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Ray Davies was the lead singer, chief songwriter, and rhythm guitarist in the Kinks, one of the most long-lived of the British Invasion rock groups of the 1960s. In effect, the Kinks had always been merely a backup group for Davies, who wrote and sang nearly all their songs with only the occasional contribution from his brother, Dave, who played lead guitar in the group. At various times, Ray Davies made noises about dissolving the group and going solo, but for years the closest he came to it was taking solo credit for the soundtrack to his 1985 film, Return to Waterloo (which he wrote and directed), even though the music sounds as much like the Kinks as that on any regular Kinks record. During the '90s, however, the Kinks gradually became inactive and Davies pursued other projects, starting with his semi-fictional 1995 memoir, X-Ray. He supported the book with a series of concerts subtitled Storyteller, where he played classic Kinks songs, read from the book, told stories, and showc...