Working at The Factory. stereo mix, recorded Jun-Jul 1986 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London All my life, I've been a workin' man When I was at school they said that's all you'll ever understand No profession, I didn't figure in their plans So they sent me down the factory to be a workin' man All I lived for, all I lived for All I lived for was to get out of the factory Now I'm here seemingly free, but working at the factory Then music came along and gave new life to me And gave me hope back in 1963 The music came and set me free From working at the factory All I lived for, all I lived for Was to get out of the factory All I lived for, all I lived for Was to get out of the factory Never wanted to be like everybody else But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf They sold us a dream but in reality It was just another factory I made the music, thought that it was mine It made me free, but that was in another time But then the corporations and the big combines Turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines All we live for, all we live for All we live for is to get out of the factory We made the music to set ourselves free From working at the factory All my life I've put in a working day Now it's sign the contract, get production on the way Take the money, make the music pay Working at the factory All I lived for was to get out of the factory Never wanted to be like everybody else But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf They sold us a dream that in reality Was just another factory Working at the factory Written by: Ray Davies Published by: Davray Music Ltd. Personally I really like this song... perhaps Ray didn't really work in a factory, or at least for too long, but this song captures a certain feeling.... and very well. It isn't really a song predominantly about working in a factory really, it is the way that everything has become a factory mentality. Ray starts off with the idea that he started working in a factory in 63, but really needed to escape its soul crushing claws.... to venture further and see more, not be locked into a life of "Repetition" ... to have the ability for a free spirit to actually have some freedom. Then we move into the reality of it... this is a song about the homogenization of the music industry, and the false dream it presents. The great escape is merely a change of view, an environment no different to a steel factory, but instead, the product you need to make isn't corrugated sheet metal, or porcelain bowls, it's easy to digest songs. "Never wanted to be (I'm Not) Like Everybody Else" It was a dream .. a delusion sold to a generation of wannabe's... I bought it ... and I don't regret it, but it's probably just as well that it didn't happen. I would likely have been in the 27 club more than anything else lol "But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf" The harsh reality of the industry... not that there isn't great music, whether popular or not, just that it is another store, with another product, and all the brands are lined up.... whether branded band names or branded tinned pears.... just another product on a shelf with a hundred or more other products. "They sold us a dream but in reality... It was just another factory" I think this is the key to this song. The rock music dream certainly has its perks, but at the end of the day it is a production line of music for consumers, just like everything else The point is driven home in the next section "I made the music, thought that it was mine It made me free, but that was in another time But then the corporations and the big combines Turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines" and here we speak to the changing face of the industry, when music became secondary. When the corporate interests no longer developed bands, you either had something they thought they could sell, or you didn't. There was no thought that this artist "has potential we can develop" over three albums and then set them free to take over the world.... there had been too many financial failures, and as the freewheeling sixties and early seventies saw many companies going under, the business men started to take over, and the face of the industry changed .... that doesn't mean that there was no good music, but it meant a certain emphasis on trends and formulas in order to achieve the success... ie money ... required to keep this juggernaut rolling. This is a brilliantly set up and executed commentary from Ray on the industry and its health, or lack thereof. I'm guessing some may disagree, or perhaps see it as self indulgent... the idea of a successful rock star singing about this being somewhat redundant, perhaps self serving, perhaps whiny rich guy syndrome or whatever, but to me it's a pretty straight forward look at the modification of the art of music being turned into the commerce of music.... which doesn't mean art can't exist, but it may be somewhat tempered in light of commercial expectations. I think this is a direct and concise look at the way the industry has changed, and it sort of adds to this idea that the Village Green Preservation Society, with all of its well meaning intentions failed to sway the power of the mighty dollar.... an often misquoted biblical verse is "for the Love Of money is the root of all evil"... which typically has been modified into the idea that "money is evil" ... like television and the internet, it is inanimate, and merely used in the manner people see fit.... in the fallout the "Love Of" became so great that what it was trying to achieve became redundant... It speaks to who we are as people that all these inanimate things become used as weapons rather than tools, and we wonder how we end up where we are. We open with some nice crisp acoustic guitars and an organ in the background, and then boom, in comes the body of the band to push it along. I guess we could see this as being related to Petty, or Springsteen, or quite a few of the seventies and eighties commentary based artists, and the music that was predominantly used to press those messages. We get an early bridge to change up the feel.... a brief snippet of freedom. Then we get the desperation of the chorus .... the feeling that this is essential ... I have to get out of here... We get some great vocals from Ray, and some really good backing vocals I assume from Dave ... I'm on my phone here, so it isn't an ideal listening situation. We get a really effective short and sweet lead break from Dave that fits the feel and mood well. The song winds back down, to almost a resigned understanding of this is how it is.... just keep on working at the factory. I really like this song, and I think it is a great opener.... and it can't help but make me think of our recent Traveller .... resigned to getting on the train every day .... that whole groundhog day existence that we all think, when we're younger, that we will be able to escape .... but the reality is, in one way or another, you will be performing one of these types of tasks for most of your life. Often the office worker gets scorned for their comfort or whatever, and certainly it is more comfortable in a climate controlled office than it is in the streets with a jackhammer..... but then again being in the streets, isn't sat behind a lifeless desk, in a gray office, with faded hearts surrounding you.... I think this song conveys that one way or another, we all end up in some form of factory... some form of production-line of repetition that grinds on the core of our being, and we can either fight in futility to change our particular factory for another one, or submit to the fact that this is how it goes for the next fifty to eighty years, until we shuffle off the perch.... and I suppose that all sounds a bit grim, but it comes back to whether we can muster contentment .. for all the broo-hah of fighting the system, whether inside or outside the system, we need to work to survive, whether that be at the factory, or one on one with nature trying to grow our own food, or hunt our own meat... there is no free lunch, and neither situation has any guarantees or safety net...
"Working at the Factory" What more can you want at the start of a Kinks album than a bit of the old Resonator guitar strum? I've found that the album openers on the last few albums (and indeed the next two) have tended to feel a bit longer than they needed to be - perhaps one bridge, verse or solo too many. No such problem with "Factory" - it's over and done in under three minutes. Perfectly structured, tight and compact. It's not spectacular, and Ray's musings on the nature of the music biz are certainly nothing new, but it holds my attention, and I quite like the "origin story" aspect to the lyric. Whether the comparison to working in an actual factory stands up is dubious, but it does make you wonder if we finally have Lola v Powerman part 2 here. (Spoiler: we don't) Good tune, good soloing, and what little shouting (by Ray) there is on this album is mostly confined to this track. Also big props to Ray for including the word "seemingly". Can't think of another song that this appears in. N.B. the video in Mark's post doesn't work - try this one (which has some pleasing comments underneath)
"Working At The Factory" - I like this song. It is hard to listen to it and not think of Bruce Springsteen's song "Factory" and Warren Zevon's "The Factory" (which came out around this time on Sentimental Hygiend). Ray writes from the point of view of the working person (though like Bruce, it is not based on his own experience). But Ray does know something about not being like everybody else and making music to escape factory life. I like the flow of the lyrics and Ray's vocal delivery. I like how the song builds from acoustic guitar to full band at the outset. From there, the music is pretty punchy. I really like the repeated refrain of "all I lived for". It is a pretty catchy song and a good way to start the album.
Pretty outdated song now that hardly anyone in the UK works in factories any more! The song is obviously about the music industry anyway.
Working at the Factory: Keep in mind, this came in on the heels of Springsteen's massive mid-80s success. As far as I'm concerned, Ray, and more than a few other recording artists, particularly in the U.K., have done a great job of detailing working-class lives, without all the critical fuss or over-emphasis on working-class roots as a workable aspect of one's image. Hell, most guys you've seen in heavy metal bands since the start of the genre in the 70s were or are working-class kids who hit it big in some respect. You can assume the same for most soul, R&B and then hiphop artists, too. Springsteen's handlers were simply savvy enough (cough, Jon Landua with the help of his old critic friends, cough) to work that angle. I think this is a pretty good song, especially musically, but I'm also not buying it. Ray's factory analogy has nothing to do with his life as a musician ... unless he's also referring to being a working musician in much the same way he created a fictional self to actually work in a factory. He's led a charmed life as a musician. And don't get me wrong either. I suspect he worked much longer and harder than ever would have had he chose life working in an office or actual factory. He wrote a vast majority of the words and the music. He was the lead singer. He was the producer. He was most likely the arranger. He obviously made key business decisions that many artists left to managers. At various times in his life, he worked to and past the point of exhaustion, possibly even becoming suicidal at times. And throw in a mostly misguided attempt in the 80s to make inroads into the movie industry (that thankfully for everyone never panned out). Now, working in a factory can be a pretty depressing proposition at times. But damn few people working in a factory are going to have any idea of the kind of continuous pressure Ray put himself under for decades. If you took the CEO, CFO, plant manager and the most put-upon workers in the factory ... that's more like the mentality one would need to have to accomplish what Ray did. If anyone in The Kinks had any idea what it was like to be an assembly-line factory worker, it was probably Mick Avory! That repetitive sense of being a drummer and working endless sessions, not fully sensing how the beat you're repeating for hours plays in the whole ... yes, that's the definition of factory life! And for how hard he worked, he also got to be treated very well compared to most musicians. I'm sure the financial compensation was handsome and in line with his expectations. He got to make key decisions in his band's image and how he personally wanted to shape that. Most artists don't get that luxury. He was given free rein to create his own sound, fully flesh out his own ideas, basically try anything he wanted without fear of rejection from his labels (another luxury most artists don't have). Of course, they gave him enough rope to hang himself along the way, but far more often that not, he developed first an innate sense of using the most creative, empathetic parts of himself to write timeless songs, and eventually shape that talent into ways that he could sense the music scene was moving and help his band navigate some tricky waters through the 70s and 80s. That's no factory worker. That's not your average rock star. And I can only think Ray was playing at Springsteen a bit with the lyrics of this song to try to capture some of the working-class mojo and recast it into a somewhat fictional portrayal of his life as a rock star. Ray's truth goes way beyond the constraints of factory life, real or imagined.
This opener is a big big song, in which Ray gets back to his weird structural ways, never settling on a classic verse/chorus approach. It’s not his greatest melody (melodies), but it’s catchy as hell, and putting the message across with anger, power, conviction. I like the change in the “the music came along” section, when you actually feel the mental switch to 1963 before he even mentions it. Ray’s singing's brilliant, not tentatively punk or whatever but super expressive and heartfelt. It has a ready made eighties' radio rock feel to it, (I even hear some of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger in the “no profession” musical phrase) and Dave’s guitar is… back! We of the Thread know that he’s been amiss for quite some time now, at least on Ray songs, absent on Waterloo, restrained on most Word of Mouth tunes he appears on. Here, he’s back full force, good solo, a lot of grit, without resorting to any “metal” prowess. The song’s about an old Ray theme: the music is an escape, but it takes its toll and, ultimately, even though you don’t want to conform (be “like everybody else”), you end up feeling the routine, the repetition, the predictability, and you have to bend to the power of “they”. It’s the Denmark Street/Get Back in Line combo all over again, but retold as an older guy: not wiser but furious, outraged, bitter because he knows better. I understand the criticism about Ray not knowing what he’s talking about but come on, it’s not a comparison of hardships, it’s a metaphor, it’s not a fact, it’s what he feels like. He should feel free, and he doesn’t. He should feel privileged but he still feels imprisoned, alienated, and exploited by “the powers that be”. What’s wrong with being angry about that? He should be angry. It’s a fitting update of the “every day’s the same routine” tone of Here Come’s Yet Another Day. Fifteen years have passed, and now he realizes that he’s not just bored, he’s trapped in a reality that doesn’t have the flavor of a dream come true. And I love the ending of the song. After being enraged, he’s calming down and getting back in a more submissive attitude, almost back to sleep. Rebellion's over. He won't win this fight and he knows it. The stadium heroics were just for show. He put it out of his system, now he can get on with the rest of the album.
Although this is sung in the first person, I don't see it as having that much to do with Ray. It is a typical Ray observational lyric, about the changes in music as an industry. The rock and roll Rebel dream, becoming a production line, not dissimilar to any other variant on a production line/factory. I don't even see this as being anything to do with working class, or any other class, it just happens to have the word Factory in it.
Working at the Factory I'm with those that think this is a good solid rocking opener for the album. It benefits especially from its catchy chorus and a trim 3 minute running time. @Vangro is right about the literal interpretation being outdated, but it was outdated when it was written. For many decades in Western countries far more people have been pushing pens, cutting hair or selling stuff than working up a sweat in factories to make their living. The song is a metaphor and one that possibly still holds true.
Working At The Factory A decent opener with appropriate and largely believable Ray aggro even if some parts are bereft of melody. Clever idea from Ray but of course given the choice (to either he or us) it would be creative leader of a successful group over a more routine "factory work" routine and discipline. Oh Dave's solo is sweet, short and sharp as he did not previously return to (or from) Waterloo. Did i mention i really liked the self referential part about 1963 and the music then setting Ray free and allowing him belief and hope for...... awhile?
‘Working At The Factory’: why? A twenty plus year career, oodles of albums…and…I don’t get it. Admittedly, I do like this part. It’s a nice, comforting intro. But then there’s the bridge which I have issues with. The chorus? I can take it or leave it. Overall, this is a Ray Davies composition so of course it is well-crafted. But I’m just not particularly interested.
Solid opening track which I have always liked. Ray is writing (and singing) the way he has from the start of their career. It's character observations that may or may not be things he himself has experienced or people he knows have experienced. Or it may be entirely fictional. Or a mix of both.
I was talking about Sticky Fingers, the first album on RS Records, although that ‘64 debut has its charms.
Well, even if it's a metaphor, it's still not kosher within the context of his life. All he lived for was to get out of the factory? It appears to me all he lived for was to keep working in the factory: routinely revising his band's sound and image so that he could go on making a living in the music industry. Touring like crazy for over a decade - at least in America - probably past the point of exhaustion, frayed personal relationships, blown marriages. As any senior-level executive could tell you, it goes with the territory! And I don't blame him for that. When's the last time a few dozen women offered you fellatio after completing a particularly stellar cash-flow report? Or beautiful actresses threw themselves at you for balancing the budget that month? He knew how good he had it. And he knew he wanted to keep it, as long as possible. Granted, those are very base, surface images to use in this instance, but also exemplify standard-issue scenery in a world very few of us have experienced. And I'm also sure that world was crushingly, achingly boring between those passing moments when it felt like the whole world wanted you, and you felt like you owned an entire city because an arena full of people came to see your show, city after city. It has to play with one's mind to go through those extremes repeatedly. Of course, any job has its downsides, and I would guess his real pitfall was maintaining an image while at many times feeling fragile and not able to handle it.
I like "Working at the factory". A perfect little opener for the album in good old rocky Kinks tradition...
You don't have to be famous to be hit on. I'm nothing special, nor famous, and shameless hussies would hit on me in front of my wife, just because I was singing and playing guitar..... it is bizzaro world... I just think your taking the lyric too literally, from my perspective, but that's cool, we all see things from our perspective. Actually when I think about it... the only women who were ever interested in me, was after they heard me sing..... I have nothing going for me at all LOL
“ Working at the Factory”: For the Kinks’ first song for their first album for the musical corporation MCA, Ray has a song about how working for the said corporation is just like working in a factory. As a song, it’s OK, a nice way to begin the album, but those lyrics are somewhat problematic, especially when you know that Ray was in art school and in various bands in 1963, not the factory floor. I like Avid fspringer’s analysis, which to me boils down to what my friend Jimmy says, “Ray has never done a day job since 1964!” I get the feeling that if Ray ever did a factory job, he would be the foreman, making the workers work harder in their jobs. Again, to paraphrase Mick Avory, if Ray’s birthday was a holiday, that means you have to work harder at your job.
But then, given his background, the factory must have been more than just a fiction for him, when growing up. It must have been one of the very palpable horizons, maybe the most likely. And I believe him when he says he played music to escape that fate. Didn't he state it somewhere in so much words ? I seem to remember so.
By the way, I did spend a weekend doing a factory job when I was in college. I was temporarily employed at the Parker Brothers Games factory here in Salem, which made the famous Monopoly game. I spent two days putting little shoes and little cars into Monopoly games as they sped past me. It cured me of working in factories.
