I suspect you’re right. Yet, supposedly Ray was getting screwed by managers/agents/label at Pye (see: The Moneygoround) and wasn’t making squat!
Here Come the People in Grey I love side two of this album but this song is a bit of an outlier with its chugging riff and angry lyrics. That said, I love this song too - because of its chugging riff and angry lyrics. And I really enjoy that guitar sound - why don't they make guitars sound like that anymore? This is directed at the forced relocation of people - including Ray's grandmother - from old terraced houses to anonymous modern towers. For example, the houses that formed the backdrop to the band in the album's gatefold photo were all demolished. Ray sings about becoming a "one-man revolution' to resist those bureaucratic forces but I hear it as Ray fantasising rather than as a call to arms. If it's called the "clucky" sound, I love clucky! Stupidly Happy - one of my favourite XTC songs - "ernies" relentlessly for 4 minutes and 15 seconds There is a place for simple boogie in rock, but we don't all have to like it. A Ray quote from Joe Rogan's bio of Ray: "My gran used to live in Islington in this really nice old house, and they moved her to a block of flats, and she hasn't got a bath now. She has a shower because there isn't room for a bath. And she's 90 years old, she can't even get out of the chair let alone stand in the shower....they took her around and showed her where she was going to live and she didn't have any choice. They didn't think to help her in any way..."
Well, that's Ray experience, but excuse me if I'm somewhat sensitive to this idea of 'government overreach' and the evils of council (re)housing because I've got personal experience of our family moving to a council estate in the 70s - admittedly we weren't relocated, we did it by choice - and it was the best thing we ever did. For a start, we now had a garden (front and back), three bedrooms (there were five of us), and a upstairs and a downstairs - and we also had a bathroom for the first time ever! Council housing was a completely positive and liberating experience for lots of families, *if you want to see the sorts of conditions people were expected to live in before council housing - and I'm talking in the 60s and 70s here - it's easily Googled. So, thank you, People In Grey. (*Of course, we're right back there in 2021)
I completely understand what you're saying, and to some degree I certainly agree, but there is a distinct difference between moving somewhere, and being forced to move.... Anyway, this is probably a somewhat contentious subject, so let's keep it to the song.
Here Come The People In Grey First listen again for me moments ago. I sure can hear T. Rex and Marc Bolan in the vocal & guitar Boogie period stylings. I never knew about this rehousing program parts of England went through but I sure can sympathize & applaud (and enjoy) Ray's lyric and comitment to it's highlighting & delivery. Not sure yet just how Kinky this really is though as I note the comments of avid @Vangro concerning Ray's recent penchant for "broad brush strokes completely lacking his regular subtlety & nuance" amidst regularly simple song structures lesser band's could cop.
Here Come The People in Grey: Finally, a chunky little riff rocker to tie the album back to some older school Kinks sounds. Finally, a rock and roll anthemic chorus. Nice soloing from Dave and some cool lyrics. I want to be scared of those spooky people in Grey, but as an American, I don’t know who they are! Nonetheless, I am signing up for Ray’s one man revolution, he sounds like he needs my help. …and in case it wasn’t clear, I like this one a lot!
Here Come The People In Grey. Musically, as a straight ahead I-IV-V boogie, this could easily have been a total throwaway. While it is still bound by those musically narrow parameters, it manages to be more in the way it builds, and in the uniquely executed acoustic/electric blend. Lyrically, it is even more perfectly executed. And let's face it, for many, home is home, even if it is modest. Being uprooted is traumatic. Tull would bring an equally brilliant, and even more sarcastic, take on this theme 16 years later with Farm on the Freeway.
I mentioned Pete Townshend in my blurb on today’s song and, sure enough, found myself humming Going Mobile and My Baby Gives It Away as I cleaned the kitty litter. I can’t explain the connection…but there it is!
Must’ve been a thing in the UK then since a year later we have Genesis’ “Get Em Out By Friday”… My old neighborhood in San Francisco near Geary in the old Fillmore district was haunted by the same Urban Development in the 60’s like Bunker Hill in 50’s LA
Here Come the People in Grey I like how this track builds, and love the Dave harmonies. Any Kinks song is elevated when Ray and Dave sing together. Great lyrics. I will say that I am not really a fan of Ray's 'quaver' voice. An occasional use is fine, but he seemed to be using is more and more.
"Here Come The People In Grey" is a great song to kick off Side 2 of Muswell Hillbillies. I do like the way the guitars sound & it swings a bit more than the other songs in the album. As for the lyrics, they are angry & resentful towards the bureaucracy that's forcing the protagonist to move. I didn't realize until recently that the neighborhood that was pictured in the inner gatefold was mostly demolished & replaced. The place didn't look like a slum. As another Avid pointed out, in the early days it would have been a good thing to move people out of the slums, especially since there was also much housing stock damaged during the bombings of London in WWII, but probably not so much by the 70s. I was also thinking about that major fire on one of those council estates a few years ago that killed a lot of people & also a collapse of another one back in 1968.
A further thought on the songwriting: Ray has specifically referenced the displacement of his 90 year old grandmother but that doesn’t mean that he’s suggesting his grandma up and move to the fields, live in a tent and begin the good fight against Authority Figures In Grey. Whether he’s sitting in a pub or having a cuppa tea (see tomorrow’s song) I’m quite certain he’s catching fragments of conversations that he plays around with and becomes fodder for his lyrics. It’s a snapshot of his surroundings and the characters (perhaps even imagined, or multiple persons melded into one). My wife was waiting in line at the pharmacy and heard an elderly guy tell the pharmacist that he’s been to see a doctor and, when he’d asked the doctor what his ailment was, the doctor had replied, “I don’t know. You tell me.” And then charged him for the office visit. I can well imagine such an overheard remark being the basis for “I Don’t Need No Doctor.”
The irony is almost too much to contemplate but right now, in the London where Ray Davies where still lives, you have council tenants fighting to remain in those same 'identical little boxes' which so horrified Ray in 1971 and prevent them being sold off to private developers or demolished to make way for homes they can't afford to live in. So, the circle goes on.
Here's a very recent article on Muswell Hillbillies. It's well worth the read and discusses what others are already talking about: the forced moves of people from central London to the 'burbs. The Kinks vs. the People in Grey - Reason.com
@DISKOJOE was going to post that the other day.... and I, probably wrongly, suggested it would go well with our last song.... Sorry Joe It's a very interesting article
Sorry I missed that discussion! But sounds like it's all good. It talks about several tracks off the album, so it fits in right about now.
Definitely fits, it's a very good article. You wouldn't have seen the discussion because Joe messaged me about it
The "Do It Again"/"Love Will Keep Us Together" riff. This sounds a lot more like Canned Heat than The Kinks. It's interesting how in the UK, "The People In Grey" means something entirely different than it does in the US, where it's usually an indication that one is about to hear a song about the civil war.
