{"id":541661,"date":"2026-03-24T04:30:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/541661\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T04:30:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:30:12","slug":"all-day-and-all-of-the-night-by-the-kinks-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/541661\/","title":{"rendered":"All Day And All Of The Night by The Kinks – The Story Behind The Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madison Square Garden, October 30, 2009. Metal giants Metallica<\/a> are among the heavyweights celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> joins in for a banging version of Iron Man<\/a> and Paranoid, while Lou Reed<\/a> is on hand for Sweet Jane.<\/p>\n

Then James Hetfield steps up to the mic: \u201cWe got completely schooled on early riff-rock by this man and his band \u2013 The Kinks<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Enter Ray Davies for a bracing assault with his two 1960s trailblazers: You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night. With its thumping power chords and shredding solo, All Day And All Of The Night \u2013 recorded in September 1964 \u2013 is often cited as the jump-off point for punk and hard rock.<\/p>\n

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Black Sabbath<\/a>, The Clash<\/a>, Thunder<\/a> and The Who<\/a> are among those who have acknowledged their debt to it. Davies is routinely painted as the consummate English songwriter, the wistful composer of Waterloo Sunset<\/a>, and avid preservationist of the local village green.<\/p>\n

But early Kinks were a band forged by American rock\u2019n\u2019blues. Their third single, You Really Got Me, which borrowed heavily from The Kingsmen\u2019s Louie Louie<\/a>, made No.1 in the UK in 1964. The distorted guitar riff by Ray\u2019s brother Dave was a revelation. But it was the follow-up that really created the metal\/punk blueprint.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one that started it was All Day And All Of The Night,\u201d Ray Davies explains to Classic Rock. \u201cThe sounds on that one, if they were made today, would sound like Green Day<\/a> or a metal band.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secret to The Kinks\u2019 early guitar sound was Dave Davies\u2019s brainwave of slashing his speaker cones of his amp with a razor. \u201cAs it vibrated it produced a distorted and jagged roar,\u201d he commented later.<\/p>\n

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It was a sound they patented in the theatre halls of Britain throughout the early part of 1964. It also brought them into conflict with their first producer, 23-year-old American Shel Talmy.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially we did everything he asked us to do, as regards the first couple of singles \u2013 Long Tall Sally and You Still Want Me,\u201d says Ray Davies. \u201cBut we found that we were developing a certain live sound and wanted to replicate that in the studio. He had recorded You Really Got Me once, maybe twice, but it wasn\u2019t the way we sounded. Basically, he was smart in that he accepted our point of view. Smart producers get what the band want.”<\/p>\n

Davies began writing All Day And All Of The Night \u201cin my music publisher\u2019s office. Then we went on a little tour, so I wrote part of it in the car. It was written over a period of about three or four days.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It was certainly a step up from their previous hit. Dave\u2019s sliding power chords and Ray\u2019s throaty vocals are somehow more urgent than before, while the lyrics tap into a more aggressive strain of teen angst: \u2018I\u2019m not content to be with you in the daytime\/Girl I want to be with you all of the time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ray Davies agrees: \u201cIt\u2019s more demanding. Maybe that was because we\u2019d just come off a success with a number one single. So it was a bit cocky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brother Dave adds: \u201cI cranked up my guitar more than on You Really Got Me. When we went into the studio, everybody knew what they were doing. There was a new-found confidence. I think we did it in three takes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song was actually recorded, Ray Davies reveals, at 10am. \u201cWe came down to London especially to record it, as we\u2019d played Birmingham the night before. The first time the band heard it was when I ran through it with them at the soundcheck. Afterwards we drove back down to London, got up in the morning and finished the song by midday.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was still time for some dispute though, involving session drummer Bobby Graham, a relative veteran brought in by Talmy before Mick Avory became an integral part of the band.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore verse two and into verse three,\u201d explains Davies, \u201cI wanted a \u2018bop-bop-bop\u2019 fill, but Bobby was a bit reluctant to do it. He said I was getting a bit cocky, telling him what to do. But it ended up on the record. I wanted it there because I\u2019d heard it on Buddy Holly\u2019s It\u2019s So Easy and I\u2019d always wanted it to be on one of my records. We had a big argument over it, but in the end he took it on board.”<\/p>\n

NEW \ud83d\udcc0 All Day And All Of The Night – The Kinks {DES Stereo} 1964 – YouTube
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Record label Pye, however, weren\u2019t too enamoured with The Kinks\u2019 latest sound, and initially rejected the song for being \u201ctoo working class\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they had a problem with The Kinks because the first two songs that Shel produced were kind of Merseybeat-sounding and American-polished,\u201d he reasons. \u201cBut The Kinks were a rough-and-ready unit. Certainly the whole feeling of All Day And All Of The Night is working class, without parochially trying to sound working class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever its social standing, All Day And All Of The Night was a ferocious blast of rock\u2019n\u2019roll. It gave The Kinks their second major hit and cemented them in the US as one of the key bands of the British Invasion.<\/p>\n

Shel Talmy, who today remembers Davies as \u201ccomplex, conflicted, unsure, angry, resentful, mistrusting, untrustworthy\u201d as well as \u201ca very talented songwriter\u201d, still believes guitarist Dave is owed his dues.<\/p>\n

\u201cDave is one of the more underrated guitarists in rock,\u201d he asserts. \u201cHe\u2019s always been overlooked for no reason I can determine, except that he never got the PR he should have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray Davies, meanwhile, has been quoted as calling All Day And All Of The Night \u201cneurotic, youthful, obsessive and sexually possessive\u201d.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s keen to set this straight: \u201cBurt Bacharach actually called it \u2018neurotic\u2019. He reviewed it for some music magazine. But that\u2019s what it was; I was a neurotic 19-year-old at the time. I\u2019d say I was a sweetheart, but I\u2019m sure others say I was appalling to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 141, published in February 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Madison Square Garden, October 30, 2009. Metal giants Metallica are among the heavyweights celebrating the 25th anniversary of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-541661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}