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David Russell Gordon Davies (born February 3, 1947) was a singer and guitarist with the British rock band The Kinks, which he founded with Pete Quaife in 1963. (His brother Ray, who became the best-known member of the band, joined soon after.) Although the group has been all but disbanded since the early 1990s, Davies continues to have a steady musical career as a performer and songwriter.
Although never attaining the fame and reputation of his older brother, who wrote and sang lead on most of the Kinks' songs, Dave Davies wrote some hits himself (notably "Death of a Clown" and "Living on a Thin Line"), and his unusual, high-pitched voice was a vital part of the Kinks' sound. But his rock legacy was cemented in 1964, when he created the buzzing, slam-dunk power chords for his brother's "You Really Got Me." Davies has given various accounts of how he got that sound, including one tale in which he said he stabbed the speakers on his cheap Elpico amplifier with knitting needles before the recording session.
On June 30, 2004, Davies suffered a stroke in an elevator at the London offices of the BBC, where he had been promoting his latest album, Bug. He was released from the hospital on August 27.
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