"We change as human beings on a daily basis, so our opinions and our feelings change as well," Dave Davies says with a soft smile. "Music is like a painting: hanging it on the wall, it keeps relating different things to you."
Considering the many musical lives that Davies has lived, he has become intimately familiar with that evolving sense of meaning. Since co-founding the legendary English rock band the Kinks with his brother Ray in 1963, Davies has exposed every inch of his soul and personal history through song. With the recent release of The Journey, Part 1 — the first of two career-spanning Kinks compilations of hits, B-sides, and favorites — Davies has had even more opportunity to discover new facets to the memories and feelings he’s been expressing across the decades.
"I can't imagine what we would do without music or art," he says. Countless fans around the world have Davies to thank that they don’t need to worry about that sad possibility.
Davies spoke with GRAMMY.com about some of his favorite songs from The Journey, Part 1 that deserve more love, the impact of his parents' and siblings’ favorite music, and the lessons he’s taken from the Kinks’ discography.
"Stop Your Sobbing" (1964)
Ray's always been prolific, but that was a particularly prolific stage. We've always been, like, visual writers. The music is very visual. It's kind of a family thing, as well. We even had an album called Think Visual some years ago.
And even thinking back to my early days, listening to Eddie Cochran, it's very visual music, the movement and the words. It can really put you into a mental dimension of that time. Ray was a genius at that, writing about things that had been going on at that time, even though sometimes it was like recycling a menu from a diner. [Laughs] It was all fantastic.
"Dead End Street" (1966)
A song I've always liked is "Dead End Street". That's always made me feel like that's where our family comes from. That's always been really important to me.
Ray and I are obviously very attached to our family history and family members. A lot of inspiration comes from people either in our family or people connected to our family. A lot of memory flows through family and through events. We were listening to everything — country music, my mom and dad liked a lot of the music from the '30s and '40s, and my sisters liked show music and film music like "Oklahoma," dance band music — just so much. Ray and I were so lucky to grow up with so many musical influences.
"I'm Not Like Everybody Else" (1966)
That song makes a statement about where we come from as people. I never thought I was like anybody else. Ray always thought that that would be a key song for me. It says a lot about the Kinks as people. I've always found that the Kinks were always a bit different in what we did as artists and people. I would use that song as a recommendation for the whole compilation.
"Wonderboy"(1967)
I always talk about "Wonderboy" as a very overlooked track. It's a lot deeper and has a lot more meaning to it than what people realize. Sometimes we try so hard to get things, to do things, and maybe the best thing is staring us straight in the face.
[Music] is even sometimes a great means of expressing what you don't know. That's what "Wonderboy" intimates: Maybe what we're looking for is in front of us… It's all happening now. You don't have to try so hard. You don't have to drive yourself crazy trying to work out what you need to do in life. Sometimes people are put in our lives for joy and wonderment and unusual thoughts. It's important to encourage each other, to help other people.
"Death of a Clown" (1967)
I was going through a time where I thought, What the hell are we doing? I was going to parties all the time and hanging out, and it made me reflect on what we were doing as a band. It made me think of being a circus actor, a clown.
I think the important thing was that we were just a regular working class family. Ray had a great ability to observe life in a slightly different way. The whole family did, really. We learned at a young age, being a big family, that music was a great means to express everyday things in a positive way.
"She's Got Everything" (1968)
That one’s a really great rocker, and it's about a rock 'n' roll romance. I love to do that one live.
The remastering is really cool. I think they did a really good job on the remaster for the compilation. Ray kind of oversaw most of the remastering, but we had all had different important stages. And BMG were of great help. It's great to work with a record company like that. It makes it a bit different.
"Days" (1968)
"Days" has always been a very important track for the Kinks, through our evolution as a band. That song ticked so many boxes [and] it's always a poignant piece of music whenever we've played it. It came out at a time when we were all experiencing a lot of inner change, emotional change, business change, life change — Ray especially. And that song would always lend itself to a memory of some sort of loss but also of understanding.
Maybe we should think more about things before we've done them. We don't always take the time to understand feelings. We can't throw our emotional ideas away because we don't understand the depth of them. But over time we can find out more through a song, a painting, a person. Really good music you listen to and think about over and over again.
"Mindless Child of Motherhood" (1969)
That song is really based on a theme of childhood love — really my first love, which was at school. We were 15, and we were separated, and our parents wouldn't let us see each other. You can read all about it in my autobiography [laughs] if you fancy. "Mindless Child of Motherhood" is about how she had a baby and we couldn't become a proper family, all that heavy emotional stuff.
It's like poetry. Sometimes you don't realize fully what it's about until some years later. That makes it more interesting. Art offers a way of expressing the way you feel, even if you don't know exactly what you mean. It's very deep inside of you and sometimes you only find out later. We'd go really mad if none of us had a means of expression like that. That's what's so great about rock 'n roll in the early days, when we were kids: It was a great means to express ourselves. When you're young, you don't always know what you're expressing, but sometimes it's enough to dance, or stomp your feet. We can take so much sometimes by saying very little.