THE Kinks Book

In Which Doris Gets Her Oats, or, The Kinks Get Their Due

“This is insane!” I laughed, as I looked out onto my front porch to see a very large white box. It was too large to hold a book, wasn’t it? I opened the door, made several elder person huff-and-puff noises as I clumsily picked it up, and hurried the heavy package into the house.

As I opened the outer box, there were more boxes. “HA! This. Is. INSANE!!” I giggled with delighted disbelief. THE BOOK was here at last! If you are a devoted fan of the very British rock band The Kinks, “The Book” is probably how you’ve referred to author/researcher/archivist/musician Doug Hinman’s “All Day And All Of The Night: Day-By-Day Concerts, Recordings and Broadcasts, 1961-1996,” since it was published in 2004. It was exactly as described: a 350-page opus of Kinks career facts, from their band beginnings to the early post-Kinks Ray and Dave Davies solo shows. It was an incredible piece of work, cited often as the most scholarly, reliable source of Kinks info ever produced.

But what does one do when the Information Age keeps exponentially expanding? In the 22 years since the original book was published, Doug has kept on doing what he’s done since he was an actual kid: he tracks and checks and rechecks and re-rechecks and digs and delves and finds and places more Kinks puzzle pieces. The picture of Kinks history, one of the most elusive and interesting in rock, had become more clear and full, and it needed to be shared, but the task was deeply daunting on every level. How could The Book become THE BOOK? For many years, it seemed an utterly unattainable wish.

WAIT…there…in the far distance…a rider on a Kinky white horse…it’s Andrew Sandoval! Could an alliance be formed with this Grammy-nominated musical reissue specialist, DJ, author, journalist, and musician (who actually performed with Dave Davies)? Who just happens to own Beatland Books, a small-but-mighty publisher of the most gorgeous, detail-and-photo-laden music books you’ve ever seen? Could East Coast Doug and West Coast Andrew sort through the formidable Hinman archive to re-imagine Doug’s original book to become the Kinks reference book that equals, and yes, even surpasses peer bands’ similar tomes (coughcough Beatles)?

My goodness. MY GOODNESS. I opened my Super Deluxe Edition, with it’s fancy foiling and TWO boxes and an extra scrapbook and hardcover and numbered and signed by Doug and Andrew AND FRIGGIN’ DAVE DAVIES, and I was genuinely overwhelmed. They did it. They took Doug’s book, an already wonderful thing, and made it into this explosion of rare photos, memorabilia, and flowing information, beginning from the band members’ births to 1971. They had to cut it at ‘71 because people like me couldn’t LIFT THE DAMN BOOK otherwise. This is sort of true. There are hopes to produce more volumes to cover the entire Kinks career if this first one sells well, and if there’s any justice in this world, it will.

It’s worth explaining that this beautiful piece of work is not a biography, at least not in the sense of the typical rock book. There are quite a few of those about the Kinks now, and they all have value to read. Of course, Ray and Dave Davies’ own books (X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography, Americana, Waterloo Sunset; Kink and Living On A Thin Line) are fascinating (and sometimes rather obfuscated and/or wild) rides through their own history, and there’s also unique insight from the late Pete Quaife’s Veritas books, a lightly-fictionalized account of his Kinks years. THE KINKS – ALL DAY AND ALL OF THE NIGHT The Day-By-Day Story Pt 1: 1940-1971 (i.e., THE BOOK) tells the Kinks’ story through the daily details much like a diary, but with carefully-selected and relevant quotes from the band and those around them at that time. It feels so vibrant and exciting as one moves along the timeline along with the band, and when you realize all that was achieved during this period and how young they were, it’s truly remarkable.

And the photos! SWOON! So many full color, many unbelievably rare or unseen…this book delivers on graphics, gig posters, sheet music, rare recordings, and all the incredible band photos you could ever, ever want. I think of all the Kinks scrapbooks filled with articles and photos I painstakingly collected as a kid and young adult, and this book is like those on turbo mega steroids. A dream, a dream, a dream.

I’ve known Doug Hinman for decades, and he’s one of my dearest friends. Dangit, we were even in the Washington Post a year ago with our pal Jim Napoli as we saw the Kinks musical “Sunny Afternoon” in Chicago, and pondered on our years as “superfans.” I have a pretty good view into the “whys” and “how on earths” of this effort. This, I believe, is a fact: if Doug hadn’t put in the lifetime, serious, academic commitment into excavating and preserving the details of Kinks history, no one else ever would’ve or probably could’ve, and the vast majority of it would’ve been lost to time and faded memories.

The Kinks were and are musically important over these 60+ years since they began, highly influential, and still beloved by music fans all over the world. I know the process of this book, and I know the people behind it, and I know that what you read in this book is not opinion or conjecture or agenda. Everything in here has been vetted upon vetted and anything that is unsure is marked as such. Many, many, many stones and boulders have been overturned and many teeth pulled because there is value in the truth of even the smallest details. This is how it was, and how it unfolded, how it looked, how it was reported. It’s not only an immense, joyful gift to Kinks fans, but to music history, and most importantly, to the band members and their families.

THE BOOK now has its own table to live on, where I can page through it at my leisure as I sip Kinks-brand tea, while figuring out where to put another table for a Volume 2! Thank you Doug and Andrew for delivering the dream, and for giving the Kinks this gorgeous representation of their very deserved due.