Fifty years ago today, today's song was released in the U.S. It
was released earlier that month in the UK. It was the first big hit by The
Kinks in both markets, and rightly so. Set it beside anything being served up
by their contemporaries—blokes like The Beatles, the Stones, The Who, The
Animals—and it kicks butt. Brothers Ray and Dave Davies came up with a signature
sound that would mark The Kinks, suddenly, as a “heavy” band. Ray does the
vocals and wrote the song. Dave—and not Jimmy Page, as has been oft rumored—plays
the fast, distorted and twisted guitar solo. But what stays engraved in the
brain after all the smoke settles is those fucking power chords, hammering
away, and Ray repeating the song’s trance-like mantra: “you really got me, you
really got me, you really got me.”
In 1964, British Invasion was the name of the game. The
Beatles, with their Mersey Sound, were the top dogs, but Davies came up with a
line that wouldn’t be amiss in a Beatles tune: “you really got me” is one of
those odd phrases that seems self-explanatory but isn’t quite. Does it mean “I’m
yours”? Does it mean “you get me”? Does it mean “you got to me”? All of the
above? Such might be a cause for rejoicing, but Davies wisely makes it a source
of cranking angst. “You got me so I can’t sleep at night.” The effects of this
affair of the heart—and other organs—seems like paranoia, insomnia, anxiety
attacks.
Ray Davies is sort of the last guy you’d expect to be
intoning such distress—and that “oh yeahhhh.” It sounds as delinquent as teachers
were always telling us guys with hair over ears and collars and bad grammar must
be. Though they were Mods in their couture, The Kinks sound almost like
greasers on this one, with that guttural guitar sound able to put uptight teeth
on edge.
And how about that solo? It became instantly influential, so
resolutely not cleaned up or given any prettiness whatsoever. It goes for the
jugular—a brash attack on the niceties of courtship and the sense that young
love is supposed to be mawkish and self-conscious. It sounds like different solos spliced together, it's so frantic. And Davies’s voice grabs you as if he’s jabbing at this girl who’s making his head spin. Of all the
Brit bands of this time, The Kinks sound like drinkers. There’s often something
boozy about Davies’s voice—like the “I always wanta be by your side” bit. And
the way the overlapped screams come right before the solo—it sounds like the
lads are in primal heat.
It’s a great rock track but it’s not the first song I heard
by Davies, Davies and company. That was “Lola,” in 1970, another indelible riff
song that made the charts. The Kinks could rock second to none when the mood
was on them, and without the pretty harmonies of The Beatles or the showboating
of Jagger or Burdon or Daltrey or any of the other big singer bands—like Van
Morrison in Them and Steve Marriott in The Small Faces. The Kinks are one of
the best bands of the era and my appreciation of their early work—from 1966 to 1971—continues
to deepen as time goes on.
See, don’t ever set me
free.
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