“They Tried to Kill Our Dream but We Were Unstoppable”: Ray Davies Declares The Kinks Invented Punk Rock, Outsings the Sex Pistols, and Says No Band Has Ever Come Close
Decades have passed since The Kinks first sent shockwaves through the British music scene, but for frontman Ray Davies, the fire hasn’t dimmed — it’s just burned deeper. In a recent and rare interview, the rock icon reflected on the band’s stormy legacy, their exile from the American music scene, and what he believes is a deep and lasting truth: no band, then or now, has matched The Kinks.
“I’ve never seen a band as good as The Kinks. Not before, not since. And that’s not arrogance — it’s truth,” Davies said, a matter-of-fact glint in his voice.
His claim isn’t just rooted in nostalgia. It comes from the turbulent journey the band endured, especially in the United States, where they were effectively banned from touring for years in the mid-1960s — a move that nearly crippled their international momentum. Davies remains adamant that the U.S. ban was more than bureaucratic red tape.
“They tried to kill our dream,” he said. “America didn’t want us there. We were loud, rebellious, raw. But they couldn’t stop us — because they knew they couldn’t. We were The Kinks. We had songs in our blood.”
The Kinks’ 1964 smash “You Really Got Me” is widely credited as a proto-punk explosion, a sound so aggressive and primal that it predated the rawness of punk rock by over a decade. But Davies wants the record set straight.
“We invented punk rock. Not the Sex Pistols. Not The Ramones. It was us. Listen to ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘All Day and All of the Night’ — that was the spirit, the aggression, the attitude. Long before anyone used the term ‘punk’,” he said with certainty. “The Pistols just dressed it up in safety pins.”
Davies didn’t speak with bitterness — he spoke with conviction, the kind that only comes from someone who’s watched history overlook a band that reshaped music from the underground outwards. The Kinks, often trapped between the clean-cut Beatles and the swagger of the Stones, carved a raw and poetic path that inspired countless artists — even if many don’t realize it.
“We weren’t trying to be legends,” he added. “We were just trying to survive. And in surviving, we created something nobody could kill — not even America.”
Now, as rock continues to evolve and blur into genres far removed from its garage-born roots, Davies stands firm in his legacy. Not just as a songwriter or bandleader, but as a voice that cut through the noise long before punk had a name — and long after the world tried to silence it.
“You don’t have to top the charts to be the greatest. You just have to never give in. That was always The Kinks.”
