The Kinks were yesterday’s men as the 70s dawned, written off as 60s relics. Their only significant hit since 1967, Days, hardly arrested a calamitous, lift-shaft fall which hit bottom with a humiliating 1968 tour of working men’s clubs, bizarrely undertaken as they finished their wistful LP classic The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, which bombed. Convinced their archaic label Pye only wanted Kinks singles in the age of Sgt. Pepper, Ray Davies decided he’d had it with 45s.
And yet when the first undeniable, clanging chords of Lola rang out on its release 50 years ago, it was clear The Kinks had come storming back. Not only that, but Davies’s sly tale of a transvestite affair offered a template for the imminent, androgynous glam era. For one last time in 1970, the band who had revolutionised pop six years before with You Really Got Me’s proto-punk roar had seized back their crown.
