Kinks – Come Dancing

I saw the Kinks on this tour. This remains one…if not the best concert I’ve ever attended. They were in their early forties and all over the stage. In 1983 this song peaked at #6 on the Billboard 100, #6 in Canada, and #12 in the UK.

Heineken Beer Bottle

When I was watching them, Ray kept drinking from a Heineken green bottle. He ended up tossing that bottle to a person in the audience.  During intermission, I went to the lobby and I talked to the guy that had the bottle. He said he would keep that forever…he was an intense Kinks fan. I bet that guy still has that bottle somewhere…and I would have done the same thing.

This song got heavy play on MTV at a time when I would watch the channel. I’ve always liked the Kinks. They get forgotten but deserve their place beside the Beatles, Who, and Stones…I used to say those three bands are the holy trinity of rock…but I have to add the Kinks…making it the 4 walls that hold the building up.

It was on their State of Confusion album. I bought it as it came out without hearing a song because I loved Give The People What They Want so much. It’s par for the course that Davies met resistance from record company head Clive Davis on this single. Davis didn’t want this song released as a single…he thought it was too British and vaudevillian. 

He wrote it as a reflection on his childhood and the dance halls of his youth. The song is particularly personal to him, as it was inspired by his older sister, Rene, who had a profound impact on his early life. Rene had given Ray his first guitar that he had tried to talk his parents into. On that same night, Rene passed away from a heart attack on her way to the  Lyceum Ballroom…a dance hall on Ray’s 13th birthday.

Ray Davies: Clive Davis didn’t want to put it out, because he thought it was too vaudevillian, too English. It was only the video that convinced him. It went on MTV when it first started, and they couldn’t stop rotating it.

Ray Davies:  “I wanted to regain some of the warmth I thought we’d lost, doing those stadium tours. ‘Come Dancing’ was an attempt to get back to roots, about my sisters’ memories of dancing in the ’50s.”

Come Dancing

They put a parking lot on a piece of land
When the supermarket used to stand
Before that they put up a bowling alley
On the site that used to be the local pally
That’s where the big bands used to come and play
My sister went there on a Saturday
Come dancing
All her boyfriends used to come and call
Why not come dancing, it’s only natural
Another Saturday, another date
She would be ready but she’s always make him wait
In the hallway, in anticipation
He didn’t know the night would end up in frustration
He’d end up blowing all his wages for the week
All for a cuddle and a peck on the cheek
Come dancing
That’s how they did it when I was just a kid
And when they said come dancing
My sister always did
My sister should have come in a midnight
And my mom would always sit up and wait
It always ended up in a big row
When my sister used to get home late
Out of my window I can see them in the moonlight
Two silhouettes saying goodnight by the garden gate
The day they knocked down the pally
My sister stood and cried
The day they knocked down the pally
Part of my childhood died, just died
Now I’m grown up and playing in a band
And there’s a car park where the pally used to stand
My sister’s married and she lives on an estate
Her daughters go out, now it’s her turn to wait
She knows they get away with things she never could
But if I asked her I wonder if she would
Come dancing
Come on sister, have yourself a ball
Don’t be afraid to come dancing
It’s only natural
Come dancing
Just like the pally on a Saturday
And all her friends will come dancing
Where the big bands used to play

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

44 thoughts on “Kinks – Come Dancing”

  2. Pingback: Kinks – Come Dancing – MobsterTiger

  3. Love that song , it got me to buy the album which was good as a whole & showcased their rock/pop dichotomy very well. I think they are at their best being very ‘British’ like this & ‘Waterloo Sunset’, but given the latter’s failure here I guess I can understand Davis’ hesitation. Glad he was proven wrong though

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    1. It is British but that catchy chorus wins out for most people…for me being too British is a good thing but yea I’m glad he was proven wrong.

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      1. me too. Obviously a really good melody and set of lyrics will win out more often than not. I could venture that maybe the times were more receptive to ‘very British’ sounds then – Thomas Dolby, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins all very big then and Bowie going from star to superstar – but then again… around ’66 the public didn’t half mind the Beatles or Stones!

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      2. I think that was the big difference between the Kinks and most of their peers…he did vocals with the accent…The Beatles and Stones sounded more American.

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  4. terrific post! I’m a HUGE kinks fan and saw them dozens of times and I don’t think I ever saw a gig end without a fistfight lol as soon as I get my new blog up and running I would like to reboot this! I’ve been watching your blog for a while , coming into my inbox and was always really excited to see what you had to share but I injured my typing arms so I’m hopelessly behind in my emails but I HAD TO SAY SOMETHING when you did the Kinks lol

    peace and love, Sherry Carroll the Sherry fairy

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  5. It was the Kinks that made a lot of us think we could be musicians. We heard “All Day and All of the Night” and thought we could do that. Once they got to “Muswell Hillbillies” it was pretty clear that we couldn’t do that. The keyboard on “Come Dancing” always made me think of roller rinks and the carnival midway…and they knew how to tell a story!

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    1. I too like The Kinks and would have this as one of my favourite singles of theirs Yet I always thought it very un-Kinks-like!

      It reminds me of Modern Romance and a couple other pop bands that went down a sort of Salsa route in the early ’80s.

      But the message is very poignant – bothe the passing of his sister and the passing of the old school dance halls which every town in UK has at one point.

      😄

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  11. Can’t beat the Kinks, on every album I’ve heard there is always at least one song that shines in one way or the other. The tempo and feel n this I pair with ‘Heart Of Gold’.

    On the ‘too Brit’ point it seems a bit petty- I mean, Mick Jagger tried to sound as far South as he could go without it become complete parody, and there’s this whole Americana thing been going on for years now- so wot’s wrong with sounding a bit British? Nuffink.

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    1. I totally feel the same. I don’t know what the big deal is by actually sounding British. It fits well to me and adds more history to Davies songs.

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  12. Where some write lyrics directly apprehended, (e.g. The Beatles,) others write in metaphor (e.g. U2 and Bob Dylan,) Ray writes in liminal, sacred spaces. Even the fun songs like this one have a charm beyond the words. I put Springsteen in the liminal category also. It’s too bad “the man” squelched their US popularity. Enough of their songs got through that most people recognize their hits, like Lola and this one. Good choice to share on a Monday, Max. We all need a lift.

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    1. Very well put Lisa. (I hang my head in shame, I had to look up ‘liminal’ but that is the perfect word.) Some of his lyrics are, well, just Kinksish. I mean who else could have written ‘Autumn Almanac?’ It has a bouncy jaunty beat and grey downbeat ‘this is my lot’ lyrics that shouldn’t work but they do!

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      1. Just listened to it on YouTube. He’s a poet at heart and when you add in the melodies they transport me to another place. I feel like I know Ray through his lyrics. Would love to meet him sometime.

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    3. Thanks Lisa…yea you can’t be too British to me. Davies and Springsteen do remind me of each other…one is an American and one English.

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      2. Oh many critics say that bands like Slade, Mott The Hoople, Kinks, and other bands with a heavy British accent while singing are too British to make it over here. Thats always the excuse of why bands like that don’t make it over here…. T Rex would fall into that also. Of course it’s garbage…I think it’s the record companies more than anything.

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  14. I can just imagine his wife going through his stuff and wondering “why’s he have this old beer bottle?” and confronting him about it, and when he explains she has no idea what he’s talking about…

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  15. I’ve always liked “Coming Dancing”. Great lyrics as well, which until now I hadn’t scrutinized any closer. I also dug “Don’t Forget To Dance.” Still like that one as well. Last but not least, I’m with you putting The Kinks together with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who as one of the top British bands.

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  17. When this song came out, I did not like it. It actually made me not want to dive deeper in to the Kinks. I ‘d heard of the Kinks (thanks to Van Halen, but this was so “not” rock that I was like…eww! Of course, years later I realized I was wrong and dove deeper in to them and I actually dig this song now. But young me was stupid.

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