The Kinks

Fleiner, who teaches classical history at the University of Winchester, nicely places the reader into the atmosphere that produced the Kinks, one of the most important bands of the British Invasion. The book veers from their image as teenage rebels into their status as champions of average folk; Fleiner sets the tone early, saying this is 'not a biography of the band,' and focuses on the culture and world that surrounded the Kinks and influenced their music. Arranged chronologically, the book offers an excellent history of postwar Great Britain told through the eyes of the Davies brothers, Ray and Dave, and their bandmates. The author’s background as a historian shines through in the book’s meticulous research and analytical perspective on the cultural context in which the Kinks wrote their music. Coming out of Britain’s working class in the mid-1960s, the Davies experienced a bit of social mobility during the postwar economic boom. The book deftly discusses the influence of their economic perspective on both the sound of their music and the stories they chose to tell. * Publishers Weekly *
The Kinks were among the most idiosyncratic bands that emerged during the British Invasion of the 1960s. They were defiantly English. In fact, as Fleiner notes, they were often celebrated as an icon of 'Englishness.' And, true to form, their Englishness was in full display in such works as The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) and Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969). Their songs evoked social satire, personal memories, political satire, and, especially, nostalgia for a lost England. Still, their best-known song is probably the enduring and gender-bending 'Lola,' about a transvestite. Fleiner examines the Kinks’ musical influences, which ranged from the music-hall tradition to the Davies family’s own Saturday night house parties, when the front room was filled with family and friends singing and dancing around the piano. Other strong influences were the exciting sounds coming over from America. Fleiner also explores the band’s very distinctive, and often self-deprecating, humor; the sexuality and gender issues in their music; the Kinks as a socially conscious band; and, especially, their reputation as champions of the 'ordinary guy' as well as their ongoing legacy. Fans of the beloved, and often underappreciated, band will enjoy this thoughtful examination of their music. To paraphrase a line from their own lyrics, and as this book proves, the Kinks arenot like everybody else. * Booklist *
[The Kinks: A Thoroughly English Phenomenon] adds to the understanding of the Kinks’s universe as Fleiner concentrates on their continual motif of music-hall style/themes blended in with topics of everyday life. This entertaining (and very successful) coinage had been impossible without the lyrics of Ray Davies that contained a very special dose of absurdity, irony, social criticism, satire, humor and sometimes a bleak outlook on England’s future. * Popcultureshelf.com *