I basically took all the notes of the Kinks recorded on my iPod – certainly nothing until 1980. And that all sounds good. The Kinks may be the only major band from the sixties who have not followed the psychedelic, has done all this crap that all the other great bands at the time imagined. If everyone wrote song cycles of Eastern mysticism, Ray Davies was on a plate two-up/two-down write in English in any suburb. Ray has written songs about the things that were important to him. He invented his world and gave his life. And in this world, people not wearing Nehru jackets, smoking pot and jam for 24 hours a day. The Kinks created a different world – and I’m glad they did.

When I heard about Village Green Preservation Society, 1971, I have this picture in my head of English life, a small city, village greens, cold beer, but when REM went to England in 1985, I crossed Muswell Hill – and it certainly was not romantic-looking. I had this image of a beautiful view – if it’s really kind of dirty area. I realized these songs were all acts of imagination that Ray was in memory of an England that was slipping away. This is a great touch of sadness in these songs.

I am, how great records by the Kinks’ sounded surprised – even if you listen closely, there is very little going on in them. Green Village is the best example: Unlike many records of his time, is filled with a Lots of tools. Yet the songs are performed to perfection, well-organized.

Ray wrote “You Really Got Me” on the piano. Then he gives to his brother, Dave, this maniac teenager who turns into a frenzied guitar part. I read that an interviewer once asked Dave if he had the heavy metal Kinks in the eighties, just gone. He said: “It was called Heavy Metal when I invented.” If R.E.M. started, only Dave solo on this song was the only I knew how to play. So if I were to do a solo, I only played it

The Kinks slipping in the history of rock through the back door. All those great albums we’re talking like Face to Face, Something Else by the Kinks and Village Green – nobody bought the records of the sixties. But those of us who love the records – and many of us are musicians – who have loved for decades.