Contemporary Reviews (1977) all at one site. RS plus Stereo Review negative Billboard plus Playboy neutral and bizarre Christgau plus The Kinks - Sleepwalker
John Gosling. John “The Baptist” Gosling was born on 6 February 1948 in Paignton, Devon. He was keyboard player with The Kinks from 1970 until 1978. In the 1990s, John became a founding member of the Kast Off Kinks until retiring in 2008. Keyboardist John Gosling was added to the Kinks' lineup in May 1970. He auditioned on the final backing master track for "Lola", and was hired soon after. He was initially taken on solely for their upcoming US tour, but his post evolved into a more permanent position soon after. Gosling would remain with the band until 1978, departing after the release of Misfits. It seems that Gosling is somewhat in the background and it is very difficult to find much information on him. One thing we do know from our journey through the albums though, is that Ray leaned quite heavily on John when it came to the songs and the albums. After what could have been the catastrophic loss of Nicky Hopkins from their studio sessions, the band came across Gosling and although initially he was just going to be on Lola and the following tour, he became a full member of the band for nearly a decade. His keyboard work was a heavily contributing factor to the band's RCA years in particular, and he almost had top billing on the band's studio recordings, with Ray using the textures of the organ and piano to create the backdrop for probably the majority of their songs during this period. It appears it is as difficult to get pictures of John as it is information .... Oh well, any of you guys with info, please feel free to add info for us. cheers Interview with Gosling pt1 John Gosling Interview Part 1 . Interview pt2 John Gosling Interview Part 2
I got Sleepwalker (on cassette) around the same time as Everybody's in Show Biz and Schoolboys in Disgrace, trying to figure out the band that had made Soap Opera after hearing it on DC indie radio. 16 years old, pretty much over Wings and Aerosmith and Zep and Yes, the same year I got my first Talking Heads, Blondie, Sex Pistols, and Ramones LPs. Given that -- trajectory -- you'd think I would've hated Sleepwalker. But it was briefly my favorite Kinks album, until I finally dug up a copy of Soap Opera and then, decisively, got Kronikles. When I went to the Constitution Hall concert mentioned in the article above, I cheered and jumped up and down for Alcohol and The Hard Way, but I lost it screaming-teeny-bopper style for Sleepwalker, Life on the Road, and Mr. Big Man. I'd just gotten my first (muscle) car, and I played those three songs constantly, along with Juke Box Music -- because, as noted by someone above, they work perfectly for zooming around in American '70s gas guzzlers. But the songs also hit my adolescent heart in some way I'm hoping to revisit in the next few days on this thread. Anyway, once I got Kronikles, a month or so after getting Misfits, that was pretty much it for me & post-RCA Kinks for the next few decades. Arthur, Village Green, Lola, Face to Face, etc pretty much relegated Sleepwalker to the back of the record pile. A few years later, when the frat-bro crew got into Low Budget, I fully bought into the (critical consensus) idea that the Kinks were a brilliant band in the '60s who started losing their way in the '70s and then sold out completely when they signed with Arista. I always went back to certain songs from the RCA period -- fun ones like Ducks, Holiday Romance, Skin & Bones, Jack; emotional stuff like Sitting in My Hotel and You Make it All Worthwhile -- but the only song from the Arista period that stayed on various mix tapes and playlists over the years was Mr. Big Man (looking forward to discussing that one!). But man I've been getting more and more excited to go through this LP. Playing it again the last couple of days, I absolutely love it. My wife and 12 year old daughter -- huge '60s-era Kinks fans who I expected to be like "what the hell is this?" -- both love it, too. Which makes me think that a lot of my "oh this period IS the Kinks, and this period ISN'T the Kinks; oh this is the Kinks being AUTHENTIC and this is the Kinks being SELL OUTS" is a generational thing (my wife is 35). Wife and daughter don't hear Journey or REO or "AOR" when they hear Sleepwalker, they hear Ray singing with conviction and huge emotional range, Dave playing with total command of his instrument, tight melodies & complex structures. A dozen times in the last couple of days one of them has looked up and said "wow, why haven't you played this one before?" Revisiting Schoolboys In Disgrace on this thread really helped, too. I had my familiar dinosaur "oh no we're leaving all the fun stuff and getting into the sell-out period" reaction to the guitars etc on Headmaster, but No More Looking Back reminded me of everything great we were about to hear on Sleepwalker, and how well it fits with everything that came before. It's funny how people are like oh Bowie, so many personae, oh Dylan, he follows his muse wherever it leads, but Ray doesn't catch that kind of break. Dylan and Bowie had commercial considerations too, but Sleepwalker doesn't display any signs (to me) of Ray/the band saying "okay, we give up, we don't really mean any of this, we're just in it for the money from now on." It feels like the whole band really likes playing this kind of rock and roll, and that Ray's continuing to find new & original modalities for his storytelling. I mean, what if they just dug the "AOR" sound? It certainly sounds like Dave does. Now that it's not all tangled up in my mind with "dinosaur rock" and the "rise of punk" and whatever frat boys did and didn't like 40 years ago, I find myself able to really enjoy it again. So, very much looking forward to doing this LP and thankful to @mark winstanley for doing this thread and leading me back to the love & appreciation I had for Sleepwalker in the spring of 1977.
Sleepwalker was the first kinks album I bought shortly after its release. It grabbed me right off the bat and before 1977 ended I purchased most of the back catalog from from face to face onward, the first few albums just never did it for me though. I think the album songs are sequenced perfectly, the album jacket is their best IMO and the bootlegs out there from the spring tour are great, two were radio broadcasts with very good sound. As for the RCA comp greatest celluloid hero’s someone mentioned that here comes yet another day was taken from a Paris 1975 show which the live songs on the Soap Opera reissue are from, I’d like the concert those songs were taken from to be released at some point.
My first copy of Sleepwalker was a cassette, as was Misfits.The cover artwork for both are OK. I do prefer Misfits. I do have to say that the first two Arista albums are stylistically the same as the better songs on Schoolboys. I think the real change will be coming in Low Budget, although both Sleepwalker and Misfits did well in the album charts. Avid Brian x, if you don't mind me asking, what kind of muscle car were you driving back in the day? Old cars are another interest of mine, even though I'm a crappy driver!
I mostly agree with this re the Arista albums. But fortunately, Ray's lyrics often remain biting and funny.
Sleepwalker - anticipation I believe this is the first album where I became aware of Kinks music as they were putting it out. Not in retrospect. A couple songs on the album were played on the radio and that's about all I know up until fairly recently. I guess I'm a little wary of this big deal made over switching record labels. Up until joining this thread I didn't know nor care about what record label the Kinks was on during any period. Let the music speak. So I come into this album pretty open minded. I have examined Sleepwalker a bit but not intensely. I have to say I AM glad it's not a musical though. I'm a bit tired of trying to following a story (or NOT follow it which is the tiring part). And maybe that IS The difference in record labels that everyone talks about. I know Clive Davis was like "enough of this musical stuff, right, Ray?!" Did that hinder Ray with his creativity or did it lead to him going into a new direction he was already going to travel in? there are several songs beyond the two radio hits that stick out as being really good. And the others...let's see what happens. And I have no complaints about the album cover (for once) - so that's something. But yeah...how does Ray get to be the only one on it? If I was in the band, I may be a little resentful of that. But maybe the guys were cool with that?
I'm unsure how people don't hear that.... Aside from a few songs, I'm not into Journey or REO, not that I have a problem with them, but the association between the Kinks and those types of bands is bewildering to me
I think he was heading there anyway, personally. I get the impression that the seeming turn here is in the sound. Oddly when the band was making their early stuff there are lots of comments about the sound being so rough, and it would have been better if the albums were recorded better.... now we are hearing it is recorded too well and has no life LOL We hear the band was a little sloppy, and now we hear they are too polished LOL
I recall reading one critics review of One for the Road as bloodless. Not that I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment, but it might be an apt description for Sleepwalker. All the good rough edges sanded off. Professional, but perfunctory. I haven’t gone back and listened yet but my memory tells me I much prefer Misfits. But trying to keep an open mind as we go through track by track.
They're in a no win situation, that's for sure. What I come away with is that after a certain point in their output(everyone will place their marker where they wish), every single song was not a gem, but you were always guaranteed more than a few outstanding songs. Was there a consistency with their inconsistency? So far none of their albums are an utter travesty and embarrassment and my hope is that it will continue that way until...the end.
@DISKOJOE it was a 1973 Mustang Grande 351 V8 (w/ a Pioneer cassette deck & Altec Lansing speakers). I got to drive it for about five months before we moved to a place where the driving age was 18, but in that time I basically only got out of it to sporadically attend school & sleep.
I do have a problem with them. I don’t necessarily hear those particular bands, but The Kinks were definitely moving towards a fan base that would love those bands. The overall vibe of The Kinks totally changes on Sleepwalker. They become more of a band for “Ordinary People”. Even if some of the upcoming music doesn’t agree with me, I still take The Kinks over any AOR or stadium rock band that they sometimes get associated with. The comparison to those bands is a little far fetched, but I understand it.
I think that One For the Road is the key to this album. It carries the thread from when Ray and his dad had the chat depicted in the recent Lola show, that the only way for the Kinks to go on was to hit the road like other rock bands of the era, and todo that he had to write a hit. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. But the Kinks did become a road band starting in 1969. My guess is that Ray is perhaps purposefully off the mark when he says that RCA thought they were signing the band from 1965. They were clearly signing the band that recently had a hit with Lola. This was the same people at RCA who signed Bowie and Lou Reed. With Everybody’s in Showbiz, Ray reflected on the touring life. We know it was soon after that his marriage dissolved. He apparently decided that to continue he needed to write conceptual pieces, but the Kinks continued to tour and gain fans for their enjoyable live show. Ray was a great frontman. The seeming shift when the Kinks went to Arista seems to me to be a practical exploiting (no judgement intended) of what was at this point their biggest asset - being a great rock band with a special frontman. Oh, and a useful lead guitar player with a narrative relationship to the singer. They’d been dropping the horns, now they drop the backing singers and focus on their core strengths as a mid-seventies act. Sleepwalker has several good songs but I have always found it to be a little faceless, even when compared to Misfits. Maybe with in titling the next album Misfits, they add a bit back into the stew of what the audience wants from them, their quirkiness. I also agree with those who don’t hear a more significant musical change until Low Budget, and much of GTPWTW. Christgau would have an interesting comment on this era about “tunecraft once so delicate it threatened to waft away on the next zephyr” now taking on an “unbecoming swagger”. I do disagree with Christgau in that the change didn’t ruin Ray’s show. It just changed it. Now they were playing a mighty, legendary rock band on stage and did that quite well. Oh, and my favorite part of the Sleepwalker album is also the opening verse of Life on the Road. I like the rest of the song too, but that intro section is gorgeous.
Sleepwalker is the last Kinks record I bought in real time, as it was released. I remember liking it somewhat, but being disappointed that it sounded a little too generic to me at the time. Back then, I was in college, and was looking for new sounds. I loved Peter Gabriel's first solo album (still do), and later in the year Talking Heads 77 became my obsession. For what it's worth, at some point after I started buying cds, over the years I ended up buying or re-buying, if I already had it on vinyl, every Kinks album from the first one up to Preservation Acts I and II, and then stopping. I just listened to Sleepwalker again after quite a few years, and enjoyed it - hey, it's still the Kinks. A couple of the songs do still feel generic to me, but a couple may have more to them than I remembered. I look forward to everyone's comments on this one.
Seeing as we're starting a new era for the band I thought it would be interesting to picture the output of the Kinks and their contemporaries over the next 10 years: year ....Kinks.................... Stones ................McCartney ................. Who 1977 Sleepwalker ........................................................................................... Rough Mix (solo) 1978 Misfits ...................... Some Girls .................London Town .................. Who Are You 1979 Low Budget................................................... Back to the Egg 1980 ..................................... Emotional Rescue .......McCartney II.................Empty Glass (solo) 1981 Give the People..........Tattoo You ........................................................ Face Dances 1982 ......................................................................... Tug of War ................. It's Hard + All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (solo) 1983 State of Confusion..... Undercover.................Pipes of Peace 1984 Word of Mouth .............................................. Give My Regards to Broadstreet 1985 Return to Waterloo (solo) She's the Boss (solo) ................................. White City (solo) 1986 Think Visual .............. Dirty Work ............. Press to Play I won't offer any commentary on these albums (i.e no thread-crapping) but I think it's fair to say the big three struggled for inspiration and consistency over those 10 years. It must have been incredibly difficult when they had already said and done so much through their music and had scaled peaks of worldwide success and fame that most artists could only dream about. (note: I didn't include Dylan because he's an outlier: his output in the same period was also patchy but he's managed to scale the peak of creative success at least once in every decade he's been performing.)
I don't agree personally... Soap Opera and Schoolboys are a clear indicator of the changes already taking place .. The only things missing on Sleepwalker really are the fifties pastiches, the concepts and the Theatre. As songs, Underneath The Neon Sign, Face In The Crowd, No More Looking Back, I'm In Disgrace and The Hard Way could all be songs on Sleepwalker. The only real difference I am hearing at the moment, without having started the songs, is the overall sound of the album. The drums may be mixed a little lower, and the keys may be mixed a little lower in spots, but I'm not going to sign off on that until we've been through them though
Thanks for your reply, Avid Brian x. The second and last car my late father had was a 1973 Thunderbird that he bought new. Let me put it this way, if he got a Mustang Grande instead, my brother and I would have kept it instead of selling the T-Bird.
I wish I agreed with you! They sound like a different band to me beginning with Sleepwalker. Sure, there are moments on the last two albums that are not too far off from the next two records. This became more clear in the last month or so, but all of the songs you mentioned are, in my opinion, much better than anything on Sleepwalker. The songwriting is part of the problem. This is not some new discovery I have made. I have felt this way for a long time. I like a few songs on Sleepwalker. The first song, for instance, isn’t some radical departure, but the album as a whole sounds like a new direction. They eventually do become a different band with the exit of Gosling and Dalton, but I’m already hearing it on these last couple records with them. If there was no difference, then why would I love every album up until now, but not love anything on this album? That would be strange. I have been enthusiastic and have praised almost every song so far, and we have been discussing songs for 10 months! This album is just when that enthusiasm dies down a bit. It’s like watered down Kinks. You also came into The Kinks during this period or soon after it? That can have an impact on your thoughts about it. I didn’t follow any timeline for The Kinks. I knew and loved the 60s albums first, but Sleepwalker and Misfits were among the first vinyl records of theirs I bought because they were cheap and easy to find. As I stated earlier, I think Misfits has more in common with the last two albums. It’s easier to hear the same band from Soap Opera on it. It would make more sense if that came out before Sleepwalker, and at one time I thought it did. I would love to be proven wrong over the next two weeks. It’s still The Kinks and they are my favorite band, but we have hit the point where I would rather listen to any of the previous albums over any of the upcoming albums. Fifteen great albums is an incredible run, and there are still many more good albums to come. If you can continue to get the same level of enjoyment out of the remaining albums, that is a great spot to be in!
Not Paris, but The New Victoria Theatre London June 14, 1975. I’d like to see that show released too. Sounds like it was professionally recorded based on the sound quality of the four tracks that have been released.
Sleepwalker was the first Kinks record I bought in real time. In the couple of years before it I had bought and loved Muswell, Lola, Kronikle and the Reprise Greatest Hits. Other than Muswell the RCA era didn't impress me (I bought the Celluloid Heros comp a little later which didn't change my mind). With Sleepwalker I thought the Kinks were back and making great music again.
