On the subject of songwriting, I try to put my own feelings in our records, apart from making them commercial….

["All Day and All of the Night"]—despite what many critics say—is a sincere effort to convey the attitude of many people today. It seems that when a thing is "down-to-earth" and factual people always try to stamp it out, but eventually it becomes the established thing.

I could really call myself an apprentice songwriter at the moment and I hope eventually to become sufficiently capable of expressing people's everyday moods, thoughts and emotions in music.

Maybe we should be called the Francis Bacons of pop music!

Ray Davies, "Kink Is Still a Naughty Word," in Melody Maker (© IPC Business Press Ltd.), November 28, 1964, p. 9.