the schoolroom, went back to work. It may not be so bad, I’ll just have to get over the initial loneliness. ‘Fuck it!’ he thought. I don’t need anyone. Who am I kidding? I’m desperate!’ Whatever else, that year was the year R.D.’s world came to an end. He dreamed that he had been killed on that warm autumn afternoon as he cycled down the country lane. Perhaps he had actually died after the White City concert?
For a time Roxy stayed on at R.D.’s house while he was trying to reorganize his life in London, to come to terms with the divorce. Finally Roxy left probably because she felt she was just a replacement for Rasa. If this was the case, who was Rasa a replacement for? You’ve gotta think hard. Roxy had asked for a long-term commitment and at one point R.D. had even thought about it, but this had fizzled out and when Roxy realized this she made this decision to bite the bullet and get out. She had to. She could see her life being ruined. But before she finally left she sat R.D. down and asked him to spell out the truth: who was she replacing if it was not Rasa? R.D. just looked at the stars and thought about Hollywood Boulevard. That Christmas was one of the strangest of R.D.’s life. Christmas day spent on the Circle line with a six-pack of Kronenbourg.
‘It makes you laugh, it makes you laugh; you go round and round on the Circle line and come back where you started. The last can of Kronenbourg is half finished and you’re dying for a pee. Eventually you get off and pee up against a wall somewhere in the station. Suddenly you realize the six-pack’s run out and it’s just you and a couple of drunks left on the train and there’s nowhere to go because all the off-licences are closed and you need more beer. Makes you laugh, you’ve gotta laugh.’
Eventually R.D. made his way over to East Molesey where Colin the Scrap’s local pub had an afternoon drinking extension. Scrap was at the bar talking to a fat old buzzard called Sydney Barker. Barker after shaking R.D.’s hand, continued to chat up a fat barmaid. Sydney was a likeable old bloke who revelled in being called an old bugger. In his world an old bastard was someone you could depend on. Sydney and the barmaid were both in their late fifties. On second glance the barmaid was possibly in her late sixties, and still wearing heavy make-up in a style that she hadn’t changed since she was twenty. Sydney ordered drinks all round and explained to everyone that the last time he had screwed the barmaid was during the war. He was giving her one under the bar when a bomb landed nearby and blew out the windows of the pub just as he was on the ‘vinegar’ stroke and the barmaid was about to come. Must have been the biggest blast of their lives.
Eventually the pub closed and Colin the Scrap took R.D. to the British Legion in Molesey, which turned out to be closed. Not to be done out of a drink, Scrap then drove R.D. all around Surrey in his open lorry until he found a pub open in Thames Ditton. The rest was a blur. Thankfully. A mixture of free drinks, cigarette smoke and stale kisses from the old boilers and dossers who hang around pubs on Christmas Day because they have no family.
Scrap finally topped R.D.’s Christmas by taking him to a friend’s house to watch blue movies. Unfortunately for Scrap, the friend’s relatives were assembled around the television watching Morecambe and Wise and opening Christmas presents. Outraged but not to be outdone, Scrap packed away his projector and blue movies and drove off with R.D. in the lorry to another unsuspecting friend’s house. R.D. was still hungover and asked Scrap why they couldn’t just go back to Scrap’s house and watch the blue movies without ruining everybody else’s Christmas. Scrap looked over at R.D., took a giant pull on his roll-up and explained that it was because it was no good without an audience.
Colin the Scrap spoke the truth. It hit R.D. straight between the eyes. That was the key to the problem. R.D. had lost his audience. Somebody to do it for, to write, to live, to have and know that, somewhere in the world, they’re going to hear your song – it’s got to be a special person. Somebody worth doing it for R.D. had started off with an audience of one, ended up with thousands, only to lose them again.’
Raymond Douglas looked like himself again. This story had made me a little emotional but R.D. smiled at me across the control room in a reassuring way. There was optimism in his voice as he spoke. ‘All you really need is that one person to get you started. A Julie Finkle. A muse. Go looking for her, get in the car, drive forever, just hope that you can open the door one day, look in a bar and there she looks up at you, with that look in her eyes that says, “I’m your friend.” It’s got to be out there somewhere, just keep searching for it. When I think about it though, perhaps Julie was part of my dream world that nobody could penetrate.
‘Just like the song. Fancy that. I predicted my own end.
‘All in all, I suppose I got what I deserved. I came from a family who for all their failings stayed together. Mine was the first marriage to break up. The stupidity and the shame seemed to send me on an endless spiral that I never quite recovered from. I was never fully reconciled with Rasa. With me, when it’s over, it’s over for good. Creatively, however, there were good things ahead. I’ve got a lot I want to tell you. Maybe next time I’ll even tell you who that mystery girl was in Southsea!’
‘Julie Finkle? Margie?’ I enquired.
‘No. Get out of here. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I might even tell you who the real Lola was and the rest. The old brain-box is somewhat knackered and I need some sleep and so … go. Take the car.’
Hearing Raymond Douglas describe how his family disintegrated made me feel fortunate that I had not known my own. I had no memories, no blood ties. And yet I still miss them, even though I didn’t know them. That night I began to be haunted at night by faceless people walking towards me, holding my hand, embracing me, loving me; the love that comes from the heart; the love that’s all-consuming and yet lets you free. That’s the most difficult love; a love that can hold you and still lets you grow. But now I wanted my family back. Raymond Douglas, what have you done to me by telling me about yourself? You made me want the impossible. I look at myself as if I were another person. In the reflection behind me I see Raymond Douglas riding down a country lane in Surrey and his narrow escape when the lorry knocked him off his bicycle. The drive was probably worthwhile just to see the schoolteacher at the end of the road. Maybe he was prepared to risk death, just to see her. There’s got to be a reason for doing everything. Perhaps R.D. was too insecure just to do it for himself. His words kept going around in my head. You need to have an audience, to be connected with real human beings. There’s a Julie Finkle for everyone out there somewhere.
As I drive the magical Mercedes home afterwards, I see the dark road ahead of me, the flashing lights from the on-coming traffic, the motorway that took over the world. Everybody’s going somewhere. That’s another line, ‘the killing time, see how they stand in line’, I see the black sky ahead. I drive away from the big city, I drive away from the bright lights behind. I enter the blackness. Outside there somewhere there is somebody waiting. We must all keep searching for something. The cars pass me, overtake me, flashing red lights, white lights from the oncoming traffic, it all seems so unreal and yet there are people in all of those vehicles. I wonder where they’re going and I wonder who they’re going there for. After a while, I start to think and wonder, do I really exist? Why am I telling this story? Did these things happen? Have I always been on this motorway in this car, driving? There seems to be no life outside of this metal machine I am in. Perhaps I’ve never lived at all, perhaps I have always been a sleepwalker. God knows.
I see myself in the mirror of my apartment, then in the reflection I become R.D. in a meeting with Dave Davies and Mick Avory. I am an outsider and an insider at the same time. We are discussing Dave’s future and the selling of his shares in Konk Studios. Dave Davies, Mick Avory and me. R.D. Of all people, why am I there? They look at me as if they know me. They call me Ray. They’re asking how much I want to pay for the shares in the studio. I don’t question where I am and what I’m doing. I go along. After the meeting I tell Mick how I drove up to Rutland to try to find David Watts. I knew that David Watts was the only man who genuinely cared for my brother as much as I did, and for some obscure reason I thought that if I’d found David Watts now, he’d come back to help Dave Davies out of his financial plight, but David Watts had died some years earlier. The journey seemed wasted.
Then Mick reminisced about the time the Kinks met David Watts. ‘We had a good crack then, didn’t we?’ We really enjoyed life. Those were the days.’ That there was a time when Dave and Mick actually got along. Maybe I had always been the problem? Mr Big Mouth, Mr Big Shot. But who am I thinking this? I’m not the person they think I am. I look in the mirror at my apartment and I see myself in this scene as R.D.
I look at Dave and listen to the astronomical figures he is beginning to quote – company shares, bottom line, profit margins. I think back to when we were just in a band in a little Bedford Dormobile, driving up and down the M1, happy to get £50 a night for playing a gig. Then to that underground journey after I’d signed my first songwriting contract, which said at the bottom of the page, ‘In consideration for your signature, we will pay you the nominal amount of one penny.’ One penny on that train. Suddenly I’m back with Dave and Mick, company shares, how much value can you put on a lifetime of work together? I think of Mick, Dave and me laughing in the back of that van with Peter Quaife. If only we’d known then, been smart, street-wise. We were totally innocent. I look at the guys now, well into our forties, we’re totally innocent, just as we were in the back of that van. Mick only wanted to do it for laughs and the girls, and even though I thought that I had something weird to prove, we did it for fun. The songs were secondary. We celebrated a time, our youth. An escape from normality. And we made a career for ourselves in a world that offered us very little alternative.
The door into the studio creaked open the following morning. R.D. was looking old and pale. I felt an intruder, just as I had done the first time I entered his room. It was obvious that the old rocker had not slept all night. I was the one who was dreaming, and he had taken on the burden of my insomnia.
I was not afraid anymore. The Corporation did not bother me. I would lose my job and disappear into the world of the unemployed. It was worth it.
R.D. looked over at me. ‘What if I said that there was a part of me that knew what I was doing all along; that perhaps I was not the innocent I said I was? That I manipulated emotions in order to get creative ideas?’
‘Then I would say that you were a liar.’
‘What if I said the songs came from nowhere?’
‘Then I would say you were a dreamer.’
‘And if I, R.D., said I was born a king, then fell to earth to become working class, then ended up in a classless occupation?’
‘Then I would say that you owed nothing to no man.’
‘Perhaps that is who I am – no man. And no man or Corporation shall have my dreams. The only things that were real were the songs. The people existed half in reality and half in my imagination.
‘Perhaps everyone exists half in somebody else’s imagination. No one is totally human. We are all facets of someone else’s internalization. Visions of what they want us to be.’
R.D. moved closer and started to tell me about myself.
‘Do you sleep near to water and trains? Stay near to those sounds of trains in the far distance. That is where we were born.
‘And your loneliness when you were a confused child was because you lost your sister. Your family truly loved you.’
‘And Roxy? Did she exist?’
‘She was similar to so many people in my life. They exist as part reality, part invention. Roxy was as real, say, as Alan Klein, Larry Page, Alfie, Cindy … They have one reality seen through my eyes. But the truth of what they are is theirs and theirs alone. The only perception I have of them is from my own narrow angle. Like a one-camera shoot. They are probably totally different to the way I have described them to you. If you ask me about Julie Finkle, Cindy, Margie, whatever you want to call her, I will say she is as real as I am, because to me my dreams tell me more about the real world than any newspaper or history book. I have this dream about her. I have a desperate need to write. She visits me occasionally and I give her my stuff to read. As long as she is pleased with it I have no need to show it to anyone else. She is my audience of one, her approval is all I need. Our relationship is purely platonic – there is no sexual interaction between us, there is no pressure on me to prove I am a man. I live as long as she wants to hear my songs and read my poems. Julie Finkle has no face. I am alone but not afraid. I am emotionally independent.
‘Enough about my dreams. Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you about the time you saw me as a demon in your dream. And tomorrow I’ll tell you about your family.
‘Meanwhile, be careful. You are undoubtedly being watched. You are a danger to them now.’
‘Who are they?’
‘You know who they are. You have always known. Now go on your way. Be off. Do not waste the time of the last of the independents. I need to rest, I’m tired. Go now, son.’
Something inside told me not to leave him alone because, although he sounded confident, I knew he was particularly vulnerable at times like this and needed someone around whom he could depend on. I was afraid that small dark cloud might appear again and consume us both, so I tried to end our session on an up note.
‘All those things happened to you so long ago. You can’t still feel bitter?’
‘Bitter? Not really. When you get to my age you learn to be philosophical about these things. What you never had, you never miss. As for individuals, I believe that no one person knowingly intends to injure another. They were people. Not the Corporation. Anyway, it’s history now. They have their lives to live and, if you’ll excuse me, I must get on with mine.’
I was still uneasy about leaving, but he seemed in a better mood.
‘Don’t worry, lad. I’ll tell you more next time, I promise.’
He sounded sincere and I forced myself to believe him, even though my better judgement told me that this was probably another one of his false promises; the kind he would give to over-zealous fans just to get them out the door. But, being a fan, I respected his wishes.
As I entered my apartment I knew that someone else had been there. The red light on my answer-machine was flickering on and off, and as I rewound the tape, I noticed a box of newly prescribed tranquillizers: the mysterious intruder must have left them on my desk. The first message was from Julie, saying that the medical department had instructed her to tell me that I should start taking this new medication. My irritation turned to anger when I listened to the next message. It was from some busybody in the legal department who had seen the early pages of my research relating to R.D.’s contractual disputes. This person was objecting to R.D.’s references to ‘a Corporation’, and demanded that certain events should be ‘excised from the text’. I was outraged.
I deleted all my computer disks relating to R.D. and just kept one hard copy, which I hid in a safe place. There was a second message from Julie, asking me to call, but I was far too intimidated to make contact with her. The tranquillizers went the same way as the sleeping pills, down the toilet. I put on a live version of ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’, from one of the last concerts the Kinks gave. I changed the combination lock on my door and pulled out the phone so that I wouldn’t hear it ring.
I waited for word from R.D. but it never came, so I went back to his studio. Once again I was confronted by the robotic-sounding voice on the entryphone. They knew me and I was allowed in, but for the first time R.D. was not there. The control room looked the same, with a thin shaft of light coming through the ceiling. His chair was still in the corner. The castors still needed oiling and the air-conditioning still whistled from time to time, but now there were none of his songs on its breath. I looked for the tapes but they, like their owner, were not to be found.
His Coronation mug was on the control desk and, before I left, something compelled me to take it as a souvenir. I took a quick last look at the room and left.
The next day I saw in the newspaper that Raymond Douglas had died. I felt my body chill with anger, partly due to the shock of the news and partly to the fact that the paper had given him only two paragraphs. They were at the bottom of a page, underneath the obituaries of a little-known nuclear scientist and a former member of parliament. There was a small picture of him with his band, but John Dalton was credited as being Peter Quaife. At least the two brothers’ names weren’t confused. It was a picture that I knew that R.D. would have disliked, and the caption underneath referred to R.D. as a ‘Kink’. I suppose that’s what he was, but somehow I wanted him to be credited as something more.
I didn’t want to read how, when or of what he died. It was there, but for some reason I didn’t want to know, nor did I want to know whether he would be buried or cremated.
I made a pot of tea and decided to drink it from his mug. I prepared the tea with care, in the same way I had for him in the studio. I played some old Kinks records as I drank, and I became somewhat emotional. As I listened to the songs, I hoped that he had not been alone or afraid when he died and that his family had been around him even after abandoning him for so many years as he became grumpy, decrepit and difficult to deal with. Afterwards, I imagined that a great white unicorn would come down from the heavens and protect him on his long journey. At the end of it he would be reunited with his ancestors, and wait for his loved ones to leave this world to join him. Now he could thank his sister Rene for the guitar she had bought him on his thirteenth birthday. Now he could tell his dad that Arthur Ashe had indeed beaten Jimmy Connors in the Wimbledon final, and then probably get his ear clipped for not having gone to a bookie to place a bet. He could describe how Arsenal had beaten Liverpool at Anfield to win the 1989 Football League title and repeat the championship win two years later. There were so many stories and so many incidents to reflect upon.
And what about Julie Finkle? R.D.’s name for his mystery muse. His admirer and keeper of all his secrets and the probable inspiration for ‘Waterloo Sunset’? I had to find out the truth about the elusive Miss Finkle. I decided to try to contact her via R.D.’s studio. If Julie existed, she would have heard the news and phoned in by now.
I telephoned his studio and the operator answered. I recognized her voice from the first time she quizzed me about rock trivia before letting me into the building. I spoke but she didn’t know me and when I asked if there was a message form Julie she denied all knowledge of her.
‘Nobody called Julie here.’
I tried an obvious, somewhat desperate ploy.
‘It’s me. It’s Ray, it’s Raymond Douglas. Julie Finkle must have phoned.’
‘Raymond who?’
‘This is my office, isn’t it?’
‘I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t know who you are. Your name is not listed in our directory. Will you check to see if you have the right number?’
I considered the possibility that I could have been imagining all that had happened in the past weeks. I sensed that she was going to hang up. I tried one last time.
‘Is Mick Avory there?’
‘Mr Avory is not here yet. He’s on the golf course and when he comes back, he is going straight into a meeting with other surviving partners.’
‘Yes, I know, I should be there. I’m Raymond Douglas Davies, I’m a partner.’
By now the secretary had run out of patience.
‘Sir, whoever you are, Mr Davies passed away last week and if this is your idea of a joke, then it’s in very poor taste. Anyway, Mr Avory is actually no longer with the company since the new owners took over. Thank you.’
The line went dead. Terminal.
The Corporation. They had finally done it, just as R.D. always feared that they would. I vowed to myself that they would not have it all their own way. I still had R.D.’s story and there was no way I was going to let the Corporation have his life rights.
My paranoia started to get the better of me, and I cursed out loud: almost as though I had been deliberately cheated out of the rest of R.D.’s story. I felt as though he had conned me. As though after selling the Corporation the rights to his life, he had actually told me nothing before he died.
After I had taken a shower, I calmed down and became more rational. I concluded that R.D. had given me much more than a list of events in his life plus a few worn-out old anecdotes. That would have been normal, acceptable and expected, and therefore much too ordinary for him. He knew that to most of the world he had been an ordinary man who had been in the right place at the right time and, as a result, had capitalized on his good fortune and turned himself into a myth. Perhaps this was partly true, but the real value of the time I had spent with him was that he had given me an insight into his world of dreams and imagery, where past and future live side by side. He had shown me how it is possible to escape the reality and dullness of the world simply by examining, observing and celebrating it. He had helped me out of my own crisis by showing me his own. Now his songs were more valuable to me than just anthems from another age.
From a last-minute pang of conscience, I decided to go to the funeral after all. I arrived just as the last of the limousines carrying official mourners was pulling away. As I approached the row of sad, perfectly arranged flowers, a single figure appeared under the shadow of a tree. I stood back and watched her approach. She was a mature but still elegantly slim woman: Raymond Douglas would have described her as a ‘nice bit of old’. She was attractive, dressed all in black and, although her head was covered by a scarf, I could see that her slightly tinted hair was pulled into a bun at the back of her head. Her face was covered with white make-up and she wore dark sunglasses. Who was she? Margie, Alfie, Anita? She was too old to be Victoria or Louisa, even though they must have been there. Maybe it was his last wife. After reaching down to pluck a small fuchsia from one of the wreaths, she turned away before I could approach her. I tried to catch her but she disappeared into a waiting limousine. As she got into the car I saw that she had well-formed dancer’s legs: the sort of legs Raymond Douglas would have appreciated.
A few days later a package arrived for me. I unwrapped the brown envelope to discover a few old diaries tied together with string. They were accompanied by a note from R.D.’s solicitor. It said I was to have the diaries on condition that I did not publish them until the tenth anniversary of R.D.’s death. And on no account was I to let them fall into the hands of the Corporation. I was elated. My faith in R.D. had been restored.
R.D. must have known he was going to die for some time and had decided not to tell me. But he had trusted me enough to have access to the missing diaries and tapes. A key fell out of the envelope and on it was a label which said that it was to a trunk that contained additional notes, along with cassettes of unfinished and unreleased songs. These had been left for me to complete and have recorded. But there was no indication of where the trunk was. This was so typical: to give me the key to a box that did not exist. Then a few days later it arrived. There were storage and delivery charges: it was as if even after his death R.D. had decided to play one last trick on me and leave an outstanding bill to pay.
I opened the chest to discover it packed with old cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Countless notebooks, newspaper cuttings and photographs. This was a treasure trove. My Tutankhamun’s tomb, King Solomon’s mines. Raymond Douglas Davies’ life story was laid out in front of me for me to finish. It made me feel as though he were still alive. But now I could discover the answers to those questions I had never had the opportunity to ask. And I could re-live moments with him by working with him, listening to his voice on the tapes. R.D.’s life was like a jigsaw puzzle and it was my task to put it back together. Most people are the sum total of many parts; as varied in temperament and layers of character as there are molecules in the human body. The most explicit analysis of a person’s exterior can show us only a fraction of what that person is about. An old X-ray photograph of R.D.’s injured back fell out on to the floor and I picked it up and studied it. I felt that while the physical world can see two people – the outer and inner person – there is also the third person, a spiritual driving force that constantly intermingles with the first and second person. Intangible and totally inseparable.
I also knew that if the Corporation found out what I was about to do they would stop at nothing to get their hands on these materials and my manuscript. It was obvious that they would pursue me forever; and that Julie and I were finished. I wanted to see her again so badly, but I knew that if I made any attempt to contact her it would bring about her ruin as well as my own. I had to disappear – and fast. I gathered together all my belongings and packed R.D.’s car full of his memorabilia. I drove with no destination in mind; I knew that the car would automatically point me in the right direction. Eventually I reached a far country and rented a small attic that was just large enough to accommodate me and my belongings. That night I heard the sound of a train in the distance and knew that this was near to where I had been born. The sound both comforted me and filled me with anxiety. I longed to speak to Julie to tell her about the incredible events that had occurred, but I knew better. They had taken away my dreams once, and I was determined that they would never have them again. I started to think of the image of the attic in Flanders. Of that bright blue sky above the red tiles of the house opposite that had come to both R.D. and myself in a simultaneous dream. It was our image of freedom. Loneliness without desperation. Work without frustration. Love without the fear of it being lost. I felt that I no longer existed, I was invisible and able to see people, observe and document their lives, without having to answer to anyone. To discover that truth is not a single thing and that the only way to be totally free is to be totally devoid of any identity. The inner spirit is all important, and R.D. is inside me. When I think of him he will think of me.
Through my attic window, I heard people talking in the streets below. It was a strange, backwards-sounding language and although it was a dialect I had never heard before, I was able to understand more and more of it as days went by. I felt as though I had been born again and placed into another life. I looked over my shoulder and for a moment I thought I saw R.D. sitting beside me. R.D. had become my shadowman, who would be my companion in my new existence. As the small dark cloud reappeared in my attic room I welcomed it like an old friend as well as an enemy, because now I knew that it would always be there to consume me if I let it. I smiled at it and allowed it to drift outside the attic window, and once I knew that the black cloud was safely outside, I blew it a kiss and quickly closed the window in its face.