THE KINKS - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)

“I am sentimental about my childhood - not my own particular childhood, but the civilisation which I grew up in and which is now, I suppose, just about at its last kick”

“Coming Up For Air,” George Orwell

This is a quietly bitter record. Ray Davies put this together at the tender age of 25 whilst battling with the insecurity of his role as breadwinner for both family and band. He was recovering from a breakdown, adapting to fatherhood and in career limbo due to an American touring ban, which had The Kinks reduced to playing the Northern cabaret circuit. The songs bear witness to the psychological unravelling of a British subject, mirroring the decline of the Empire itself with Davies drawing on his own family for inspiration. But somewhere along the line, the archetypal affection for his subject matter got lost. In fact the sweet hummable tunes and chipper delivery make the lyrical desperation at the heart of it, all the more harrowing. The political stance is ambiguous but as a summary of the first 69 years of the 20^th century, it stands as an eviscerating portrait of working-class servility. And it makes me think about my own family.

From a childhood smothered in the fag-end “Land of hope and gloria, land of my Victoria”, Arthur miscomprehends his future. “I was born lucky me, in a land that I loved”. Job, family, methodism for the straight and narrow, “Scenes from the Afghan War” ‘tween skits at the Pally for entertainment. But in a heart-beat, the military drums of “Yes Sir No Sir” establish a life routine exercised on the shiny wet parade ground of school and barrack. “Stop your dreaming and your idle wishing, you’re outside and there ain’t no admission to our play”. An angry and pivotal song, it reads like a manifesto of oppression. I think of my Dad’s Dad and his first trip from home in 1915. Train from Oldham Mumps to Milton Haven, vomit filled boat to Channel fort , training in weapons of mass destruction, application in Flanders mud and blood. “Give the scum a gun and make the bugger fight and be sure to have deserters shot on sight, if he dies we’ll send a medal to his wife.” My Grandad was buried alive on the Western Front but dug himself out in time to witness the Canadian’s amphetamine charge at Vimy Ridge. “Some Mother’s Son”, recounts heartbreaking sacrifice. “One soldier glances up to see the sun and dreams of games he played when he was young” One minute it’s cowboys and Indians in the rhododendron bushes of Alexandra Park, “…a second later he is dead”.

Moving on into the post-war, we’re in the bread and circuses of consumerism, courting in a rented jalopy, “Drivin’” to adventure, in… Potters Bar. Forget, forget, forget. Like a thunderbolt “Brainwashed” deviates from any semblance of the universal to directly address the condition of our eponymous hero, punning on his genuflecting, carpet fitter profession. “Look like a real human being but you don’t have a mind of your own. Yeah, you can talk, you can breathe, you can work, you can stich, you can sew but you’re brainwashed. Yes you are, yes you are. Get
down on your knees!”.

In 1934 my Grandad was on his knees, convalescing on the dole and my 4 year old Dad went with mother to visit the cotton mills of Massachusetts. This was no holiday, it was reconnaissance for escape. It didn’t happen. Arthur contemplates a similar still-born fantasy in “Australia” where “nobody has to be, any better than what they want to be”, where “nobody has a chip on their shoulder”, where “…everyone walks around with a perpetual smile across their face”. The song starts in playful style like the Terry Gilliam-esque artwork on the sleeve, but the aboriginal sounds and tooting jazz soon turn it into an end of pier nightmare. There is no crock of gold. The crumpled Thomas Cook pamphlets, salvaged and smoothed out on Whitehall desks, selecting Australia as test site for the Bomb. A future destination for the airmen sent like lab-rats into the atomic clouds billowing over the vaporized atolls.

Arthur reaches the summit in an alternative “Shangri-La” somewhere in one of those suburbs that spread like gravy over the Nation’s tablecloth. “Put on your slippers and sit by the fire, you’ve reached your top and you just can’t get any higher”. It’s the emotional and musical peak, with urgent strummed guitars, tinkling harpsichords and lyrics hammered out like last rites. “You need not worry you need not care, you can’t go anywhere”. You can’t go anywhere!

In short fashion the Second World War breaks out and as “Mr Churchill Says”, “ gotta fight the bloody battle to the very end”, with the conflict erupting in a surreal barrage of raga-rock. Post-war austerity follows and the raucous pantomime of “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina” parades working class pride in the face of adversity. In the interval, Palestine and Mau-Mau on the newsreels, for the main feature, “The Dambusters”. Then coming up for air Arthur reflects on his “Young and Innocent Days” indulging in a nostalgia, that seems not what it used to be.  

In “Nothing to Say”, the albums grinds towards it’s close with a glimpse of the isolation of age. I think of Dad and his Dad, I think of us all watching the football, their shared Unionism, their local pride and their stoicism but I also think of their strangely distant and jarring communication. For Arthur, his son is on his own aspirational path. “I’ll have to go soon cos I’m getting bored, I gotta be home early to see a good play”, and I think of my Dad’s transcendence of both his parents and his class.

By 1969 Britain had effectively become an archaic vessel in receipt of American culture, so it is strangely appropriate that the title track concludes as a country-style hoe-down. Davies had been commissioned to write the album for a Granada TV play, but it never got off the ground due to funding issues. The album was thus delayed and on release unfavourably compared to the heavy sounds of the day. “Shangri-La” was issued as a single but found no takers. Like the country The Kinks were suddenly out of time. But the lifting of the American touring ban opened up new horizons and like my Dad's speculative journey in 1934, The Kinks set sail in search of a new land of “hope and glory-ia”.