God Save The Kinks A Biography paperback by Rob Jovanovic

It’s incredible how a band can go from nowhere to suddenly being everything and everywhere and while its easy to see the 60s as being dominated in this way by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Kinks are challengers to both, which is why the upcoming release of Rob Jovanovic’s God Save The Kinks: A Biography paperback is potentially something to look forward to.

Ask a kid on the street to name a Stones or Beatles track and they’ll probably be able to get at least one or two, but ask the same kid to name a Kinks song and they’ll probably struggle. However, play them You Really Got Me, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Waterloo Sunset or Days and they’ll probably recognise them all.

Massively loved by music fans, but probably a bit under-appreciated by the general masses, The Kinks’ back catalogue goes a lot further than the obvious hits however, with seminal albums like Something Else and The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which are amazing from start to end. You’ll find it difficult to find a single Kinks track that hasn’t got at least a little musical genius built into it.

It’s the story behind the band’s rise to music legends that underpins Jovanovic’s book, but there’s a lot of iceberg under the surface when it comes to The Kinks. With the sibling rivalry of brothers Dave and Ray Davies, a pretty fast rise to fame from their Muswell Hill beginnings and all the excesses of rock n roll, as well as some of the finest music we’ve ever been lucky enough to listen to, there’s a good amount of ground to cover.

It’s easy to make a lot of fuss about the fact that their first two singles didn’t really get them noticed, especially with the knowledge that their label Pye Records were apparently on the brink of cutting the cord, but the reality is that they had a UK singles chart #1 with just their 3rd release, so they were on a fast track to success pretty much right from the start. You Really Got Me hit the big time following its release on the 4th August 1964 and from that point on they’d sealed their place in the history of great British music.

The biography takes us back before the North London brothers were famouse, as they grew up during the rebuild of London after the Blitz, right the way through the formation of the band, it’s early gigs and recordings and their massive chart success. It’s a story of on-stage punch ups, widely regarded as being the reason the band was banned from touring the United States at the height of the British invasion, band tension, a drugs overdose in the 70s for Ray and a whole lot of love for the band’s innovative style.

God Save The Kinks: A Biography is set for release on paperback on the 6th March 2014, building on its earlier hardback launch. Sadly, Jovanovic isn’t necessarily making a special case for The Kinks in writing the book as he’s a bit of a music biography slapper with previous releases on Richie Edwards, Big Star, Beck, Michael Stipe, The Velvet Underground, George Michael, Kate Bush, Nirvana and Johnny Cash, but hopefully that just means he can teach us a thing or two too.

As well as the paperback release, God Save The Kinks: A Biography will also be released as an eBook on the 6th March 2014.