20th Century Man

From a Rolling Stone interview with Ray Davies, February, 2006:

You used to have insomnia. Did you write most of your songs at night?

Yeah, that's when I wrote "Rocky Skies." Same with "Don't Lie to Me" and "Nothin' in This World Can Stop Me Worryin' 'Bout That Girl" -- which ended up in the movie Rushmore. I wrote "All Day and All of the Night" in the morning, and "Sunny Afternoon" I wrote in the afternoon. Now I don't write songs during the night -- I just worry.

Where was the sloppiest Kinks show ever?

In Virginia, in the early Seventies. It was on a revolving stage, and during the first song I jumped in the air, fell on my head and knocked myself out, and was carried offstage. My brother [Dave] was drunk, so he had to sit down for the set [laughs]. The moment my brother could have taken over the band, he was too out of it! So Mike Cotton, our harmonica player, took over center stage and began doing "You Really Got Me." I had to fight the ambulance crew to let me back onstage, because they sounded terrible without me. I did the rest of the set with my head bandaged up.

Dave was known for playing at ear-shattering volume. Did you ever turn down his amp?

Yeah. We had a guitar tech who worked out a device on the side of my amp, so I could control his maximum volume. We had Dave well in control.

Are you kidding? Dave didn't know you were doing that?

He didn't notice. The guy that took the heat was the monitor guy. We lost a lot of monitor men during that period [laughs]. But it had to be done. Then Dave started to draw a line around the area where he played, and nobody was allowed to walk in that space.

Has the hip-hop community embraced you, now that you've taken a bullet?

[Laughs] I'll tell you, it's not cool -- it fucking hurts. But it's cool I got shot and we're here talking about it.