It’s not exactly rare for band members to not get along with each other. Unfortunately, at least in the world of rock music, it’s also not rare for band members to get physically violent with each other when tensions are high. That’s what happened between Dave Davies and Mick Avory of The Kinks back in 1965.
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Usually, when The Kinks got into fights, alcohol was the culprit that fuelled them. That was, unfortunately, what fuelled the fire behind an altercation that took place during a performance at the Capital Theatre in Cardiff, England back in 1965.
Ray Davies, Dave Davies’ brother and fellow member of The Kinks, once spoke about the incident in an interview from 2010. According to Ray, Avory was already angry by the time he sat behind the drums for the performance that day. Davies allegedly insulted him the previous night. On the day of the performance, Avory had a bit too much to drink and was waiting to take his revenge.
Davies was none the wiser. Maybe if he was wiser, he would have kept his comments to himself. That didn’t happen.
Dave Davies Ended Up With Stitches After a Snide Comment Went Awry
The band performed two songs at the Capital Theatre before Davies turned and said to Avory, “Why don’t you get your c*** out and play the snare with it? It’ll probably sound better.”
That comment was low-key hilarious, but Avory certainly didn’t think so. He lunged from his drum kit and punched Davies in the face, though some accounts say he hit him with a cymbal. After the shock had passed, the band members found their frontman unconscious on the stage floor. He was taken to an infirmary immediately and was given sixteen stitches following the attack.
Avory ran away and hid, but the local police found him pretty quickly. Despite the fact that hundreds of audience members (and his own bandmates) witnessed the attack, he tried to lie his way out of it.
Fortunately, Davies dropped the charges against him to keep the band going and the tension between him and Avory was more or less tamed. Still, the public attack didn’t help their careers. They had a bad record of on-stage incidents, and they were banned from touring in the US after that final death knell.
“In many respects, that ridiculous ban took away the best years of the Kinks’ career when the original band was performing at its peak,” said Ray Davies in the above-mentioned interview. “[…] We were battlers. But the very thing that makes a band special is what ultimately causes it to break up. What made our music interesting ended up being the very thing that destroyed it.”
Despite the drama, The Kinks are still considered legends today, years after they finally called it quits in 1997.
Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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