Although it was a commercial flop at the time, The Kinks had already dipped their toes in the water of concept albums with their excellent, Britpop-influencing Little England commentary The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society in 1968. With Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), released the following year, the group flung themselves in the deep end with the most ambitious record of their career.
Ray Davies often found source material in his family life and north London neighbourhood, and this time around was no different. Ray’s much older sister Rose had emigrated to Australia in 1964 under the government’s Ten Pound Poms scheme and Ray had been pining for her and her avuncular husband Arthur since.
