Today is May Day, the international holiday of the working class, a celebration of our labor unions and our rich history of struggle. I marched, along with 40,000 comrades, past the United Nations, across 42nd street and back up 6th avenue to Central Park for nuclear abolition and an end to the war in Iraq.
Back home, spinning a Kinks CD, I am inexplicably drawn to an anti-union song, “Get Back In Line.” Ray Davies, the lead singer and chief songwriter of the Kinks, is a curmudgeon. He’s also one of the greatest songwriters of the rock-n-roll era. He infuses his songs with a dry wit and clever character studies, as well as a supernatural sense of melody, that all his songs are likable, even when he’s bashing socialism or criticizing labor unions.
Back in 1964, in the first great wave of the “British Invasion,” the Kinks scored a #1 hit on both sides of the Atlantic with “You Really Got Me,” an infectious rave-up that employs the first integral use of feedback in a rock song. The Kinks were stars, but they were denied the opportunity to tour America while all of their compatriots were making the Ed Sullivan Show their first stop in lucrative and career-enhancing tour of the states. The exact reason for the Kinks Ban is murky. It had something to do with Ray’s tendency to get into fist fights on stage with his brother Dave. Many, Ray Davies chief among them, blame the American Federation of Musicians for banning the Kinks from America.
I find it hard to believe that the union ever had the kind of power to singlehandedly prevent famous rockstars from touring. They certainly don’t have that power now. My friend Elana works for Local 802 AFM now, and she is investigating this mystery.
Whatever kept the Kinks out of the US, it ultimately enhanced their art and helped define their career. While the Beatles and Rolling Stones were getting sick of playing concerts for arenas full of American girls whose screaming drowned out their music (both eventually quit touring for much of the 60’s), the Kinks were embracing their distinct Britishness.
Davies wrote about Carnaby Street fops, English pubs, the Waterloo train station, village greens, holidays in Germany, English music halls – all are rather alien to American teenagers. By 1967’s “Summer of Love,” the Kinks’ new album was extolling the virtues of “little shops, china cups and virginity” (That record, “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” sounds much more timeless than the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper”).
In 1970, Davies wrote the song “Get Back In Line.” Although the yearning ballad is a poetic imagining of a union hiring hall, the clear subtext is that it’s Davies’ shot at the Musicians union in America.
The lyrics, quoted in whole, are:
Facing the world ain’t easy when there isn’t anything going
Standing at the corner waiting watching time go by
Will I go to work today or shall I bide my time
‘Cos when I see that union man walking down the street
He’s the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve, or I eat
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine
Then he walks right past and I know that I’ve got to get back in the line
Now I think of what my mamma told me
She always said that it would never ever work out
But all I want to do is make some money
And bring you home some wine
For I don’t ever want you to see me
Standing in that line
‘Cause that union man’s got such a hold over me
He’s the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve, or I eat
Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine
Then he walks right past and I know that I’ve got to get back in the line
It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking song, even if it is an ugly shot at unions. It took me a long time to appreciate this song. In fact, it was only recently, finding myself in a similarly powerless situation as the song’s protagonist, that I recognized the song’s meaning for what it was: championing a little guy’s survival from forces that are frequently beyond his control. It’s a standard theme of Ray Davies’ writing, and it’s not so curmudgeonly now that I think about it.
