"Dead End Street" (Ray Davies)

Ray Davies: 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. The Beatles are aware that Mr. So and So in Northhampton is about to buy the record and listen to it while he's having his tea. I think they've always tried to keep that in mind. I'm a little bit more selfish. Sorry, I'm not answering your question directly. We do tend to think about what we're doing (pause) too much. And that's what happened in "Dead End Street."

Jonathan Cott.  “The Kinks’ Ray Davies Talks.” Rolling Stone (10 November 1969): https://www.kindakinks.net/misc/articles/rs69.html


Ray Davies: My whole feeling about the ’60s was that it’s not as great as everyone thinks it is. Carnaby Street, everybody looking happy, that was all a camouflage. That’s what Dead End Street was about. I wrote it around the time I had to buy a house and I was terrified. I never wanted to own anything because my dad had never owned property. He’d inherited from his dad that he had to rent all his life. So I still have inbuilt shame of owning anything. It’s guilt. I forget who said it, ‘All property is theft’? [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon? One of those mad people. “Dead End Street was meant to be a song my dad could sing, like a Minnie the Moocher-type Cab Calloway song. Our producer, Shel Talmy, recorded it during the day with this French horn player which sounded a bit pompous. I said, ‘That’s not right, Shel.’ He said, ‘Nah, it sounds great.’ So after he went home we went back in and recorded it with a trombone player from the local pub in Piccadilly, paid him cash, and he put that now-legendary solo on the end. The next morning we played it to Shel and he said, ‘See, I told you it’s great, you don’t need to redo it.’ He couldn’t tell the difference.
Q Magazine. "Face to Face with Ray Davies." Q Magazine (29 November 2016): https://www.pressreader.com/uk/q-uk/20161129/283519385486701 (accessed December 2017).

Ray Davies: I wanted to write abou the cold reality, the lies and the deceits. The Sixties were just beginning to be shown to be a lie. (298)
Johnny Rogan. Ray Davies: A Complicated Life. London: The Bodley Head, 2015.