What is the full name of the Kinks member that released solo work in the 1980's?
Following the termination of their contract with RCA, the Kinks signed with Arista Records in 1976. With the encouragement of Arista's management they stripped back down to a five-man core group and were reborn as an arena rock band. John Dalton left the band before finishing the sessions for the debut Arista album. Andy Pyle was brought in to complete the sessions and to play on the subsequent tour. Sleepwalker, released in 1977, marked a return to success for the group as it peaked at number 21 on the Billboard chart. After its release and the recording of the follow-up, Misfits, Andy Pyle and keyboardist John Gosling left the group to work together on a separate project. Dalton returned to complete the tour and ex–Pretty Things keyboardist Gordon John Edwards joined the band. In May 1978, Misfits, the Kinks' second Arista album, was released. It included the US Top 40 hit "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy", which helped make the record another success for the band. The non-album single "Father Christmas" has remained a popular track. Driven by session drummer Henry Spinetti's drumming and Dave Davies' heavy guitar the song "Father Christmas" has become a classic seasonal favorite on mainstream radio. Dalton left the band permanently at the end of their UK tour, and Gordon John Edwards followed. Ex-Argent bassist Jim Rodford joined the band before the recording of Low Budget, on which Ray Davies played the keyboard sections. Keyboardist Ian Gibbons was recruited for the subsequent tour, and became a permanent member of the group. Despite the personnel changes, the popularity of the band's records and live shows continued to grow.
Beginning in the late 1970s, bands such as the Jam ("David Watts"), the Pretenders ("Stop Your Sobbing", "I Go to Sleep") and the Knack ("The Hard Way") recorded covers of Kinks songs, which helped bring attention to the group's new releases. In 1978, Van Halen covered "You Really Got Me" for their debut single, a Top 40 US hit, helping boost the band's commercial resurgence (Van Halen later covered "Where Have All the Good Times Gone", another early Kinks song which had been covered by David Bowie on his 1973 album Pin Ups). The hard rock sound of Low Budget, released in 1979, helped make it the Kinks' second gold album and highest charting original album in the US, where it peaked at number 11. In 1980, the group's third live album, One for the Road, was produced, along with a video of the same title, bringing the group's concert-drawing power to a peak that would last into 1983. Dave Davies also took advantage of the group's improved commercial standing to fulfill his decade-long ambitions to release albums of his solo work. The first was the eponymous Dave Davies in 1980. It was also known by its catalogue number "AFL1-3603" because of its cover art, which depicted Dave Davies as a leather-jacketed piece of price-scanning barcode. He produced another, less successful, solo album in 1981, Glamour.
Dave Davies