THE KINKS - “Sunny Afternoon”
(#218, 9th July 1966)
I have a vivid image of Summer in the 60s, heat-hazed beauty, dollybirds in floral print minidresses, everything rich and green and the whole English countryside suffused with light. Since I wasn’t born until 1973, this can’t be from memory. My best guess is that it’s rooted in The Golden Oldie Picture Show, a tawdry early-80s TV show fronted by Dave Lee Travis whose hook was “what if old hits had had videos?”. Very cheap videos. I can’t remember if “Sunny Afternoon” was given the video treatment but later songs by the Mixtures and Mungo Jerry certainly were and they told me that the recent past was bucolic, full of rich young things, boaters, long legs, lawns, lanes and muttonchops.
“Sunny Afternoon”, with the Kinks playing an English Lovin’ Spoonful, is a seed for that languid vision, even if I didn’t realise it. It’s also a satire of the idly wealthy, but the languor overwhelms the satire for me, now and every time. Mind you, it seems to me that effective satire has to carry within it the temptation to become the thing it hates - or in this case the rueful fear that it already has. Pop itself was creating new wealth - yachts, stately homes, the taxman’s hand were hot topics and not just for mockery, especially given how the London scene mingled pop and fashion and the young aristocracy, all basking in each others’ glory. Distance and deference balance in “Sunny Afternoon”: compromised bliss is still, after all, blissful.
“Sunny Afternoon” is also one of those records where I wish I had any kind of musicological chops, so I could piece together exactly how the Kinks create its four-pints-down sense of boozy irresponsibility, where time meanders by and nothing matters except the sunshine and a refilled glass. Something in the rhythms, the pub backroom piano, the buskerly strum and Ray Davies dreamy, blurred vocal, no doubt. 8
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bza on October 18th, 2005
Man, I love this review. You make the best point I can think of every one of the hundreds of times I’ve listened to this song: how hard it is to see the sarcasm when the feeling it evokes is so effective.
I know Davies is being sarcastic, but I’ll be damned if every time I listen to this thing I’m not thinking “wow, that poor guy. I hope he gets his girl back.”
It’s no “Waterloo Sunset,” but “Sunny Afternoon” is a great bridge between the old and the new Kinks.
rjm on October 19th, 2005
This song was part of a loose trilogy on the Face To Face LP, along with “House In the Country” (which was a hit for The Pretty Things) and “Most Exclusive Residence For Sale”. Each song told basically the same story from different points of view–one third person, one somebody who hates the guy’s guts, and then from the first person point of view in “Sunny Afternoon” (even then, Ray was writing little operas). There’s a suggestion (I think) at the end of “Residence” that the guy kills himself–with drink if nothing else.
This is one of the few songs from the 60s (I was eight when it came out) that I really remember from the time, and when I got into the Kinks more deeply years later, I often wondered if people, especially in the US, even noticed the lyrics and realized what the song was about. That’s the great thing about satire in pop: you can bury things under so many layers of catchy beauty that when the real meaning comes through it hits even harder.
As for sources, this was the first song Ray wrote after suffering a nervous breakdown in February of ‘66. He said it came from listening to a lot of Sinatra while he was recovering, and I think the tone owes a lot to some of Frank’s saloon songs. It really is a beautiful record, and though I agree it’s not up to Waterloo Sunset, or as hard hitting as “Dead End Street”, it’s better than most everything else that followed.
And I like your mention of The Loving Spoonful (one of my favorites). I’d never really considered the connection to “Daydream”, but now it seems obvious. It was a pretty good year for summer songs (the Spoonful had two).
Marcello on October 19th, 2005
I suppose the song could be viewed as a reclamation of “Daydream”’s vaudeville, like the Karno boat sailing backwards. But there’s a barrier between me and the Kinks, and I think it’s to do with what I consider Ray Davies’ essentially High Tory perspective on the past and how it influences or even supersedes the present. As with Michael Powell in cinema, he recognises that the world he loves is coming to an end, though is equally cognisant of its multiple deep structural faults; unlike Powell, he can’t translate this melange of nostalgia and reluctant futurism into listenable art.
It may be the smugness (second smug song in a row, and I do have a problem with smugness in music in general) of what sounds like Harry Champion rewriting “Taxman.” Does the “ice-cool beer” (why “cool” and not “cold”? Does the protagonist consider himself still to be cool in the splendour of his ruination?) signify his demeanour of surface calm/uncaringness, or does it simply mean that he persuaded the bailiffs not to take the fridge?
Davies was wise enough to look through the other end of the societal telescope in the follow-up single “Dead End Street,” which is very similar in construction but explicates the misery imposed on those as a result of subsidising the whims of the protagonist of “Sunny Afternoon.” However, as Gissing did, Davies criticises The System but doesn’t see any useful or convenient replacement for it. Thus the drift into hallucinatory ruination (”Waterloo Sunset” is about a voyeur trying to pretend he’s happy and not living in a slum; and subsequently there’s the balance between the Quintin Terry mock-pastoralism of Village Green Preservation Society and the genuine rage of Arthur) and an elevated, etiolated past which Davies has never quite managed to convince me is worth revisiting or reclaiming.
bza on October 19th, 2005
This post has been removed by the author.
bza on October 19th, 2005
I wrote this about Village Green:
http://www.prefixmag.com/features/T/The-Kinks/The-Kinks/177
Alan Connor on October 19th, 2005
Resurrection Watch: Those of a sensitive disposition might like to hide their eyes before reading some of the covering artists: Stereophonics, Cathy Dennis, Jimmy Buffett, Brian Bennett, the Standells and, worst til last… Bob Geldof.
But Baby Gramps went for it on the Sub Poppy covers thing, and the Flying Pickets went for that bassline.
Marcello, thank you. Every so often, I decide that there must be something in the Kinks, and give them another try. Every so often, another “See my friend” or “Nothing in the world can stop me worryin bout that girl” comes along. But mostly, there’s archness.
For a while, I thought it was residual memories of seeing Ray D giving his sour readings from his boring book in 1994ish and letting the author thing get in the way.
But for the most part, I think it’s because there’s something about this kind of ’satirical’ pop that has something in common with other forms of fakery which are my nightmare. I suppose I’m saying I can see why it appealed to Geldof and the Stereophonics.
I’ll keep on trying, though.
Frank Kogan on October 20th, 2005
I love this more than “Waterloo.” More voluptuous.
Hearing this in real time age 12 I noticed not the satire, nor the wickedness. Did feel a sharpness, though, an r’n'r speed under the languorous sheen.
Amazing balance between shimmer and snarl; don’t know how they kept it up through the Sixties, or why it collapsed so quickly and completely c. 1970-71. With the shimmer lost, the snarl became stupid.
Frank Kogan on October 20th, 2005
Also, the Kinks may be the love of mine that friends have the most trouble sharing. (Well, that and hip-hop, and disco, and c&w, and Europop, and philosophy.) What I hear as style and twists, friends hear as lack of commitment.
Frank Kogan on October 20th, 2005
bza, the authorities won’t let me onto your Village Green.
Frank Kogan on October 20th, 2005
Same season as “Sunshine Superman.”
Alan Connor on October 20th, 2005
bza, the authorities won’t let me onto your Village Green.
Hmmmm… bza’s link works, but only if you copy and paste the text, rather than clicking on the hyperlink.
See if this flies:
http://www.prefixmag.com/features/T/The-Kinks/The-Kinks/177
Lena on October 20th, 2005
For some reason the line “telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty” sticks out for me, and for all I know this song may be one. But it’s so gratuitously slackerly that I have a hard time caring. Maybe if I was British I’d get the sarcasm?
bza on October 20th, 2005
how odd, maybe in my haste I pasted in the link to this comments section? We may never know…
Hope you enjoy if you did get to read it. Don’t take it to seriously either.
The Kinks are my favorite band, by the way, although they are certainly not for everybody. They did have so good songs post-Muswell, but their albums generally took a nose dive. So few bands stay relevant after ten years, though, it’s hard to single them out for their decline.
Anonymous on October 21st, 2005
I think that the Kinks ( and Ray in particular ) were writing ” out of the box” in the sixties. NO spoon, moon june, for ol’ Ray - except of course when he wanted it that way. Cue the face paint and gas lamps of the venerable music Hall.
Ray was into a broader palate than most at this time and writing about stuff he knew and cared about, England and it’s changing face in the sixties & seventies.
As in the name of an LP they did - he’s a chronicler of that time.
Incidentally , as all songwrtiters know , cool beer is a double rhyme with cruetly.
And just in passing I live in the home town of Zal from the Lovin’ Spoonful - unfortunately he passed away 2 years this Xmas and besides the musical legacy established the best restaurant ( Chez Piggy ) and the best bakery (Pan Chancho ) - this side of Montreal…
Brian in ( Kingston ) Canada
It's Dadaismus on October 27th, 2005
As a dyed-in-the-wool Kinks’ fans since I was THREE YEARS OLD (goldarnit!) (…or so my mum tells me), I’ve never liked this song much. Musically, it drags - no doubt deliberately but nonetheless - and the satirical edge of the lyrics is dulled by the fact that Ray, being a clever chap, seems only too aware of the fact that he could be singing about himself, if not his current self then his future self - so, on cue, archness ensues.
Also the reference to the taxman - 1966, a Labour government increases its majority from 3 to 97 and, all of a sudden, working class boys on the way up (yer George Harrisons and Ray Davieseseses) are bellyaching about their earnings disappearing to fuel Harold Wilson’s white hot technological bonfire instead of up their noses. Do I not like that…
And, yes, it has always struck me as an English equivalent of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream” (pettiness, cynicism and whingeing inclusive therefore) but then “Daydream” is another of my least favourite songs by another of my most favourite bands!
Frank Kogan on November 4th, 2005
it’s so gratuitously slackerly that I have a hard time caring
Lena, it’s interesting that you say this, since you and I are so close to each other in the way we hear “Paint It, Black.” In some ways - and not just the lyrics, but the delivery, the tone - “Sunny Afternoon” is “Paint It, Black,” with a sunny surface.
The Kinks, like the Stones, put their song elements at war with one other. The word “irony” isn’t sufficient to describe what’s going on in “Heart of Stone” and “Get Off of My Cloud” and “Under My Thumb” and “Back Street Girl” and “Street Fighting Man” and “Sunny Afternoon” and “Waterloo Sunset.” You can’t say that there’s some “intended” message in these songs that runs opposite to the “literal” message, since the war between elements is never resolved, and no message gets to define the song.
Frank Kogan on November 4th, 2005
“Sunny Afternoon” is notable for being one of my few absolute favorite Kinks songs that has neither drone nor rave-up. So it’s less Yardbirds-like than the others.
Lena on November 15th, 2005
I agree with you, Frank, on the hopelessness of this song - it is very dark and it’s hard to tell where to look for the darkness (”the tales of drunkenness and cruelty”?), but Jagger’s darkness is a literal blackness and this seems more like a kind of blurry helplessness wherein the singer wants to be saved, but there is no salvation - whereas Jagger knows what he wants. I don’t know, aggression vs. passive-aggression? I agree that there is no irony in this song, at least, and as a listener I can’t tell what the heck is going on. Maybe that’s the point?
Also, I don’t think this has much to do with the “Daydream” song which is uncomplicated to me - just slow and slack and kind of annoying.
maxes on December 29th, 2005
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bye
sj maclean on November 3rd, 2006
What a brilliant post from Tom. Captures an emotional feeling of how we like to think of the sixties. What a beautiful sense of calm it captures.
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Caledonianne on July 14th, 2007
Don’t know about “the English countryside suffused with light”, but for me this is redolent of Glsgow Fair day-trips for my nigh-on-seven year-old self with the cousins to Ayr, getting grubby on exhaling-their-last steam trains (”change at Dalry!”), chomping boiled egg sandwiches on sizzling sands, and sniggering conspiratorially about the “big fat mama” - perhaps because the accompanying aunt was a slender Joan Sanderson-type schoolmarm.
One of said cousins is now a Professor of Psychiatry. Wonder what he makes of it all?