Where Have All the Good Times Gone (referred to as WHATGTG from here on out) was written by Kinks frontman Ray Davies for their third studio album The Kinks Kontroversy (1965 – or 1966 in the US). The album title is pretty much a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the bad events that surrounded the band at the time. Which controversy? Take your pick!
The band was under a lot of stress at that time, and the mood in the band would be very up and down. One night at the Capitol Theatre in Cardiff it got really bad. Guitarist Dave Davies and drummer Mick Avory had an on-stage spat which resulted in Avory nearly decapitating Davies with a cymbal, leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood. Avory ran away, terrified that he had killed him.
Then we have the Kinks’ first (and nearly last) tour of America in 1965, where an altercation with a representative from the American Federation of Musicians led them to being banned from playing there until the matter was sorted in 1969. No matter where they were in those days, there was an element of things not being quite under control.
The lyrics to WHATGTG could be seen as a reflection on the strain from all the incidents and the inner-band tensions at the time, and maybe that was some small part of it. Ray was however looking further back than that.
Around the time this song was written, Ray was entering a phase where he would write nostalgic songs where he looks back at his own childhood, and frequently even earlier than that. He was looking at the England that used to be, and the traditions that he now saw slipping away.
That focus in his writing would increasingly dominate his output over the next few years, eventually culminating with the album Village Green Preservation Society (1968).
As many of these type of songs demonstrated, Davies was as much a traditionalist as an innovator, ever willing to mine the distant past for lyrical or musical ideas.
WHATGTG was particularly inspired by the good times Ray Davies had singing around the piano when his family would get together. “I wanted to write a song my dad or relatives could sing,” he told Rolling Stone. “They always talked about how great it was before or during the war. I think every generation thinks that way.”
Ma and Pa look back at all the things they used to do
Didn’t have no money and they always told the truth
Daddy didn’t have no toys
And mummy didn’t need no boys
The timing of the song was apposite. As the song appeared, dark clouds were gathering over the country. The economy was in trouble, sanctions were imposed on Rhodesia by the British government, and the BBC had just screened Ken Loach’s Up the Junction – a searing adaption of Nell Dunn’s novel of slum life in Battersea with explicit scenes of working-class strife.
It was a world away from the popular image of Swinging London, as Davies realised. “Everyone I knew seemed to be having a good time. But as a realist, I knew that the good times had to have a payback.”
Several people were impressed with the self-questioning title and nature of the song, which sounded like the work of an old head on young shoulders. This had been pointed out to Ray Davies from the song’s initial inception. He said, “We’d been rehearsing WHATGTG and our tour manager at the time, who was a lot older than us, said, ‘That’s a song a 40-year-old would write. I don’t know where you get that from.’ But I was taking inspiration from older people around me. I’d been watching them in the pubs, talking about taxes and job opportunities.”
The song was written quickly, mostly out of necessity. The songwriting demands on Ray Davies were so high in those days that it threatened to run his pen dry. In thirteen months, he had written three albums, two four-track EPs, and twelve singles, plus several other songs demoed/recorded but not released at the time, or given to others.
The fact that this was done in between touring, promotional work and other band commitments, and that he had a new family with a young daughter arriving in the middle of this period, only makes his work rate more impressive.
It is understandable that not every song was pored over, that some of them were basic, and that sometimes ideas were re-used. This happens in WHATGTG which features lines like “get your feet back on the ground” and “worry ‘bout a thing,” both echoing song titles on the previous album Kinda Kinks (1965).
More pertinently, the line “yesterday was such an easy game for you to play” was not merely indebted to Paul McCartney’s Yesterday but repeated part of its lyric, almost verbatim.
As catchy as the music is, it certainly is rougher around the edges than most of the pop songs of its time. This suits the message well. Ray Davies said: “It’s got that hard edge The Kinks had, but at the same time, it’s got a reflective, poignant lyric.”
The song was originally released on a single as the B-side of Till the End of the Day on 19 November 1965, as well as ending up on the third Kinks album The Kinks Kontroversy, released a week later on the 26th. The Kinks had performed the song live on the TV show ‘Ready Steady Go’ in 1965, but it would not become a staple of their live shows until the 1970s after David Bowie had covered it for his album Pin-Ups (1973).
To capitalise on Bowie’s cover, Pye Records released the track as an A-side in November 1973. It did not chart, but it led to the song being reappraised. It would start being featured in their live sets and on numerous compilations, slowly but surely taking its rightful place as one of their classics.
The song got a further boost when Van Halen covered it on the album Diver Down (1982). This was the second case of Van Halen covering The Kinks (the first being You Really Got Me on their 1978 eponymous debut). Ray Davies said he was “thrilled” with Van Halen’s cover, which he said “took it up a step.”
These days it might be easy to forget that the song originally was a b-side, but this also made all of the cover versions somewhat more unexpected and exciting choices.
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