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"Cos I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Still I dream of the Black Hills that I ain't never seen."
What a charming scoundrel, Mr. Raymond Douglas Davies. If there were an award for brass-faced cheek in rock music, I believe it would rightly be his. No one like him has been able to mock everything and everyone in over thirty years of an illustrious career, continuously angering producers, colleagues, critics, and the public from a position of shameless arrogance and Oscar Wilde-level sarcasm. He was the most revolutionary of conservatives and the most conservative of revolutionaries. A Leo Longanesi of rock 'n' roll who dipped his pen in venom to satirize the vices and virtues of society in general and show business in particular. He was excessive, mocking, insolent, and snobbish, and he straightforwardly called out beatniks, the operetta revolutionaries of '68, and punks, all derided by his skewed vis polemica. Being himself, obviously, a rogue of the highest order.
Take the lyrics of the chorus of the song at the top, the title track that closes that "Muswell Hillbillies" of 1971, the first album of phase-2 of the Kinks' career, marking their debut for the then-powerful RCA. Here, an unbounded love for America is declared, especially for the most traditional part, not for the New York intellectuals or, even worse, the sunny and fashionable West Coast. But this declaration comes precisely from the lips of someone who, until a few months prior, could have been considered English through and through, the rock equivalent of afternoon tea, strawberries with cream, and the Changing of the Guard in front of Buckingham Palace. The album in question was supposed to be their star-spangled consecration. Only in hindsight, it was the Kinks' last great album.
Obviously, the result was light years away from what the record label expected. With the recent breakup of the Lennon-McCartney duo, RCA managers thought they had struck gold by signing that impudent Englishman who was supposed to churn out chart-busting hits like "You Really Got Me", "Victoria", and "Lola". None of that happened. Ray Davies, whether consciously or not, came out with an album that offered nothing to easily please tastes or the charts. An album that skillfully mixes quiet moods and electro-acoustic sound, able to build the ideal bridge between suburban London—where the Davies brothers were born and raised—and rural America. Authentic, if I may be bold with the neologism, "Blues-collar (pop)rock".
Indeed, no album from Mr. Raymond's pen, in its lyrics and music, breathes such a "working class" air, albeit in his style, which is certainly not that of a John Lennon. It's the general mood of the album that captivates. Never overblown, yet there are tracks that "rock", like the opening "20th Century Man", straightforward rock 'n' roll that hits the mark and the almost-hard "Here Come the People in Grey". In "Skin & Bone" and "Complicated Life", the Kinks had never been so rhythm 'n' blues. And what about the left-handed pop-cabaret vein, that Made in England trademark present from "Something Else..." to "Arthur"? Rest assured, the languorous "Holiday", "Alcohol", and "Have a Cuppa Tea" fulfill that need. Towards the end, the masterpiece ballad that can never be absent from an author of such caliber: "Oklahoma U.S.A.", among Ray Davies's top ten songs in my opinion, and that's saying enough. And yet, a Rolling Stones-style outtake with a slide and organ triumph, "Uncle Son". To close it all, the brisk country-rock of the same title with the aforementioned lyrics. Green on Red and the Long Ryders born in the English countryside a decade earlier. A perfect seal.
"I'm proud of that album (he's talking about "Muswell Hillbillies", ed.). I think it's as good a record as the Kinks ever made." When talking about himself and his matters, Ray Davies was always deadly serious...
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 Skin and Bone (03:37)
Fat Flabby Annie was incredibly big
She weighed just about sixteen stone
And then a fake dietician went and put her on a diet
Now she looks like skin and bone
She looks like skin and bone
Do the meditation and yoga
And she's thrown away the good food guide
And she's given up the alcohol and pizzas
And the pies and now she looks as if she's ready to die,
You can't see her walk by
Don't eat no mashed potatoes,
Don't eat no buttered scones
Stay away from carbohydrates
You're gonna look like skin and bone.
Living on the edge of starvation
And she says she's got no appetite
And her father and her mother
And her sisters and her brothers
Couldn't see her when she walked by
You can't see her walk by.
She don't eat no mashed potatoes,
She don't eat no buttered scones
Stay away from carbohydrates
You're gonna look like skin and bone.
She used to be so cuddly,
She used to be so fat,
But oh what a sin cos she's oh so thin
That she lost all the friends that she had,
She looks like skin and bone
If you look flabby
And you feel overweight,
And you wanna lose a couple of stone,
Take a crash course diet do your daily exercises
And you'll look like skin and bone.
Come on rattle them bones,
Put your hands up to the ceiling,
Bend your hips and touch your toes,
Do your daily exercises,
You're gonna look like skin and bone,
Don't eat no mashed potatoes,
Don't eat no buttered scones
Don't eat no carbohydrates
You're gonna look like skin and bone
10 Oklahoma U.S.A. (02:35)
All life we work but work is bore,
If life's for livin' what's livin' for,
She lives in a house that's near decay,
Built for the industrial revolution,
But in her dreams she is far away,
In Oklahoma U.S.A.
With Shirley Jones and Gordon McRea,
As she buys her paper at the corner shop,
She's walkin' on the surrey with the fringe on top,
Cos in her dreams she is far away,
In Oklahoma U.S.A.,
She walks to work but she's still in a daze,
She's Rita Hayworth or Doris Day,
And Errol Flynn's gonna take her away,
To Oklahoma U.S.A.,
All life we work but work is a bore,
If life's for livin' then what's livin' for.
12 Muswell Hillbilly (04:50)
Well I said goodbye to Rosie Rooke this morning,
I'm gonna miss her bloodshot alcoholic eyes,
She wore her Sunday hat so she'd impress me,
I'm gonna carry her memory 'til the day I die.
They'll move me up to Muswell Hill tomorrow,
Photographs and souvenirs are all I've got,
They're gonna try and make me change my way of living,
But they'll never make me something that I'm not.
Cos I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
but my heart lies in old West Virginia,
Never seen New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee,
Still I dream of the Black Hills that I ain't never seen.
They're putting us in little boxes,
No character just uniformity,
They're trying to build a computerised community,
But they'll never make a zombie out of me.
They'll try and make me study elocution,
Because they say my accent isn't right,
They can clear the slums as part of their solution,
But they're never gonna kill my cockney pride.
Cos I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy,
But my heart lies in Old West Virginia,
Though my hills are not green,
I have seen them in my dreams,
Take me back to those Black Hills,
That I have never seen.
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