Themes
Ray Davies crafted the concept album as an homage to English hamlet and country life and culture.
The album theme was inspired by the November 1966 track "Village Green", which was inspired by the Kinks' performances in rustic Devon, England in late 1966. (Davies has also stated that Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood was an indirect inspiration for the concept). This song neatly sums up the album's broad theme: "I miss the village green, and all the simple people..." In addition to nostalgia, the album's songs touch on a wide range of emotions and experiences, from lost friends ("Do You Remember Walter?"), memories ("People Take Pictures of Each Other", "Picture Book"), technological obsolescence ("Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"), bucolic escape ("Animal Farm"), social marginalization ("Johnny Thunder", "Wicked Annabella"), public embarrassment ("All of My Friends Were There"), childlike fantasy ("Phenomenal Cat"), straying from home ("Starstruck") and stoical acceptance of life ("Big Sky", "Sitting By the Riverside"). Davies did not compose many of the songs to fit the predetermined theme of the album, rather their commonality developed naturally from his nostalgic songwriting interests at the time. The title track, one of the last written and recorded (in August 1968), effectively unifies the songs through an appeal to preserve a litany of sentimental objects, experiences, and fictional characters from progress and modern indifference: "God save little shops, china cups, and virginity". This last lyric inspired the slogan, "God save the Kinks" which was used in the US promotion for the album, and was associated with the band through the 1970s.
Session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins contributed significantly to the album. With the exception of true orchestral backing on the early "Village Green" track, the string and woodwind backings on such tracks as "Animal Farm", "Days", "Starstruck" and "Phenomenal Cat" were simulated by the Mellotron, played by both Hopkins and Ray Davies.
Read more about this topic: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)