“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch.”

- Rudyard Kipling

It was Thanksgiving night, 1974, and our uncle dropped my brother Pete and my cousin Freddy off in front of Madison Square Garden in New York City. Freddy was attending an Elton John concert in the Garden; Pete and I were going to a concert in the much smaller venue under the Garden. Back then it was called, “The Felt Forum”, and we had tickets to see Ray Davies (pronounced, “Davis”) and the Kinks perform his rock opera/vaudeville show, Preservation.

Standing on the sidewalk in the cold November night, it was easy to spot which fans were going to which concert. It was the heyday of “glam-rock”, and Elton’s fans wore lamé and had glitter on their eyelids and in their hair, and coke spoons dangling from chains around their necks. They stepped out of limousines in two-inch high platform shoes, long leather coats, fur and feather boas and tight zebra-skin pants – and that was just his male fans.

The Kinks fans, on the other hand, were dressed in flannel shirts and jeans, sporting long, long hair, and rolled out of taxicabs. Dressed in leather coats or denim jackets, some of them were surreptitiously sipping beer from cans hidden in brown paper bags.

Inside, the first half of the show was the usual Kinks concert. Ray balanced a can of Schaefer Beer on his head, and led us in a sing-along of the “Banana Boat Song” (“Day-o”). My younger brother noticed that, as Ray conversed with the audience between numbers, Ray’s younger brother Dave (the Kinks’ lead guitarist) was making faces at him behind his back. It was such a younger-brother thing to do, and it took a younger brother to notice.

Ray Davies may be the best-kept secret in the world of songwriters. Could Lennon and McCartney – talented as they are - have written the following?

I’ll be your Tarzan, you be my Jane,
I’ll keep you warm and you keep me sane.

That couplet is from Ray’s song, “Apeman”.

Pete Townsend, of the Who, once said in the early seventies that Ray would always be a good songwriter, because he often wrote from the perspective of an old man. Maybe so, but that’s only part of the explanation. My brother Pete, himself a jazz guitarist, says that Ray might be a genius for all the imaginative songs he’s written in so many different styles using only a 1-4-5 blues progression. For me, it’s the fact that he can be scathing in one song and funny in the next; or, cold and contemptuous; or, old and nostalgic.

For me, his best song is “Waterloo Sunset”. I’m not going to quote the lyrics; they have to be heard with the music. There’s not another songwriter in the world that projects so many conflicting feelings in one song. A complex protagonist - reveling in the simple pleasures of an urban dusk - experiences desperation mixed with hope, and alienation mixed with longing - and a quiet, lonely happiness.

The music is quite lovely; the song makes an excellent lullaby. I’ve sung both my grandsons to sleep with it. Without understanding the words, they seem to feel from the music a sense of place and safety.

In February of 1996, my wife and I went to see Ray’s “Storyteller” show in the Westbeth Theater in New York’s Greenwich Village. The theater seats 500 and was decorated like a pub. The audience sat mesmerized as Ray sang and told stories. It was as intimate as someone’s basement or family room. Ray was older, with less hair, but had that same crooked smile. There were a lot of fans there who had dragged along friends and significant others. These newcomers - who only knew him from “You Really Got Me” and “Lola” – walked out charmed by his wit and charisma.

That Thanksgiving night back in 1974 went down in the annals of rock and roll history for what happened at that address, but not for what the Kinks did. Upstairs, John Lennon joined Elton for the encore, singing, “I Saw her Standing There.” Supposedly, Yoko Ono was backstage and the rumor was that the Lennons were getting back together.

Downstairs in the Felt Forum, you could have spread the word about what was happening above our heads, and no one would have lifted an eyebrow. We were enjoying the Kinks; that was where we belonged.

(Ray Davies celebrated his sixty-forth birthday on June 21. Happy Birthday, Mr. Davies – and God save the Kinks.)