Milestones In Rock ‘n’ Roll History: You Really Got Me

Published on: 24 May, 2018
Updated on: 24 May, 2018

In the third of our series of feature articles on Milestones in Rock ‘n’ Roll History, former Guildford journalist Dave Reading recalls the story of the Kinks’ ground-breaking song You Really Got Me

The Kinks’ 1964 hit single, You Really Got Me, was the first heavy metal record, according to some music critics. Up until then, there’d been nothing quite like that frantically loud guitar riff that gets the whole thing moving. Rolling Stone magazine described it as “the proto heavy metal song”.

The reckless experiment that gave birth to You Really Got Me is certainly true to the spirit of heavy metal.

Cover of the Kinks’ single You Really Got Me.

At the centre of the story are two brothers from north London, Ray and Dave Davies. It’s Dave, the wild and angry one, who gets the ball rolling and almost gets himself killed in the process.

He is in his parents’ living room at their home in Muswell Hill testing out the guitar sounds he can get out of his little Elpico amp (price: £6) and his prized Vox AC30. At the first attempt, Dave accidentally crosses a speaker wire with a transformer on the back of one of his amps. A violent electrical charge throws him across the room and blows out the lights. The accident is near-fatal.

On the next attempt, undeterred, he plugs the Elpico’s loudspeaker’s output leads into the input of the AC30. The sound he gets is good, but it’s not quite what he wants. So in a moment of erratic genius, here’s what he does: he slashes the speaker cone of the Elpico with a Gillette razor blade. And as it vibrates, it produces a distorted, jagged roar. A sound is born, waiting for a song to launch it.

One afternoon his brother Ray is practising jazz riffs on the family piano. At some stage he moves on from jazz and idly plays around with the chords of Richard Berry’s Louie Louie, a hit for the Kingsmen a few months earlier. And playing with two fingers, he comes up with a simple F G G F sequence.

Hearing that riff, Dave wonders what it will sound like using barre chords on the guitar through the amp that he’s intentionally damaged with a razor blade. Ray shifts the riff a tone, G A A G A, and then he moves up into D. Dave blasts out the chords on his guitar. They realise they have a song in the making.

To complete this display of creative union, Ray then goes away and writes some lyrics. They are far removed from inspired poetry but they capture the true, raw essence of rock ‘n’ roll. In Dave’s words, they are “inexplicably pure and exhilarating.”

Girl, you really got me goin’

You got me so I don’t know what I’m doin’

Yeah, you really got me now

You got me so I can’t sleep at night

The above account is the one Dave Davies tells. Ray’s story differs slightly but not in spirit. What is unarguably true is that it’s a great song and six months later it hit the No.1 spot in the UK record charts, saving the Kinks’ career. Their first two singles had bombed and they were on the verge of being dumped by their record company, Pye.

The Kinks, from left: Mick Avory, Dave Davies, Peter Quaife and in front Ray Davies.

Postscript added by David Rose:

On a local angle, Ray Davies owned a house in Effingham and lived there for several years around the 1980s, I believe. There is also a tale that he kept a donkey there and it would escape onto the nearby common with the police turning out to round it up. Perhaps readers can throw some light on this?

In 1985, An hour-long musical film, Return to Waterloo, written and directed by Ray Davies was released.

The film features the journey of a commuter from Guildford railway station to London Waterloo. Instead of dialogue, the story is told through music and lyrics. The film featured Tim Roth, Kenneth Colley, Valerie Holliman, Dominique Barnes, and (briefly) Ray Davies himself. He can be seen at the start busking.

A album of the same name was released featuring songs from the film. However, Ray’s brother Dave evidently refused to play on it.

Ray is quoted as saying: “Dave refused to play and so it had to be ‘Ray Davies and members of the Kinks’. If he had worked with me on it, it would have been a great record, but he let me down.”

Click below to watch the film. Scenes shot at Guildford are about six minutes in. There are other local stations featured on the ‘New Line’ further on.