The band that made the greatest rock ‘n’ roll records, according to Ray Davies
There would be no rock ‘n’ roll without The Kinks, and you can quote me on that.
The genre is an offshoot of the blues and R&B, two styles of music where you don’t just rely on what’s being played, but the means by which the person is playing it. You’ll hear some songs from those genres which are only three or four chords, but they open doors to alternate universes because of the power the musician puts behind the notes they hit.
Ray Davies and The Kinks, as rock ‘n’ roll was coming into being, reminded listeners just how important this element of music was with one single A chord. When they made ‘You Really Got Me’, it didn’t become a hit because it was catchy or because it was radio-friendly; rather, it became a hit because of the passionate way in which it was played.
That riff, which runs through the entire song, isn’t hard. You slightly bend on the third fret of the E string and then hit some A chords, alternating between the two. That’s it. And yet that’s a riff which shook the world to its foundations because of how much oomph the band had managed to pack into it. Before rock musicians went off and overcomplicated the genre (in a good way) the world had to be reminded where this sound came from, and what the fundamentals of it was.
“That was a radical-sounding record,” said E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt when discussing ‘You Really Got Me’. “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.”
Of course, while The Kinks played an important part in the development of what we now consider one of the greatest genres in the world, they weren’t the only band that helped bring it to the mainstream in the early ‘60s. You also had the likes of The Beatles, Dave Clark Five, and, of course, The Rolling Stones, who probably stayed closest to that original R&B sound when they originally started performing.
For the majority of the Rolling Stones, their initial love for R&B started when Muddy Waters toured the UK at the end of the ‘50s. They had heard this sound before, but seeing it live was a whole other experience, as the energy with which these artists played was suddenly fully realised. After that, the Rolling Stones members in that audience knew they wanted to create something similar, and so began by playing R&B covers and better getting an understanding of the genre, before going on to write their own material.
Ray Davies admitted he was a big fan of their live shows because of how true they stayed to that R&B sound. “See, the first time I saw them, I was playing in a blues group, in a club in London, and they were the support band,” he recalled, “They played the filling spot. And the people I played with were real old, mainstream jazzers. I preferred what the Rolling Stones were doing, cos that’s my idea of what R&B was.”
When he was asked if he’s bitter about the fact that The Kinks are remembered as an acquired taste, while The Stones are one of the biggest rock bands in the world, Davies didn’t have much negative to say. While he admired the band’s live shows and which inspired The Kinks, he also heard his own band’s influence in what The Rolling Stones did. They all borrowed from one another, but he believes it led to the creation of some of the best rock ‘n’ roll records of all time.
“I remember when The Kinks had a tremendous two or three hits in a row very quickly, we did a TV show and they were there, the Stones were there,” said Davies, “Jagger was standing at the front, not tryna put us off but studying. And I just think they’re responsible for some of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll records ever made. When we were both sort of developing our influences and styles, I heard some influences from Kinks stuff in there too, so there’s a little bit of borrowing that goes on.”
