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As soon as two English people greet each other for the first time and say they are pleased to meet you , they both know, just for the melody of the phrase, what kind of school each one went to, in what layer of the upper, middle or working class I think and if he aspires to social ascent or if he pretends to be proletarian. Or, at least, I read or heard that somewhere. I am not English, I write in ears and, in any case, I already imagine that many young Englishmen try to forget that obsession and overcome the immense legacy of novels, songs and movies that share the theme: social classes. Good luck.

An example: the most interesting thing that any reader of any book on The Kinks will find (mine is called God save the Kinks , is by Rob Jovanovic, and, despite the title, not bad) will be information about the torments and disappointments of Two poor brothers transplanted to a world of cheerful snobs in the 60s and 70s.

Like so many other brothers, Dave and Ray Davies, guitarist and singer of The Kinks, they have hated each other, they have hated each other for the usual, for fraternal competitiveness and for the brutality with which grievances are expressed as a family . But also for more complex issues such as loyalty to a social class, to a cultrura.

Some facts: Ray was the first son of his parents after six girls. Three years later Dave came and the account was closed. Together and overcrowded they lived in a small house in Fortis Green, a modest neighborhood in North London that time has mitigated a bit silly.

Eye: yours was not the worst possible family. There was joy and a piano and some culture in the environment and their parents were sweet and well-meaning people. Dave has said that house looked like a Fellini film.

What was not in Fortis Green was space. That is why Ray was sent to live with his older sister, Rosie. And here begins the drama .

Ray came out winning in the move. Rosie was doing well, she had a washing machine, TV and a presentable husband. The pleasures of the middle classes thus appeared in Ray's life and allied with a natural artistic and depressive temperament. Bourgeois vices that manifested soon.

Ray must be a man with a sense of humor: he once said that at age 15 he behaved like a Smiths fan ahead of time , bright, sensitive and sad. He discovered that he had a good hand to draw and got a scholarship at an art school. He got bored and started writing because he also had a good ear. For Ray, rock was not a necessary destination but an option among the many that awaited him.

More complicated was Dave: with 14 years he was thrown out of high school because he had bedded his girlfriend in the yard . The young was sent as far as possible, so she could never meet Dave again. I was pregnant but he didn't know it until many years later.

Of course, many middle-class boys also get into trouble: they are thrown out of school and sexually reckless . But, in the end, they always have someone to teach them not to self-destruct at all . Instead, Dave faced only his drama and turned it into a great burden of resentment. He got into fights, drank a lot and wandered aimlessly. When his favorite sister, Rene, died, Dave finally turned to anger. Ray, to the melancholy.

Ellipsis in time. We are in 1964 and The Kinks are in the foam of the days . Dave has turned his anger into the score of You really got me , his little piece of glory. Ray has found the great theme for his creativity: the story and ennoblement of the working class through the music of cabarets, their extravagant characters , humor and loneliness ... But that does not mean that things went well for them. to the brothers

The Kinks triumphed, but were a disaster in their success . If they were taken to TV they were like idiots; if they slept with the fans they would take them out in the tabloids; they were kicked out of the United States for misconduct and felt that their private school managers laughed at them and cheated them . The Davies premiered all the clichés imaginable for a rock band: the shattered hotel room, the concert frustrated by alcohol, the guitarist's hand broken in a fight, the ruinous mansion in the countryside ... They were not anecdotes: they were the Expression of a very intimate anguish.

At that time, Brian Wilson decided to stay at home, composing, while his colleagues at The Beach Boys led the public life of a band. Ray wanted The Kinks to do the same, he wanted to lock himself up and let Dave be the star, but Dave was a time bomb and couldn't go out into the world alone. The rancor came: Ray felt that he was leading the odious life of a rocker because of Dave's immaturity , while Dave reproached Ray for his neurotic gentrification. They hit each other privately and humiliated themselves in public whenever there was occasion, but they needed each other as musicians and that is why they lived doomed to mutual torment.

The funny thing is that The Beatles, who did everything that The Kinks did well, separated exhausted in 1970. Instead, the Davies have had a very long and admirable career together. And there is still room for tenderness: once Ray tried to kill himself, it was Dave who took care of him. Hate also works.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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