(Credits: Far Out / KRLA Beat / Beat Publications, Inc.)
Sat 11 October 2025 8:00, UK
There is no arguing or denying that ‘All Day and All of the Night’ is one of the most defining tracks of the entire rock and roll genre. From the second that instantly recognisable opening riff roars to life, feet are moving, hips are swaying as The Kinks made an objective hit.
It’s one of those songs that feels like it changed the course of history. Released in 1964, it seemed to mark the moment when British rock and roll, especially, got dirty. Before, it all felt more straight-laced as if the UK bands were merely taking the hits from across the pond and making them a little more vanilla for the radio. But when The Kinks launched this, perhaps it was a sign that things were finally ready to race forward: British bands were ready to finally forge their own identity and get electrifying with it.
The band themselves agree with that. On a group level alone, this track felt like a turning point. For Dave Davies, it was a moment where everything seemed to technically click. “When they tried to develop amplifiers that had pre-gain and all, I thought it wasn’t quite right, and I struggled with the sound for a while,” he said, but then suddenly, after playing around with different kit, this track was the moment where he got his recipe right, saying, “I liked the guitar sound on ‘All Day and All of the Night’.”
It was a similar feeling for Ray Davies too who was also playing about with different technology, only to resolve that really he just wanted to make a song that would truly capture the energy of their live sets. So he began writing this “neurotic…youthful, obsessive and sexually possessive” track. The second he started, it all flowed as he explained it began as a quick scribble during a meeting at their publisher’s office, “then we went on a little tour, so I wrote part of it in the car”, continuing, “It was written over a period of about three or four days”.
Even the recording seemed to happen quickly as there was something about this song that seemed to click for everyone involved. “When we went into the studio, everybody knew what they were doing. I think we did it in three takes,” Davies said, adding it was all about the energy when he declared, “I cranked up my guitar more than on ‘You Really Got Me’”.
With louder volumes, bigger instrumentals and a hooking chorus, it has stayed timelessly golden, as many bands in the decades since have referenced the track. Really, it was golden at the time too, but something kept blocking it.
Why didn’t ‘All Day and All of the Night’ get number one?
For a hit that big, it’s baffling that The Kinks never topped the charts with it. Instead, one other song kept getting in their way, keeping them from the number one spot two weeks in a row in a fierce chart battle.
It was boys versus girls as The Kinks entered into a chart battle with The Supremes. Despite their own track ‘Baby Love’ being released a month before in September, at the end of October, it hit the big time and started flying off the shelves, clashing with the release of The Kinks’ track.
For the two weeks the British band were in the running for the top, ‘Baby Love’ took the trophy. Eventually, though, rock and roll won again as The Rolling Stones usurped the Motown girl group after two weeks with ‘Little Red Rooster’.
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