Ray of sunshine on wet home turf

Another step away from the showbiz ledge, towards which an early signing to a jazz major once edged her.

It took Ray Davies three years to recover after he was shot in 2004. The lost time has increased his determination to ensure his work endures, he tells James McNair

Next month, a new musical written by the former Kinks lead singer Ray Davies, and based on his life, will open at the Theatre Royal Stratford East.

A musical based on a song by Ray Davies, frontman of the Kinks, and featuring 20 new tracks by the Sixties legend, will premiere later this year.

The history of President Records, one of the first independent labels in the UK, is inextricably linked to that of music publisher Edward Kassner. Born in Austria to Jewish parents in 1920, Edward dreamed of becoming a composer but his orchestral aspirations were cut short when Hitler annexed Austria.

“He was tipped off by his friends that they were rounding up Jewish boys,” says David Kassner, Edward’s eldest son and now MD of President. “He fled through Belgium and got caught trying to cross the border at Aachen twice. On the third occasion a German soldier caught him but let him go saying that he hadn’t signed up to shoot young boys.”

He may be just 22, but Alex Turner is being hailed as a singer-songwriter to compare with Ray Davies.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young the very heaven." From Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited to In A Silent Way by Miles Davis, I recall my teens as aurally amazing. Dozing in the back of my parents' car, I was thunderstruck when I first heard "Strawberry Fields". "Eight Miles High" by the Byrds was so intoxicating – it still is – that you couldn't believe it was legal. The same applied to "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane and, in a home-grown way, "Itchycoo Park" by the Small Faces. One day, someone brought into school Are You Experienced? by Jimi Hendrix. On the following day, someone else arrived with Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd. Or it might have been 5,000 Spirits by the Incredible String Band or We're Only in it for the Money by the Mothers of Invention or Sgt. Pepper ...

His rough language should be an asset at closing time. Even so, the world of haute cuisine may be surprised to learn that Britain's most acclaimed chef is planning to become a publican.

It's tempting to devote this space to querying how the Devon teenager Joss Stone won the urban music award at the Brits last Wednesday. But deconstructing the state of urban music on the mean streets of Paignton might cause the brain to implode.

Too young to die, too old to rock'n'roll? Not if you're Paul or Mick or Keith or Tina or any one of a host of Sixties rockers back from the grave and back on stage. Personal trainers, wig manufacturers and St John's Ambulance brigades stand by...

Ray Davies, The Storyteller; Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

You know the hit, but do you know how it came to be written? What was the inspiration? Today: Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks

A very English group, the Kinks were a hybrid of music hall and Noel Coward on electric guitar. At first they sounded like a garage band. Their three-chord smash hit "You Really Got Me" showed no sign of the mordant, world-weary melancholy to come. But in 1966 Ray Davies gave us "Waterloo Sunset", one of the most beautiful pop songs ever written. It's a perfect vignette, a classic English weepy.