Ray Davies, growing in working class in Muswell Hill, New Labour, cricket & Arsenal
Ray Davies lead singer of the Kinks, and the original Muswell Hillbilly, is 81 on 21st June. He was interviewed in the Sunday Times (18th February 2024) on his life and times.
Muswell Hill is thought of today (not entirely accurately) as a well to do area of North London. Davies was part of a large working class family that grew up in the area after World War Two.
Davies recalls that popular music in the 1950s had a rather middle-class flavour noting that it was only when bands like the Kinks and the Beatles appeared that working class music made an impact. Davies was just 19 when the band signed a record deal. He argues that it was a democratic shift mirrored later by Britpop in the Blair era. Now he argues Britain seems ‘smaller’.
He now thinks that hip hop is expressing the mood and views of the moment, as the Kinks themselves did in the 1960s.
Davies says he is a cricket fan but also recalls playing football at school in Muswell Hill with Rod Stewart. As appropriate for someone on the West side of Haringey he is an Arsenal fan and still living in North London, though not on the Hill
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