All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?[1]
Throughout the 1960s The Beatles and The Kinks wrestled, in their music and in their careers, with the concept of the ‘outsider.’ From ‘Nowhere Man’ to ‘Clichés of the World (B Movie),’ both bands portrayed society as a harsh and potentially very lonely place, where vulnerable people such as ‘nowhere Man // Sitting in his Nowhere Land,’ and the ‘little man...who’s reached the end of his rope’ have tragic lives on the fringes of society.[2] What is interesting, however, is that while they both devote considerable time to exploring what it is to be a misfit, they identify different causes. They also prescribe very different solutions, with The Beatles favouring a form of collective individualism, as opposed to The Kinks’ idea that loneliness is the price of freedom, and that the only hope is the possibility of love. This is mirrored in the way in which the two bands interacted themselves with society. While both were undoubtedly hugely popular and famous, as the decade progressed they both sought to place their music and lives outside of mainstream culture. The Beatles did this by engaging increasingly in the counterculture of the 1960s, albeit in a complex relationship, but The Kinks, under the guidance of Ray Davies, went a step further to eschew even the counterculture itself, thus becoming the ‘perpetual outsider’ of 1960s popular music.[3]
Both The Kinks and The Beatles saw mainstream society as deeply flawed and generating a concerning number of isolated individuals. For The Kinks, society was deliberately repressive, where ‘crooked politicians // Betray the working man,’ and where the population is ‘Brainwashed.’[4] This mirrors Ray Davies’ metaphorical claims in his autobiography that he was ‘fostered by the Corporation as a child,’ and grew up ‘one of the faceless thousands manufactured by this corporate society.’[5] Ray was convinced that a corrupt society had ‘increasingly empowered itself at the expense of individual certainty and liberty, leaving the individual in various states of confusion and incompleteness.’[6] Most people, therefore, are unable to realize the extent to which they are controlled, but The Kinks felt that they were in a position to observe and criticise the way that society works. They reserved the greatest condemnation for those who have some suspicion about how repressed they are, yet are ‘too scared to think about how insecure [they] are.’[7] Although they are naturally ‘misfits,’ they ‘run away and hide’ from the truth and instead embrace those homogenizing symbols of the repressive society, becoming ‘dedicated follower[s] of fashion,’ much to The Kinks’ disgust.[8]
However, perhaps this scathing tone is rather harsh. The cost of rebelling against the ‘Corporation’ is high, as they argue that the individual sets themselves up for life as an outsider. For those brave enough to see ‘what it’s like in the world outside,’ they are met with a harsh and lonely reality, as the outsider admits morosely in ‘I Am Free’: ‘I need someone, it’s dark and it could get lonely // I am free.’[9] The only solution offered by The Kinks to the loneliness of being on the outside is love. This is specifically romantic love, as experienced by Terry and Julie in ‘Waterloo Sunset,’ and which leads The Kinks to conclude that for them, as enlightened outsiders ‘there is no life without love.’[10] However, if that love is terminated for any reason, the outsider is left alone ‘on an island.’[11] For those unfortunate ones, such as ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness,’ who ‘might as well have died’ after ‘the only boy she had // Went and coolly stepped aside,’ the only solace left is The Kinks’ music, which sought to provide ‘a musical haven for misfits and innocents...for the three minutes most Davies’ tunes play.’[12]
Similarly, The Beatles offer romantic love as a way to escape from isolation. As early as their 1963 album, Please Please Me, they claim that ‘There’s a place // I can go // When I feel low ... I think of you.’[13] They also explore how love lost can lead to isolation in songs such as ‘You’re Going to Lose that Girl’ and ‘Yesterday.’ However, unlike The Kinks, they offer another interpretation of the loneliness of being an outsider, based on different assumptions about how society actually functions. While The Kinks see society as a massive ‘false perception’[14] with loneliness as an outsider as the only alternative, The Beatles explore the concept of being lost within the crowd of mainstream culture. Thus, Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are alone in spite of the people who surround them in the McKenzie’s congregation, and the wedding which passed Eleanor Rigby by. This move by The Beatles to critically examining society is first seen in 1965 in ‘Nowhere Man’ where they begin to explore the idea of society creating people who are both unloved and incapable of love (such as the ‘Taxman’). This, in part, marks their development from traditional male pop groups appealing to a young female audience into what Ian Inglis has termed ‘men of ideas,’ and coincides with a general mood among many ‘Baby Boomers in the mid-’60s...beginning to question authority and search for a way of living that was richer and fuller than what straight society offered,’ without leaving that society altogether.[15]
The Beatles’ response to ‘straight society’ is somewhat like The Kinks’, in that it requires the individual to break away from the masses and become something of an outsider to achieve some form of enlightenment. It is after doing this that Harrison has adequate distance and perspective to ‘look at the world and...notice it’s turning.’[16] However, the predicted results of this outsider perspective are wildly different. While The Kinks anticipate perpetual isolation, or at best existing with just one other person, The Beatles envisage that they will be able to form their own ideal communities with like-minded individuals, like the one described in ‘Yellow Submarine,’ where ‘our friends are all aboard’ and they ‘live a life of ease // Every one of us has all we need.’[17] In fact, therefore, the way to avoid loneliness and isolation for The Beatles was to engage in self-exploration to work out where they fitted in, and that in groups outside of mainstream culture they would ‘get by with a little help from [their] friends.’[18] Tellingly, they also concede that they would ‘get high with a little help from [their] friends,’ as The Beatles often sought this self-realization by using drugs to try to achieve a child-like awareness. Harrison described the sense of community that this collective individualism gave to The Beatles in the summer of 1967, claiming that ‘there was definitely a vibe: we could feel what was going on with our friends - and people who had similar goals in America - even though we were miles away. You could just pick up the vibes, man.’[19] So ironically, for The Beatles becoming outsiders enabled them to avoid the isolation they experienced in mainstream society.
This preoccupation with outsiders and marginal members of society may seem peculiar for bands as popular as The Beatles and The Kinks. Indeed, Maureen Cleave claimed in 1966 that ‘The Beatles’ fame is beyond question...With [the Queen] they share the security of a stable life at the top.’[20] Similarly, Keith Altham noted how The Kinks would be met everywhere they went by ‘the usual crowd of adoring schoolgirls’ in 1965, the same year that Ray Davies claimed The Kinks launched their ‘assault on the rest of the world’ with ‘the UK...more or less ‘in the pocket.’’[21] However, while The Beatles in particular were ‘probably the four most famous people in the world,’ ‘by the end of 1966, The Beatles began to see their relationship to the crowd as an antagonistic one.’ [22] The chaos of Beatlemania in the early years of The Beatles’ career is show in their film A Hard Day’s Night (1964), which depicts The Beatles constantly having to run away from hoards of screaming girls. Interestingly, however, they do not seek solace with the other professionals in the music industry, such as their quarrelling managers, Shake and Norm, as The Beatles’ behaviour, though childish at times, is also professional in a way that no one else in the film is able to achieve. Thus, as scenes such as the famous Ringo scene, perhaps as early as 1964 The Beatles were feeling lost within the crowd that surrounded them due to their own fame. As with Ringo, perhaps the only way for them to escape was to take time to look at themselves and to work out where they fitted in. While Ringo doesn’t fit in entirely with the boy he meets, nor in the pub that he visits, he eventually realises that he belongs in with the other Beatles, and rejoins them for their performance.
Thus, in many ways, The Beatles implemented what they advocated in their songs, associating themselves with increasingly marginal practices as they became disillusioned with their role in society, and sought self-realization. In 1965 it was noted that ‘the boys are leading almost entirely self-contained lives,’[23] and they took this further after the disastrous tour of America in 1966 when they stopped touring and developed a new image for themselves in their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band album. This depicted The Beatles’ own funeral, and was, according to McCartney, an attempt to ‘lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group,’ giving them the freedom to explore beyond the restrictive mop-top image.[24] Similarly, following Brian Epstein’s death in 1967, John Lennon in particular withdrew, drifting ‘onto a sea of LSD and eventually into the choppier waters of heroin addiction. In his subconscious search for another father substitute to replace Epstein, he’d been much taken with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.’[25] With Yoko Ono he also later explored political activism and different forms of art. Thus, increasingly, The Beatles’ image ‘was shifting toward a new kind of pop intellectualism, demonstrated by their interest in social issues such as drugs, religion, the war in Vietnam, and, increasingly, the function of art and music in society.’[26] This matched a general mood among certain aspects of the ‘new subcultures and movements,’ which formed in certain parts of British society during the 1960s and were ‘generally critical of, or in opposition to, one or more aspects of established society.’[27] There were still some tensions within the counterculture, such as frustration over the nature of Lennon’s political activism in the late 1960s which eschewed a leadership role for a more abstract idea of peace. However, for the most part, The Beatles’ disengagement from mainstream society meant that they found a place for themselves in the developing counterculture, and ultimately ‘got by with a little help from their friends.’
The Kinks, however, seem to have taken this attempt to break away from the restraints of mainstream society to another level. As a band they seem much more ‘abnormal’ and they have ‘always been different, always outsiders in the rock world.’[28] This can be seen both in the way their music was ‘always proudly out of step’ with contemporary trends, and also in their behaviour throughout the 1960s.[29] Paul Williams argues that Ray Davies’ music ‘has nothing to do with almost anything else. It’s in a category unto itself.’[30] Indeed, this does seem to be the case, as Ray Davies himself explained: ‘when everybody else thought that the hip thing to do was to drop acid, do as many drugs as possible, and listen to music in a coma, The Kinks were singing songs about lost friends, draught beer, motorbike riders, wicked witches and flying cats.’[31] Thus, in singing about topics such as the ‘Village Green Preservation Society,’ and declaring ‘God save strawberry jam and all the varieties,’ The Kinks were consciously disengaging even from the popular themes of the counter-culture.[32] Like the characters in their songs, they were becoming the ultimate outsiders of British music.
This idiosyncratic style of music was enforced by their behaviour in the 1960s. The Kinks never played at ‘Monterey Pop or Woodstock, the major rock festivals of the 1960s, or the Live Aid benefits of the 1980s.’[33] Following a violent row in 1965 with a US union official ‘The Kinks returned to Britain soon afterwards, leaving behind a trail of confusion and hatred.’[34] They were not allowed to perform in the USA again until the end of the 1960s, by which time their strongest rivals, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, had capitalised on their absence. Yet even when these competitors had ‘atrophied’ by the beginning of the 1970s, ‘Ray Davies went underground, with a series of unbought, interior albums...deliberately buried treasures only now being unearthed,’ such as the 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies.[35] It is interesting that in sharp contrast to The Beatles, who either as a group or in their subsequent solo years were on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine, The Kinks never once were pictured.
Given their attempts to engage with the marginal and the ‘misfits,’ perhaps this under-representation in more mainstream rock magazines may be seen as appropriate. However, it is possible that one band being more on the fringes than another could have caused friction, as The Kinks and The Beatles had a tense relationship with sometimes extreme rivalry. Ray Davies remembers how John Lennon told him before a concert in which both bands were performing that ‘You’re just there to keep the crowds occupied until we go on.’[36] Davies later reviewed The Beatles’ Revolver album, claiming that Yellow Submarine ‘is a load of rubbish, really’ and that the album’s biggest asset is only that ‘the balance and recording technique are as good as ever.’[37] While it is possible to argue that this competitiveness may have been based on personal rivalry or financial gain, it also reveals a crucial paradox for both The Beatles and The Kinks: that the success of conveying their messages about society and outsiders depended fundamentally on their popularity. Thus, on the one hand, both bands sought to escape from the constraints to which they felt they were subjected by society, and which their fame exacerbated. On the other, it was only thanks to their fame that they had the means to promote their views and explore the ideas further, through travel, drug-taking and engaging in the thriving counterculture in 1960s Britain (and in the case of The Kinks, beyond the counterculture). In this way, their experiences of fame made each band obsessed with being outsiders, although they interpreted this isolation in different ways. Yet it was precisely because this fame had such a tight hold on them, keeping both bands (and especially The Beatles) at least in part so firmly in the mainstream, that their views on being outsiders were heard by so many.
Overall, both The Beatles and The Kinks place the issue of the outsider at the centre of many of their songs, although with slightly different interpretations. The Kinks view society as deliberately oppressive, but argue that the individual who breaks away from this faces extreme loneliness and estrangement, unless they are lucky enough to find love that lasts. While The Beatles value the roll of romantic love in avoiding being an outsider, they also argue that the love between friends, and belonging to a group, can keep an individual from being alone, even if the group itself is on the fringes of society. However, it is necessary for the individual to engage in serious self-exploration to determine where they truly belong. In many ways, their attitudes were mirrored by the way they conducted themselves. The Beatles increasingly sought to disengage with mainstream culture and explore aspects of the counterculture as the 1960s progressed. The Kinks took this a stage further, deliberately championing aspects of everyday life to place themselves outside of the counterculture itself, and being seen as a more marginal band as a result. However, both bands retained a complex relationship with the mainstream throughout their careers. While they often found their fame repressive, and it fuelled their obsession with the concept of the outsider, it was only by using their stardom that they were able to make their ideas heard by the largest number of people possible. Perhaps, straddling mainstream celebrity culture, the counterculture and beyond made The Beatles and The Kinks both the best and the worst outsiders in the 1960s.
Bibliography
Books
Beatles, The. The Beatles Anthology (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2000).
Davies, Ray. X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995).
Derogatis, Jim. Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Music From The 1960s To The 1990s (London: Fourth Estate, 1996).
Hasted, Nick. The Story Of The Kinks: You Really Got Me (London: Omnibus Press, 2011).
Inglis, Ian. ‘Introduction: A Thousand Voices’, in idem (ed.), The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: A Thousand Voices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
Kitts, Thomas M. Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else (London: Routledge, 2008).
Mäkelä, Janne. John Lennon Imagined: Cultural History Of A Rock Star (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2004).
Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties: Cultural Revolution In Britain, France, Italy, And The United States c.1958-c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Northcutt, William. ‘The Spectacle of Alienation: Death, Loss and Crowd in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in Kenneth Womack and Todd Davis (eds). Reading The Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism and the Fab Four (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006).
Articles
Altham, Keith. ‘The Kinks’ Peter Quaife’, New Musical Express, 2 April 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-peter-quaife.
Altham, Keith. ‘The Kinks: Kinks Back To Abnormal’, New Musical Express, 11 June 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks-back-to-abnormal.
Cleave, Maureen. ‘How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This’, London Evening Standard, 4 March 1966: http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.0304-beatles-john-lennon-were-more-popular-than-jesus-now-maureen-cleave.html.
Davies, Ray. ‘Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles LP’, Disc and Music Echo, August 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/beatles.html.
Jopling, Norman. ‘How The Beatles Spend An Evening’, Record Mirror, 15 May 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/how-the-beatles-spend-an-evening.
Jopling, Norman. ‘The Kinks: Kinks’, Record Mirror, 3 October 1964: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks.
Mervis, Scott. ‘Kinks Preservation Society’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10 May 2007.
Perusse, Bernard. ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else: Ray Davies, the Perpetual Outsider’, The Gazette (Montreal), 25 March 2006: http://www.somagraphics.net/portfolio/gazette/P22.pdf.
Stubbs, David. ‘The Death of The Beatles’, Uncut, November 2000: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-death-of-the-beatles.
Williams, Paul. ‘The Kinks: Face To Face’, Crawdaddy!, March 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/ftof.html.
Audio
Beatles, The. ‘Eleanor Rigby’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
Beatles, The. ‘Nowhere Man’, Rubber Soul (London: Parlophone, 1965).
Beatles, The. ‘There’s A Place’, Please Please Me (London: Parlophone, 1963).
Beatles, The. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, The Beatles (White Album) (London: Parlophone, 1968).
Beatles, The. ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (London: Parlophone, 1967).
Beatles, The. ‘Yellow Submarine’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
Kinks, The. ‘Brainwashed’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
Kinks, The. ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’, State of Confusion (London: Arista, 1983).
Kinks, The. ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘I Am Free’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘I’m On An Island’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness’, Face to Face (London: Pye, 1966).
Kinks, The. ‘Misfits’, Misfits (London: Arista, 1978).
Kinks, The. ‘Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man’, Preservation Act 1 (London: RCA, 1973).
Kinks, The. ‘Shangri-la’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
Kinks, The. ‘The Contenders’, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (London: Pye, 1970).
Kinks, The. ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, (The Kinks Are) The Village Green Preservation Society (London: Pye, 1968).
Kinks, The. ‘There Is No Life Without Love’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967).
Kinks, The. ‘Waterloo Sunset’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967).
[1] The Beatles, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
[2] Idem, ‘Nowhere Man’, Rubber Soul (London: Parlophone, 1965); The Kinks, ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’, State of Confusion (London: Arista, 1983).
[3] Bernard Perusse, ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else: Ray Davies, the Perpetual Outsider’, The Gazette (Montreal), 25 March 2006: http://www.somagraphics.net/portfolio/gazette/P22.pdf.
[4] The Kinks, ‘Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man’, Preservation Act 1 (London: RCA, 1973); idem, ‘Brainwashed’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
[5] Ray Davies, X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), pp.2, 1.
[6] Thomas M. Kitts, Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else (London: Routledge, 2008), p.252.
[7] The Kinks, ‘Shangri-la’, Arthur.
[8] Idem, ‘Misfits’, Misfits (London: Arista, 1978); idem, ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
[9] Idem, ‘The Contenders’, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (London: Pye, 1970); Idem, ‘I Am Free’, Kink Kontroversy.
[10] Idem, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967); idem, ‘There Is No Life Without Love’, Something Else By The Kinks.
[11] Idem, ‘I’m On An Island’, Kink Kontroversy.
[12] Idem, ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness’, Face to Face (London: Pye, 1966); Nick Hasted, The Story of The Kinks: You Really Got Me (London: Omnibus, 2011), ix.
[13] The Beatles, ‘There’s A Place’, Please Please Me (London: Parlophone, 1963).
[14] The Kinks, ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’.
[15] Ian Inglis, ‘Introduction: A Thousand Voices’, in idem (ed.), The Beatles, Popular Music And Society: A Thousand Voices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p.1; Jim Derogatis, Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Music from the 1960s to the 1990s (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p.24.
[16] The Beatles, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, The Beatles (White Album) (London: Parlophone, 1968).
[17] Idem, ‘Yellow Submarine’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine.
[18] Idem, ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (London: Parlophone, 1967).
[19] Harrison in The Beatles Anthology (London: Orion, 2000), p.254.
[20] Maureen Cleave, ‘How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This’, London Evening Standard, 4 March 1966: http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.0304-beatles-john-lennon-were-more-popular-than-jesus-now-maureen-cleave.html.
[21] Keith Altham, ‘The Kinks’ Peter Quaife’, New Musical Express, 2 April 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-peter-quaife; Davies, X-Ray p.199.
[22] David Stubbs, ‘The Death of The Beatles’, Uncut, November 2000: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-death-of-the-beatles; William Northcutt, ‘The Spectacle of Alienation: Death, Loss and Crowd in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in Reading The Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four, Kenneth Womack and Todd Davis (eds.) (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), p.132.
[23] Norman Jopling, ‘How The Beatles Spend An Evening’, Record Mirror, 15 May 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/how-the-beatles-spend-an-evening.
[24] McCartney (1984) cited in Northcutt, ‘The Spectacle of Alienation’, p.135.
[25] Stubbs, ‘The Death of The Beatles’.
[26] Janne Mäkelä, John Lennon Imagined: Cultural History Of A Rock Star (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2004), p.140.
[27] Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution In Britain, France, Italy, And The United States c.1958-c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.17.
[28] Keith Altham, ‘The Kinks: Kinks Back To Abnormal’, New Musical Express, 11 June 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks-back-to-abnormal; Kitts, p.4.
[29] Perusse, ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else’.
[30] Paul Williams, ‘The Kinks: Face To Face’, Crawdaddy!, March 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/ftof.html.
[31] Davies, X-Ray, p.361.
[32] The Kinks, ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, (The Kinks Are) The Village Green Preservation Society (London: Pye, 1968).
[33] Kitts, Ray Davies, p.4.
[34] Hasted, The Story of The Kinks, vii.
[35] Ibid. viii.
[36] Davies, X-Ray, p.156.
[37] Idem, ‘Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles LP’, Disc And Music Echo Magazine, August 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/beatles.html.
Where do they all come from?[1]
Throughout the 1960s The Beatles and The Kinks wrestled, in their music and in their careers, with the concept of the ‘outsider.’ From ‘Nowhere Man’ to ‘Clichés of the World (B Movie),’ both bands portrayed society as a harsh and potentially very lonely place, where vulnerable people such as ‘nowhere Man // Sitting in his Nowhere Land,’ and the ‘little man...who’s reached the end of his rope’ have tragic lives on the fringes of society.[2] What is interesting, however, is that while they both devote considerable time to exploring what it is to be a misfit, they identify different causes. They also prescribe very different solutions, with The Beatles favouring a form of collective individualism, as opposed to The Kinks’ idea that loneliness is the price of freedom, and that the only hope is the possibility of love. This is mirrored in the way in which the two bands interacted themselves with society. While both were undoubtedly hugely popular and famous, as the decade progressed they both sought to place their music and lives outside of mainstream culture. The Beatles did this by engaging increasingly in the counterculture of the 1960s, albeit in a complex relationship, but The Kinks, under the guidance of Ray Davies, went a step further to eschew even the counterculture itself, thus becoming the ‘perpetual outsider’ of 1960s popular music.[3]
Both The Kinks and The Beatles saw mainstream society as deeply flawed and generating a concerning number of isolated individuals. For The Kinks, society was deliberately repressive, where ‘crooked politicians // Betray the working man,’ and where the population is ‘Brainwashed.’[4] This mirrors Ray Davies’ metaphorical claims in his autobiography that he was ‘fostered by the Corporation as a child,’ and grew up ‘one of the faceless thousands manufactured by this corporate society.’[5] Ray was convinced that a corrupt society had ‘increasingly empowered itself at the expense of individual certainty and liberty, leaving the individual in various states of confusion and incompleteness.’[6] Most people, therefore, are unable to realize the extent to which they are controlled, but The Kinks felt that they were in a position to observe and criticise the way that society works. They reserved the greatest condemnation for those who have some suspicion about how repressed they are, yet are ‘too scared to think about how insecure [they] are.’[7] Although they are naturally ‘misfits,’ they ‘run away and hide’ from the truth and instead embrace those homogenizing symbols of the repressive society, becoming ‘dedicated follower[s] of fashion,’ much to The Kinks’ disgust.[8]
However, perhaps this scathing tone is rather harsh. The cost of rebelling against the ‘Corporation’ is high, as they argue that the individual sets themselves up for life as an outsider. For those brave enough to see ‘what it’s like in the world outside,’ they are met with a harsh and lonely reality, as the outsider admits morosely in ‘I Am Free’: ‘I need someone, it’s dark and it could get lonely // I am free.’[9] The only solution offered by The Kinks to the loneliness of being on the outside is love. This is specifically romantic love, as experienced by Terry and Julie in ‘Waterloo Sunset,’ and which leads The Kinks to conclude that for them, as enlightened outsiders ‘there is no life without love.’[10] However, if that love is terminated for any reason, the outsider is left alone ‘on an island.’[11] For those unfortunate ones, such as ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness,’ who ‘might as well have died’ after ‘the only boy she had // Went and coolly stepped aside,’ the only solace left is The Kinks’ music, which sought to provide ‘a musical haven for misfits and innocents...for the three minutes most Davies’ tunes play.’[12]
Similarly, The Beatles offer romantic love as a way to escape from isolation. As early as their 1963 album, Please Please Me, they claim that ‘There’s a place // I can go // When I feel low ... I think of you.’[13] They also explore how love lost can lead to isolation in songs such as ‘You’re Going to Lose that Girl’ and ‘Yesterday.’ However, unlike The Kinks, they offer another interpretation of the loneliness of being an outsider, based on different assumptions about how society actually functions. While The Kinks see society as a massive ‘false perception’[14] with loneliness as an outsider as the only alternative, The Beatles explore the concept of being lost within the crowd of mainstream culture. Thus, Eleanor Rigby and Father McKenzie are alone in spite of the people who surround them in the McKenzie’s congregation, and the wedding which passed Eleanor Rigby by. This move by The Beatles to critically examining society is first seen in 1965 in ‘Nowhere Man’ where they begin to explore the idea of society creating people who are both unloved and incapable of love (such as the ‘Taxman’). This, in part, marks their development from traditional male pop groups appealing to a young female audience into what Ian Inglis has termed ‘men of ideas,’ and coincides with a general mood among many ‘Baby Boomers in the mid-’60s...beginning to question authority and search for a way of living that was richer and fuller than what straight society offered,’ without leaving that society altogether.[15]
The Beatles’ response to ‘straight society’ is somewhat like The Kinks’, in that it requires the individual to break away from the masses and become something of an outsider to achieve some form of enlightenment. It is after doing this that Harrison has adequate distance and perspective to ‘look at the world and...notice it’s turning.’[16] However, the predicted results of this outsider perspective are wildly different. While The Kinks anticipate perpetual isolation, or at best existing with just one other person, The Beatles envisage that they will be able to form their own ideal communities with like-minded individuals, like the one described in ‘Yellow Submarine,’ where ‘our friends are all aboard’ and they ‘live a life of ease // Every one of us has all we need.’[17] In fact, therefore, the way to avoid loneliness and isolation for The Beatles was to engage in self-exploration to work out where they fitted in, and that in groups outside of mainstream culture they would ‘get by with a little help from [their] friends.’[18] Tellingly, they also concede that they would ‘get high with a little help from [their] friends,’ as The Beatles often sought this self-realization by using drugs to try to achieve a child-like awareness. Harrison described the sense of community that this collective individualism gave to The Beatles in the summer of 1967, claiming that ‘there was definitely a vibe: we could feel what was going on with our friends - and people who had similar goals in America - even though we were miles away. You could just pick up the vibes, man.’[19] So ironically, for The Beatles becoming outsiders enabled them to avoid the isolation they experienced in mainstream society.
This preoccupation with outsiders and marginal members of society may seem peculiar for bands as popular as The Beatles and The Kinks. Indeed, Maureen Cleave claimed in 1966 that ‘The Beatles’ fame is beyond question...With [the Queen] they share the security of a stable life at the top.’[20] Similarly, Keith Altham noted how The Kinks would be met everywhere they went by ‘the usual crowd of adoring schoolgirls’ in 1965, the same year that Ray Davies claimed The Kinks launched their ‘assault on the rest of the world’ with ‘the UK...more or less ‘in the pocket.’’[21] However, while The Beatles in particular were ‘probably the four most famous people in the world,’ ‘by the end of 1966, The Beatles began to see their relationship to the crowd as an antagonistic one.’ [22] The chaos of Beatlemania in the early years of The Beatles’ career is show in their film A Hard Day’s Night (1964), which depicts The Beatles constantly having to run away from hoards of screaming girls. Interestingly, however, they do not seek solace with the other professionals in the music industry, such as their quarrelling managers, Shake and Norm, as The Beatles’ behaviour, though childish at times, is also professional in a way that no one else in the film is able to achieve. Thus, as scenes such as the famous Ringo scene, perhaps as early as 1964 The Beatles were feeling lost within the crowd that surrounded them due to their own fame. As with Ringo, perhaps the only way for them to escape was to take time to look at themselves and to work out where they fitted in. While Ringo doesn’t fit in entirely with the boy he meets, nor in the pub that he visits, he eventually realises that he belongs in with the other Beatles, and rejoins them for their performance.
Thus, in many ways, The Beatles implemented what they advocated in their songs, associating themselves with increasingly marginal practices as they became disillusioned with their role in society, and sought self-realization. In 1965 it was noted that ‘the boys are leading almost entirely self-contained lives,’[23] and they took this further after the disastrous tour of America in 1966 when they stopped touring and developed a new image for themselves in their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band album. This depicted The Beatles’ own funeral, and was, according to McCartney, an attempt to ‘lose our identities, to submerge ourselves in the persona of a fake group,’ giving them the freedom to explore beyond the restrictive mop-top image.[24] Similarly, following Brian Epstein’s death in 1967, John Lennon in particular withdrew, drifting ‘onto a sea of LSD and eventually into the choppier waters of heroin addiction. In his subconscious search for another father substitute to replace Epstein, he’d been much taken with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.’[25] With Yoko Ono he also later explored political activism and different forms of art. Thus, increasingly, The Beatles’ image ‘was shifting toward a new kind of pop intellectualism, demonstrated by their interest in social issues such as drugs, religion, the war in Vietnam, and, increasingly, the function of art and music in society.’[26] This matched a general mood among certain aspects of the ‘new subcultures and movements,’ which formed in certain parts of British society during the 1960s and were ‘generally critical of, or in opposition to, one or more aspects of established society.’[27] There were still some tensions within the counterculture, such as frustration over the nature of Lennon’s political activism in the late 1960s which eschewed a leadership role for a more abstract idea of peace. However, for the most part, The Beatles’ disengagement from mainstream society meant that they found a place for themselves in the developing counterculture, and ultimately ‘got by with a little help from their friends.’
The Kinks, however, seem to have taken this attempt to break away from the restraints of mainstream society to another level. As a band they seem much more ‘abnormal’ and they have ‘always been different, always outsiders in the rock world.’[28] This can be seen both in the way their music was ‘always proudly out of step’ with contemporary trends, and also in their behaviour throughout the 1960s.[29] Paul Williams argues that Ray Davies’ music ‘has nothing to do with almost anything else. It’s in a category unto itself.’[30] Indeed, this does seem to be the case, as Ray Davies himself explained: ‘when everybody else thought that the hip thing to do was to drop acid, do as many drugs as possible, and listen to music in a coma, The Kinks were singing songs about lost friends, draught beer, motorbike riders, wicked witches and flying cats.’[31] Thus, in singing about topics such as the ‘Village Green Preservation Society,’ and declaring ‘God save strawberry jam and all the varieties,’ The Kinks were consciously disengaging even from the popular themes of the counter-culture.[32] Like the characters in their songs, they were becoming the ultimate outsiders of British music.
This idiosyncratic style of music was enforced by their behaviour in the 1960s. The Kinks never played at ‘Monterey Pop or Woodstock, the major rock festivals of the 1960s, or the Live Aid benefits of the 1980s.’[33] Following a violent row in 1965 with a US union official ‘The Kinks returned to Britain soon afterwards, leaving behind a trail of confusion and hatred.’[34] They were not allowed to perform in the USA again until the end of the 1960s, by which time their strongest rivals, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who, had capitalised on their absence. Yet even when these competitors had ‘atrophied’ by the beginning of the 1970s, ‘Ray Davies went underground, with a series of unbought, interior albums...deliberately buried treasures only now being unearthed,’ such as the 1971 album Muswell Hillbillies.[35] It is interesting that in sharp contrast to The Beatles, who either as a group or in their subsequent solo years were on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine, The Kinks never once were pictured.
Given their attempts to engage with the marginal and the ‘misfits,’ perhaps this under-representation in more mainstream rock magazines may be seen as appropriate. However, it is possible that one band being more on the fringes than another could have caused friction, as The Kinks and The Beatles had a tense relationship with sometimes extreme rivalry. Ray Davies remembers how John Lennon told him before a concert in which both bands were performing that ‘You’re just there to keep the crowds occupied until we go on.’[36] Davies later reviewed The Beatles’ Revolver album, claiming that Yellow Submarine ‘is a load of rubbish, really’ and that the album’s biggest asset is only that ‘the balance and recording technique are as good as ever.’[37] While it is possible to argue that this competitiveness may have been based on personal rivalry or financial gain, it also reveals a crucial paradox for both The Beatles and The Kinks: that the success of conveying their messages about society and outsiders depended fundamentally on their popularity. Thus, on the one hand, both bands sought to escape from the constraints to which they felt they were subjected by society, and which their fame exacerbated. On the other, it was only thanks to their fame that they had the means to promote their views and explore the ideas further, through travel, drug-taking and engaging in the thriving counterculture in 1960s Britain (and in the case of The Kinks, beyond the counterculture). In this way, their experiences of fame made each band obsessed with being outsiders, although they interpreted this isolation in different ways. Yet it was precisely because this fame had such a tight hold on them, keeping both bands (and especially The Beatles) at least in part so firmly in the mainstream, that their views on being outsiders were heard by so many.
Overall, both The Beatles and The Kinks place the issue of the outsider at the centre of many of their songs, although with slightly different interpretations. The Kinks view society as deliberately oppressive, but argue that the individual who breaks away from this faces extreme loneliness and estrangement, unless they are lucky enough to find love that lasts. While The Beatles value the roll of romantic love in avoiding being an outsider, they also argue that the love between friends, and belonging to a group, can keep an individual from being alone, even if the group itself is on the fringes of society. However, it is necessary for the individual to engage in serious self-exploration to determine where they truly belong. In many ways, their attitudes were mirrored by the way they conducted themselves. The Beatles increasingly sought to disengage with mainstream culture and explore aspects of the counterculture as the 1960s progressed. The Kinks took this a stage further, deliberately championing aspects of everyday life to place themselves outside of the counterculture itself, and being seen as a more marginal band as a result. However, both bands retained a complex relationship with the mainstream throughout their careers. While they often found their fame repressive, and it fuelled their obsession with the concept of the outsider, it was only by using their stardom that they were able to make their ideas heard by the largest number of people possible. Perhaps, straddling mainstream celebrity culture, the counterculture and beyond made The Beatles and The Kinks both the best and the worst outsiders in the 1960s.
Bibliography
Books
Beatles, The. The Beatles Anthology (London: Orion Publishing Group, 2000).
Davies, Ray. X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995).
Derogatis, Jim. Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Music From The 1960s To The 1990s (London: Fourth Estate, 1996).
Hasted, Nick. The Story Of The Kinks: You Really Got Me (London: Omnibus Press, 2011).
Inglis, Ian. ‘Introduction: A Thousand Voices’, in idem (ed.), The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: A Thousand Voices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
Kitts, Thomas M. Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else (London: Routledge, 2008).
Mäkelä, Janne. John Lennon Imagined: Cultural History Of A Rock Star (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2004).
Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties: Cultural Revolution In Britain, France, Italy, And The United States c.1958-c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
Northcutt, William. ‘The Spectacle of Alienation: Death, Loss and Crowd in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in Kenneth Womack and Todd Davis (eds). Reading The Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism and the Fab Four (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006).
Articles
Altham, Keith. ‘The Kinks’ Peter Quaife’, New Musical Express, 2 April 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-peter-quaife.
Altham, Keith. ‘The Kinks: Kinks Back To Abnormal’, New Musical Express, 11 June 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks-back-to-abnormal.
Cleave, Maureen. ‘How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This’, London Evening Standard, 4 March 1966: http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.0304-beatles-john-lennon-were-more-popular-than-jesus-now-maureen-cleave.html.
Davies, Ray. ‘Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles LP’, Disc and Music Echo, August 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/beatles.html.
Jopling, Norman. ‘How The Beatles Spend An Evening’, Record Mirror, 15 May 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/how-the-beatles-spend-an-evening.
Jopling, Norman. ‘The Kinks: Kinks’, Record Mirror, 3 October 1964: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks.
Mervis, Scott. ‘Kinks Preservation Society’, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10 May 2007.
Perusse, Bernard. ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else: Ray Davies, the Perpetual Outsider’, The Gazette (Montreal), 25 March 2006: http://www.somagraphics.net/portfolio/gazette/P22.pdf.
Stubbs, David. ‘The Death of The Beatles’, Uncut, November 2000: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-death-of-the-beatles.
Williams, Paul. ‘The Kinks: Face To Face’, Crawdaddy!, March 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/ftof.html.
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Beatles, The. ‘Eleanor Rigby’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
Beatles, The. ‘Nowhere Man’, Rubber Soul (London: Parlophone, 1965).
Beatles, The. ‘There’s A Place’, Please Please Me (London: Parlophone, 1963).
Beatles, The. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, The Beatles (White Album) (London: Parlophone, 1968).
Beatles, The. ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (London: Parlophone, 1967).
Beatles, The. ‘Yellow Submarine’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
Kinks, The. ‘Brainwashed’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
Kinks, The. ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’, State of Confusion (London: Arista, 1983).
Kinks, The. ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘I Am Free’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘I’m On An Island’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
Kinks, The. ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness’, Face to Face (London: Pye, 1966).
Kinks, The. ‘Misfits’, Misfits (London: Arista, 1978).
Kinks, The. ‘Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man’, Preservation Act 1 (London: RCA, 1973).
Kinks, The. ‘Shangri-la’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
Kinks, The. ‘The Contenders’, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (London: Pye, 1970).
Kinks, The. ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, (The Kinks Are) The Village Green Preservation Society (London: Pye, 1968).
Kinks, The. ‘There Is No Life Without Love’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967).
Kinks, The. ‘Waterloo Sunset’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967).
[1] The Beatles, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine (London: Parlophone, 1966).
[2] Idem, ‘Nowhere Man’, Rubber Soul (London: Parlophone, 1965); The Kinks, ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’, State of Confusion (London: Arista, 1983).
[3] Bernard Perusse, ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else: Ray Davies, the Perpetual Outsider’, The Gazette (Montreal), 25 March 2006: http://www.somagraphics.net/portfolio/gazette/P22.pdf.
[4] The Kinks, ‘Money & Corruption/I Am Your Man’, Preservation Act 1 (London: RCA, 1973); idem, ‘Brainwashed’, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (London: Pye, 1969).
[5] Ray Davies, X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995), pp.2, 1.
[6] Thomas M. Kitts, Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else (London: Routledge, 2008), p.252.
[7] The Kinks, ‘Shangri-la’, Arthur.
[8] Idem, ‘Misfits’, Misfits (London: Arista, 1978); idem, ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’, The Kink Kontroversy (London: Pye, 1965).
[9] Idem, ‘The Contenders’, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One (London: Pye, 1970); Idem, ‘I Am Free’, Kink Kontroversy.
[10] Idem, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, Something Else By The Kinks (London: Pye, 1967); idem, ‘There Is No Life Without Love’, Something Else By The Kinks.
[11] Idem, ‘I’m On An Island’, Kink Kontroversy.
[12] Idem, ‘Little Miss Queen of Darkness’, Face to Face (London: Pye, 1966); Nick Hasted, The Story of The Kinks: You Really Got Me (London: Omnibus, 2011), ix.
[13] The Beatles, ‘There’s A Place’, Please Please Me (London: Parlophone, 1963).
[14] The Kinks, ‘Clichés Of The World (B Movie)’.
[15] Ian Inglis, ‘Introduction: A Thousand Voices’, in idem (ed.), The Beatles, Popular Music And Society: A Thousand Voices (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p.1; Jim Derogatis, Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Music from the 1960s to the 1990s (London: Fourth Estate, 1996), p.24.
[16] The Beatles, ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, The Beatles (White Album) (London: Parlophone, 1968).
[17] Idem, ‘Yellow Submarine’, Eleanor Rigby/Yellow Submarine.
[18] Idem, ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (London: Parlophone, 1967).
[19] Harrison in The Beatles Anthology (London: Orion, 2000), p.254.
[20] Maureen Cleave, ‘How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This’, London Evening Standard, 4 March 1966: http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.0304-beatles-john-lennon-were-more-popular-than-jesus-now-maureen-cleave.html.
[21] Keith Altham, ‘The Kinks’ Peter Quaife’, New Musical Express, 2 April 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-peter-quaife; Davies, X-Ray p.199.
[22] David Stubbs, ‘The Death of The Beatles’, Uncut, November 2000: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-death-of-the-beatles; William Northcutt, ‘The Spectacle of Alienation: Death, Loss and Crowd in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, in Reading The Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four, Kenneth Womack and Todd Davis (eds.) (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), p.132.
[23] Norman Jopling, ‘How The Beatles Spend An Evening’, Record Mirror, 15 May 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/how-the-beatles-spend-an-evening.
[24] McCartney (1984) cited in Northcutt, ‘The Spectacle of Alienation’, p.135.
[25] Stubbs, ‘The Death of The Beatles’.
[26] Janne Mäkelä, John Lennon Imagined: Cultural History Of A Rock Star (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2004), p.140.
[27] Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution In Britain, France, Italy, And The United States c.1958-c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p.17.
[28] Keith Altham, ‘The Kinks: Kinks Back To Abnormal’, New Musical Express, 11 June 1965: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/the-kinks-kinks-back-to-abnormal; Kitts, p.4.
[29] Perusse, ‘He’s Not Like Everybody Else’.
[30] Paul Williams, ‘The Kinks: Face To Face’, Crawdaddy!, March 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/ftof.html.
[31] Davies, X-Ray, p.361.
[32] The Kinks, ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’, (The Kinks Are) The Village Green Preservation Society (London: Pye, 1968).
[33] Kitts, Ray Davies, p.4.
[34] Hasted, The Story of The Kinks, vii.
[35] Ibid. viii.
[36] Davies, X-Ray, p.156.
[37] Idem, ‘Ray Davies Reviews The Beatles LP’, Disc And Music Echo Magazine, August 1967: http://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/beatles.html.