Kinks Week – Come Dancing

When my buddy Max from the PowerPop blog reached out to me and asked if I would like to take part in his “Kinks Week” feature, I naturally said yes. He told me that I should pick a specific Kinks song and write a bit about it. Easy enough, right? Well, sort of…

They band was formed in London in 1963 by Ray and Dave Davies. The were part of a sort of British R&B and Merseybeat thing that was happening there. Technically, they were part of the British Invasion here in the US, too. They certainly had plenty of hits that still get airplay today.

My introduction to the Kinks came from my dad and from listening to his oldies station. I heard All Day and All of the Night, You Really Got Me, Lola, and Tired of Waiting for You a lot growing up and when I worked in radio. But it was MTV and Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 that I heard them in a way I was unfamiliar with.

In 1983, the Kinks released their State of Confusion album. One of the tracks, Come Dancing, is undeniably an “80’s” song. It has that distinct sound of the early 80’s. When I heard that the song was the Kinks, I actually thought that maybe it was a different band. This song is so different and distant from what I’d call the “classic Kinks” sound. Not to mention that Ray’s accent is very obvious. I suppose that is why it stood out to me.

In one interview, Ray stated that this song was an attempt to return to the “warmer” style that the group had before they became the “arena rock act.” He said, “I wanted to regain some of the warmth I thought we’d lost, doing those stadium tours. Come Dancing was an attempt to get back to roots, about my sisters’ memories of dancing in the ’50’s.”

On the surface, the song sounds fun, but the inspiration for the song and the lyrical content came from a real life tragedy and nostalgia. Davies hints a both of those things in the quote above.

As I began to research the story behind the song the word “nostalgia” came up many times. I suppose, it was reinforcing that the Nostalgic Italian had chosen the right song to write about. Rolling Stone magazine called the song “delightfully nostalgic.” Another article says that the song is basically “the 1980’s nostalgia for the 1950’s” and goes on to say how Davies tapped into that nostalgia as he was inspired by his sisters as young adults going to dance halls in the 1950’s.

The real life tragedy involved Ray’s sister Rene. As a child she had rheumatic fever, which led to some heart issues. She lived in Canada with her abusive husband and would come home to London to visit with her family annually. In 1957, Rene (then 37 years old) surprised Ray with a Spanish guitar on his 13th birthday. He had been trying to get his parents to buy it for them, but to no avail. He was thrilled to receive the gift from her. His joy would be replaced with sadness later that evening, however, as his sister would have a heart attack while dancing at the Lyceum ballroom.

Ray took inspiration from his memories of his sisters dancing at the local dance halls to the music of big bands and wrote Come Dancing. The song is written from the point of view of what he called an “East End barrow boy” watching his sister going out on dates. It speaks of the nostalgia of how they are building a parking lot on the spot where the supermarket used to be. Before that it was where the bowling alley was. Still before that, it was the spot where the local “palais” (French for Palace) dance hall used to be.

Ray said that the song was an easy song to write, because the idea had been in his head for some time. He didn’t start writing it, though, until March of 1982 while on a flight home from Japan. He had just purchased a new Casio keyboard and used it to write the song.

In his book, You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks, author Nick Hasted claims that the song was written in an attempt “to reach out to the Kinks’ lost British audience.” This is probably why Ray sang with his British accent despite being asked to sing it with an American one. He has been quoted as saying that he “tried to retain the Englishness” of the song.

The “Englishness” almost prevented the song from being released. Well respected record man and founder of Arista records, Clive Davis really didn’t want to released the song in the US. He didn’t think that the American public would be able to relate to the English subject matter of dance halls. It didn’t help that the song had already been released in the UK in 1982 and did not chart.

In the end, the song was released in the US in April of 1983 and was a Top 10 hit (reaching #6). The video for the song played often on MTV which also helped the radio performance. Come Dancing would go on to be the highest charting US single of their career (tying with 1965’s Tired of Waiting for you). Naturally, because it did so well in the states, it was rereleased in the UK and this time it reached #12 on the British charts.

The Kinks would have one more Top 40 single in the US and that was also on the State of Confusion album. That song was Don’t Forget to Dance, which peaked at at #29. So I guess it is fair to say that Come Dancing was the last big hit for the band. Ray wasn’t done with the song, though.

In 1997, he wrote a musical play with the title Come Dancing. It was set in a 1950’s dance hall and included some Kinks songs and original songs. The play opened in September of 2008, and sadly only ran through the end of October 2008. Ray appeared as the narrator in the play. The show was brought back in 2010, but quickly cancelled again.

As I listen to all of the nostalgia presented in the lyrics of Come Dancing, it makes it feel like a perfect swan song for the Kinks. First of all, it has a happy feel to it that passes from the music to its listener. It is much like Walking on Sunshine, in that I cannot hear it without smiling.

Then you have picture of life progressing. The “out with the old, in with the new” kind of thing. You reach a point in your life or career where you look back on where you’ve been nostalgically. In a sense, that is what’s happening here. Despite where we are currently, we look back at many fond and happy memories. Isn’t that really what Ray and the Kinks are doing here? I suppose that’s the way I see it anyway.

Thanks to Max for asking me to participate and and contribute to his look at one of the greatest, and often overlooked bands in history. Thank you for reading. Now let’s give it a listen ….