Dave Davies was born David Russell Gordon Davies on 3 February 1947 in Muswell Hill, North London, the youngest of eight children. He is best known as lead guitarist and backing vocalist of The Kinks, the band he formed with his elder brother Ray Davies in 1963. Dave's pioneering, distorted guitar sound on early hits such as You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night is widely credited as a formative influence on hard rock and punk.
Dave Davies was born and raised in England, so this is not a birthplace connection to Wales. The link is a family one: his paternal grandfather, Harry Davies, came from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales before the family moved to London, where Dave and Ray's father, Frederick George Davies, was born. Dave Davies wrote about this Rhondda ancestry himself in his 1996 autobiography, Kink, which is also the source cited for the equivalent, already-published entry on this site for his brother Ray Davies.
Because this connection runs through a grandfather rather than a parent, and because "Davies" is itself one of the most common Welsh surnames, it should be read as a real but distant family link rather than a Welsh upbringing or identity. It is, however, more than surname speculation alone: it is a specific, named ancestor and place, set down in Dave Davies' own account of his family history.