{"id":41414,"date":"2025-08-03T22:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T22:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/41414\/"},"modified":"2025-08-03T22:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T22:57:10","slug":"the-kinks-song-that-accidentally-invented-heavy-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/41414\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kinks song that accidentally invented heavy metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ray<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ KRLA Beat \/ Beat Publications, Inc.)<\/p>\n

Sun 3 August 2025 9:43, UK <\/p>\n

The position of The Kinks<\/a> is firmed up by a deep appreciation from a select group of music lovers who ca understand their relevance. Though you might not know it, The Kinks might well be the most important band to emerge from the 1960s. <\/p>\n

The retrospective sound of the 1960s is one eclipsed by the might of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Early in the decade, the sound of salience was Paul McCartney and John Lennon harmonising a love-drunk smash hit to a chorus of screaming fans; while later in the decade, one might ponder the psychedelic oddity of Sgt. Pepper or the dark blues rock of \u2018Sympathy for the Devil\u2019. <\/p>\n

Beyond these common reference points, however, the British Invasion was home to swathes of overlooked yet crucially innovative musicians. One of whom is Dave Davies of The Kinks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Granted, The Beatles have been cited by practically every prominent rock musician of the latter 20th century, from Ozzy Osbourne to Bruce Springsteen, but some of their peers had more covert paths of influence. <\/p>\n

While one wouldn\u2019t consider The Kinks a particularly psychedelic or heavy rock-leaning group, their influence on both fields was palpable in the musical aroma of the late 1960s. Over the years, musicologists have sought the splendid source of metal, with songs like The Who\u2019s \u2018I Can See For Miles\u2019, The Beatles\u2019 track \u2018Helter Skelter\u2019, and Led Zeppelin\u2019s \u2018Whole Lotta Love\u2019<\/a> singled out for their powerful, chugging guitar runs. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>(Credits: Bent Rej)<\/p>\n

Another song found in such conversations is The Kinks\u2019 \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019. What sets this track apart from the aforementioned hits is that \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 was released in 1964, while the above songs were a product of 1967, \u201968 and \u201969, respectively. <\/p>\n

So, having located the probable source of all things heavy in rock music, what is it about \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 that made it so unique and influential?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ray Davies said of the track in a 2016 interview: \u201cI was playing a gig at a club in Piccadilly and there was a young girl in the audience who I really liked. She had beautiful lips. Thin, but not skinny. A bit similar to Fran\u00e7oise Hardy. Not long hair, but down to about there (points to shoulders). Long enough to put your hands through\u2026 (drifts off, wistfully)\u2026 long enough to hold. I wrote \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 for her, even though I never met her.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Dave\u2019s older brother and Kinks frontman Ray Davies wrote \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 early in 1964, his intended sound was a far cry from the eventual single recording. The main riff was initially intended as a saxophone line as part of a lower-tempo jazz-blues composition. But the song became more energetic and edgier when Dave tried playing the saxophone riff on his guitar with erratic power chords.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After seeing something special in this new direction, the band recorded an early version of the track in June 1964, but it still hadn\u2019t found its eventual heavy-metal-inspiring sound. That sound would come following a serendipitous moment of aggression from a 17-year-old Dave Davies. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy childhood sweetheart Sue got pregnant, and we wanted to get married,\u201d Dave told the Guardian in 2013. \u201cBut our parents said we were too young, and they split us up. I was a rebellious, angry kid anyway, but that had a profound effect on me. I was full of rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA little later, I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade,\u201d he continued. \u201cI could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, \u2018I\u2019ll teach it\u2019 \u2013 and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar. Then, when I wired that amp up to another, a Vox AC30, it made it a lot, lot louder.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s producer, Shel Tamy, subsequently took Dave\u2019s discovery to the studio with his sonic expertise to further amplify the distorted sound to create the finished product. \u201cWhile working as a studio engineer in LA, I\u2019d figured out various techniques to make stuff sound even more powerful,\u201d Tamy told the Guardian. \u201cOn \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019, I recorded the guitar on two channels, one distorting and the other not. The combination makes the sound seem louder. We\u2019d even kick Dave\u2019s amp as we walked past to make it sound rougher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dave\u2019s damaged little green Elpico is now widely cited as the birthplace of distortion in guitar amplification. Combined with the choppy power chords of \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019, this defective speaker cone really got people going. <\/p>\n

Released on August 4th, 1964, The Kinks\u2019 third single, \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 would flow into the ears of guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix<\/a>. \u201cI remember once sitting next to [Hendrix] on a plane bound for Stockholm,\u201d Dave Davies once recalled. \u201cAfter a while, we got talking a little, and he suddenly said to me: \u2018Y\u2019know, that guitar riff you did on \u2018You Really Got Me\u2019 was a real landmark.\u2019 You can imagine how I felt. To be endorsed by Hendrix was really something. It was a great compliment.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ KRLA Beat \/ Beat Publications, Inc.) Sun 3 August 2025 9:43, UK The position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,36482,134,36483,136,36484,36485,36486],"class_list":{"0":"post-41414","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-dave-davies","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jimi-hendrix","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-the-beatles","15":"tag-the-kinks","16":"tag-the-rolling-stones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}