“What does it mean?”: the 1978 cover song that completely divided The Kinks
Covers are a difficult balancing act. What often begins as a faithful tribute can, in many cases, come much closer to being an insult to the original song. The Kinks, as should come as no surprise, have been the subject of countless covers over the years, but only one seemed to split opinion within the band itself.
The Kinks have always lent themselves naturally to being covered. Their early work, in particular, is by and large very easy to play and perform. It also helps that their work is so ubiquitous that even those who are not bona fide rock obsessives are more than familiar with it. Songs like ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘Waterloo Sunset’, or even later tracks like ‘Lola’ have been common cultural touchstones since they first hit the airwaves – at least in the band’s homeland of Britain – and so it is no wonder that various artists have sought to record their own renditions over the years.
Across the entire landscape of Kinks covers, spanning the spectrum from The Raincoats to the Trinidad Tripoli Steelband, Van Halen’s cover of the band’s seminal 1964 single ‘You Really Got Me’ stands out for multiple reasons. Rendering the raw mod rock classic in the kind of exuberant, virtuosic playing style of Eddie Van Halen, the 1978 cover was intended to “update” the original track, and it succeeded in adding another element to the divide at the centre of The Kinks.
From the beginning of the band’s success, the sibling rivalry between Ray and Dave Davies was always present, eventually culminating in the end of the band in 1997. There was little the pair could agree on, so, unsurprisingly, the Van Halen cover of ‘You Really Got Me’ gave them yet another thing to disagree on.
Ray Davies, on the one hand, has repeatedly praised Van Halen’s cover version. “It was a great idea. More no-nonsense than our version,” he once told Guitar World, highlighting the group’s decision to play the song in the key of A. “That allows you to thrash the chords out more, and it changed the sound of the whole thing – playing an open G and then slamming your hand down to the A,” he declared, delving into the technical aspects of the track.
Despite his brother’s support of the cover – or perhaps because of it – Dave Davies has never been overly convinced of Van Halen’s credentials. “When I first heard Van Halen’s version of ‘You Really Got Me’, I laughed,” he disparagingly told Guitar Player. Seemingly, the guitarist didn’t embrace Van Halen’s flashy, Americanised heavy metal sound with the same open arms as his brother.
“It just seemed so exaggerated,” he continued. “It really misses the point of the whole meaning of the song: four working-class guys, struggling to do something different. In the original record, you can sense that in its energy, the roughness. It’s very impure.” Davies added, “The Van Halen thing; it’s very accomplished and flashy, but what does it mean?”
It is easy to see where Davies is coming from in that particular quote; there was a rawness, unpredictability, and underdog characteristic to The Kinks circa 1964, and ‘You Really Got Me’ encapsulates that beautifully.
It is worth noting, however, that Van Halen were still in the very early days of their own careers when they recorded ‘You Really Got Me’, so perhaps that “roughness” still comes through on the 1978 recording, albeit in a more updated sense, as Ray Davies believed.
