PART ONE Dave at 11 years old When my brother Ray and I formed the Kinks in the early 1960s, I never imagined that more than thirty years later we'd still be recording and performing all over the world. That we'd still be playing rock 'n' roll. I was a teenager when we had our first hit, 'You Really Got Me', in 1964, a wild and angry kid who suddenly had more money than I'd ever seen before, and an abundance of women and drugs at my disposal. I was sure that the party would end at any moment, and I wanted to live it up while I could. I never planned for the future. Who would have guessed that the Kinks would survive? Everything seemed effortless in those early days, with hit after hit and fans in every country, but as the years wore on the struggles became Dave and Ray in a London photo booth 1964 greater, the battles more brutal, the mind games more intense, weirder, and the lows much lower. It got to the point where it seemed that nothing good ever happened without a fight of some kind; with band members, management, record companies and, of course, my brother. My battles with Ray are notorious in the rock world, and as I reflect back on this crazy life I'm still trying to figure out what happened between us then and what continues to go on between us now. Maybe I'll never know. But one thread that's remained constant throughout these years is my love of music - and it's music, really, that has made it all happen. A great and powerful motivating force in my life.

'Kink - An Autobiography'. By Dave Davies. Published by Hyperion Books (US) & Boxtree (UK) ©Dave Davies 1996