A carpet layer named Arthur Morgan never made it to the screen. The Kinks wrote his story for a Granada Television play, but the play was cancelled for lack of funding before a single scene was shot. What survived was the band's seventh studio album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), released on 10 October 1969. It turned a failed commission into one of the most admired British records of that year.
From family story to concept album
Ray Davies had planned the album as the soundtrack to the television play, and he developed the plot with the writer Julian Mitchell. The main character, Arthur Morgan, was based on a real man: Arthur Anning, the husband of the Davies brothers' older sister Rose. Rose and Arthur Anning had emigrated to Australia in 1964, and that departure had already inspired Ray Davies to write a song for the 1966 album Face to Face. Now the family story became the spine of a much larger work.
The album arrived in a strange position. The television play that was supposed to carry the songs into British living rooms was gone, and the record had to stand alone. Pye Records released it in the UK, while Reprise Records handled the American market. The Kinks were also breaking in a new bassist, John Dalton, who had replaced Peter Quaife. A concept album about a carpet layer and the decline of an empire was not an obvious commercial bet.
American critics respond with praise
The critics, especially in the American music press, responded with almost unanimous praise. Rolling Stone ran two reviews back to back: Mike Daly called the album a masterpiece on every level and the best hour of Ray Davies, while Greil Marcus named it the best British album of 1969. The record had found its audience among writers who heard something ambitious and strange in its songs about ordinary English life.
Mike Daly called the album a masterpiece on every level and the best hour of Ray Davies, while Greil Marcus named it the best British album of 1969.
The public did not follow the critics. Sales were low. The singles Drivin' and Shangri-La missed the British charts entirely. In the United States, Victoria became the lead single and reached number 62 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's first appearance there in two years. In Britain, Victoria came out later and climbed to number 30. The album itself reached number 105 on the Billboard Top LPs and stayed on the chart for 20 weeks, the group's best showing in three years.
That modest American foothold mattered. Arthur prepared the ground for the success of Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, the 1970 album that would give The Kinks a genuine hit. The failed television play had, by accident, pushed Ray Davies to make a record that worked as a complete piece on its own, and the American press had noticed before the British public did.
Fifty-seven years after its release, the album still reads as a turning point. The Kinks had spent the mid-1960s moving away from their early hits, and Arthur gave that shift a shape: a story about a man, a family, and a country losing its place in the world. The television play never happened, but the record it was meant to accompany became the thing people remember.