The Kinks' album Arthur to be turned into BBC radio drama

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/06/the-kinks-album-arthur-to-be-turned-into-bbc-radio-drama

Version 0 of 1.

The Kinks’ classic album Arthur will be turned into a radio drama for BBC Radio 4, 50 years after it was released.

The BBC confirmed that Arthur – a concept album about a man who struggles to find his place in a country that is wrestling with the end of the colonial era – would air in November.

The Radio 4 commissioning editor for drama and fiction, Alison Hindell, said the “seminal album” would be turned into a radio drama that “makes you want to dance as you listen”.

Hindell called Arthur – which has a full title of Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) – “a heartfelt true story of a particular moment in recent history that has resonances today about the ways in which we connect as humans at times of great social change – through story, music, home and family”.

The Kinks’ Ray Davies said the album was inspired by real-life events. “Arthur’s generation returned from war to find Britain’s future in the midst of cultural and social change and political uncertainty, much like today,” he said. “A play set yesterday about all our tomorrows.”

The Guardian wrote about Arthur before its release in October 1969, describing it as being in the same vein as the Who’s concept album Tommy – with Davies’s ambitious writing signalling a shift in what a record could be. “Scenes from the life of one person is a perfect solution to a time of transition, in the record industry, between singles and albums,” wrote Geoffrey Cannon in May 1969. “The combination of media has produced the form of the message.”

Rolling Stone praised the album on its release, saying that Arthur presented 100 years of English history “through the eyes of one little man who never meant a thing to the rest of the world”.

It was “less ambitious than Tommy, and far more musical”, JR Young wrote. “No fillers, no waste tracks, not a matter of ideas but of perceptions worked out by bass, drums, voices, horns and guitars – Arthur is by all odds the best British album of 1969.”

Despite the critical praise, the album and its singles did not perform particularly well for the band, with lead singles Drivin’ and Shangri-La failing to chart – the first failure for the band since their breakthrough in 1964. Victoria would chart at 30, and was eventually covered by the Fall 19 years later, charting at number 35.

Lee Ross will play Arthur and Rosie Cavaliero has been cast as Rose. Davies, who adapted the drama alongside the Olivier-nominated playwright Paul Sirett, is also a producer.