Featured Album – Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) – The Kinks

Melody Maker – “Ray Davies’ finest hour … beautifully British to the core.”

Allmusic – It’s a detailed and loving song cycle, capturing the minutiae of suburban life, the numbing effect of bureaucracy, and the horrors of war.

I’ve dug The Kinks for a long time. They are on my “ https://musicenthusiast.net/my-favorite-bands/" rel="nofollow - My Favorite Bands ” list. And sooner rather than later, I’m going to do a series on them. But in the meantime, let’s dip into this classic album from 1969. I know a lot of people prefer Village Green Preservation Society. But Arthur is my favorite of theirs. How many albums do you know that talk about Lord Beaverbrook, Queen Victoria, Vera Lynn, Churchill, Ascot, Anthony Eden, AND Princess Marina? (Whoever SHE was.)

This album was supposed to be the soundtrack to a TV show in Britain that, per Dave Davies, “fell apart.” (Rumor has it that a producer “mismanaged” the funds.) But the band had a clutch of great songs and so, plowed ahead with the album. The theme is in the title and Arthur was a real guy. He was the husband of Ray and Dave Davies’ sister Rosie.

His emigration to Australia in 1964 devastated the Davies’ brothers, not to mention pretty much everybody but Arthur (and it eventually caught up with him). It wasn’t anything about Australia per se so much as the fact that they were now 10,000 miles away from everyone and everything they loved. (The Davies clan is pretty large and very close.)

In fact this wasn’t the first time the band recorded a song about this situation. In 1966 they did a song called, “Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home.” “I started screaming,” Ray Davies said. “A part of my family had left, possibly forever. I collapsed in a heap on the sandy beach and wept like a pathetic child.”

But the album is, I think, brilliant as it details not only what Ray Davies sees as the decline of the British Empire but also how it affects working-class guys like Arthur and his family. From the liner notes:

Arthur Morgan … lives in a London suburb in a house called Shangri-La, with a garden and a car and a wife called Rose and a son called Derek who’s married to Liz, and they have these two very nice kids, Terry and Marilyn. Derek and Liz and Terry and Marilyn are emigrating to Australia. Arthur did have another son, called Eddie. He was named for Arthur’s brother, who was killed in the battle of the Somme. Arthur’s Eddie was killed, too—in Korea.

The album kicks off with one of my very favorite Kinks songs of all time, “Victoria.” This, of course, refers to the woman who reigned as queen for 63 years. (Also Ray’s daughter’s name). It was the 19th century and the Queen oversaw the expansion of the British Empire. The Kinks here exuberantly celebrate (sort of) her life and those times. This song is a rave-up to the max, capped off by Dave Davies’ exuberant yelps. This is rock and roll:

Long ago life was clean
Sex was bad and obscene
And the rich were so mean
Stately homes for the Lords
Croquet lawns, village greens
Victoria was my queen