Lowell’s Commodore Ballroom (current site of Gallagher Train Station’s parking garage)

The Night I Met the Kinks in Lowell

By Charlie Gargiulo

One of the greatest memories of my life took place one Saturday night in May 1970 at the Commodore Ballroom, our personal live sixties music shrine, and Lowell’s spiritual counterpart to Liverpool’s old Cavern Club, after serving as our parent’s generation’s local version of the Cotton Club.

I guess back in their time it was a suave, elegant place where dates would get dressed up to the nines and dance to live performances of their big-band era musical heroes, but during the late sixties it morphed into a great big grungy working class city hangout on Saturday nights where guys and gals came, indistinguishable by hair length, and dressed in who gives a shit clothes, supposedly to dance, but really to just mob and jostle with others standing on the non-seated open dance floor in front of a crappy old stage where our sixties rock band gods came to cast their musical blessings upon us as we mystically, but raucously, looked up at them staring down upon us, as if from Valhalla, just mere feet away from us mere mortals.

On that glorious Saturday night in May 1970 I met my rock band idols the Kinks, who I considered the greatest HUMAN band on the planet (the Beatles being unreachable GODS). Not only did I see my legends in the flesh, I got to the Commodore early so that I could get in first when they opened the doors and rush to claim my ground in the front, where you could get close enough to literally stand in front and rest your arms on the lip of the stage while watching them perform.

More amazingly, after hanging around inside after the concert basking in the exaltation of the experience while watching most of the crowd leave, I even got to take a leak a few urinals away from the Kinks lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies, who with only the exception of John Lennon, was my own personal musical and cultural pied piper.

But I digress. First let me tell you a little bit about why seeing Ray Davies and the Kinks meant so much to me.

You see, I was an only child whose old man took off when I was 11 and after my mom and I moved from Dracut to Lowell’s Little Canada in 1963, I spent the next two years living out a nightmare, fighting for my life without a dad or older brother, spending many nights alone while my mom had to work in a shitty bar room under the table in order to supplement the unlivable income being on welfare doled out to us. Even worse than all of that, I spent the next two years in a dystopian nightmare watching the new community I grew to love, and the friends who became like family to me, ripped away one at a time, tossed away to far off unreachable places from the slow, cruel destruction of Little Canada. Until finally they got to my apartment and forced me, my mom, my Aunt Rose and my other close neighbors out of the home we loved and scattered us like dry leaves from an ominous wind, separating many of them from my life permanently.

I would never be the same. I was so consumed with anger at the faceless forces that did this to us that it physically hurt. I wanted so badly to find out who did this and to make them pay for what they did and that led to a vicious cycle because at the same time I hated myself as I struggled with feelings of inadequacy for being too stupid to know what to do and from shame thinking me and my family were considered too worthless to be treated with dignity and respect. Bouncing from raging alienation to sinking depression and hopelessness that I bordered precariously close to self-destruction. I’m convinced to this day that if it wasn’t for the Beatles and the musical revolution of the sixties, I might never have recovered from my emotional spiral.

I don’t need to rehash how powerful the impact the Beatles had upon the youth of my generation since that phenomenon has been so numerously and eloquently documented that another account of it might make you want to puke. However, in my case I believe its impact even went to another level. The early Beatles energy and life force gave me an indescribable joy that lifted my spirits from life-support and John Lennon in particular, also exuded a cocky, fuck you, extremely attractive and endearing attitude that felt like it came from a place I recognized but couldn’t name. He felt like the cool older brother that I never had who allowed me to tag along with his other cool older friends Paul, George and Ringo who all took me under their wing. I felt safe around them. I felt good around them. I felt like I meant something around them.

In addition to the happiness I felt horsing around with them singing and sharing irreverent fun as a group, my big brother John also had a more intimate, caring older brother side who could comfort me with the wisdom I needed through difficult times by sharing advice and understanding  through his songs like “Help,””I’m a Loser,”  “Girl,” “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away,” and “I’m So Tired” while also inspiring me to bigger things with songs like “All You Need Is Love,” “Rain,” “Revolution” and “Nowhere Man.”

As I grew older with them I came to recognize that the other awakening they had on me was finally being able to put a finger on the angst, inner rage and lousy self-esteem brewing within me. The Beatles and many of the British Invasion bands brought more than great music to American working class kids, they also brought their own proud class-consciousness from England that had been effectively squashed, demonized and forbidden from being acknowledged in America through the right-wing power structure’s use of the Red Scare after World War II to destroy unions and vigilantly suppress any demands by the poor and marginalized for social and economic justice.

After being first educated by my working class heroes from Liverpool, I earned my graduate degree in class consciousness through music from Ray Davies and the Kinks. Most Americans old enough remember the Kinks through their legendary power chord anthem, “You Really Got Me” and similar hits like “All Day and All of the Night, “Till the End of the End” and by even using power chords for their slow tune hit, “Tired of Waiting For You.” I loved those songs too, but what really made the Kinks stand out to me was how brilliantly and courageously Ray Davies wrote about working class anger and his satirical power of exposing the cruelty, vanity and injustice of elitist snobbery and systemic class inequities.

Ironically, after being one of the most popular of the original British Invasion musical groups to hop the shore after the Beatles, the Kinks quickly faded from the American musical scene from 1966 to 1969 after they were banned from playing in the States because Ray Davies apparently slugged an American Musical Union official because he was pissed at how British acts were treated with contempt and disrespect by jealous American musicians over British acts dominating the scene. As a result, they fell out of view during those years and most Americans never heard their most prolific work in the late 60’s. While in England during that time, the Kinks rivalled any group other than the Beatles and Stones, yet their greatest music very rarely found any American ears. Despite this disappearing act from American airwaves, music historians still rave about the albums they produced between 1966-69, “Face to Face,” “Something Else,” “Village Green Preservation Society,” and “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”

I was very fortunate in that I was so enamored by their last song “Well Respected Man,” which hit the charts before they disappeared on American radio, that I went out of my way to find out what they were releasing in England and turned to the late, great Harvey Bisson of Harvey’s Bookland, who now sold new records, as well as old used ones and books, at his new downtown store on Central Street after being displaced from Little Canada, so he could do a special order for me to acquire each new Kinks single and album as they came out.

It was during this period that I got the full class consciousness education from Ray Davies songs. How’s this for starters from the “Well Respected Man” song I mentioned:

“And he plays at stocks and shares
And he goes to the regatta
And he adores the girl next door
‘Cause he’s dying to get at her
But his mother knows the best about
The matrimonial stakes

‘Cause he’s oh, so good
And he’s oh, so fine
And he’s oh, so healthy
In his body and his mind
He’s a well respected man about town
Doing the best things so conservatively.”

It only grew better and stronger from there. So many songs about ordinary working class folks struggling to make it through every day with a clear eye on the inherent unfairness of the system but with a healthy irreverence and desire to strive for a fairer world.

Thanks to help from Harvey, I got to hear songs like “Dead End Street:”

“On a cold and frosty morning,
Wipe my eyes and stop me yawning.
And my feet are nearly frozen,
Boil the tea and put some toast on.

What are we living for?
Two-roomed apartment on the second floor.
No chance to emigrate,
I’m deep in debt and now it’s much too late.

We both want to work so hard,
We can’t get the chance,
(dead end!)
People live on dead end street.
(dead end!)
People are dying on dead end street.
(dead end!)
Gonna die on dead end street.”

And other classic songs like “Shangri-La:”

“And all the houses in the street have got a name
‘Cause all the houses in the street, they look the same
Same chimney puff, same little cars, same window panes
The neighbors call to tell you things that you should know
They say their lines, they drink their tea, and then they go
And they tell your business in another Shangri-La
The gas bills, and the water rates the payments on the car
Too scared to think about how insecure you are
Life ain’t so happy in your little Shangri-La!”

Through the inspiration of the Beatles and Kinks I learned to play the guitar with the dream of playing in my own band. However, after a devastating compound fracture of my left wrist, I was lucky that I had the complete recovery of my arm and hand. That is, except  for one thing. I have never been able to play a barre chord on a guitar because when I try to hold down the six strings with my index finger, I can’t adequately move the other fingers to hold down the other notes so that ended any hope of being a rock guitarist. And besides that, I sing like shit.

BUT, I could play guitar well enough to write songs and that is what I did. I became a songwriter who wrote both the music and lyrics to my songs. The dream I never realized was being able to link with a band seeking to do original material because the duties of life got in the way, or as John Lennon better put it, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

Anyways, I digressed way too much, so let me get you back to the beginning of my story about seeing the Kinks at the Commodore. The concert was mind-blowing, Ray Davies was in fine form with a straw hat singing his heart out and being charming and witty with his banter, crazy brother Dave Davies, who had legendary fisticuffs and battles with his brother Ray over the years, that made the Oasis Gallagher brothers tempestuous relationship appear like choir boys in comparison, was a mad lead guitarist whose hand looked like a blur as he stared rakishly at the audience, drummer Mick Avory, who once nearly decapitated Dave’s ear in an on-stage fight when he hit him with a cymbal, was a dynamo and new bass player John Dalton did his best Bill Wyman, “what am I doing with a crazy rock band look” while playing quietly and earnestly. It was the greatest performance I had ever seen live. And I saw them many, many more times in the years to come.

But the moment I will never forget and always regret came next. After most people cleared out, I decided to go to the restroom before I left. At that point the Commodore’s men’s room was a disaster with piss-soaked floors from urinals inadequate to contain the gallons of beer-drenched urine badly aimed all night by hundreds of young guys who were in too much of a rush to clean up so they could get back out to see the bands.

That’s when Ray Davies pulled up to his urinal, leaving the polite empty one between us. It was just the two of us. I admit, I was more than just star-struck, it was more like coming face to face with a guru, an artist who seemed to have all the answers I was looking for but couldn’t quite find on my own. And to meet him HERE!

I think we both pretended to wash our hands by running the water over our fingers on the way out. He nodded politely and I did the same and mumbled something like “great show” and felt like an idiot. Then finally as we walked out of the men’s room and down the dance floor as he walked to his backstage room, and I to the exit, I got up my courage and told him how much I appreciated his songs and asked him if he had any new music coming out. He was friendly as hell and stopped to talk with me and told me they had a new album coming out in which he writes a lot about how artists get ripped off by the music industry. It turned out to be their classic album, “Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround.”

We talked for about 10 minutes and as we said goodbye he asked, “Do you know of any clubs that might be open now where me and the boys can go?” I mistakenly thought he meant a night club when I later realized it was his British way of asking for a place to eat. Since I didn’t want to send them to some dive like the Laconia I said I was sorry but I didn’t think anything was still open. I still kick myself for my mistake because I could’ve directed him to the Owl Diner and, shit, even offered them my place to come if they wanted a bite to eat. And I honestly believe that Ray was such a cool, down to earth guy he might have taken me up on the offer after our pleasant conversation.

It’s one of those moments I wish I could have back to do over, but I also know that just that moment we had was precious to me because I got to know the man I admired and didn’t come away disappointed.

And to top it all off, a year after that experience Ray put out another album with the Kinks called “Muswell Hillbillies,” which contained the first song I ever heard written by somebody who was a victim of urban renewal. The title song spoke about his family’s experience with urban renewal in the Muswell Hills section of London. It made me feel even more connected and grateful to the man I almost got to take home for dinner.