Ray Davies Quotes (27 Quotes)


    I have been astonished by the reactions and apparent shame of some of the U.S. television reporters who seemed overwhelmed to discover that there actually is poverty in America, ... They made me want to grab my television and shout 'Hello, dear reporter, yes, America actually does have poor and underprivileged people as well. Hello, yes, the president might well be slow to react but at times like this, that's all that an over-burdened, out-of-touch president can be.

    When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog - big as a donkey.

    If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear.

    What you are saying too, is that it's not only what other people are doing, it's what I'm doing, what I'm feeling. It's a little bit selfish as well.

    She only sang. I didn't have to talk to her. I was quite uncomfortable, but I thought it was a nice moment. Love ends, but songs are for ever. They capture a moment and an emotion. You can have two human beings who should not be in the same house, or possibly even the same country, but the music tells you that it really could have been for ever. In those three minutes, there are no hard feelings.


    I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently - if I had walked around the studio or gone out - it wouldn't have turned out that way.

    Then I got together with my brother and a friend and we decided to play dates. The more we played, the more we wanted to do it. And it got to a stage where we wanted to do it all the time.

    I'm susceptible to that sort of thing - to walls and flowers. You can probably get something more from a wall than a person sometimes. It's just put somewhere.

    ('Other People's Lives') is my first attempt to make a studio album that's got original songs on it, and it's a completely new adventure for me.

    I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere.

    Those three chords were part of my life - G, F, Bb - yeh, it is, it is, and I can't help noticing it. But there have been other things nearly as close to it which people haven't noticed, other things we have done.

    At one time they've been the most important thing to me. So I can't hear our records on the radio, I can't stand it, because they sound so out of what everyone else is doing.

    What struck me was that it was more like the family Christmas I enjoyed as a child growing up in London. Thanksgiving is a time for sharing and even though they throw up their eyes as though it were a chore, family members traditionally gather for a reunion at the house of the oldest relative.

    When you are making a record and if you spend too much time over it, you have to record it a tone lower or cut the tones lower because you can't reach some of the notes, I find this. But when you go on stage, you have to put the key up and it really changes the whole thing.

    Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

    No one can penetrate me. They only see what's in their own fancy, always.

    If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done.

    I'm easy driving, But I'm not a person who loves living pleasantly above all else. I'm not that way at all. I might think I'm that, but I'm not really that.

    I was an art student at the time, like thousands of others.


    I like surfers. Their imagery, it's great.

    I don't think England is that gray but India is like a long drone.

    I got that idea from being in India. I always like the chanting.

    What I try to do probably doesn't come out. What I've worked out what I do - I might not be right - is to do something very personal, and then suddenly I look at it, up in the air. I blow it up and look at it and then I come down again - a better man.

    I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.

    People take pictures of the Summer, just in case someone thought they had missed it, and to proved that it really existed.

    Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep.


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