The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

"Village Green Preservation Society" redirects here. For the song, see The Village Green Preservation Society.

The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
Studio album by the Kinks
Released	22 November 1968
Recorded	February 1967 ("Village Green") March–October 1968
Studio	Pye, London
Genre	Pop rock baroque pop music hall folk
Length	39:11
Label	Pye (UK) Reprise (US)
Producer	Ray Davies
The Kinks UK chronology
Live at Kelvin Hall (1968) The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968) Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969)
The Kinks US chronology
Something Else by the Kinks (1968) The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1969) Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969)
Alternative cover
Planned cover of the unreleased UK twelve-track edition, instead issued in Scandinavia on 9 October 1968.
Singles from The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
"Starstruck" / "Picture Book" Released: 8 or 15 January 1969 (US)

The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is the sixth studio album by the English rock band the Kinks. It was released on 22 November 1968 in the United Kingdom by Pye Records and in February 1969 in the United States by Reprise Records. A modest seller on release, it was the band's first studio album which failed to chart in either country, but was lauded by contemporary critics for its songwriting. It was embraced by America's new underground rock press, completing the Kinks' transformation from mid-1960s pop hitmakers to critically favoured cult band.

Bandleader Ray Davies loosely conceptualised the album as a collection of character studies, an idea he based on Dylan Thomas's 1954 radio drama Under Milk Wood. Centring around themes of nostalgia, memory and preservation, the album reflects Davies's concerns about the increasing modernisation and encroaching influence of America and Europe on English society. Other than "Village Green", which was recorded in November 1966 and then re-recorded in February 1967, sessions began in March 1968 at Pye Studios in London. The sessions produced numerous recordings, including the non-album singles "Wonderboy" and "Days", while others went unreleased for years. Incorporating a range of stylistic influences, including music hall and baroque pop, the album was the first which Davies produced entirely on his own and was the last to feature the original Kinks line-up, as bassist Pete Quaife departed the band in March 1969. It also marked the final collaboration between the Kinks and session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, whose playing features heavily on piano, harpsichord and Mellotron. The album's planned September 1968 release was delayed by two months in the UK after Davies's last-minute decision to rearrange and augment the track list, though release of the earlier twelve-track edition went ahead in several European countries.

Village Green is regarded by commentators as an early concept album. Despite its initial commercial shortcomings, it has influenced numerous musical acts, especially American indie artists from the late 1980s and 1990s and Britpop groups like Blur and Oasis. Driven in part by this influence, the album experienced a critical and commercial resurgence in the 1990s, and it has been reissued several times, including an expanded edition in 2018. The album has since become the Kinks' best-selling album in the UK, where it was certified silver in 2008 and gold in 2018. It has been included in several critics' and listeners' polls for the best albums of all time, including those published by Rolling Stone magazine and in the book All Time Top 1000 Albums.

Background

Primarily known as a singles act, the Kinks assembled their early LPs without thought to making a greater artistic statement. Following the success of "A Well Respected Man" as a US single in November 1965, Ray Davies, the Kinks' principal songwriter, promised in media interviews that the band would release songs satirising contemporary fashion and social trends on EPs, a medium which would compromise between the longer format of an LP and individual singles. In July 1965, the Kinks were informally blacklisted from US performance by the American Federation of Musicians, something author Ian MacDonald suggests left the band comparatively isolated from American influence. The isolation, he writes, guided them away from their earlier blues-based riffing towards a distinct English style evident throughout their late 1960s work. Davies expressed his pride of Britain in an April 1966 interview with Melody Maker magazine, expressed his wish that its culture could remain distinct from that of America and Europe. He further indicated his desire to keep writing "very English songs" and hoped to convey his feelings in a new composition, "You Ain't What You Used to Be".

When the album (Village Green) was written, I thought that the Kinks would never get back into the [United] States after the ban. While everybody in the world was gravitating towards love, peace and San Francisco, the Kinks were in a London suburb making this strange little record about an imaginary village green.

– Ray Davies, 1994

In March 1966, despite the Kinks' recent commercial successes, the band's extensive touring and promotional appearances led Davies to a nervous breakdown. Adding to his stresses was litigation by Larry Page, the Kinks' former manager, and Edward Kassner, their former publisher, who had been claiming publishing rights and 10 per cent of the Kinks' earnings since November 1965. Davies's songwriting earnings from November 1965 on remained in escrow during the legal proceedings, which persisted until October 1970. The band reduced their touring commitments from the high of 1964–66 and spent more time recording in the studio, allowing Davies to develop as a songwriter of increasing depth, while being separate from the emerging youth- and drug-culture.

According to author Johnny Rogan, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (often shortened as Village Green) reflects a progression in the thematic linking apparent on the Kinks' albums. Though the band assembled their November 1965 album The Kink Kontroversy quickly, it was the first time Davies composed songs specifically for a single project. Author Robert Polito terms the album's second side a "pocket opera of despair". While the band considered it their most unified work to date, Rogan writes the album can retrospectively be seen as a transitional work where the band moved away from their original R&B style. Davies further shifted his approach with the band's 1966 album, Face to Face, conceptualising an LP made up of songs connected through the use of sound effects and segues. The concept would have predated its first use on the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, though Pye Records's objections forced him to reestablish the traditional separation between tracks. The album is retrospectively seen as one of the Kinks and rock music's first thematically linked albums, dealing loosely around themes of English class and social structures.

Davies was unsatisfied with Face to Face, saying in a February 1967 interview that the album was "more of a collection of songs than an LP" and "didn't seem to fit together too well." In November 1966, as the Kinks started sessions for their next album, Something Else by the Kinks, he began envisioning an LP unified around his newest composition, "Village Green". He later compared the initial idea to Under Milk Wood, a radio drama about a small Welsh town completed by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas just before his 1953 death. The idea was shelved while the band worked on Something Else, being deemed more appropriate for a potential solo album than a Kinks LP. Davies spent early and mid-1967 increasingly thinking about the form his solo project would take; contemporary magazines reported it would be "a solo LP with orchestra and things like that", an "LP of ideas and songs" or "a solo LP with the songs linked up in a musical story".

Recording history

1966–1967

The Kinks performing for Dutch television in April 1967, two months after re-recording "Village Green".

The Kinks first recorded "Village Green" at the beginning of the sessions for Something Else by the Kinks, on 24 and 25 November 1966. They later re-recorded the song in February 1967, though Davies withheld it from the album. In November 1967, the Kinks shifted to working on a project tentatively titled Village Green, at that time still envisaged as a Davies solo project. Davies wrote most of Village Green's songs from late 1967 into 1968 in his living room at 87 Fortis Green, North London. He generally composed on his Fender Malibu acoustic guitar. The band began rehearsing the new songs at the home in late 1967 and may have begun recording songs for the album during this period, including "Monica" and "Phenomenal Cat". Davies recalled "Mr. Songbird" specifically as being recorded "a long time before" the rest of the album, leading band researcher Doug Hinman to date it to around November 1967.

1968

March–April

Recording for the album began in earnest in March 1968 at Pye Studios. The Kinks recorded most of the album in Pye Studio 2, the smaller of two basement studios at Pye Records's London offices. Recording took place any time the band were able to obtain studio time, generally in the late afternoon or during the night. While Davies produced, Pye's in-house engineers operated the four-track mixing console; the band's longtime engineer Alan "Mac" MacKenzie worked on the album until departing from Pye in early 1968. Brian Humphries engineered from May onward. The band's initial March 1968 sessions produced numerous recordings, only some of which ended up on the final album, including "Animal Farm" and "Johnny Thunder". "Lincoln County" and "There Is No Life Without Love" were issued in August as a Dave Davies solo single, while other tracks like "Berkeley Mews", "Did You See His Name" and "Rosemary Rose" went unreleased for years.

Ray Davies's former home at 87 Fortis Green, North London (pictured 2016). He composed most of the LP's songs in its living room before moving out in late July 1968.

After being quickly written and recorded earlier in the month, "Wonderboy" was selected from the available recordings to be the band's next single, rush-released in the UK on 5 April. Its B-side, "Polly", also recorded in March, indicated Ray Davies's continued interested in Under Milk Wood by directly referencing a character in the drama, Polly Garter. Unlike the Kinks' previous singles, "Wonderboy" failed to chart, selling only 26,000 copies in the UK. Further indicating the band's diminishing status, they were unable to support themselves as a headlining act in concert; recording for the album paused from 6 to 28 April 1968 as the band toured England on a package tour, performing in cinemas with the Herd and the Tremeloes, among other groups.

May–June

The band resumed work on the album in May 1968 by recording several new songs, including "Picture Book". In light of "Wonderboy"'s failure to chart, Davies opted to record his new composition, "Days", as quickly as possible to reestablish the Kinks' status. Recording for the song concluded in early June, and it was issued in the UK on the 28th. Hinman writes that by early June, Davies's solo LP and the band's next album had "[slowly] mutated into one" under the expected title Village Green.

Throughout the 1960s, the Kinks were on different record labels in the US and UK and had differing contract schedules between the two countries. By June 1968, the band were contractually obligated to immediately submit a finished LP to their US label, Reprise Records. Of those songs the band had already recorded, except "Village Green", Davies sent fifteen to the label. The label titled the album Four More Respected Gentlemen in reference to the band's 1965 single "A Well Respected Man". Rather than issue it immediately, Reprise planned for a November release after learning about the Kinks' plans for a September release of Village Green. In the UK, Pye Records allowed the band extra time to record more tracks for Village Green and made plans to release the album in the lead-up to Christmas 1968. The band again took time off from recording for a tour of Sweden from 8 to 23 June 1968. Because of the band's weakening reputation, the booking agency and the band's new agent, Barry Dickens, scheduled them to perform at outdoor public parks, seeing it as the only realistic way for the band to turn a profit.

July–August

After returning from Sweden, the band began rehearsing more songs for Village Green in July at Davies's Fortis Green home. To boost the album's track listing, the Kinks spent most of the second half of July recording new songs. New tracks included "Do You Remember Walter", "Wicked Annabella", "Starstruck", "People Take Pictures of Each Other" and "Sitting by the Riverside". In late July, Davies and his family moved out of their Fortis Green home to a larger Tudor house in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. Davies's previous work had been heavily inspired by life in the original area, not far from his and his brother's childhood home. He later reflected that as soon as he moved into the new house he felt unhappy.

In mid-August 1968, the Kinks recorded Davies's new composition "The Village Green Preservation Society". Davies intended for the song to be the last recorded for the album, making it a twelve track LP. With its recording, he changed the album's title to The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society and did its final mixing. Publishing was assigned for the LP's songs on 16 August. Around the same time, Davies interviewed with Record Mirror and New Musical Express (NME) magazines in anticipation of the album's release, and the album cover was photographed.

September–November

In September 1968, with recording for Village Green finished, the Kinks returned to Pye to record a new Davies composition, "Til Death Do Us Part", for a film of the same name. Extracts from the LP were played by Pye executives at the label's international sales conference, held on 5 and 6 September at London's Europa Hotel, and around 11 September, Keith Altham of NME listened to a tape of the album at the band's manager's office. Before Altham's favourable review was published in the 21 September issue of NME, Davies had Pye halt the album's production and postpone its planned UK release of 27 September.

Davies's reason for delaying Village Green's release is unclear. Hinman writes the last-minute decision foreshadowed major conflicts between Pye and Davies in late 1968. Davies later suggested he was annoyed that the label demanded hit singles from him and afforded little support for full-length LPs, and Hinman suggests this annoyance moved Davies to withhold from Pye any potential Kinks singles. Miller suggests Davies may have desired to increase Village Green's track listing after becoming aware that both the Beatles and the Jimi Hendrix Experience would be issuing double albums, Apple Records having announced on 22 September that the Beatles' November release would include 24 songs. On 30 September, a press release stated that the Kinks' next album would be released in a month as a double-record with at least 18 songs, and Avory explained in an October interview with Peter Jones of Beat Instrumental magazine that the band's next album would include 20 songs over two records, but sold for the price of one. After Davies suggested the change to Pye, the label rejected it for financial reasons, but accepted a compromise of a fifteen-song single-disc LP.

The Kinks returned to Pye Studios around 12 October 1968 to record more tracks for the album, including "Big Sky", "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" and "All of My Friends Were There", though the latter may have been recorded in July. Davies remixed several songs from the July sessions on 28 October, likely because the original mixes had been rushed, and submitted the final tapes to Pye for the fifteen-track LP in November.

Production

Studio aesthetic and sound

Studio and sound effects are largely absent [from Village Green], and rarely put to expressive purpose (would the Beatles have been able to record a song like the Kinks' "Animal Farm" without adding animal noises onto the studio track?). Instrumental playing provides some color to songs, but they never constitute a texture, let alone a hook. Ray Davies overdubs vocals, but little else ... Nothing is allowed to detract from the presentation of the distinct part of each song.

– Author Barry J. Faulk, 2010

Village Green was the Kinks' first studio album which Davies produced entirely on his own, following a breakdown in his relationship with the band's longtime producer, Shel Talmy, during the sessions for Something Else. The production is subdued, described by author Nicholas Schaffner as "unassuming in the extreme, with embellishments kept to a minimum." Davies's mix of the album is generally light on the bottom end. He later suggested he under-recorded the songs, either deliberately or out of inexperience, resulting in a demo-like sound.

The album uses a variety of contrasting instruments and sounds, such as harmonica, harpsichord and flute, as well as guitar feedback. The Kinks' recording process generally consisted of laying down the rhythm track first, featuring drums, bass and Ray Davies on piano or rhythm guitar. Four microphones were placed around Avory's drum kit and Quaife's Rickenbacker bass was plugged directly into the mixing desk. Its songs are generally driven by Ray's 1965 Fender Malibu acoustic guitar, while Dave often supplemented an electric guitar contribution on Ray's 1963 Fender Telecaster or one of his own guitars, including a 1959 Gibson Flying V and Guild Starfire III. Dave's typical Vox AC30 amplifier was likely used for most tracks, though the long sustain heard on "Wicked Annabella" suggests the use of an early solid-state amplifier. Avory altered his drum sound on "Wicked Annabella" and "Picture Book" by disengaging the snare and deadened the sound on "Phenomenal Cat" by placing newspaper over a floor tom. After recording the rhythm track, the band would then typically add percussion, keyboards and a guitar contribution from Dave. The recording would then be mixed-down to make room for vocal contributions.

Ray Davies sings lead on each song except "Wicked Annabella", where Dave sings lead. Ray Davies's vocal is generally double tracked throughout. The group sang harmony vocals together, often supplemented by a falsetto from Ray's wife, Rasa Davies, who had sung backing vocals on all of the band's studio albums to that point. Typical of the band's vocal work, their barbershop harmonies include falsettos and wordless sounds like "la la" ("Village Green"), "na na" ("Picture Book") and "ba ba" ("Johnny Thunder") or nonsense phrases like "fum fum didle um di la la" ("Phenomenal Cat").

A Mellotron Mk II. After first using the tape-loop-based instrument in June 1967, Ray Davies employed it extensively during the Village Green sessions as an inexpensive alternative to real string- and brass-sections.

The album prominently employs a Mellotron as an inexpensive alternative to real string- and brass-sections. Ray Davies was introduced to the tape-loop-based keyboard instrument in May 1967 while visiting the home of Graham Nash, a member of the contemporary English rock band the Hollies. He purchased his own soon after and likely first used it on a Kinks recording in early June 1967 with "Lazy Old Sun". The sounds it mimics on Village Green include a horn section ("Do You Remember Walter"), accordion ("Sitting by the Riverside") and flute ("Phenomenal Cat"), among others. Strings are generally absent from the Kinks late 1960s recordings, likely because Pye executives saw the hiring of an arranger and string players as too expensive to warrant. Among the songs on Village Green with real string sections are "Village Green" and possibly "Animal Farm", as arranged by English composer David Whitaker, though the string sounds on the latter may have been accomplished with a Mellotron.

Session musician Nicky Hopkins contributed extensive keyboard work for the album on piano, harpsichord and Mellotron. Hopkins had first contributed to a Kinks LP in 1965 on The Kink Kontroversy and his playing featured heavily on the band's releases to 1968. He later estimated he played "about seventy per cent" of the LP's keyboard work, while Ray Davies played the rest.

Band dynamics

When the Kinks rehearsed and recorded Davies's new compositions, he typically avoided sharing the song's lyrics or melody with his bandmates. Mick Avory suggested the practice arose out of Davies's paranoia that his song's would be stolen, while Quaife ascribed it to "Ray playing silly buggers". Both Avory and Quaife recalled being annoyed by the method, since it prevented them from easily adding fills and embellishments that fit the song.

Pete [Quaife] and I were trying to get the excitement of our performances on record and that's just the way it came out. On songs like "Big Sky," I'd think of a bass part and give it to him and he'd change it around – play off the melody, like Paul McCartney was starting to do at the time, because they both started as guitar players – and it would create something completely different and also really new-sounding.

– Dave Davies, 2014

In contrast to the Kinks' work under Talmy, Davies ensured the group ran through numerous takes of songs on Village Green. Avory recalled that after Talmy's departure, the group spent more time collaborating and "[fleshing] out the sound" in studio. All group members contributed to the recording process, though Davies held final say over all decisions. He required all band members to attend all sessions, regardless of whether they were expected to play on the particular song. Quaife recalled: "He'd keep you there for hours and he wouldn't let you out of the studio either. You'd have to be there even though you weren't doing anything." Rasa Davies served as an intermediary in the studio between Davies and his bandmates. In subsequent interviews, Quaife has sometimes stated that Rasa's presence at sessions eased group tensions, but has also suggested that her attendance catalysed anger within the band.

Tensions within the group culminated on 27 May 1968 during a session for "Days". In both Ray and Dave Davies's mid-1990s autobiographies, they recall Quaife crossing out the word Days on the track's tape box and substituting Daze. In subsequent interviews, Quaife has instead recalled being bored while listening to numerous playbacks of the song, leading him to doodle a cartoon character on the tape box. The incident led to an argument between Ray Davies and Quaife before the latter left the studio. Davies later suggested his anger at Quaife was instead anger at himself for becoming conceited over his songwriting: "That truth was that as proud as I was of the song, I was literally in an emotional daze about where I was, who I was and who I wanted to be with." Dave Davies reflected that the event marked Quaife's growing disillusionment with the band's musical direction and an expression of his jealousy and resentment towards Ray.

Village Green Preservation Society ... was the one album where all four of us contributed ideas. It was the only project where everybody participated as a group. Ironically, it was my last album with the band.

– Pete Quaife, 1998

Following the late May 1968 incident, Quaife remained unhappy. On 1 June, as the Kinks prepared to fly to Dublin for an evening show in Wicklow, Ireland, he stepped off the plane shortly before it departed. His absence was not noticed by his bandmates until after their arrival, necessitating the cancellation of the performance. During the band's June tour of Sweden, Quaife recalled he and Ray Davies remained distant from one another. Tensions eased after the band returned and resumed recording in July. Davies reluctantly allowed for creative input from his bandmates, Avory recalling it being the first time in the group's history that they worked together during recordings. Quaife was unsure what precipitated Davies's change, but remembered the period as being "amazing", with a "lightened up" Davies allowing them to suggest things during both the rehearsal and recording process. He further remembered Davies's reluctance returning during the end of the album's recording.

Mono and stereo versions

When Davies mixed Village Green in 1968, mono remained his preferred format. Despite his preference, the album was released in both mono and stereo formats in the UK, and in the US, its release marked the first Kinks LP to be issued in stereo only. As was typical for the time, the mono and stereo editions contained obvious differences. The twelve- and fifteen-track editions contain additional differences, since Davies remixed some tracks in late October 1968 after finding the original August mixes rushed.

The mono version of "Do You Remember Walter" has more electric guitar, less Mellotron and no tambourine, and "Wicked Annabella" has more reverb and is louder. The mono mixes of both "Starstruck" and "People Take Pictures of Each Other" last for a few extra seconds. As well, the original stereo ending of "People Take Pictures of Each Other" featured a trad jazz ragtime piece, which Miller writes served to express "That's All, Folks!" at the album's close. Davies was forced to remove it due to copyright issues, likely because he used a pre-existing tape rather than hiring session musicians to play it.

Songs

Overview

... I like these traditional British things to be there. I never go watch cricket any more, but I like to know it's there. It's like not being able to read Eagle any more. And it's bad for people to grow up and not know what a china cup is – or a village green. In other words, I'd rather have the actual things here not just pictures of things we used to have. It all sounds terribly serious, but it isn't really – I mean I wouldn't die for this cause, but I think it's frightfully important.

– Ray Davies, May 1969

Village Green is the Kinks' first album where every composition is credited to only Ray Davies. Most of its songs run only a little over two minutes; other than "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", all of its tracks are under three minutes, leading Schaffner to term them "miniatures". Davies was initially inspired by Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, a radio drama which focuses on the townspeople of a small Welsh town on a typical spring day. Dave described Village Green as "about a town and the people that have lived there", where "the village green is the focal point of the whole thing." Ray Davies contemporaneously explained that its songs are "all related in a way"; while the songs vary in their adherence to the village green theme, the album displays a preoccupation with the past, hoping to find refuge in a simpler time rather than in the alienation of the present. Author Carey Fleiner counters that while a "lazy interpretation" of the album's message would suggest that Davies is about living in the past, she writes it instead suggests using the common cultural experience of the past to cope with the issues of the present.

The tracks typically serve as portraits of the village's inhabitants or as a description of local attractions or activities. Among the song's character studies are "Johnny Thunder", "Monica" and "Do You Remember Walter", about a biker, a prostitute and a lost friend, respectively. Other songs display an interest in memory and its relationship with photographs, such as "Picture Book", "People Take Pictures of Each Other" and the unreleased "Pictures in the Sand". Miller writes that several of Davies's compositions employ a similar format of having one stinging line, an idea Davies elucidated in a December 1969 interview: "If you can make a funny song and then have one very hard line, you reach people."

Authors Andy Miller and Mike Segretto describe Village Green as an example of rock and pop music. Critic Hal Horowitz instead writes it is less a rock album than an example of "melodic folk/pop", and Jonathan Donaldson of the website Vanyaland describes it as baroque pop. According to Segretto, while the album includes some elements of 1968 music, borrowing from "heavy blues", psychedelia, raga rock and acid rock, it is generally separate from contemporary musical trends. According to author Mark Doyle, the album fits in the contemporary Pop art movement due to its drawing from "eclectic and cosmopolitation" styles, such as the "English folk-pastoral traditions", music hall, psychedelia, calypso and blues. Musicologist Stan Hawkins describes the album's sound as generally "flowery, tranquil and dreamy", influenced equally by music hall and American rock and roll. Author Patricia Gordon Sullivan sees the album as a continuation of the music hall overtones established the previous year on Something Else by the Kinks, heard especially in songs on Village Green like "The Village Green Preservation Society", "Johnny Thunder" and "Phenomenal Cat". Davies later recalled that though he never went to a music hall performance as a child, his style of composition was heavily influenced by his father, who regularly went to musicals and dances and encouraged his children to sing songs at the piano. Miller suggests the sing-along style is evident in Davies's late 1960s work, such as on "People Take Pictures of Each Other", while Sullivan writes "All of My Friends Were There" arose from Davies's time spent as a child listening to his father's sing-alongs at the local pub.

Davies later cited the Kinks' five-year ban from American performance as producing his English-focused lyrics. Miller instead connects Davies's writing to a broader tradition of English pastoral poetry, particularly the song "Village Green" and its story of a disappearing rural idyll. He writes the song is typical of the genre, especially in its evocation of literal imagery like oak trees and church steeples to suggest a loss of innocence. He compares it to other examples of the genre like William Blake's poem "The Echoing Green" from his Songs of Innocence (1789), William Wordsworth's "Michael" (1800) and Oliver Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" (1770). Miller further suggests Davies may have gone through a period of reading the works of English author George Orwell, especially his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air, where the central character George Bowling goes back to the country town of his childhood and experiences disappointment when compared to his nostalgic expectations. Journalist and musician Rob Chapman suggests that in addition to Coming Up for Air, Davies's lyrics further allude to other English writings, including Harold Nicolson's short stories, E. M. Forster's Bloomsbury essays and the writings of Philip Larkin. Author Ken Rayes compares the album to F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, a relationship he thinks is hinted at in the song "Village Green" by the presence of the characters Tom and Daisy, who have the same names as the novel's characters Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Rayes writes that Davies's notion of "an encroaching modern English culture" parallels the novel's motifs of "mythic America and the changing American dream."

Side one

"The Village Green Preservation Society"

Davies composed "The Village Green Preservation Society" around August 1968, after most of the project's tracks had been completed. He was unsatisfied with the LP's working title Village Green, but was unsure how to replace it. In contemporary interviews, he explained that the song's central inspiration spawned from a conversation where someone suggested the Kinks had been preserving things, and he hoped to capture the idea within a single song. He subsequently described it as the album's "national anthem".

The song's composition is simple, employing four chords and a midway modulation from C to D major. Miller suggests its arrangement is defined by Avory's "especially exuberant" drumming and the "similarly light and effective" piano contribution. Ray and Dave closely harmonise throughout, while Ray's voice is emphasised at the midway point and its closing. Ray's organ contribution is emphasised in the mix over Dave's acoustic rhythm guitar. Lyrically, the song consists of a listing of things to be saved for posterity, such as the characters Desperate Dan and Donald Duck, though Rogan writes the mention of the latter, an American creation, suggests "the Anglocentric ideal has already been tainted." The song concludes by building towards its final lyric of "God save the village green!", backed with falsetto harmony vocals.

"Do You Remember Walter"

Ray Davies was inspired to compose "Do You Remember Walter" after running into an old childhood friend: "Walter was a friend of mine, we used to play football together every Saturday. Then I met him again recently after about five years and we found we just didn't have anything to talk about." In its lyrics, the singer recalls his and Walter's various childhood exploits, such as playing cricket in the rain and smoking cigarettes together, and recalls a childhood promise they made to one another that they would sail away to sea. In the second half of the song, the singer instead sees the older Walter as fat and married, mocking his early bedtime, while Walter is uninterested in the singer's reminiscing of the past. In his November 1968 interview with Melody Maker, Davies stated the song's closing line, "People often change but memories of people can remain", served to sum up the song's message. Rogan compares it to Davies's 1967 song "David Watts" and suggests it conveys "a loss of almost tragic proportions" when the Walter character is "demythologised in adulthood." Rayes writes the song is a variation on a convention in pastoral poetry in which a reader is addressed as an acquaintance and told about "a dead 'Golden Age' hero".

"Do You Remember Walter" employs a vertical melody, described by Miller as "like a piano exercise". After opening with "machine gun drumming", the song is defined by a dominant piano and bass guitar, alongside snare rolls. Davies lead vocal is occasionally double tracked, and is sung in a tone of longing and regret. A Mellotron mimicking a horn section follows the melody low in the mix, which Miller writes contributes a rousing and melancholic effect.

"Picture Book"

"Picture Book" describes the singer's experience flipping through a photo album reflecting on happy memories. Both Rogan and Miller suggests the song's cheerful sound provides a misleading impression that it is purely lighthearted, since it not directly describing happy memories, but instead the experience of the ageing narrator looking at photographs from "a long time ago". In addition to using barbershop-like harmonies for a wordless vocal, Davies sings "scooby dooby doo" in reference to Frank Sinatra's 1966 single "Strangers in the Night". The song employs two acoustic guitars along with an overdubbed electric guitar. Unlike most of the album's songs, its mix emphasises the low-end, particularly Quaife's bass and Avory's drums, which critic Stewart Mason terms "cleverly sloppy". Quaife's bass doubles Ray's rhythm guitar in playing the song's hook.

"Johnny Thunder"

Davies composed "Johnny Thunder" after re-watching László Benedek's 1953 film The Wild One, which had been reissued in London cinemas in early 1968. Miller retrospectively compares the Johnny Thunder character to the film's lead character, Johnny, as played by Marlon Brando, while Dave described him in an August 1968 interview as "the local hound" and "[a] real swine". The character is an enemy of conformity who survives on a diet of water and lightning. A straightforward rock song, it joins acoustic guitars, bass and drums with an electric guitar contribution by Dave, who plays a countermelody low in the mix. The backing vocals are wordless and imitate the sound of a brass section, while it is one of the few instances on the album of Ray's lead vocal not being double-tracked.

"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"

"Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" is likely the last song Ray Davies wrote for Village Green. The lyrics describe a steam train that has outlived its usefulness and has since moved to a museum, steam trains having been retired from passenger service in the UK in August 1968. Based around the riff of Howlin' Wolf's 1956 song "Smokestack Lightning" – a popular recording among early 1960s British R&B groups – it recalls the Kinks' roots as an R&B focused band. Its recording displays a noticeably more live sound than the rest of the album, using both harmonica and guitar to imitate the sound of a rolling train. Several authors interpret the song as Davies analogising the train with contemporary British R&B music, like John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers or the Yardbirds, which he saw as increasingly disconnected from the authenticity of the original American blues artists they were channelling, like Elmore James or Muddy Waters.

"Big Sky"

Davies composed "Big Sky" in late January 1968 while attending the second annual MIDEM Music Publishers Festival in Cannes, France. He later recalled watching the sunrise from his balcony at the Carlton Hotel: "I spent an evening with all these people doing deals. The next morning ... I watched the sun come up and I looked at them all down there, all going out to do their deals. That's where I got the 'Big Sky looking down at all the people' line. It started from there." Davies later suggested that watching the businessmen from his hotel made him imagine "a being somewhat bigger than all the hustlers around me," but that rather than dealing with his dissatisfaction of the music business, the resulting lyrics are instead "more about the struggle of ordinary humans beings surviving in the modern world." While Davies has typically been coy about interpreting the song's meaning, retrospective commentators often interpret it as describing God as unsympathetic towards the problems of humans. Davies's lead vocal alternates between singing, speaking and harmonising with Dave while Rasa contributes a wordless falsetto harmony.

"Sitting by the Riverside"

"Sitting by the Riverside" joins honky-tonk piano with an accordion produced via Mellotron. The singer enjoys the calmness and warmth offered by a pastoral setting, before closing his eyes results in a rush of overwhelming memories and fear. Accompanying the eye-closing moment is a swelling cacophony, a sound Rayes compares to the orchestral crescendos heard in the Beatles' 1967 song "A Day in the Life". When the singer reopens his eyes, he is overtaken by the area's splendor. Ray Davies contemporaneously described the composition as a "fishing song", relating it to his time spent fishing when he was a child, and Miller suggests it was perhaps further inspired by Orwell's Coming Up for Air, since Bowling's happiest childhood memories relate to his time spent fishing.

Side two

"Animal Farm"

Side two of the LP opens with "Animal Farm". While its title references the Orwell's 1945 novella of the same name, its anti-urban theme has more in common with H. G. Wells's 1910 novel, The History of Mr Polly. Davies suggested the song was about how "everybody else is mad and we are all animals anyway – which is really the idea of the whole album. I'm just a city dropout I suppose." The song expresses feelings of pastoral bliss, the singer recalling an earlier time where he was happy living a simple life on a small farm. He yearns for his idealised world where people can be authentic rather than insincere actors. Recorded in Pye Studios's bigger studio, No. 1, the song has a larger sound than the rest of the album, featuring reverb on the drums, percussion and tack piano. Hopkins plays harpsichord, which Rogan writes "imbues the track with a stately grace". The song was a favourite of Quaife's who later listed it as one of Davies's top three compositions, saying decades later, "I still get shivers when I listen to it".

"Village Green"

Devon county, South West England (pictured 2020). An August 1966 visit to the area in rural England inspired Ray Davies to compose "Village Green".

Davies likely composed "Village Green" around 16 August 1966, the same day the Kinks played at Torquay Town Hall in Devon, a rural part of England. Its lyrics lament the decline of an English community's traditional village green. He later cited its central inspiration as spawning from his disappointment while drinking in a Devon pub and finding out the beer was stored in a pressurised metal keg, rather than in a traditional wooden barrel, and further remembered observing a degradation in the area's country-lifestyle due to the encroachment of more modern buildings.

The song is tonally more solemn than "The Village Green Preservation Society", Davies singing in a defeated tone to generate a sense of pathos. Hopkins plays a prominently featured harpsichord, which Rogan writes helps further the song's drama, while musicologist Allan F. Moore suggests the instrument's presence, joined with the "fifth-cyclic sequence and descending chromatic chorus", evokes the music of Baroque composer George Frideric Handel. Whitaker's orchestral arrangement of the song features oboe, cello, viola and piccolo, all played by session musicians. The singer recalls the village green in his memory as somewhere he misses but expects to have changed since he left it. He mourns the town's invasion by American tourists and the community's cheapening atmosphere, while remembering it as the place he left his romantic love, Daisy. He declares that he will return to see Daisy so they can reminisce about the village green as it was. Miller suggests the closing lyric represents a self-delusion that the singer can return to things as they were, while author Joseph G. Marotta instead writes the idea of returning to see Daisy only remains the singer's hope or fantasy.

"Starstruck"

Davies later said he wrote "Starstruck" as a tribute to his favourite Motown groups, including the Four Tops and the Temptations. Miller writes Davies's suggested Mowtown connection is difficult to discern, but suggests the song has a slight resemblance to the Four Tops' 1965 single "It's the Same Old Song". Rogan instead writes "Starstruck" displays "a distinct Acapulco-flavouring" with vocal harmonies influenced by the American band the Turtles. The singer politely chastises a female listener for failing to distinguish between stardom and real-life and further warns her about the risks of the big city. Though Davies later expressed surprise that the song appeared on Village Green, suggesting it sounds like something "that should be on somebody's solo album", Miller suggests the song's warning about city life is similar thematically to "Village Green", and Rayes writes its comparison helps contrast "rural with urban, spirituality with materialism, and the natural with the manufactured."

"Phenomenal Cat"

Davies described "Phenomenal Cat" as like a nursery rhyme, telling the story of a flying cat who has visited Katmandu and Hong Kong and discovers "the secret of life", and so decides to spend the rest of his life eating. Rogan compares its "vaguely Victorian flavour" to the work of English 19th-century authors Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Miller instead compares it to more contemporary work, such as Donovan's April 1968 album A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, which combined songs for adults with children's music, or psychedelic songs like Pink Floyd's "The Gnome" (1967) and the Fleur de Lys' "Gong With The Luminous Nose" (1968). Rayes writes the song is about conspicuous consumption and a "gentle, nuanced portrait of the temptations of capitalist materialism", contrasting it against the more "spiritually and emotionally fulfilling possibilities" offered by the village green.

The backing track combines a flute, woodwinds and tambourine, played against electric guitar and Avory's deadened drums. The recording's distinct flute introduction was accomplished by holding down the Mellotron's keys and allowing each tape loop to spool through. Davies's lead vocal is double tracked, while Dave sings as the cat, his vocal altered by first speeding-up the tape before slowing it down on the master tape. Ray and Dave do not fully harmonise until the song's ending, before Dave's vocal fades away.

"All of My Friends Were There"

"All of My Friends Were There" was inspired by a Kinks concert at Rectory Field in Blackheath, London on 1 July 1967. Ray Davies recalled falling ill with a 104 °F (40 °C) fever but was persuaded to perform by the organisers due to the agreed contract: "I had lots and lots to drink and I thought 'It doesn't matter.' The curtains opened and all my friends were sitting in the front row ... It was a terrible night and I thought I would write a song about it." Another example of music hall style, the song employs an organ and a jerky rhythm, shifting between what Miller terms a "music-hall gallop" in the verses and a "lilting, wistful waltz" during the choruses.

Miller compares the song's story to a bad dream, while author Patricia Gordon Sullivan writes it resembles a "drunken sing-[along]". The singer describes his embarrassment after his friends attend his missed performance. After struggling during his next show, he goes to a café he frequented during happier times in his life, only to find all of his friends there as well. Rayes describes the ending "another typical Davies twist", where "in the end, the presence of the singer's friends both deepens his embarrassment and strengthens his stability and sense of companionship." Miller instead interprets the ending as the singer's nostalgia for the earlier time, with his happy surroundings instead imaginary. The song ends on dominant seventh chord, something Hawkins writes is awkward while leaving the listener "in a position for deep reflection."

"Wicked Annabella"

"Wicked Annabella" is Dave Davies's only lead vocal contribution on the album. His voice is double tracked, and ranges from frightened whispers to raging screams. The song is another of the album's character songs, recounting the wicked deeds of a local witch as a warning to children to stay in their beds and avoid the woods. Miller characterises it as a "psychedelic nursery rhyme", while Rogan calls it a "black fairy tale". In his November 1968 interview with Melody Maker, Ray Davies suggested "Wicked Annabella" was his attempt at getting a song "to sound as horrible as it could", resulting in its overall "rude sound". Its July 1968 recording coincided with Davies's allowance for greater creative input from his bandmates; during the song's breakdown, Quaife improvises a section of Johann Sebastian Bach's piece "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (1:12–1:19). Employing guitar feedback, the song's main riff is reminiscent of the Doors' 1967 song "Light My Fire", while its conclusion of interplay between drums and guitar features Dave's laughter and heavy echo and reverb. Critic Jim DeRogatis counts the song as the only example of psychedelia in the Kinks' discography, while author Steve Alleman instead writes that its "freakout ending" is one of the few times the Kinks approached the genre, without actually achieving it.

"Monica"

"Monica" is a calypso number, a genre Ray Davies first explored on The Kink Kontroversy with "I'm On an Island", and incorporates Caribbean rhythms and jazz tempo changes. The backing track includes acoustic guitar, congas and organ, while bass guitar does not enter until the second verse. Possibly inspired by the character Polly Garter from Thomas's Under Milkwood, the lyrics are a serenade for a prostitute. The words are deliberately subtle, never directly mentioning her profession. Davies later expressed pleasure with its subtlety since it both averted a ban from radio-play and allowed for others to more easily relate to the song.

"People Take Pictures of Each Other"

"People Take Pictures of Each Other" was inspired by a wedding Davies and Rasa attended where he watched the newlywed couple photograph one another. Miller suggests Davies composed the song to be a closing track, since it served as such on both the twelve- and fifteen-track editions of the LP, and because of the return of the oak tree from "Village Green" and the theme of photography from "Picture Book".

The song's lyrics satirise the absurdity of using photographs to prove one's existence. In his autobiography, Davies writes the lyrics sum up how he feels about "the world of photographic images", which he thinks both encourage nostalgia while misleading the viewer by providing a narrow perspective. Beyond being a reflection on humans' transitory existence, Chapman suggests the lyrics also "serve as a metaphorical postscript for the swinging '60s." Rogan describes the song's sound as a cross between a Coassack dance and a Greek wedding, something he relates to its original wedding inspiration. It employs a quickly strummed acoustic guitar and fast a breathless lead vocal from Davies. Hopkins plays harpsichord, along with what Miller terms a "silly vaudeville piano vamp".

European format

The original twelve-song edition of the album had been completed in mid-August 1968 and was released as such in Sweden, Norway, France, Italy and New Zealand. In addition to a rearranged track listing, it includes the songs "Days" and "Mr. Songbird" while being without "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", "Big Sky", "Sitting by the Riverside", "Animal Farm" and "All of My Friends Were There".

"Days" recalls a past relationship, the singer remembering either a friend or lover. The song's theme of nostalgia lyrically relates it to the rest of Village Green, and Alleman writes its motif of "looking back yet trying to start anew" makes it the composition most representative of Davies's 1966–68 songwriting. Instrumentally, the recording incorporates acoustic and electric guitars, bass, harmonium, piano and a Mellotron which mimics a string section. "Mr. Songbird" is about a songbird whose call helps the singer's problems go away. Hopkins plays Mellotron to duplicate the sound of a flute, trilling during the chorus to mimic the sound of a bird. Miller suggests the song's escapist sentiment is comparable to other contemporary Davies compositions like "Picture Book", and author Christian Matijas-Mecca writes the song is thematically related to the album's "loose narrative about a desire for a lost England."

Title and packaging

The album cover was photographed in mid-August 1968 outside Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath, north-west London (pictured 2009).

In mid-August 1968, a photo session of the Kinks for the album's cover was arranged at Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath, north-west London. Pye's in-house photographer John Prosser and Barry Wentzell of Melody Maker photographed the session. After drinking tea on the terrace with the photographers, the band were photographed in their casual attire walking through the Heath's long, uncut grass to emphasise a country-feel. Prosser took the album's cover shot; the original twelve-track edition featured a black-and-white cover design, while the fifteen-track edition featured a different image, retouched to show the band enclosed in what Rogan terms "hazy, psychedelic circles". Pye had not informed Wentzell that the photo session was for an album and he was not aware one of his images was used on its rear sleeve until he purchased his own copy of the LP. He was neither credited nor compensated for the photograph until the album's later reissues. The album's twelve-track releases in Scandinavia, France, Italy and New Zealand all feature unique album sleeves which have subsequently become valuable collectors' items. The Scandinavian sleeve features Pye's original UK cover of a black-and-white design. Fleiner suggests the New Zealand sleeve's depiction of the band standing next to several horses sought to emphasise the band's "Englishness".

New Zealand cover artwork. The album's twelve-track releases in different countries all feature unique sleeves.

Village Green served as the album's working title to mid-1968, though Davies remained unsatisfied that it was too narrow to encapsulate the album's broader themes. In a November 1968 interview, he recalled that in August, while searching for a new title, someone mentioned to him in conversation that "one of things The Kinks have been doing for the last three years has been preserving." The comment prompted him to compose "The Village Green Preservation Society", which subsequently became the new title track.

The LP was the Kinks' first to feature a gatefold sleeve, though critic Robert Christgau suggested contemporaneously that by early 1969 "the promotional value of such extravagance has apparently dissipated". The lyrics of the title track appear on the sleeve's rear. The album's title appears on the cover in small font, with The Kinks written large and detached from Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Rogan hypothesises that Davies meant to title the album The Village Green Preservation Society, thereby aligning with the title track, since there is no separate artist credit on the album cover or spine and because Davies has referred to that name in all of his subsequent interviews and writings. Rogan further suspects that the writing on the cover was originally meant to be written as The Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks, but that someone changed by to are and rearranged the phrase during the production process.

Release and commercial performance

United Kingdom and Europe

In the United Kingdom, Pye initially planned for a 27 September 1968 release of Village Green. Davies began press interviews in mid-August to promote its release, the band performed some of its songs for BBC Radio, including "Monica" on 1 and 9 July and "Picture Book" on 22 July, and Pye placed advertisements in several British pop magazines. Following Davies's last-minute request that its release be postponed, only test-pressings of the twelve-track edition were made in the UK. Because Pye had already made and sent production masters to several other countries, release of the twelve-track LP went ahead in Sweden and Norway on 9 October, with subsequent releases of that edition following in France, Italy and New Zealand.

Davies's last-minute delay of the LP resulted in confusion for both the music press and recording-buying public. The rearranged and expanded edition of the album was instead issued in the UK on 22 November 1968. To promote the release, Pye again placed advertisements in several British music magazines, while the band performed "The Village Green Preservation Society", "Johnny Thunder" and "Animal Farm" on 26 November for BBC Radio. Timed to correspond with the Christmas rush, the album was coincidentally released the same day as the Beatles' eponymous album (commonly known as the "White Album"), and the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet followed a week-and-a-half later. Though the album was moderately advertised and reviewed, its sales were quickly eclipsed by the other albums – the "White Album" sold two million copies worldwide in its first week, while Village Green failed to chart in the UK or anywhere in Europe. Exact figures for LP sales in the UK in the late 1960s are generally unavailable, though Rogan writes the available context clues suggest the album was likely "a modest seller". In 1995, Davies suggested "worldwide we'd be lucky if it [sold] 100,000 [copies]". Stiff competition from other releases during the holiday season kept the album from appearing in any UK LPs charts, which often only listed the top fifteen albums. After Something Else's failed to appear on most UK charts, Village Green's absence from all UK charts marked a continuing decline in the performance of the Kinks' studio albums.

Both Miller and author Jon Savage suggest Village Green failed to register with the public, something they attribute to its separation from the contemporary culture's focus on revolution, protest and free love. Rogan counters that Davies and authors like Miller have overstated the album's commercial failings. He instead suggests the album was likely a modest seller, while acknowledging it continued a downward trend by the Kinks since 1965. Rather than finding the album out of step with contemporary culture, Rogan writes its release corresponded with a surge of nostalgia and escapism in English culture, such as the popular television programmes Dad's Army and The Forsyte Saga and popular literature like J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series. He also remarks that the contemporary press of 1967 and 1968 were often excited by unified albums, such as Sgt. Pepper, Small Faces' Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake or Keith West's single "Excerpt from A Teenage Opera", all of which were commercially successful. Rather than laying blame with the album's content or its marketing, Rogan lists several reasons for Village Green's commercial shortcomings, such as the Kinks' waning popularity and the lack of an associated single in Britain, which resulted in fewer opportunities for television appearances and publicity.

United States

In the United States, Reprise Records received Village Green's master tapes on 20 December 1968 and planned to issue the album in late January 1969. In the lead-up to its release, the label issued "Starstruck" as a US single, backed with "Picture Book", on 8 or 15 January. Reprise neglected to send review copies to US magazines, initially leading to little critical attention. Reviewers in both Cash Box and Billboard predicted the single would help the Kinks return to each magazine's chart, though it ultimately failed to position in any American chart.

Reprise likely issued Village Green in the US on 5 February 1969, though it possibly came out a week earlier. It was not advertised or announced in any American music magazines. After Robert Christgau requested press material regarding the band in preparation for his album review, Warner Bros. Records sent him a group biography from 1964. Like in the UK and Europe, the album failed to appear in any American charts. The failure continued a trend of the Kinks' studio albums being outsold by compilations collecting their mid-1960s hits; the compilation The Kinks Greatest Hits! (1966) sold over 200,000 copies in the US by 1969, while the combined American sales of both Village Green and Something Else by the Kinks were later estimated to be 25,000.

Contemporary critical reception

United Kingdom

Village Green received favourable reviews in the music press. Among British critics, Bob Dawbarn of Melody Maker interviewed Davies in a feature review and declared that the LP was "easily [the Kinks'] best." In another positive assessment, Disc and Music Echo's reviewer stated that Davies "managed to bypass everything psychedelic and electronic, and has always concentrated on simple, even rustic melodies with words of wisdom!" The reviewer concluded, "The Kinks may not be on the crest of the pop wave these days, but Ray Davies will remain one of our finest composers for many years." In Top Pop, the reviewer stated the album's themes and styles varied greatly with considerable thought put into its lyrics and production. The author concludes that the LP was a "[v]ery good value" which would "command many hours listening". Judith Simons of the Daily Express stated the album represented "the gentler aspects of British life" and "could make an idyllic stage musical."

In his September 1968 preview of the twelve-track edition for NME, Altham reviewed the album favourably, especially the title track which he thought may have made it to No. 1 in the UK had it been issued as a single. Having already published Altham's review of the original album, NME did not publish a review of the expanded edition in November. Altham reflected decades later that while he liked the album on first listening and thought it was musically and aesthetically interesting, he worried it was a risky release for the Kinks since it was "a bit too twee." He elaborated that compared to the band's earlier work, it was "missing [something] in terms of dynamics ... it didn't seem to have that anger, the kind of attack that Dave used to bring."

United States

Following the album's US release in February 1969, American reviewers were slow to publish criticism; the only immediate response was a short review in the 27 February issue of New York City's Village Voice, in which Johanna Schier provided a mixed assessment. In the 10 April issue of the Voice, Robert Christgau countered Schier's review in his regular Rock&Roll& column, instead concluding that the album was the best of the year so far. Summarising Schier's critique of the record as: "'You Really Got Me' was so great. Why can't you just keep doing that?", Christgau writes that while he agrees the song was likely the Kinks' best, he thinks the band could not continue releasing music with the same sound, just as the Beatles were forced to progress beyond the single he considers their best, "She Loves You".

A review of the album by Paul Williams, the former editor of Crawdaddy! magazine, served as the lead review in the 14 June 1969 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In addition to praising the album, Williams describes Davies as a genius who "makes statements" and "says the sort of stuff that makes you delighted just to know that someone would say stuff like that". Comparing Davies to the French composer Erik Satie, Williams concludes that "only genius could hit me so directly, destroy me and rebuild so completely." Williams's review subsequently became the most influential piece ever written about the Kinks, helping establish a cult following for the band. The band were increasingly embraced by America's new underground rock press. A review in Circus, formerly the teen magazine Hullaballoo, stated that though the Kinks were "backdated" and "cut off from the mainstream of pop progression", Village Green indicated their continued originality. A reviewer for Fusion, a new underground paper in Boston, wrote that despite the increasingly bad press the band were facing, Village Green showed their persistence, concluding, "The Kinks are forever, only for now in modern dress." Musician John Mendelsohn reviewed the album for the Daily Bruin, the student paper of UCLA, writing that it was his favourite album since The Who Sell Out (1967) and predicted it would be one of the best in 1969. A reviewer in California Tech, the student paper of Caltech, instead disparaged the album as "schmaltz rock", being "without imagination, poorly arranged, and a bad copy of The Beatles".

Retrospective assessment

Retrospective professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
MusicHound Rock	4.5/5
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
Pitchfork	9.5/10
Sputnikmusic	4/5
Tiny Mix Tapes

Retrospective commentators often regard Village Green as the Kinks' best work. Critic Rob Sheffield writes the album is likely the band's strongest album on a song-by-song basis, while Rogan writes it is "[t]he crowning achievement of the Kinks' career and their best album by some distance". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic writes that the album's subdued performances emphasise the songwriting to make it feel more like Ray Davies's solo project than a Kinks album. He suggests that, despite the album's calm sensibility, it includes "endless layers of musical and lyrical innovation".

Village Green has often be reassessed by commentators as Ray Davies's creative peak. Dylan Montanari of the website Spectrum Culture writes that the album places Ray Davies's songwriting ability among the best of 1960s, such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. He contends that Davies's unique skill is in understanding the nostalgia one will later feel about the present moment, heard especially in a song like "Picture Book", which displays an understanding that "even in our present, we are always crafting what our past will look like to our future selves." Charles Ubaghs of webzine Tiny Mix Tapes writes the album is "[a] piece of near perfect pop perfection repeatedly imitated and arguably never bettered". He argues that its lyrical content is furthered by the arrangements which mix folk with music hall, elevating it from "odd ball piece of rose tinted British nostalgia, to a rightfully regarded piece of song writing brilliance."

Jeff Slate of Esquire magazine writes that while some late 1960s records have come to sound dated, Village Green's sound has remained "fresh and accessible" decades after its release, something he attributes to its simple and straightforward arrangements. Adding to its success, he writes, was the band's collaborative nature during its recording and their retention of "a bit of that garage edge". Michael Galucci of the website Ultimate Classic Rock similarly writes that Village Green has maintained relevance decades after its release by sounding "both timeless and of its time", its pastoral sounds partly originating from the Summer of Love while its exploration of music hall and "Victorian mores" being part of a broader "longing for [the] English tradition." Morgan Enos of Billboard writes that rather than being bitter or anachronistic, the album's tracks "burst with unique, giddy joy", only becoming more relevant in the "more crowded, convoluted and bleak" 21st century.

Though the term did not exist at the time of Village Green's release, retrospective commentators identify the album as a candidate for the first concept album. Davies later suggested the album "[is] not a storyline, it's an emotional thread", a sentiment echoed by several commentators. Erlewine writes that while Something Else by the Kinks first displayed Ray Davies's penchant for nostalgia, Village Green instead served as his "manifesto" on the disappearance of old English traditions, both real and imagined. By contrast, Ann Powers of Blender magazine suggests the album "manage[s] the impossible" of being "a subtle concept album", its focus being everyday Britons. Author Nick Hasted suggests the album's cohesiveness is comparable to the consistent melancholy which runs through Sinatra's 1958 album Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, while John Mendelsohn writes it is more unified by the sound of its music than in its lyrical themes. Author Clinton Heylin writes the twelve-track edition of the album displayed more unity, while the songs added in October 1968 – in particular, "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", "Big Sky" and "All of My Friends Were There" – helped to "kill the album conceptually". Enos, by contrast, writes the album's format of separate vignettes allows for each to be enjoyed either separately or together.

Aftermath

Village Green was the last Kinks album Quaife played on before he departed the group in March 1969. Decades later, he reflected that his work on Village Green was the high point of his career, mostly due to the collaborative nature of its recording. Dave Davies said that while Something Else by the Kinks was likely his favourite Kinks album, he found Village Green "just so good" in its intimacy and distinct English flavouring, something he thought "drew really heavily on our environment and our family". The album was also the last collaboration between the Kinks and Hopkins. While Ray Davies suggested years later that he wanted Hopkins to play on other Kinks projects but "couldn't find" him, Hopkins expressed his anger in a 1969 interview that Davies didn't include his name in the album's liner notes and instead credited all keyboard work to himself. He later suggested the band did not compensate him for his work during the sessions. Hinman writes the dissolution of the relationship between the band and Hopkins was "yet another nail in the coffin of the classic 1960s Kinks sound."

In mid-April 1969, Davies negotiated with the American Federation of Musicians to resolve the Kinks' American performance ban, leading to a North American tour in late 1969, the band's first there since 1965. In preparation for the tour and in light of Village Green's favourable reviews, Reprise and Warner Bros. Records initiated a promotional campaign in July 1969 to reestablish the band's commercial standing. Mendelsohn, whom Reprise hired after reading his favourable review of Village Green, came up with the campaign's slogan, "God Save The Kinks", a reference to the refrain "God save the village green!" heard at the close of "The Village Green Preservation Society". Reprise mailed press kits to journalists, radio program directors and disc jokeys, which included assorted items, including a guide to the Kinks' recordings, a plastic bag with blades of grass from "Daviesland village green" and a promotional-only compilation album, Then Now and Inbetween. In July or August, Reprise issued "The Village Green Preservation Society" backed with "Do You Remember Walter?" as a US single.

The band's first North American tour in four years ran from 17 October to 8 December 1969, beginning at New York City's Fillmore East. Of the songs from Village Green, "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" became a regular in the band's live set list, and they also performed "Big Sky" and "The Village Green Preservation Society" during the tour. Davies later suggested that the band "weren't prepared" for their US return: "[The American audience] hadn't seen us since 'You Really Got Me' – and it was like a complete gap." Ian MacDonald writes that in contrast to the "Englishness" of the band's pre-1969 work, after the ban was lifted their music "almost immediately began to revert to its original transatlantic idiom", such as on the single "Victoria" from Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (October 1969), which he suggests was styled after the American blues band Canned Heat. MacDonald ultimately concludes, "the group's era of classic songwriting ceased nearly overnight."

Influence and legacy

Pete Townshend of the Who (left) and Noel Gallagher of Oasis are among the album's biggest supporters.

Though Village Green was initially ignored by the public, the album developed a cult following. Among the album's earliest supporters was Pete Townshend of the Who, who later described it as Ray Davies's "masterwork" and "his Sgt. Pepper". While the album only had one track covered contemporaneously, American indie artists who admired 1960s music covered its songs extensively in the late 1980s and 1990s, such as Matthew Sweet ("Big Sky"), Jason Falkner ("Wicked Annabella"), Young Fresh Fellows ("Picture Book") and Yo La Tengo ("Big Sky" and "Animal Farm"), among others.

The album inspired several Britpop artists in the 1990s, including Damon Albarn of Blur and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, and Erlewine writes "its defiantly British sensibilities became the foundation of generations of British guitar pop". Gallagher and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon each named the album as one of their favourites. Gallagher has further characterised it as "[p]robably the most underappreciated album of all time", while suggesting that it has been a major influence on Albarn's songwriting. During Blur's 1992 American tour, Albarn found that he "started to miss really simple things [about England]", and the band's next album, Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), displays a similar feeling to Village Green of nostalgia for a past Englishness. John Harris of The Guardian suggests the Kinks' influence is apparent on several of Albarn's compositions, such as "Tracy Jacks" from Parklife (1994), which features a George Bowlingesque character. Among the other bands and musicians it has influenced are Paul Weller, the Jam, Electric Light Orchestra, Green Day, Ultimate Painting and Wilco.

I've listened to [Village Green] so many times and I just fucking love it. It's obviously such a big influence on Damon Albarn's writing. You know the song "Big Sky"? "Big sky, too big to cry." You can almost hear someone shouting "Parklife!" at the end of it, do you know what I mean?

– Noel Gallagher, 2011

The album experienced a critical and commercial resurgence in the 1990s, driven in part by its major impact on indie rock acts. Dave Davies suggests in retrospect that the album anticipated movements in the 1980s and 1990s which were both more environmentally conscious and disparaging of the trend in post-war Britain which tore down old homes to replace them with new office blocks. Jovanovic similarly writes that forty years after it was written, the title track's promise to save "little shops" sounds like a "strikingly modern sentiment". Fleiner adds that songs like "The Village Green Preservation Society" became popular among Anglophiles in America due to their presentation of English humour and attitudes. The album has since become the Kinks' best-selling studio album in the UK. The British Phonographic Industry first certified the album silver in 2008 followed by gold in 2018 (indicating 60,000 and 100,000 sales, respectively).

Based on Village Green's appearances in professional rankings and listings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists it as the eighth most acclaimed album of 1968, the 38th most acclaimed album of the 1960s and the 185th most acclaimed album in history. The album was voted No. 141 in the third edition of English writer Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, Rolling Stone placed it at No. 255 in the magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". When the list was updated in 2012 and 2020, it was placed at No. 258 and No. 384, respectively.

Reissues

50th Anniversary Super Deluxe edition reviews

Review scores
Source	Rating
American Songwriter
Rolling Stone
Uncut	9/10

Unlike most of the Kinks' contemporaries, the band's albums were not remastered until the late 1990s. Essential Records issued the album's first CD remaster in May 1998. It contains the mono version of the fifteen-track edition, the twelve-track edition in stereo and the mono single version of "Days". While the 1998 edition did not include extra tracks, Sanctuary Records reissued the album in 2004 as an expanded 3-CD box set, joining stereo and mono versions of the album and compiling all of the sessions' songs as bonus tracks.

To coincide with the album's 50th anniversary, Sony BMG and Legacy issued a "Super Deluxe" edition in 2018. The release featured three different versions, including a 1LP/1CD-edition, a 2CD-edition and the "Super Deluxe Box Set", the last of which spanned five CDs which include home demos, BBC Radio appearances, non-LP singles, outtakes, backing tracks and interviews, among other recordings relating to the sessions. It also includes three replica 7" singles in picture sleeves, three vinyl LPs and a 52-page book with photos and essays, including one by Townshend. The 2018 release marked the album's only British charting, appearing on the UK Albums Chart for one week at No. 47.

Track listing

UK and US edition

All tracks are written by Ray Davies. Track lengths according to AllMusic. The original release included four discrepancies between the titles listed on the album sleeve and those on the LP's central label. Other than "Phenomenal Cat", the titles listed below are those from the sleeve.

Side one

1. "The Village Green Preservation Society" – 2:49
2. "Do You Remember Walter" – 2:28
3. "Picture Book" – 2:38
4. "Johnny Thunder" – 2:33
5. "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" – 4:03
6. "Big Sky" – 2:49
7. "Sitting by the Riverside" – 2:21

Side two

1. "Animal Farm" – 2:57
2. "Village Green" – 2:08
3. "Starstruck" – 2:22
4. "Phenomenal Cat" – 2:37
5. "All of My Friends Were There" – 2:23
6. "Wicked Annabella" – 2:40
7. "Monica" – 2:13
8. "People Take Pictures of Each Other" – 2:10

European edition

All tracks are written by Ray Davies. Track lengths according to AllMusic.

Side one

1. "The Village Green Preservation Society" – 2:49
2. "Do You Remember Walter" – 2:25
3. "Picture Book" – 2:36
4. "Johnny Thunder" – 2:30
5. "Monica" – 2:15
6. "Days" – 2:52

Side two

1. "Village Green" – 2:08
2. "Mr. Songbird" – 2:25
3. "Wicked Annabella" – 2:41
4. "Starstruck" – 2:20
5. "Phenomenal Cat" – 2:36
6. "People Take Pictures of Each Other" – 2:23

2004 CD reissue

All tracks are written by Ray Davies, except where noted. Track lengths according to AllMusic.

Disc one – The stereo version of the fifteen-track album, with the following stereo bonus tracks:

16. "Mr. Songbird" (From 12 Track Edition) – 2:24
17. "Days" (From Single and 12 Track Edition) – 2:52
18. "Do You Remember Walter" (Original Stereo Mix From 12 Track Edition) – 2:24
19. "People Take Pictures of Each Other" (Original Stereo Mix From 12 Track Edition) – 2:24

Disc two – The mono version of the fifteen-track album, with the following mono bonus tracks:

16. "Days" – 2:55
17. "Mr. Songbird" – 2:25
18. "Polly" – 2:50
19. "Wonderboy" – 2:48
20. "Berkeley Mews" – 2:36
21. "Village Green" (No Strings Version) – 2:12

Disc three

1. "Village Green" (Orchestra Overdub) – 2:20
2. "Misty Water" (Stereo) – 3:03
3. "Berkeley Mews" (Stereo) – 2:37
4. "Easy Come, There You Went" (Stereo) – 2:23
5. "Polly" – 2:49
6. "Animal Farm" (Alternate Stereo Mix) – 3:00
7. "Phenomenal Cat" (Mono Instrumental) – 2:49
8. "Johnny Thunder" (Stereo Remix) – 2:33
9. "Did You See His Name" – 1:57
10. "Mick Avory's Underpants" (Dave Davies) – 2:17
11. "Lavender Hill" – 2:56
12. "Rosemary Rose" – 1:44
13. "Wonderboy" (Stereo) – 2:42
14. "Spotty Grotty Anna" (Dave Davies) – 2:04
15. "Where Did My Spring Go" – 2:09
16. "Groovy Movies" – 2:32
17. "Creeping Jean" (Dave Davies) – 3:10
18. "King Kong" – 3:23
19. "Misty Water" (Mono) – 3:09
20. "Do You Remember Walter" (BBC Session Remix) – 2:16
21. "Animal Farm" (BBC Session Remix) – 2:56
22. "Days" (BBC Session Remix) – 3:02

2018 Super Deluxe Edition

All tracks are written by Ray Davies, except where noted.

Disc one – The stereo version of the fifteen-track album, with the following stereo bonus tracks:

16. "Days" (Original Stereo Mix)
17. "She's Got Everything" (Original Stereo Mix)
18. "Mr. Songbird" (Original Stereo Mix)
19. "Wonderboy" (Original Stereo Mix)
20. "Polly" (Original Stereo Mix)
21. "Berkeley Mews" (Original Stereo Mix)
22. "Rosemary Rose" (Stereo Mix)
23. "Misty Water" (Original Stereo Mix)
24. "Did You See His Name?" (Original Stereo Mix)
25. "Do You Remember Walter?" (European Stereo Mix)
26. "Animal Farm" (Alternate Stereo Mix)
27. "People Take Pictures of Each Other" (European Stereo Mix)

Disc two – The mono version of the fifteen-track album, with the following mono bonus tracks:

16. "Days" (Mono Single Mix)
17. "She's Got Everything" (Mono Single Mix)
18. "Mr. Songbird" (Mono)
19. "Wonderboy" (Mono Single Mix)
20. "Polly" (Mono Single Mix)
21. "Till Death Us Do Part" (Mono)
22. "Berkeley Mews" (Mono)
23. "Village Green" (Alternate Vocal)
24. "Lavender Hill" (Mono)
25. "Rosemary Rose" (Mono)
26. "Pictures in the Sand" (Mono)
27. "Misty Water" (Original Mono Mix)
28. "Did You See His Name?" (Mono)
29. "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" (Mono Mix)

Disc three – Village Green Sessions

1. "The Village Green Preservation Society" (Alternate Mix)
2. "Do You Remember Walter?" (Backing Track)
3. "Picture Book" (Alternate Mix)
4. "Johnny Thunder" (Stereo Remix)
5. "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" (Alternate Mix)
6. "Big Sky" (Alternate Mix With Session Chat)
7. "Animal Farm" (Takes 16 & 17 Alternate Mix)
8. "Village Green" (Unissued Acetate Mix)
9. "Starstruck" (Alternate Mix)
10. "Phenomenal Cat" (Alternate Mix)
11. "Monica" (Alternate Mix)
12. "People Take Pictures of Each Other" (Alternate Mix)
13. "Egg Stained Pyjamas" (Backing Track)
14. "Days" (Alternate Mix)
15. "She's Got Everything" (Alternate Mix)
16. "Misty Water" (Alternate Mix)
17. "Mr. Songbird" (Alternate Mix)
18. "Pictures in the Sand" (Backing Track)
19. "Berkeley Mews" (Alternate Mix)
20. "Easy Come, There You Went" (Backing Track)
21. "Did You See His Name?" (Alternate Mix)
22. "Mick Avory's Underpants" (Backing Track)
23. "Spotty Grotty Anna" (Backing Track)
24. "Lavender Hill" (Backing Track)
25. "Village Green" (Backing Track)

Disc four – Village Green at the BBC

1. "Interview: Ray Talks About Working"
2. "Days"
3. "Waterloo Sunset"
4. "Interview: Ray Talks About Solo Records"
5. "Love Me Till The Sun Shines" (Dave Davies)
6. "Monica"
7. "Interview: Ray Talks About Village Green"
8. "The Village Green Preservation Society"
9. "Animal Farm" (BBC Mix)
10. "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" (With Live Vocals)
11. "Picture Book" (With Live Vocals)
12. "Interview: Ray and Dave Talk About Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"
13. "Do You Remember Walter?" (BBC Mix)
14. "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion" / "A Well Respected Man" / "Death of a Clown (TV Pre-Mix)" (Dave Davies, Ray Davies)
15. "Sunny Afternoon" (TV Pre-Mix)
16. "Picture Book" (TV Pre-Mix)
17. "Days" (TV Pre-Mix)
18. "Lazy Old Sun" (TV Pre-Mix)
19. "Two Sisters" (TV Pre-Mix)
20. "Monica" (TV Pre-Mix)
21. "Lincoln County" (TV Pre-Mix) (Dave Davies)
22. "Where Did My Spring Go?" (Mono)
23. "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light" (Mono)

Disc five – Demos, Sessions, Preservation & Live

1. "Home Demos Medley"
2. "Days" (Acoustic Version)
3. "Mr. Songbird" (Alternate Mix)
4. "The Village Green Preservation Society" (Alternate Mix)
5. "Johnny Thunder" (Backing Track)
6. "Big Sky" (Alternate Mix)
7. "Phenomenal Cat" (Backing Track)
8. "Picture Book" (Vocals and Guitar)
9. "Animal Farm" (Backing Track)
10. "Time Song" (Monitor Mix)
11. "The Village Green Preservation Society" (Preservation Version)
12. "Medley: Picture Book / People Take Pictures of Each Other" (Preservation Version)
13. "Village Green Overture"(Preservation Version – Stereo)
14. "Days" (Live in Denmark 2010)
15. "Ray Davies Spoken Intro" (Live in Denmark 2010)
16. "Village Green" (Live in Denmark 2010)
17. "Picture Book" (Live in Denmark 2010)
18. "Big Sky" (Live in Denmark 2010)
19. "Do You Remember Walter?" (Live in Denmark 2010)
20. "Johnny Thunder" (Live in Denmark 2010)
21. "The Village Green Preservation Society" (Live in Denmark 2010)
22. "The Way Love Used To Be" (Live in Denmark 2010)

Personnel

According to band researcher Doug Hinman, except where noted:

The Kinks

• Ray Davies – lead vocals, guitars, keyboards, Mellotron; harmonica ("Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"); producer, mixer
• Dave Davies – backing vocals, guitars; lead vocals ("Wicked Annabella")
• Pete Quaife – backing vocals, bass
• Mick Avory – drums
• Unidentified (played by the Kinks) – congas ("Monica"); handclaps, percussion, tambourine

Additional musicians

• Rasa Davies – backing vocals
• Nicky Hopkins – harpsichord, Mellotron, piano
• David Whitaker – arrangement ("Animal Farm" and "Village Green")
• Unidentified session musicians – oboe, cello, viola and piccolo ("Village Green"), string section ("Animal Farm")

Additional personnel

• Brian Humphries – engineering
• Alan MacKenzie  – engineering
• John Prosser – photography (front cover)
• Shel Talmy – producer ("Village Green", uncredited)
• Barry Wentzell – photography (rear image)

Charts and certifications

Reissue weekly chart performance

Year	Chart	Peak position
2018
	Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	131
	Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)	124
	German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)	84
	Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE)	50
	UK Albums (OCC)	47
2019	Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)	86

Sales certifications for The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
United Kingdom (BPI)	Gold	100,000^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

See also

• British invasion
• British rock
• Deep England

Bibliography

Books

• Davies, Dave (1996). Kink: An Autobiography. New York City: Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-7868-6149-1.
• Davies, Ray (1995). X-Ray: The Unauthorised Autobiography. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-0-87951-611-6.
• Dawson, Julian (2011). And on Piano ... Nicky Hopkins: The Extraordinary Life of Rock's Greatest Session Man. San Francisco, California: Backstage Press. ISBN 978-0-9844362-2-4.
• DeRogatis, Jim (2003). Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-0-634-05548-5.
• Doyle, Mark (2020). The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached. London: Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78914-254-9.
• Faulk, Barry J. (2010). British Rock Modernism, 1967–1977: The Story of Music Hall in Rock. Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-4094-1190-1.
• Fleiner, Carey (2017a). The Kinks: A Thoroughly English Phenomenon. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4422-3542-7.
• Hasted, Nick (2011). The Story of the Kinks: You Really Got Me. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-1-84938-660-9.
• Hawkins, Stan (2017). The British Pop Dandy: Masculinity, Popular Music and Culture. New York City: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7546-5858-0.
• Heylin, Clinton (2012). All the Madmen: Barrett, Bowie, Drake, Pink Floyd, the Kinks, the Who & a Journey to the Dark Side of English Rock. London: Constable. ISBN 978-1-84901-880-7.
• Hinman, Doug; Brabazon, Jason (1994). You Really Got Me: An Illustrated World Discography of the Kinks, 1964–1993. Rumford, Rhode Island: Doug Hinman. ISBN 978-0-9641005-1-0.
• Hinman, Doug (2004). The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night: Day-by-Day Concerts, Recordings and Broadcasts, 1961–1996. San Francisco, California: Backbeat Books. ISBN 978-0-87930-765-3.
• Irvin, Jim; McLear, Colin, eds. (2003). The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion. Edinburgh: Canongate Books. ISBN 978-1-84195-438-7.
• Jovanovic, Rob (2013). God Save the Kinks: A Biography. London: Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-84513-671-0.
• Kitts, Thomas M. (2008). Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else. New York City: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-97768-5.
• Larkin, Colin, ed. (2000). All Time Top 1000 Albums (3rd ed.). London: Virgin Books. ISBN 0-7535-0493-6.
• Larkin, Colin, ed. (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (Fifth concise ed.). London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
• MacDonald, Ian (2007). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (Third ed.). Chicago Review Press. ISBN 978-1-55652-733-3.
• Marten, Neville; Hudson, Jeff (2007). The Kinks: A Very English Band. London: Bobcat Books. ISBN 978-0-8256-7351-1.
• Massey, Howard (2015). The Great British Recording Studios. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4950-3533-3.
• Matijas-Mecca, Christian (2020). Listen to Psychedelic Rock! Exploring a Musical Genre. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-6198-7.
• Mendelsohn, John (1985). The Kinks Kronikles. New York City: Quill. ISBN 978-0-688-02983-8.
• Miles, Barry (1980). The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Discography. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-86001-762-2.
• Miles, Barry (2001). The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-8308-3.
• Miller, Andy (2003). The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. 33⅓ series. New York City: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-8264-1498-4.
• Moore, Allan F. (2001). Rock: The Primary Text: Developing a Musicology of Rock (Second ed.). Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0298-9.
• Rogan, Johnny (1984). The Kinks: The Sound and the Fury. London: Elm Tree Books. ISBN 0-241-11308-3.
• Rogan, Johnny (1998). The Complete Guide to the Music of the Kinks. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-6314-6.
• Rogan, Johnny (2015). Ray Davies: A Complicated Life. London: The Bodley Head. ISBN 978-1-84792-317-2.
• Savage, Jon (1984). The Kinks: The Official Biography. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-13407-6.
• Schaffner, Nicholas (1982). The British Invasion: From the First Wave to the New Wave. New York City: McGraw Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-055089-6.
• Segretto, Mike (2022). 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute: A Critical Trip Through the Rock LP Era, 1955–1999. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-6460-1.
• Thompson, Gordon (2008). Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out. New York City: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-971555-8.

Book chapters

• Alleman, Steve (2002). "'The Hard Way' or 'Something Better Beginning' – An Alternate View of The Kinks' Artistic Development". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 44–51. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Carroll, Steve (2002). "Two Views of Paradise: The Inner Geography of Ray Davies and Brian Wilson". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 165–170. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Catlin, Roger (1996). "The Kinks". In Graff, Gary (ed.). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Detroit, Michigan: Visible Ink Press. pp. 390–391. ISBN 978-0-7876-1037-1.
• Field, Elizabeth (2002). "Skin and Bone, Tea and Scones: Food and Drink Imagery in The Kinks' Music, 1964–1997". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 61–67. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Fleiner, Carey (2017b). "'Rosy, Won't You Please Come Home': Family, home and cultural identity in the music of Ray Davies and the Kinks". In Brooks, Lee; Donnelly, Mark; Mills, Richard (eds.). Mad Dogs and Englishness: Popular Music and English Identities. New York City: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 19–35. ISBN 978-1-5013-1127-7.
• Kitts, Thomas M., ed. (2002a). "Chronology". Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 9–24. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Kitts, Thomas M. (2002b). "'... in the grand [and not so grand] tradition': Film, Theatre, and the Triumph of 20th Century Man". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 131–142. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Marotta, Joseph G. (2002). "The Loss of Identity and the Myth of Edenic Return in Ray Davies". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 68–77. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Polito, Robert (2004). "Bits of Me Scattered Everywhere: Ray Davies and the Kinks". In Weisbard, Eric (ed.). This is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 119–144. ISBN 978-0-674-01321-6.
• Sheffield, Rob (2004). "The Kinks". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York City: Simon & Schuster. pp. 458–460. ISBN 978-0-7432-0169-8.
• Sullivan, Patricia Gordon (2002). "'Let's Have a Go at It': The British Musical Hall and The Kinks". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 80–99. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Rayes, Ken (2002). "The Village Green and The Great Gatsby – Two Views of Preservation". In Kitts, Thomas M. (ed.). Living on a Thin Line: Crossing Aesthetic Borders with The Kinks. Rumford, Rhode Island: Desolation Angel Books. pp. 153–164. ISBN 0-9641005-4-1.
• Saunders, Graham (2010). "Sarah Kane: Cool Britannia's Reluctant Feminist". In Hadley, Louisa; Ho, Elizabeth (eds.). Thatcher and After: Margaret Thatcher and Her Afterlife in Contemporary Culture. New York City: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 199–220. ISBN 978-0-230-28316-9.

Liner notes

• Anon.[a] (1968). The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (Liner notes). The Kinks. Pye Records. NPL 18233.
• Anon. (2018). "The Village Green Preservation Society" (Liner notes). The Kinks. BMG, Pye Records. BMGAA09BOX10.
• Davies, Ray (2002). This Is Where I Belong: The Songs Of Ray Davies & The Kinks (Liner notes). Various artists. Praxis Records. RCD 10621.
• Doggett, Peter (1998). The Village Green Preservation Society (Liner notes). The Kinks. Essential. ESM CD 481.
• Neill, Andy (2018). The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (50th Anniversary) (Liner notes). The Kinks. BMG, Pye Records. BMGAA09LP.

Magazines

• Alterman, Loraine (18 December 1969). "Who Let the Kinks In?". Rolling Stone. No. 48. Archived from the original on 14 May 2022.
• Altham, Keith (21 September 1968). "Kinks Reminiscing on the Village Green" (PDF). New Musical Express. p. 10 – via WorldRadioHistory.com.
• Anon.[b] (21 September 1968). "Pye Host 19 Countries At 9th Int'l Meet" (PDF). Cash Box. pp. 67, 73–74 – via WorldRadioHistory.com.
• Anon.[c] (28 September 1968). "Pye Records Presents an Autumn Collection" (PDF). Melody Maker. p. 23 – via WorldRadioHistory.com.
• Anon.[a] (25 January 1969). "Cash Box Record Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box. p. 22.
• Anon.[b] (1 February 1969). "Spotlight Singles" (PDF). Billboard. p. 79.
• Boltwood, Derek (10 May 1969). "Kinks' 'Bum' & the BBC!" (PDF). Record Mirror. p. 5.
• Breyer, Mark; Vittenson, Rik (March 1976). "Kinks Konfessions: Ray Davies Revealed". Crawdaddy. p. 8.
• Cavanagh, David (5 May 2022). "A Far Away Place". Mojo. Mojo: The Collectors' Series: Mod Icons – Part Two: The Kinks – via Apple News+.
• Christgau, Robert (10 April 1969). "Rock & Roll &: Kinks Kountry". The Village Voice. Vol. XIV, no. 26. pp. 31, 36–37. Archived from the original on 16 December 2021 – via robertchristgau.com.
• Cott, Jonathan (26 November 1970). "Q&A: Afternoon Tea With Ray Davies". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 8 February 2022.
• Dawbarn, Bob (16 April 1966). "Ray – The Patriot Kink". Melody Maker. p. 3.
• Dawbarn, Bob (30 November 1968). "Looking back with the Kinks: Ray Davies explains The Village Green Preservation Society" (PDF). Melody Maker. p. 8.
• Farmer, Bob (8 July 1967). "Kink Goes Solo!" (PDF). Disc and Music Echo. p. 16.
• Henshaw, Laurie (24 August 1968). "Enter Ray Davies, the record producer" (PDF). Melody Maker. p. 7.
• Jopling, Norman (4 February 1967). "Ray Davies on Holly, & the rocking Kinks" (PDF). Record Mirror. p. 3.
• Morisset, Jean-Pierre (May 2006). "Pete Quaife, interviewed by Jean-Pierre Morisset". Jukebox magazine. No. 230.
• Neill, Andy (February 2000). "The Great Lost Kinks Album". Record Collector. No. 246. pp. 46–49.

Nolan, Hugh (3 August 1968). "Suddenly the Kinks are Feeling Old" (PDF). Disc and Music Echo. p. 9.

• "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. No. 937. 11 December 2003. pp. 83–178.
• Walsh, Alan (12 August 1967). "'I'm Not Good Enough to Go Solo!': Dave Davies tells Alan Walsh" (PDF). Melody Maker. p. 9.
• Williams, Paul (14 June 1969). "The Kinks :The Village Green Preservation Society". Rolling Stone. No. 35. Archived from the original on 3 April 2007.
• Wilson, Tony (3 August 1968). "The loneliness of the far-sighted songwriter" (PDF). Melody Maker. p. 9.

Further reading

• Curyłło-Klag, Izabela (June 2016). "Utopia, dystopia and the 'heretic streak' – The Orwellian aesthetic in Ray Davies' song writing and other creative projects". Studia Humanistyczne AGH. 15 (2): 7–15. doi:10.7494/human.2016.15.2.7. ISSN 2084-3364.
• Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "The Village Green Preservation Society [Super Deluxe Edition] – The Kinks". AllMusic. Archived from the original on 19 June 2022. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
• Lupro, Michael Mooradian (May 2006). "Preserving the Old Ways, Protecting the New: Post‐War British Urban Planning in The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society". Popular Music and Society. 29 (2): 189–200. doi:10.1080/03007760600560094. ISSN 0300-7766. S2CID 144597530.
• Smotroff, Mark (28 November 2018). "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Remasters on Mono & Stereo Vinyl, Tidal". Audiophile Music. Archived from the original on 23 June 2021.

External links

• The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society at Discogs (list of releases)