When Kinks bassist and founding member Peter Quaife died in 2010, media in the United States took little notice.
When Kinks bassist and founding member Peter Quaife died June 23, 2010 at age 66, it may have been news in the United Kingdom. But in the United States, the media took little notice.
The Associated Press ran no obituary. Though an obit for Quaife appeared in The New York Times and ran on the CNN wire, few outlets picked up the story.
But then The Kinks were never as popular in the U.S. as they were in Great Britain. One possible explanation could be lack of visibility. In 1965, at the peak of the British Invasion, The Kinks were banned from performing live in the U.S. by the American Federation of Musicians. The ban may have been the result of an incident during a performance in Australia: When singer Ray Davies insulted drummer Mick Avory onstage, Avory responded by smashing the high-hat over the singer’s head (Davies required 16 stitches). Fighting among The Kinks was common, it seems — Quaife once claimed he got in a fistfight with Davies in a taxicab when Davies chaffed at him whistling a Beatles’ tune.
Quaife soon tired of the volatility and what he saw as a lack of creative freedom. In 1969 he left The Kinks in 1969 to form the short-lived band Maple Oak. He eventually quit music altogether, moving to Denmark and later Canada, where he worked as a cartoonist and graphic artist. Quaife also wrote a novel, Veritas, about a 1960s rock band, though it was never published.
The Kinks carried on, meanwhile, replacing Quaife with John Dalton (over the decades The Kinks would rotate 13 members through its line-up). Quaife appeared with the band for its 2005 induction into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame, but bristled at Davies’ public suggestion that he was interested in reuniting with the band.
In his later years Quaife suffered from kidney problems and would eventually die of renal failure.
Here is Quaife with The Kinks in 1965, performing “All Day and All of the Night.”
