Dave Davies

In any other band, Dave Davies would have been the star. But sharing the Kinks' stage--and a last name--with older brother Ray often exiled Dave to the background, even though he founded the band with Pete Quaife in 1963. Still, not even a near-fatal stroke in 2004 has kept him from dominating his sibling when it comes to solo records--eight of them since 1980. They will never, though, outshine his work as a Kink, from the proto-heavy-metal power chords of "You Really Got Me" (Davies supposedly created the sound by slashing his speaker cones with knitting needles or a razor blade) and his arena-rock slashing of the late '70 and early '80s to the lyrical leads of the Kinks' rock-opera period and his self-penned hits "Death of a Clown" and "Living on a Thin Line" and, always, his high harmonies with brother Ray. Davies penned an autobiography, Kink, in 1996, in which he openly discussed his bisexuality, and has been involved in spirituality and metaphysics for years, releasing an album entitled Purusha and the Spiritual Planet in 1998 and devoting an entire section of his website to the topic.