Kinks Weeks – Heart Of Gold …soundday.wordpress.com

Dave grew up in Canada, now resides in Texas, and has been passionate about music for as long as he can remember. Unfortunately, a brief foray into buying keyboards during his high school years didn’t equate to making music people were passionate about doing anything with but avoiding!  He writes a daily music blog, A Sound Day, looking at memorable music events from album releases to artist birthdays to important concerts and more. You can find Dave at https://soundday.wordpress.com.

Thanks Max, for inviting me to be a part of this “forum.” I look forward to seeing what other music fans come up with, what their reactions are to The Kinks and which songs from the band’s 25-or-so year run they choose to highlight.

It would be easier and more obvious to do the Beatles or Rolling Stones instead, but The Kinks are perhaps a more interesting choice since they’ve always been sort of on the periphery of major headline stardom and to many are an afterthought when discussing the ’60s and the British Invasion. I don’t put them on an even footing with the other two bands but the Kinks certainly deserve a bit more respect. A good chunk of their catalog is unknown to most, myself included.

My first thought when asked to write about a song of theirs was “Come Dancing”, their superb 1983 comeback hit, but that title had already been claimed. Which was actually good because it made me think a bit more and re-examine some more of their songs. Still, I knew I wanted to do something off State of Confusion, the album that put them back on hit radio after a fairly long absence, in North America at least. It was indeed the first album of theirs I bought and to date, still the only studio album – not a greatest hits sort of compilation – that I’ve had.

Though the Kinks showed up on the scene at approximately the same time as the Beatles and the Stones, they never quite matched their success and weren’t adopted nearly as much by “oldies” or “Classic Rock” radio stations. So as a kid growing up in the ’70s, I was aware of and quite liked some of their big hits – the quirky, scandalous for the times “Lola”, the rock staples like “All Day and All of The Night” and the nicely pop-py “Victoria”  but they were never at the forefront of my musical thoughts.

I noticed and liked their hard-rocking “Destroyer” in 1981; think I even bought the 45. But I really only began to appreciate their real talent with State of Confusion. I heard enough of it on radio to go out and buy it, and when I did, I found myself liking almost all the tracks and playing it end to end quite often. I really became aware of what a great lyricist Ray Davies was – how he could paint such aural pictures, and match opposing feelings like joy and sorrow, optimism and realism so well in a song. Thus, how he captured the nuances of life!

Also clear to me was that the band, like most good ones, was varied. They put together both great fist-pumping rockers and beautifully melodic pop tunes. This, ironically, annoyed their label boss Clive Davis. For some reason he thought this would cause, well a “State of Confusion” among fans and limit their appeal. Instead, I think the opposite was true. However, he wanted to market them exclusively as a hard rock act and didn’t like songs like “Come Dancing” or “Don’t Forget to Dance” since they were hardly companion pieces to Ozzy Osbourne or AC/DC for radio.

Many of their best tunes are rock; many are “pop”. But “Heart of Gold” falls somewhere in between, rather best described as “power pop” – so where better than the Power Pop Blog for it to show up!

The song tells of a young woman who is embittered and seems to have a tough demeanor, but he realizes has a “heart of gold” underneath that “tough exterior”.  In the song she was “the apple of your father’s eye” until a younger sister came along and she found “all the affection suddenly gone.”  Random, fictitious thoughts from Ray… or about someone he knew? Many think the latter.

Ray had been in a serious relationship with Chrissie Hynde for a couple of years or more at the time the song appeared. In fact, they’d just had a baby together, Natalie Hynde. Rather mirrored in the lyrics. However, all wasn’t rosy for the pair; soon after they split up and she married Jim Kerr from Simple Minds, making the song all the more poignant and an admirable expression if it was indeed about his soon-to-be ex, who certainly showed a  tough exterior in public.

Musically, I love the upbeat song and especially the jangly playing of Ray’s brother Dave, the band’s lead guitarist. Despite being contentious as anything, the two brothers were always the core and heart of The Kinks. On this one they manage to pull off a very retro-’60s sound yet keep it modern with solid production (which Ray did himself). While mirroring their ’60s heyday, it also showed a keen ear-to-the-ground awareness of the new alternative rock sounds just beginning to show up – R.E.M., The Smiths and yes, The Pretenders. It was lost on me back then, but re-listening to “Heart of Gold”, the first thing that jumped out at me is how much it sounds like a Pretenders song. It is easy in fact to imagine Chrissie singing it instead of Ray. So similar are the stylings I went to the liner notes to see if any of The Pretenders were on the song. They aren’t, but I’m betting they were in Ray’s mind when he was putting the song down on paper. Indeed, Rolling Stone noted the same, saying it “has the jangly, quasi-folk rock sound of the present hit ‘Back on the Chain Gang’” by the Pretenders.

The song wasn’t released as a single, so like many other worthy Kinks songs, it was never widely known. A shame. I’ll give the last word over to Rolling Stone again, who at the time stated “nobody but The Kinks could have made such a record in 1983 and no band deserves more to be at the top.”

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, 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. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

45 thoughts on “Kinks Weeks – Heart Of Gold …soundday.wordpress.com”

  1. Great stuff Dave. Your right about it sounding like a Pretenders tune. Maybe their line of thinking was to keep it fresh so they wouldn’t be tagged a nostalgia act at the time.

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    1. Thanks Deke! Yeah, they did well staying fresh then…in the little blip of time around then, I’d say the Rolling Stones did the same but the Kinks may have done it better when you think of albums like ‘Undercover’ by the Stones. The Kinks sounded very legit not like old guys who didn’t know when to quit

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    1. Thanks for doing it Dave… I have a huge love for The Kinks and The Who…they were certainly more British than some other bands that came from there. They didn’t Americanize their sound as much as others. There are some great songs coming that cover their different periods.

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      2. All of those albums not released over here while they were banned…are now critically acclaimed but yea they were very British and didn’t hide it.

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  3. Thanks Dave! I appreciate you writing… I haven’t heard this song since the eighties when I went to see them…around that time. They had different eras for sure…with a different sound in each.

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  4. I had this album and probably haven’t heard this song since the mid 80’s. I didn’t enjoy this album as much as the previous two. You provided a good bit of background and context however, pointing out they weren’t afraid to mix it up with their sound.

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    1. thanks Randy! Likewise, I liked this album a lot but never got it on CD, so even by about the late-’90s when I still had the LP, my turntable had bitten the dust so I never pulled it out. Might just go out and get the CD of it, as I said, not getting my initial pick was great because it made me go back and look over the songlist again.

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    1. thanks Jim. That seems to be a good thing about this series Max came up with – seems like most of us are learning new ones we’ve never heard before but are worthy.

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  8. These were the kinds of Kinks tunes that were part of their album listening experience for me. . I couldnt wait for what was coming next, They always had pleasant surprises like this one. They just keep growing on you (me). A very cool choice and proof again how certain tunes grab us. Love this band.
    I always wonder what Mick Avory was trying to avoid stepping on from the Album cover pic.

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      2. From the little I know of it , Avory got the short end of the stick from the Davies lads, and that primarily was my name sake’s whining & bitching. He was quite a good drummer

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  12. Great pick, Dave. I think this was the first time I heard this song. Off “State of Confusion,” I only knew “Come Dancing” and the title track. I also agree with your assessment that “Heart of Gold” has a Pretenders vibe – very neat. This makes me want to check out the rest of the album. While I know a good number of Kinks songs from throughout their career, I never systematically explored their albums.

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  13. Pingback: Kinks Weeks – Heart Of Gold …soundday.wordpress.com – MobsterTiger

  14. I remember reading in a magazine at the time (I think it was the old MUSICIAN magazine), an interview with Ray where he said the song was written about Princess Anne of England, but if people wanted to think it was about Chrissie, it was OK, because it was “more romantic” that way.

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    1. It’s funny that a lot of songs get different stories afterward but many times the one that feels the best gets the headlines.

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      1. I’ve been reading your blog for quite a few years now, and I’m usually content to just read and stay on the sidelines, but today I decided to take the plunge and comment! Keep up the good work!

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      2. Thank you so much! Anytime you want to comment feel free and if not I get it… I appreciate you reading. I hope I make it easy for people to comment.

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      4. Yea I get ya…I’m lucky (I guess)… because IT is my career…but other things like working on cars…I can’t do and most mechanical things…I’m hopeless!

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