to get away from the pits and the factories, all that cloth-capped bullshit

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When the scene was at its most vigorous there was this tremendous search for obscurities, and a lot of great records surfaced as a result. But after a while, the chances of discovering some old masterpiece diminish. I started Northern Soul but I actually found the music very limiting because in the early days I’d play a Charles Mingus record, then I’d play a bluebeat disc followed by a Booker T. tune, then a Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley record. Gradually there was this blanding out to one sort of sound. When I started DJing, I could play what I wanted. But after three years I had to keep to the same tempo.

fist-fights, copious sex with women and men, riots, attempted suicides

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Despite Dave and Quaife’s limp-wristed goading, Mick Avory became their new drummer. He quit the nascent Rolling Stones after only two weeks because “they were playing in London and it was too far to come.” The fourth Kink had paid for his drum-kit with two grocery rounds and a paper round. He realised too late he had no way of getting the drums to gigs. So he strapped the bass drum to his back and cycled. “I’d placed an advert in Melody Maker for a rhythm and blues drummer. My mum was the one to answer when Robert Wace phoned up. She said, ‘He’s ever so posh’. I was working at the time, delivering paraffin. They arranged a meet-up, like a sort of audition, in the Camden Head pub in Islington. I went up and played a couple of numbers with them. Larry Page was there. Would I be able to do a TV show the following day? That was Ready Steady Go! My parents preferred me to do that than deliver paraffin.”

The Kinks were all about the Wimpy bar

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This was the first time that the direction Ray Davies wanted to take was really alienating some of his own band. Dave Davies thought the song was ‘beautifully haunting’ but Pete Quaife did not agree. ‘“Wonderboy” was horrible,’ said Quaife. ‘It sounded like Herman’s Hermits wanking. Jesus it was bad. I hated it. I remember recording it and doing the la-la-las and just thinking, “What kind of prissy sissy nonsense are we doing? We’re the guys that made ‘You Really Got Me’, for Chrissakes!”’ The song was slathered in harpsichords and ‘la-la-la’ backing vocals.

“Ray does talk a lot of shit and the older he gets the worse he gets.”

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“I just thought the Rolling Stones [were] stupid and foolish and sounded like it. The Beatles up to Sgt Pepper – none of them had seemingly done anything that would have offended anybody’s granny and the songs . . . almost all of them owed something to somebody else . . . I can’t get over some of the laziness in the Beatles . . . Pete Townshend was a very close friend. We met through A Whole Scene Going – he was the first interview we did . . . Pete can’t write pop songs. He’s got no talent for writing pop songs and his music’s just drivel. It’s just that he wore T-shirts with Union Jacks on them and that looked like and felt like it was something important . . . I couldn’t see the point of the Who – couldn’t see the point of the Stones either. The words and lyrics were just rubbish. If Chuck Berry had been born white in Dagenham that’s what he would have sounded like.”

"They hated my guts. Said I was an unethical bastard."

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To Andrew’s way of thinking, the British record industry was hidebound and moribund. The culture gap between the music and the street scene that fed it on one side and the old farts at the record companies that he relied on to market the Stones on the other was maddening and almost unbridgeable. Indeed, Oldham’s guile, cheek, and extraordinary self-assurance had frequently been his chief weapons in forcing the business to take notice of the Rolling Stones, and it had impressed the band. “He was smarter and sharper than the assholes that were running the media, or the people running the record companies, who were totally out of touch with what was happening,” Keith Richards said.

James Brown invited me onstage to join him in “Sex Machine”

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One night when we had come back from Ratner’s to the Fillmore between shows, we walked into our dressing room to find a roadie getting “serviced” by a groupie. While the band and I tried to quietly manoeuvre our way around the “event,” Ken Jones was disgusted, “Streuth, it’s blow-job central ’round here; you think they would have had the decency to use the toilet like anybody else! Where do they think they are, Scandinavia?” Anyway, Mick Avory astutely observed, “Why hide such an event in a closet when you can perform it in public for the world to see?” The manners of society were breaking down, morals were being destroyed daily by these new liberal freedoms, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. People could perpetrate any deviance they wanted, anytime, anywhere, day or night; the most outrageous acts were allowed to take place, but not — according to Jonesy — in the Kinks’ dressing room.

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Despite the turmoil within the band, Grenville Collins notes that “all divisions melted away when the Kinks were confronted by external opposition . . . they would become a pack of wolves.” And no one, promoters or star, could escape the wrath of the Kinks, as English pop star Bobby Shafto found out one evening in the fall of 1964. Avory tells the story: We used to get this girl to come along and do a rave. . . . She would do a little striptease and we’d all play tambourines. The only available room was the one Bobby Shafto was in. He came in and made a fuss. He started doing the star bit, so we had a little kafuffle with him. Nothing terrible. We just put him in his place. Collins then had to contend with Shafto’s screaming and tearful manager: “Those disgusting, filthy, animalistic creatures have just beaten up my star.”

you have to remember that until 1967 they weren't even house trained

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A black and violent thriller series, The Avengers, aroused particular excitement through Miss Blackman's 'kinky' black leather costumes. And indeed the London-centred craze for 'kinky' black boots, 'kinky' black raincoats, and 'kinky' black leather or plastic garments of all kinds raged throughout that autumn. By July 1965 this frenzy was only a symptom of the gathering strain beneath, as the 'swinging city' galvanized itself for a last flight into the stratosphere. Never before had London been a town so fashionably obsessed with kinks, with sexual abnormality and make-believe violence.

sad, angry grown-ups, dreary music, stewed meat, church and school

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The Kinks were a guiding light to me when I was young. I went to the same schools as them, junior, secondary and art school. As I went into Year One of secondary school at eleven years old, the bassist Pete Quaife’s younger brother was just leaving, so there was quite a big age gap, but I followed in their wake, and I was very aware of every move they made ahead of me. Everyone in Muswell Hill seemed to have a vague connection to them, even my mum. She worked at Crouch End library and Dave Davies’s girlfriend – a beautiful natural blonde – worked there too. Mum used to come home with tales of how volatile Dave was. In junior school I’d ask the teachers, ‘Did you teach them? What were they like? Do you think you might have any of their old exercise books at home?’ I was extremely curious, much more so than I was in any lessons. I didn’t aspire to be a musician – there wasn’t that equality at the time, it was inconceivable that a girl could cross over into male territory and be in a band. When I got to secondary school, people were much more interested in them: the older boys dressed like them, long hair in side or front partings, very low-cut hipster trousers – we called them bumsters – and stack-heeled boots. The young male teachers dressed like that too. To Muswell Hill kids, the Kinks were heroes, they came from the same place as us and they made something of themselves.

We were just a bunch of unhappy, scruffy, unprofessional louts

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"R.D., as you like to refer to him, must be exposed as a petty, inconsequential dreamer. He and his kind are totally out of step with the realism of our times. We have failed to suppress the music. There are still people who listen to it and not only aspire to write and live in his outdated manner, but actually try to emulate him. We must destroy their dreams. Now, find out anything you can to discredit him. Forget about all this Preservation society nonsense. It is sentimental shit and you know it. Expose him as a corrupt person, unsuitable for any worthy place in our culture. You must succeed."

'Fuck off!' Dave shouted from the stage. 'We turned up, didn't we?' An empty bottle of Newcastle Brown smashed against his guitar. The Kinks dashed offstage after the show and headed straight for David Watts' cottage. In the midst of changing our sweaty undies, David Watts arrived with crateloads of Rutland beer and opened a refrigerator full of pink champagne. Mick seized the opportunity to prove a point and dropped his trousers in front of the Major, then proceeded to prance around like a tart. I asked the Major if he fancied Mick. He said, 'Oh God, no, not that slut. I'm more interested in that little whore,' and pointed to Dave, who was dancing with Mick. Then various members of the regional constabulary and other local dignitaries arrived to join in the impromptu festivities which, by some strange coincidence, were without women, in drag or otherwise.