Fact #118029

Dave Davies (guitarist, The Kinks] : When I flew to L.A. to do the show, my guitar was lost on the airline. I was heartbroken. So when we arrived in L.A. a guy said, 'Come along, I'll take you to a store, and we'll have a look around.' And they had all these guitars, but I didn't like any of them. So I looked up on the top shelf and saw this dusty old case. I said, 'What have you got there?' They got it down, and I saw what I thought was a Flying V. I later found out that it was a Futura, which dates back to, like, '56 and had a slightly bigger body. (Note : actually, the Futura was a prototype of the Explorer, not the Flying V). Three days later I was using it on Shindig!. I've still got it actually - it doesn't go out of the house.

James Burton was my idol! This was about the same time that I was listening to people like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. There were no really good guitarists in pop music or rock; James Burton was bridging the gap between country music, if you will, and commercialism. When we were on the Shindig TV show in '65, I was over the moon, because James Burton was in The Shindogs. I've still got his records at home - those great solos on Hello Mary Lou and the other Ricky Nelson records.

Pete Quaife (bassist, The Kinks] : Shindig was very strange because they had all these silly looking women go-go dancing around behind you. It was all mimed, and I do remember that they wanted us to dance while we were playing. We just said no.

But then America in general was very strange. Especially the showbiz side. There was a completely different attitude towards famous people. They elevated you out of all proportion. It didn't seem to make sense. Men would run up to you in the street and scream "You've got to be one of The Beatles!" for all the world to hear, and you'd want to say, "For God's sake, grow up."

I remember we did one American tv show where they had live cats all over the studio, but they must have been given something because they weren't doing very much.