It was a paraphrase, I couldn’t find the actual quote, but it was from Rolling Stone, approximately the time he released White City, 1985-ish.
A lot of Kinks songs–“Well-Respected Man” and “Dedicated Follower of Fashion,” in particular–took on a new and deeper significance 15-20 years after they were released. “Mean Mr. Mustard,” by contrast, is and always has been simply what it is.
No, it isn’t. The Beatles fucking rocked live: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0JmAsltBWW8
The crowds were too loud, and the amplification inadequate for large venues, but The Beatles could more than hold up their end. Look at Ringo towards the end, hunched over his drums, rocking out. People dis his drumming - please.
btcg - I just figured out Monkey Man on guitar; hadn’t gotten to it before. Surprisingly easy - standard tuning, not Open G. Capo two frets up. Very fun to rock out on. This guy covers it well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R4FNcGT5fSk
Loads of people like the Beatles, loads of people don’t “get” the Kinks. It’s a really tough comparison because the Beatles called it quits in 1970 and The Kinks kept on keeping on, developing as people and as a band; and music technology in the '70s+ quickly aged the Beatles. The Beatles did some trippy, eclectic things. But this:
…really sums it up. For all their adventurousness, the Beatles have never made me laugh, cry, question myself, wish the world were a better place, or give me hope for humanity when everyone around me seems twisted and unkind. And they certainly never made me feel alright for feeling depressed. The Kinks can take the listener all over the emotional scale because they simply refuse to lie, and they can do it with lyrics or just the music. “All you need is love”? Bitch, please. Not in this world.
Dag Otto, that was fukkin funny. Dark and tasteless, but funny.
I can’t find the precise interview, but here’s a *Rolling Stone *interview between Townshend and Kurt Loder (1982) where he covers a little bit of the same ground:
Loder: I’ve been listening to Tug of War,* Paul McCartney’s new album. It may be the best thing he’s done in a while – it sounds real nice. But it seems to have virtually nothing to do with rock & roll.*
Townshend: Do you think he ever really had anything to do with rock & roll?
Loder: Well . . . .
Townshend: No, he never did. You know, I could sit down and have a conversation with Paul about rock & roll, and we’d be talking about two different things. He’s got a couple of years on me, but it could be ten years, we’re so different. If he talks about rock & roll, I think he is talking about Little Richard. Whereas I don’t think Little Richard mattered, you know?
Jeez, Pete, you are such an asshole.
Or, as Who fans are wont to say, another example of “Pete being Pete.”
The man has no filter…to say he has a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease would be a monumental understatement.
Doesn’t make him wrong though. 
Sure it does. There’s a big difference between saying “Paul rocks, but looks to earlier heroes. I think I/The Who rock harder because we focused on later rockers as influences.” vs. dissing Paul and Little Richard.
Let’s be clear about this: Little Richard fucking matters.
blondebear is spot on: Pete was trying to be cute and overstepped, as is his wont. His dick moves like this always remind me how he can’t get out of his own way. His music says so much. I often wish he’d speak a lot less.
Wow, I wouldn’t tag those kinks songs as the profound ones. They have meant the same thing since day one. If we’re going by those three songs: I’ll take Mean Mr Mustard. How do you know what it means anyway? It’s oblique catchy and great. Those Kinks numbers are didactic, cutesy and not so catchy at all.
Eh. I wasn’t saying that Pete WAS right, i was just saying that just because he comes across as an asshole doesn’t make him wrong.
It was the Stones wont to say this. They did it for 8 years, following the Beatles everywhere they went and saying “Look we’re the bad ones”. I don’t think it testifies to “heavyness.” Ambition maybe. I never liked monkey man.
Well, a lot of Americans don’t get “Mean Mr. Mustard” because they think “mean” = “nasty.” But in the UK at the time, “mean” meant “cheap.” That’s why he keeps a ten-bob note up his nose, and the rest of the lyrics fall into place.
I think he was saying he was younger than Paul and had a different outlook. He was trying to sell a record there you know.
He was interviewed on a John Fahey doc, and he mentioned that he hated the Platters, cause they weren’t in tune. Could be right.
I’m American and was a (very young) contemporaneous Beatles fan. I never worried the meaning of words in Beatles songs. They were so great. The more ambiguity the better. How could that be bad? The listener is also the art too. I was captivated. Saying a song like that “is what it is” is just wrong.
Ray was very stiff and messagy in those songs and this tendency came back way later on too.
Yeah. The Beatles were a live band before they were known. Later on, as famous people they were on a huge pop roller coaster ride where they never played under any normal circumstances at all.
They need to be judged on their Hamburg and cavern performances, which supposedly were the best in England. Lemmy was at the Cavern and he thought so.
I think the Kinks have it all over the Beatles when it comes to overrated-ness.
I mean, there are a fair number of Kinks songs that are very good and on occasion even brilliant. But Ray Davies was often held up as some sort of icon of cleverness (and if you couldn’t see it, you weren’t as perceptive and cool as Kinks fans).
This got to be a drag.
Is this something that was going on contemporaneously? I’m curious, as I don’t really know any history of Kinks vs Beatles fans or anything like that. (And it’s not like there’s much talk of the Kinks now.)
I remember some critics of the time raving about the Kinks, and occasionally using them as an example of a group that’s better than the Beatles.
Ray Davies was certainly a great songwriter, and some people thought that his ambition was admirable. He did do several concept albums: The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, Preservation Act I, Preservation Act II, Soap Opera, etc. The Beatles only had Sgt. Pepper (which is greater than any of the Kinks’).
Davies also experimented with styles, but they were things like British musical hall and country. The Beatles were more far ranging.
The Beatles were overall more popular (by a wide margin). The Kinks had a small but vocal coterie of critics who loved them, but I don’t think there was the sort of arguments like Beatles vs. Stones.
As I understand it there was a lot of competitive heat between these bands, but it was only visible between the lines. Remember that the kinks exploded with a few of the hardest rocking smash hits of the era, virtually inventing modern hard rock, and that Ray also was a master craftsman of melodic pop, who denied even listening to whole Beatles albums, and did a review /interview of revolver that was very limited and dismissive. If the Beatles were thinking who was their competition it was the kinks. They knew the stones were more limited in musical scope, and they had a ying yang relationship. The Who didn’t develop their sound so much during the invasion.
Ray has called McCartney one of the most competitive people he ever met, and said that Lennon was not: he just thought everyone else was shit. I imagine that if not for the Beatles, and a few twists of fate, the Kinks would have been known as the best band of the era, for songwriting.
The only real Beatles anecdote about the Kinks is that one night Lennon was stoned and pestered the DJ in a club to keep playing “Wonder Boy” over and over.
Wordman,
I play too… for 45 years, in fact. it’s the what I’d call a “plucking technique” that Richard’s uses that makes the playing so good (I played it in high school, btw); he actually makes the guitar talk. From the opening piano, which is joined by a chilling French horn… it’s a song that cries out a true cry of serious heroin addiction. Richard’s guitar playing from 1969 thru 1972 is unparalleled… you either see it, or you don’t.
Oh… adding this: play that song correctly and you’ll get attention.