Yes, yes, we all love Ray Davies. But what about his brother Dave?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know almost every word to almost every Kinks record. Our house was full of their pink Pye 45s. So Ray Davies is rightly renowned as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. But what’s often forgotten is that in 1964, on this groundbreaking record, Dave Davies invented the electric guitar riff as we know it. Legend has it that after one of the Davies brothers’ frequent “tiffs”, Dave’s amp was damaged, as was the sound that came out of it. But he apparently loved its now wildly distorted sound and insisted that the amp was never fixed. The rest, as they say, is history. Dave Davies celebrated his 67th birthday yesterday. Which meant he was 17 when he invented rock music. Seventeen?? Can any rock star, even Dave’s older brother, claim anything as impressive as that?