Day After Day #28: Victoria

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Victoria (1969)

There were many bands that were part of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, but the artists who had the biggest impact were the obvious ones: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. Next on the list is the Kinks, a truly great and influential band that never really got its due. The band emerged with a bang with 1964's "You Really Got Me," which featured a distorted Dave Davies guitar riff and solo that influenced countless hard rock and garage acts to come. Lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies was charismatic and a brilliant writer. Hits like "All Day and All of the Night" and "Tired of Waiting for You" soon followed. 

But the Kinks were a combative lot. The Davies brothers often didn't get along, and an onstage fight between Dave and drummer Mick Avory led to Dave getting knocked out after Avory whacked him with his hi-hat stand. After a tour of the U.S. in 1965, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the Kinks to play shows in the U.S. for the next four years, which was a huge blow to the band's prospects here. The ban was believed to result from an incident on Dick Clark's TV show Where the Action Is when the band got into an altercation with a TV executive and a punch was thrown.

Forced to tour everywhere but the U.S., the Kinks continued to make quality music, moving away from rockers and producing songs steeped in social commentary and interesting characters like "A Well Respected Man," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" and "Sunny Afternoon." The band garnered respect from their peers and critical praise for the most part, but sales weren't strong. In 1969, Ray Davies flew to the U.S. to negotiate an end to the touring ban and the band made plans to do an American tour that year. 

Before the tour began, the Kinks recorded the album Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), a concept album that was supposed to be the soundtrack of a TV show that was never produced. "Victoria" was the third single released in the U.K. but the first in the U.S. Ray's lyrics look at the hardships of British working class life in the 19th century while their Queen was expanding the British Empire across the world ("From the West to the East/From the rich to the poor/Victoria loved them all"). Despite it all, the working class loved Victoria and Britain ("Though I am poor, I am free/When I grow I shall fight/For this land I shall die"). 

Despite the satirical bent, the song is stirring, following a bluesy riff and tidy solo into the bridge celebrating the "land of hope and Gloria/land of my Victoria," which features horns and great backing vocals from Dave Davies.

The song reached #62 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., their highest position since "Sunny Afternoon" hit the top 20 in 1966. The song made it to #33 in the U.K., and was also a hit in Canada, Australia and Sweden. "Victoria" has since been covered by the Fall, the Kooks and Cracker.

The long-awaited tour didn't go well, but the album did well enough to propel the Kinks into their next album, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (aka Lola Versus Powerman), which featured the top 10 single "Lola." The next 15 years was a roller coaster of success and struggle for the band. The late '80s and '90s were dry times for the band, and the last Kinks performance took place in 1996. The Davies brothers have resisted any further reunions.

My personal experience with the song "Victoria" came in 2000. My friend Bob was hosting a Halloween party at his house in Allston Rock City, and he and other friends of mine were going to play a set in his basement. Our friend (and my co-worker at the time) Ric suggested that we open the show with a short set of Kinks covers; we decided to do a parody of the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, with me playing Liam on vocals and he as Noel on guitar. We called ourselves Cirrhosis and worked up three '60s-era Kinks covers: "Victoria," "A Well Respected Man" and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone." In between songs, we argued and called the audience "fookin' stoodents." It was great fun and it made me appreciate the greatness of those songs even more.