Art & Creativity Quote by Dave Davies

A little rebellion goes a long way in rock, but Dave Davies is pointing at something more specific: the difference between making music and manufacturing product. “I don’t like people telling me what to do” is the obvious thrust, the kind of stubborn autonomy you’d expect from a guitarist who helped define a band’s sound by literally slashing a speaker cone. The sharper edge is in “trying to MAKE me write songs.” The capitalization is implied; he’s naming coercion as the enemy of creativity, not just as a personality quirk.

The subtext is a power struggle inside an ecosystem that treats inspiration like an invoice. For a working musician, “write songs” isn’t a purely romantic act; it’s tied to deadlines, label expectations, radio formats, and the internal politics of a band where songwriting credits translate into status and money. Davies spent a career in the long shadow of his brother Ray’s authorial dominance, so the line also reads as a quiet refusal of hierarchy: don’t assign me the role of “content generator” to serve somebody else’s narrative of the band.

What makes the quote land is its bluntness. He doesn’t dress it up as “artistic integrity” or a manifesto. He makes it bodily: don’t push me. That plain-spoken resistance is itself a creative stance, one that insists the best songs come from compulsion, not compliance.