"Village Green" is a song by the English rock band the Kinks from their 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Written and sung by the band's principal songwriter, Ray Davies, the song was first recorded in November1966 during the sessions for Something Else by the Kinks (1967) but was re-recorded in . Both the composition and instrumentation of "Village Green" evoke Baroque music, especially its prominently featured harpsichord played by session keyboardist Nicky Hopkins. Unlike most of the band's recordings, it employs real orchestral instruments, including oboe, cello, viola and piccolo, as arranged by English composer David Whitaker.
Davies composed "Village Green" in after an experience at a pub in Devon, a rural part of England. The song laments the decline of a fictional English community's traditional village green. Retrospective commentators place the song in the tradition of English pastoral poetry, particularly its themes of rural living and a declining English culture. After the song's recording, Davies withheld it from release while deciding whether to include it on a solo album or as part of a Kinks project. It served as one of the central inspirations for The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and was the album's title track until only a few months before its release. The song was first issued in the United Kingdom on that album in November 1968, but it saw earlier release on a French EP in as well as on a similar Spanish EP. The song was not played live until a Ray Davies solo show in 1995, though the Kinks had performed an instrumental version in 1973.
Background and inspiration
In July1965, the Kinks were informally blacklisted from performing in the United States by the American Federation of Musicians. The circumstances that led to the ban are unclear but likely stemmed from several incidents during the band's 1965 US tour; bandleader Ray Davies later attributed it to a combination of "bad luck, bad management, [and] bad behaviour". Music critic Ian MacDonald suggests the ban left the group comparatively isolated from American influence, guiding them away from their earlier blues-based riffing towards a distinctly English songwriting style. In early1966, Davies grew obsessed with aspects of English aristocracy and the country's dying traditions. He expressed his pride of Britain in an April1966 interview with Melody Maker magazine, wishing its culture could remain distinct from that of America and Europe, as well as a desire to keep writing "very English songs".
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. He later recalled the song spawning from his disappointment after finding out the beer at a Devon pub was stored in a pressurised metal keg rather than in a traditional wooden barrel. Davies explained in a 1974 interview: "I notice the difference. Some wouldn't. But it doesn't get you in the legs anymore..." He also observed an encroachment of Devon's country landscape by more modern buildings. Davies may have been further inspired by the small town of Oakham, where the Kinks played a benefit four days later. He was also inspired by Under Milk Wood, a radio drama about a small Welsh town completed by the poet Dylan Thomas just before his death in 1953.
Recording
The Kinks first recorded "Village Green" on 24–25 November 1966, at the beginning of the sessions for their next album, Something Else by the Kinks (1967). Recording took place in Pye Studio 2, one of two basement studios at Pye Records's London offices. The tracks for Something Else done in late 1966 went unused, and the band reconvened at Pye in early 1967 to re-record several songs. It is unclear if any parts of the released version of "Village Green" use the November 1966 recordings; author Rob Jovanovic writes that all the November1966 recordings, including "Village Green", were "early versions" and demos. In his 1994 autobiography, Davies writes that the song was re-recorded entirely in February 1967. After acknowledging Davies's account, band biographer Andy Miller raises the possibility that the November 1966 recording served as the basic track onto which the band overdubbed additions in February 1967.