Former Kinks frontman Ray Davies has added his thoughts to the ongoing crisis currently befalling London’s famous 100 Club, and has claimed X Factor judge Simon Cowell should foot the bill to keep the club open.
Davies told Spinner he believes Cowell should write the cheque as a payback for the ‘amount of money he takes out of pop music’. “Simon Cowell should underwrite the money needed to save the 100 Club” he said.”That would be a real payback – the amount of money he takes out of pop music he could put some back in.
But I’m very concerned about the 100 Club. The Kinks played there and it’s such an iconic venue we shouldn’t allow things like that to close down. Everything is being overrun by the chain stores and the conglomerates and it such a pity that the 100 Club has to suffer like that.”
Davies also told of his own problems with escalating overheads, revealing his Konk Studio is facing similar problems to those affecting the 100 Club. “The running costs have gone up and recording budgets from record companies have gone down and people record in a different way now,” he explained.
“Whereas people would go into record for six weeks, now they’ll go in for maybe two days to lay down the drums and then do all the rest on recording programmes in their bedrooms at home.”
Ray Davies is currently at number 12 on the UK Album chart with his new Kinks covers album ‘See My Friends‘.