“What will be will be,” The Kinks musician said in a candid interview. “I try to enjoy the moment.”
The singer-songwriter of famous hits, such as Sunny Afternoon (1966), seemingly still feels the effects of a serious altercation that occurred back in 2004.
Walking along with a female companion in New Orleans, where he was living at the time, a mugger grabbed his friend’s handbag and ran off.
“It was fight or flight,” he told the Daily Mail. “I wanted to smack him.”
Chasing the mugger, Sir Davies was shot at, with the bullet going through his right thigh, breaking his femur.
“There was a bloody great rod in there for a year or so,” Sir Davies recalled. “That’s been taken out now.”
Elaborating, Sir Davies said: “I used to be a runner, but now I have to work out at the gym, and if I don’t go three times a week the leg gets pretty stiff.”
Despite his “gammy leg”, the musician still plays football in the park with his granddaughter, Lily.
Having remained physically active, it could be one of the reasons why Sir Davies is still making music at 79 years old.
And while songwriting has been his “release” in life, the creative did attempt suicide in 1973, and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is described by the NHS as a “mental health condition that affects your moods, which can swing from one extreme to another”.
People who experience bipolar mood may alternate between depression, feeling very low and lethargic, and mania, which is “feeling very high and overactive”.
The NHS adds: “Unlike simple mood swings, each extreme episode of bipolar disorder can last for several weeks (or even longer).”
As for the life-long, painful condition he has had to live with, he told The Sydney Morning Herald: “I’ve got scoliosis, a muscular skeletal thing.”
He added: “I’ve had it all my life. I toured America for five years on and off in the 1980s and had to take synthetic morphine.”
The NHS says: “Scoliosis can sometimes irritate or put pressure on the nerves in and around your spine, causing pain, numbness and a tingling sensation.”
Watch The Kinks at the BBC on Saturday, July 15 at 9pm on BBC Two.
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