Killer's Eyes A terrific song but not on my playlist because it's a bit too heavy. After all these years of listening I still don't know if Ray's is attempting to paint a sympathetic portrait of this person but I think he got the balance just about right between condemnation and understanding. Having said that it always irks me when we hear so and so had a very unhappy/traumatic/abusive childhood as if that in some way excuses behaviour in later life. I knew plenty of kids who fit this profile (slum kids) but knew right from wrong and remained on the straight and narrow. Is this a terrorist or a lone killer? Love this one but an easy listen it ain't.
Interesting perspective. I never felt that Ray was sympathising... it comes across as a sad bewilderment to me. I think the poor kid, wrong side of the tracks thing is more looking at the way media often portrays these things, and it is nullified by the, there's no excuse/reason ....
Killers Eyes A purdy, purdy chord sequence for such a dark topic of contemplation. Hearing of the sister looking at his picture reminds me that in real life we have here amongst us a member that has said he has a sibling that is actually a convicted killer. Musically speaking it is a nice contrast to the opening two numbers though i do find my mind drifting during its duration. Some of the chord pattern and or backing actually reminds me of George Harrison's song Isn't It A Pity. Mark i don't agree with your view that for each positive influence we may make in the world we fail a dozen other times in attempting this as the positives can be many piecemeal things and only have to make a positive difference to one other individual.
That's fair, I can only go by my observations. Most people are nice and understanding to people they know, most of the time, but when it comes to the weird kid at school, or the checkout clerk, or the person in traffic, or the annoying guy at work, or whatever.... not so much
Killer's Eyes: Initially, I was really taken with this track, second favorite on the album. But for some reason, it hasn't aged well. It sounds great. I guess in some respect, this is Ray/The Kinks' version of Lou Reed's New York album where the focus is mostly shifted outwards to state of the world and news of the day. And for that reason, tracks like this don't really stick with me. I guess because of "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" by The Adverts, Gilmore stuck in my head, but there were obviously other men who qualified at the time! I guess these were the initial days of media frenzy surrounding killers, be they serial or simply high-profile murder cases. It somehow went from inspiration for pulp fiction to this massive genre in terms of movies, books, TV shows, etc. Not necessarily in a bad way either - the Coen Brothers have made more than a few compelling movies on the topic. But I gather this was something new in the early 80s.
Killers Eyes To quote a younger Ray, this is a really heavy number. Unless I'm mistaken this is one of Ray's character sketches - and arguably the first one since I'm In Disgrace on Schoolboys? Here the singer is someone who has known the killer since childhood and is trying to understand why he killed someone and thinking of the childhood signs that pointed towards the future. I've always thought most of Ray's best lyrics are found in his character sketches (Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset, Two Sisters, Dead End Street, Shangri-La etc). He doesn't hit that high standard here: I agree some of the lyrics sound corny, but someone's corn is probably someone else's gold. As for the music, there's no build-up and release. It's just a steady backing track. The introductory chords are reminiscent of Big Star and that's no bad thing. Big Star were Kinks fans and I'd like to think Ray was a Big Star fan in the early 70s - to the extent they had any fans outside of Memphis .
Off the top of my head the live versions of. Lola have some. Not the intro, which is a straitforward. c to D to E. But later in the tune he gets into the fast strumming thing. Pinball Wizard is another example, although I don’t think it’s Ray. I know I know. But it’s early here, no coffee.
Killers Eyes A song I just can't get into much. Lyrically, it doesn't work well for me. First, it's very dark. But then the treatment of the dark matter seems rather superficial. Your life sucks, but that doesn't mean you get to kill others.... did that really need to be said? And it comes across as if trying to actually reason with a sociopath; a truly fruitless endeavor! Musically, there is interesting melody and chord progression, but overall the song just kind of plods along. Pretty much a 50/50 song for me. I did appreciate @fspringer comment on Gary Gilmore. It sent me back to a young Tommy Lee Jones's brilliant portrayal of Gilmore in the film adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Executioners Song. That real life example ties very well to this song.
I don't know, the lyrics on this album so far don't sound like Ray Davies lyrics somehow - does that make sense?
Thank you for mentioning this as it was bugging me what song I was thinking the beginning sounded like and yeah, this is it. Also explains why I didn't remember the start of this song sounding like something else because I didn't hear the Big Star song until maybe 10 years after this album came out.
Killers Eyes Man is this song boring. So far GTPWTW has not sounded as good as I remembered it being. Around The Dial was fine, but the next two are very uninteresting musically. Perhaps this is an album where the best songs come later. I know for sure my three favorites haven't come up yet.
I wonder if it's because Ray's best lyrics show empathy with a character or a situation whereas in the first three songs of this album the closest he's gotten to empathy is concern for the whereabouts of his favourite DJ!
The chord pattern of the opening section is quite close to Isn't it a Pity's, indeed, with some variation. What's nice with descending note patterns is you can vary the associated chords. Killer's Eyes seems to be starting much like He's Evil, and it has the same way of going from I to I with 2 intermediary chords, a chromatic descending line and a fixed bass, but 1) these 2 chords are not the same and 2) the descending line doesn't start from the same note (from the 7th to the 5th in He's evil, from the 5th to the 3rd in Killer's Eyes). I like the way the intro to Killer's Eyes ends up being the first layer to a I-II/I-IV7/I-I progression, which very often works on me. It's not the first time I notice that Ray can write a melody that conjures a "minor" coloration using only major chords. I don't remember what other song justified the same comment. The musics on this album tend to be made of simple elements, but Ray's sense of melody and prosody makes many of these songs worthwhile. The short/short/long lines construction of the verse is simple but efficient to my ear.
Nope. Nor Marcel Proust. I think Jacques Cousteau and Marcel Marceau were the only French people allowed on Australian TV up to the mid-1980s
"Killer's Eyes": This song reflects the tenor of that sad and crazy period in which John Lennon was murdered and Pope John Paul II and President Reagan were seriously wounded. Ray's lyrics attempt to understand the motives behind the person who would do such an act. Frankly, my opinion is that such motives are more psychological than material, i.e. poverty. President Reagan's attempted assassin came from a wealthy family as well as the ******** who were behind 9/11. Anyway, Ray's lyrics are sincere and do balance the lines between sympathy for the person and condemnation for his acts. As the other Avids has stated, a rather heavy song that reflected it's times.
And Anouar El-Sadate, October 6th, 1981, the first famous (successful) assassination I can remember. I remember the attempts on the Pope and, I think, Reagan too. Weirdly, I don't recall John Lennon's murder. Did I grow up all of a sudden between December 8th, 1980, and March 30th, 1981 ?...
Yes, I do remember seeing Sadat's assassination in the news. Thanks for reminding me, Avid the late man.
People tended get blown up over here. Mountbatten was the big one, they actually blew up a member of the Royal Family.
