(Credits: Bradford TImeline)
Fri 23 January 2026 18:30, UK
The Kinks are arguably the most important band in rock history. Never has a group been a better reflection of the emotion needed to make great music.
When we talk about essential moments in sound, we tend to discuss two great minds coming together, or the release of a specific song or album; however, The Kinks’ importance can be traced back to the way an A chord was played. In ‘You Really Got Me’, the riff is simple, the whole song is simple, and yet we look at that track as being a quintessential chapter in the history of rock.
“That was a radical-sounding record,” said Steve Van Zandt when talking about the song. “When this came on the Top 30 radio, it was completely new to us. It went very high, as did ‘All Day And All Of The Night’. It was radical, and you have to give [producer] Shel Tamy credit for that.”
It wasn’t just the placement of the A chord, it was the way it was played. There was a hint of distortion there, and there was a desperation and anger embedded within each strum of the six-string, which you don’t find on every record. The truth is, this likely came from a genuinely desperate and angry place, as the band were on the verge of being dropped by their record label should their next song not chart. As such, the emotion you hear in that note is very real, setting the standard for how people should play rock ‘n’ roll.
While that note and subsequent riff went on to become some of the most important in the history of rock, ‘You Really Got Me’ wasn’t necessarily Ray Davies’ favourite riff that the band ever came up with. That place on the podium was reserved for their other classic, ‘Waterloo Sunset’.
“The original recording was very simple. I knew what I wanted straight away,” said Davies when discussing the track. “It was called ‘Liverpool Sunset’ for about five minutes, but Waterloo, because I’m from London and I’ve got a few memories of Waterloo by the river.”
As fans, sometimes we listen to our favourite pieces of music and question how the human mind could ever possibly come up with something so special, because it’s a lot of fun to idly gaze at pieces of music and wonder how something so invigorating came to be in existence, and perhaps what is even more spellbinding about some of these pieces isn’t the fact that they exist, but that they were incredibly easy to put together.
‘Waterloo Sunset’ was by no means an overnight creation, it was the product of a number of studio sessions slotted in around tour dates, but there were no complications actually getting the music down. All of the parts came together wonderfully, and Davies attested that one of his favourite parts of the track was the incredibly structured riff that his brother wrote.
“I went in with a band, we did the drums, bass and acoustic guitar in one session,” he said. “Went in the following week with my brother… It’s one of the most structured guitar parts my brother Dave has done on a record, really great arrangement.”
Concluding, “And then the following week we had about an hour and a half off, we went in and did the backing vocals, and they sounded brilliant, then the next morning I did my vocal. It’s all very simple.”
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