Never cared that much for the Stones. My liking for them rises and falls based on the quality of the song I'm hearing at the moment because I just never liked them personally or was very impressed with their image or behavior, and found them pretty limited in their songwriting (98 percent of their songs are either "wanna do you, baby," "gonna dump you, baby," or "want you back so I can do you again, baby."
I alway preferred the Kinks. I'll listen to a weak album by the Kinks just because I love the Kinks, and Ray Davies is such an interesting and creative songwriter that even his lesser material is worth hearing at least once. Plus he's quintessentially English. All this is just to say that Ray Davies should have been knighted before Mick ever was (Ray even wrote a song about Queen Victoria! And it was a GREAT song!) But Ray probably hasn't paid nearly as much in taxes to the British crown, and I have a feeling that's what this knighthood is really all about: keeping Mick happy so he won't change his legal residence.
I read somewhere that he was now living in France to avoid British taxes ...so maybe the Crown is trying to woo him back to Blighty . And I agree that Ray Davies was a helluva lot better song writer , and I dare say more of an influence on younger musicians and songwriters in the UK than Jagger .