The compilation served to satisfy Reprise Records after executives determined that the Kinks contractually owed them one more album, despite the band's departure from the label in 1971.
Most of its songs date to the sessions for the 1968 album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and were delivered by Ray Davies to Reprise in July 1969 out of a contractual obligation.
Musician John Mendelsohn wrote liner notes for the album which extensively derided Davies' contemporary songwriting in comparison to his late 1960s work.
He initiated legal action against Reprise over the album, resulting in its 1975 deletion from the label's catalogue, though it remained popular among Kinks fans into the 2000s for its inclusion of rare and otherwise unobtainable tracks.
They delivered an extra reel of twelve songs, marked as "spare tracks" and not assigned a master tape number, indicating they were likely not planned for an immediate release.
Ray Davies later expressed he was hesitant to deliver them because he did not feel they were up to standard and wanted to include a note explaining, "please, we're just fulfilling our contract, just put it in a vault somewhere.
[3] The same year, Reprise rejected the Percy soundtrack album for US release, finding it lacked commercial potential in the American market.
[7] Of the twelve "spare tracks" delivered to Reprise in 1969, three – "This Is Where I Belong", "King Kong" and "Berkeley Mews" – were dropped after having been already included on The Kink Kronikles.
[9] Songs added included "Misty Water", recorded in May 1968 and originally planned for release on Four More Respected Gentlemen;[10] "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", the non-album B-side to the 1966 single "Sunny Afternoon"; "The Way Love Used to Be", a ballad from the Percy soundtrack album; and "There Is No Life Without Love", "Groovy Movies" and "This Man He Weeps Tonight" from the unreleased Dave Davies solo album.
[14] The album's cover features the painting Proliferation by Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon, while the rear sleeve includes a picture of Davies taken by American photographer Bob Gruen.
[15] For example, Mendelsohn writes that the Kinks' 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz features "a bitchy, egocentric Davies ... whose primary interest is making clear to his listener the agony he must endure to stay on the road entertaining us.
[30] Despite the album's 1975 deletion and lack of a subsequent official CD release,[31] it has remained popular among Kinks fans for its inclusion of rare and otherwise unobtainable tracks.
[33] Into the early 2000s, the LP remained the only way of hearing several of its songs without resorting to bootlegging,[34] before many were made available as bonus tracks on the 2004 CD reissue of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.
[36] Another magazine's reviewer wrote that the album's main value was for Kink fans who "don't mind wading through second-rate material to get to the occasional highspots.
He finds The Great Lost Kinks Album lyrically weaker than the band's other late 1960s work, but counts "Rosemary Rose" "Misty Water" and "Mr. Songbird" as the highlights.