Dave Davies

Dave Davies, 2002

David Russell Gordon Davies (born February 3, 1947 in Fortis Green, London , England ) is lead guitarist and co-founder of the English rock band The Kinks . In the list of the best guitarists of all time by the music magazine Rolling Stone , he is listed at number 91.

Life

Davies is the younger brother of the Kinks songwriter Ray Davies , with whom he shares a love-hate relationship that has been partly lived out in songs and on stage.

Legendary, however, is a stage fight from 1965 between Dave Davies and drummer Mick Avory in Cardiff ( Wales ), as a result of which Davies had to answer for assault.

Davies also tried his hand at being a solo musician. With Death of a Clown and Susannah's Still Alive , he achieved two hit parades in the 1960s. His other solo releases were unsuccessful, but after the end of the band in the 1990s, Davies gained a sworn fan base with his new young band. He relied on his own hits as well as the songs of his brother, which he has played regularly on tours in the United States since 1997. In 2001 he also performed in Germany , Austria and Great Britain.

Davies played the first three solo albums in the early 1980s. After the end of the Kinks and in the course of the publication of his autobiography Kink , different career reviews with the title Unfinished Business (1999) each appeared on two CDs in Europe and the USA due to the contractual situation. In addition, a live CD Rock Bottom was released in 2000 and in 2002 the first studio album after 1983 entitled Bug . In 2007 Davies released his album Fractured Mindz , which he initially sold on the Internet , but then also appeared with two bonus tracks on Koch Records in the USA.

Davies has eight children with various women. Similar to his brother Ray, Dave Davies is considered a difficult character. In his book Kink he comes out as bisexual . In 2004 he suffered a stroke . In February 2010 he released the DVD Mystical Journey . A planned US tour to promote his DVD was canceled on medical advice.

The album I Will Be Me was released in June 2013 .

In November 2014, the album Rippin 'Up Time was released , with which he went on a US tour in autumn 2015.

Equipment

Dave Davies got his first guitar, a semi-acoustic Harmony Meteor , when he was fourteen. This guitar can be heard on the Kinks' first hit, You Really Got Me .

In the early years he mainly played the semi-acoustic Guild Starfire , as well as a Gibson Flying V , which he acquired in the USA in the mid-1960s after his guild was lost after a flight.

A 12-string Fender Electric XII was used on I'm Not Like Everybody Else (1966) .

In the 1970s he increasingly played Stratocaster and Telecaster models. Gibson guitars were added in the late 1970s , especially the Artisan and L5S models . In the 1980s and 1990s, the Telecaster was again his main guitar.

Dave Davies produced the influential distorted sound of his guitar on You Really Got Me by cutting open the speaker cone of his Elpico guitar amplifier with a razor blade and inserting needles into it. The guitar signal was then routed to a Vox AC30 .

Around 1967 Davies switched to Hiwatt amplifiers, a few years later he used a Fender Twin Reverb. At the end of the 1970s he mainly used Peavey amplifiers, which he later combined with amplifiers from the Gallien Krueger company.

Discography

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Singles

Death of a clown   DE 3 09/01/1967 (7 weeks)   AT 8th 10/15/1967 (12 weeks)   UK 3 07/25/1967 (10 weeks) Susannah's Still Alive   DE 27 01/01/1968 (4 weeks)   UK 20th 12/12/1967 (7 weeks)

• Dave Davies (AFL1-3603) (1980)
• Glamor (1981)
• Chosen People (1983)
• Purusha and the Spiritual Planet (1998)
• Fortis Green (1999)
• Fragile (2001)
• Bug (2002)
• Fractured Mindz (2007)
• I Will Be Me (2013)
• Rippin 'Up Time (2014)
• Decade (2018)

Live and compilations

• Solo Live - Live Solo Performance at Marian College (2000)
• Bugged… Live! (2002)
• Rock Bottom - Live at the Bottom Line (2000)
• Transformation - Live at the Alex Theater (2003, published by Meta Media)
• Transformation - Live at the Alex Theater (2005, released by AngelAir Records)
• Kinked (March 7, 2006)
• Rippin 'Up New York City (September 2015)

literature

• Dave Davies: Kink. To Autobiography . Boxtree Ltd., London 1996 ISBN 0-7522-1695-3 .

Web links

• Official website of Dave Davies

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The 100 best guitarists of all time
2. ↑ Interview on Guitar International ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ "The Kinks: Dave Davies" ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Guitars on www.davedavies.com ( Memento of the original from April 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Article in Guitar Player 1977 ( memento of the original from October 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Article in Guitar Player 1990 ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT UK