I used to spend a lot of time with my aunt Deane & 
uncle Howie – we’ve been really tight since I was a little kid. So spending a weekend afternoon with them in NYC was a semi-regular event. One Saturday in early 1982, I was at their apartment on the Upper West Side. We had just had a burger at the Jackson Hole on Columbus and 85th St., and maybe also gone to West Side Comics to buy comic books, and we were back at the apartment listening to music.
My uncle put on side 1 of The Kinks’ Give The People What They Want. I didn’t pay much attention, until he turned the record over and the first song on side 2 came on (back when LPs were still the primary way to listen to music). “Destroyer” is one of my all-time favorite songs, and I heard it for the first time that day. By the time it was over, I asked him to play it again, and then after we finished listening to the second side, I asked if we could hear the first side again. I was blown away.
The next week, my aunt sent me a copy of the LP, and I proceeded to listen to it over and over again. The songs ran the gamut from delicate ballads to aggressive rockers with a bunch of songs in the middle somewhere. “Better Things,” “Around the Dial,” “Add It Up,” and the title track were favorites, but “Destroyer” was already locked in as a top song on the soundtrack of my life.
Soon after, on a spring ski trip with my school, I was turned on to their live double-album One For The Road, which had been recorded just three years before, and was chock-full of all of the Kinks’ many hit songs – including “All Day and All of the Night,” “You Really Got Me,” “Low Budget,” and of course “Lola.” And Lola was the person the narrator of “Destroyer” met at the beginning of that song, which was a neat connection.
Then, though my teen years, I started exploring their less commercial music, which remains so unique – especially the Village Green Preservation Society, Lola Versus Powerman, Muswell Hillbillies era from 1968 – 1972. So different from the three-chord rockers they started with, and so interesting. Most of all, though, I learned how foundational The Kinks were to rock-n-roll, joining the Beatles and Stones as the leaders of the British Invasion.
I ended up seeing the Kinks on three successive tours in the early-mid ‘80’s, until they took a hiatus from regular touring (that they have yet to come back from) in 1987. And I still listen to this record from start to finish a few times a year at least. If you haven’t done so, give it a try.
