(Credits: Far Out / Apple Corps / Bent Rej)
Tue 28 April 2026 14:00, UK
There’s nothing quite like a rock and roll rivalry. It gives rise to some ridiculous scenarios, like Pink Floyd splitting down the middle, Blur battling Oasis, and Ray Davies thinking he was better than The Beatles.
Particularly on the latter point, there was an especially lethal load of acrimony being fired across the battle lines. Davies is, of course, no stranger to the odd feud himself, with famous fights taking place over the years between him and his brotherly bandmate, Dave. But even still, saying his own songs were better than Sgt Pepper – was he kidding?
Sadly not, and so it transpired that when The Beatles created what came to be regarded as one of the most iconic albums of all time, The Kinks frontman merely thought it was small fry compared to his own. It seems that the British invasion was not such a united front, after all, with Davies responsible for firing one of the most crushing shots.
Picture the scene: it was 1967, a year which, on the face of it, was filled with the overtures of peace and love and all things psychedelic. Except, in the world of one of those who created it, things were a lot more sneering and spiteful than many would like to believe. Ultimately, when Davies hit play on Sgt Pepper for the first time, he felt it was nothing more than purely hot air.
While many people would have a seminal memory or experience of listening to that record for the first time in their lives, Davies’s recollection of the event was for far different reasons. He happened to be in Van Morrison’s flat at the time, for starters, so maybe it was the weight of the musical oeuvre that shaped him in ways it shouldn’t have.
His simple verdict on Sgt Pepper? “I didn’t listen to all of it.” But his attempted justification was even more startling. “I knew I’d put out the best song of the year, so it didn’t matter to me.” To hear such flagrant ego out in the world is still pretty wild to hear from anyone, no matter the context. But then again, he did write ‘Waterloo Sunset’.
However, that song in question might be the key to unlocking the real reason for Davies’s bitterness towards the Fab Four. After all, did you know that it was originally meant to be called ‘Liverpool Sunset’, before those pesky hometown heroes swooped in and wrote ‘Penny Lane’? It certainly left a sour taste in The Kinks’ frontman’s mouth.
He said before that it is relatively common for him to “work on a theme only to find, as it nears completion, someone else has come up with exactly the same melodic or lyrical idea,” and in this sense, it was easy to see why his assessment on Sgt Pepper was perhaps more scathing than it should have been.
Even still, in a competition between ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and a song like ‘A Day in the Life’ from Sgt Pepper, it’s difficult to tell which one wins the battle. Davies probably wouldn’t have got that far in the tracklist, anyway, since he claimed he never listened to all of it. It seems to be a debate that will never be settled.
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