“an intriguing insight into the creative inner workings of one of popular music’s most talented songwriters and mercurial characters”
The Irish Times

In 2004, Ray Davies was shot by a mugger in New Orleans. It was the most disturbing incident in a lifelong relationship with America that has often proved challenging, to say the least. Forty years earlier, the raw guitar sound of ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’ propelled The Kinks to the top of the charts and helped kick-start the ‘British Invasion’ of the US, but the onstage antics of the group saw them effectively banned from the country and denied success there at the very height of their fame. Davies explores this ambiguous relationship in his new book, Americana: the Kinks, the Road and the Perfect Riff. From his youth in thrall to all things American (including R&B and country, Cajun and jazz), to his career in one of Britain’s most iconic bands, and that fateful shooting in a city that had almost become a second home, Davies looks back on his life in the company of Joseph O’Connor, and screens extracts from a recent documentary exploring his changing relationship with the country that both inspires and frustrates him.