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Dave Davies in Little Green Street |
Kinks star fights for Dead End Street
Former member of legendary 60s band campaigns to save road where video was filmed
FORMER Kinks band member Dave Davies is desperate to save the ‘Dead End Street’ behind one of the band’s classic hits.
The guitarist yesterday (Wednesday) signed a petition urging the council to halt plans to allow developers to drive heavy-duty vehicles along cobbled Little Green Street, the oldest road in Kentish Town.
The Kinks used the 300-year-old street as the backdrop to their promotional video for Dead End Street in the 1960s.
Mr Davies said: “It would be a great shame to touch it, really, because it’s such a unique little area. It’s like walking into the past. We have millions of tourists that come to London and they love these quaint British areas. Do you think people are going to be coming to London going, ‘ooh look at that high-rise building built in 2008?’”
In the video, Mr Davies, dressed as a Victorian undertaker, watches in mock surprise as a corpse jumps from a coffin to chase police away from the street.
The iconic footage is widely thought to be
the inspiration behind Oasis’s pop video for their single The Importance Of Being Idle.
Little Green Street, home to 17 adults and seven children living in the storybook Georgian terraces, is to become a haul road for 40-tonne lorries, cranes and diggers, if permission is granted. Campaigners say the development will damage the street.
Developers Euro Investments plan to transform a former British Rail social club at the end of the road into a gated community of 20 three-storey houses and 10 flats, plus underground parking for 17 cars.
Camden initially rejected the scheme but former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott overruled the objection, and in 2005 planning permission was granted.
The Victorian church on the corner which also appears in the video is to be demolished to make way for more flats.
Mr Davies, who has just completed his latest album Fractured Minds, visited Little Green Street to film a Kinks memoir documentary earlier this year.
He said: “It’s sad that they feel they have to run slip shod over this lovely enclave of road. I was so pleased to see, a few months ago, that none of it had changed including the little tunnel and one of the actual houses where we made the music video.
“At the time, in the late 50s and early 60s, when they would typically knock down the old Victorian and Georgian houses and put up breeze-block steel and glass structures, we thought it was a special little gem in the middle of urban life.”
Mr Davies added: “I mean, how are they going to build it? By helicopter? I’m not an expert but you wouldn’t think there was enough land to build 30 homes there anyway and underground parking as well. It’s going to disrupt the whole area.”
Mr Davies is one of nearly 2,000 supporters who have signed the petition and posted comments on a campaign website.
Other celebrity endorsements have come from Bill Nighy, Tom Conti, Ken Loach, Roger Lloyd Pack and Frank Dobson, with Nighy describing the bid as “senseless”.
Resident Nick Goodall, an office worker and father of four said: “We want as many people as possible to come and have a look and tell Camden it’s a daft idea.
“If there is anyone who wants to say it’s a great idea I’d want to hear it because I haven’t met anyone bar the developers who thinks that so far.” |
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This should be treated as an historic treasure. History is worth protecting!
Rob Peirson |
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