Ray Davies

Ray Davies, legendary frontman of The Kinks, is one of the all-time greatest rock 'n' roll musicians - and also one of its most troubled and enigmatic. In the summer of 1964, aged 20, Ray Davies led The Kinks to fame with their number one hit 'You Really Got Me'. Within months, they were challenging The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in the charts, swamped by fans and renowned for the rioting at their gigs. Over the next three decades, Davies wrote a string of enduring classics - 'All Day and All of the Night', 'Sunny Afternoon', 'Waterloo Sunset', 'Lola' - that secured his status as one of the handful of people to have redefined pop culture over the last 50 years. But Ray's journey from working-class Muswell Hill to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame was tumultuous in the extreme, featuring breakdowns, bitter lawsuits, spectacular punch-ups and a ban from entering the USA for almost four years