Talk:See My Friends

Moved to 'See My Friends'

Why has this page been moved? Surely it makes more sense for it to be at the correct title! --Moochocoogle 18:48, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the website of Kassner Music, which controls the publishing rights to the song, "See My Friends" is the correct title; see [1]. The original UK pressing was a misprint; virtually all subsequent issues of the song have used the correct title. (And c'mon, don't you think a misprinted title makes a heck of a lot more sense that titling a song "See My Friend" but singing very clearly "see my friends" throughout the track?) Raggaga 05:38, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone asked Ray Davis about this? My recollection of the event was that everything from pre-release to the post release interviews referred to 'See my friend'. Davis had every chance to put things straight, are we to believe that he just didn't want to? What we have now is a generational standoff. Everyone who was around at the time calls it 'Friend', everyone else calls it 'Friends'.

Incidentally, apropos of nothing. Ray often got the lyrics wrong performing it in the early days of the song. "See my friend, sailing 'cross the river" (Or maybe it was "Friends sailing", who can tell?) I recall hearing at one performance. --Deke42 (talk) 14:25, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

When in India

"Inspiration for the song came after a stopover in Bombay, where, finding himself jetlagged on a beach, Davies encountered two fishermen chanting on their way to their morning work. He wrote the song while travelling in India years later when he heard about the significance of the Ganges river in the Indian death ritual." So there were two visits to India. 1. A stopover 2. Travelling in India years later (1965, one presumes) when he wrote the song. When was the stopover "years earlier"? Tsinfandel (talk) 13:08, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

The article is incorrect. I quote from The Kinks' page: "A stopover in Bombay, India, during the band's Australian and Asian tour had led Davies to write the song "See My Friends", released as a single in July 1965." I've made a few changes. - I.M.S. (talk) 05:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

"See My Friends" had been inspired by Jon Mark

Shel Talmy who was the producer of the record "See My Friends" states in more than one interview that the song had been inspired by Jon Mark:

1.) Shel Talmy: Jon Mark "was absolutely a folk singer. It was only later on that he started getting into jazz and Indian. He's the first person that introduced me to sort of Indian music, and ragas and things like that, which is how [the Kinks'] "See My Friends" came about." SHEL TALMY INTERVIEW

2.) Shel Talmy: "In fact I did try early on [to record acoustic music], with a duo called Jon and Alan, and Jon became Jon Mark of the Mark-Almond Band. [Jon] was a great innovator. He's the first person, come to think of it, who ever told me about Bob Dylan. He said, "Watch - - this guy's going to be sensational." Jon was the first guy that ever brought Indian music to my attention, and in fact wrote a song that was sort of based on a drone, a folkish type song, that I recorded with him. I played that to Ray Davies, who was so enamored with it that he went out and wrote "See My Friends" [one of the first Indian-influenced rock songs]." SHEL TALMY INTERVIEW: PART TWO.

3.) Shel Talmy: "'See My Friends' was a real groundbreaker! The evolution of that came about as I was recording Jon Mark, who eventually became part of Mark-Almond. He was a very good songwriter and turned me on to Indian music - ragas and all that kind of stuff. He wrote a song that incorporated an Indian drone, which I loved! I asked him if he'd mind if I played it for Ray Davies, and he said, "Be my guest." I did … and Ray came back the next day with 'See My Friends'. There weren't any sitars available at that time, so we re-tuned the guitars and double-tracked it to get the drone effect. It was the first record on the charts to have a sitar type sound on it. I heard it recently and it really holds up!" SHEL TALMY INTERVIEWED BY ARTIE WAYNE, PART TWO. --Popmuseum (talk) 18:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Genre?

This is a bit of a gray one as far as exactly what genres it is, other than raga rock of course. We have it labelled as psychedelic rock too, which can work IMO, but I also notice the Byrds' Eight Miles High, released early the next year in '66, is described as the first bonafide song of that genre in its own article, along with Yardbirds' Shapes of Things. Personally I don't think it has to have a hard starting point like 1966 and can include See My Friends and others like it too. In reality, alot of those 1965 songs like their version of Mr. Tambourine Man, the Yardbirds' Heart Full of Soul, Evil Hearted You, Still I'm Sad, and some of the Beatles' stuff on Rubber Soul, like Norwegian Wood, If I Needed Someone, and Nowhere Man, can probably be described more accurately as sort of proto-psychedelic, but obviously that can't be used as a genre name. Around this time it seemed there was a blurring of folk rock, jangle pop, pop, raga rock, and some baroque pop influences that kind of game together to form the emerging psychedelic rock scene. But for the sake of consistency across articles, how should they be defined? Word dewd544 (talk) 04:52, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, now we've had a full year of genre warring.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] That's quite enough.

Mostly it's IPs, with a couple of GWAR accounts mixed in. While I'm quite certain I can find at least two banned editors in the mix, it's rather pointless.

If you have independent reliable sources providing genres, please discuss them here. If there is more of the usual nonsense, we can go through with the sock cases. Otherwise, without sources, there is no genre to include here. - SummerPhD^v2.0 20:05, 12 November 2018 (UTC)