You Really Got Me
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| "You Really Got Me" | ||
|---|---|---|
| Image:Nocover.png | ||
| Single by The Kinks | ||
| from the album The Kinks | ||
| Released | August 4, 1964 | |
| Recorded | January, 1964 | |
| Genre | Rock | |
| Length | 2 min 14 sec | |
| Label | Pye Records | |
| Writer(s) | Ray Davies | |
| Producer(s) | Kassner Music | |
| Chart positions | ||
| ||
| The Kinks singles chronology | ||
| You Still Want Me | You Really Got Me | All Day and All of the Night |
"You Really Got Me" is a song written by Ray Davies and performed by his band, The Kinks.
Released as the group's third single in August 1964, it got to Number 1 on the UK charts the following month and stayed there for two weeks. Built around power chords, it not only was the breakthrough hit for the band but established them as one of the top British Invasion acts. "You Really Got Me" was to prove heavily influential on later Rock and Roll musicians, particularly in the Heavy Metal genre, as it is justly considered to be the prototypical heavy metal song. As critic Denise Sullivan writes, "'You Really Got Me' remains a blueprint song in the hard rock and heavy metal arsenal."[1]
For its era the song was raw and gritty, an edgy piece of otherwise straight guitar music replete with lyrics which hinted at pleading and mad passion. It was the instrumentation, however, which caught the ear - more adult than the early Beatles, it also pre-empted the staged toughness of the Rolling Stones (who were emerging at the same time but had initially relied on stage flair and cover versions to establish themselves).
The song was recorded by the Kinks in a number of styles in the summer of 1964 before the final sound was achieved. They were under tremendous pressure for a hit from their record company Pye, after their two previous single releases failed to chart. Ray Davies in particular was stubbornly persistent in forcing the Kinks' management and record company to take the time and money needed to develop the record's landmark sound and style. Davies' efforts on behalf of the career-making song effectively established him as the leader and chief songwriter of the Kinks.
The influential distortion sound of the guitar track was created after guitarist Dave Davies sliced the cone of his amplifier (affectionately called "little green," after the name of the amplifier made by the Elpico company and purchased in Davies' neighborhood music shop, slaved into a Vox AC-30) with a razor blade (an alternative version says he poked knitting needles into the amplifier, though Davies himself says he sliced it with a razor blade). The wry vocal (by Ray Davies with backing vocals by the rest of the band), meanwhile, was delivered without a smile and with more than a hint of menace.
The guitar solo on the recording is the source of one of the most controversial and persistent myths in all of rock and roll: that the song's guitar solo was not played by Dave Davies, but by Jimmy Page. The solo was undoubtedly played by Dave Davies (then 17 years old), as everyone involved in the July 1964 recording sessions for the track has always maintained. Although an effective and integral part of the song, it is essentially a faster variation of the Louie, Louie guitar solo, and did not represent a great technical or stylistic achievement on par with that song's driving three-chord rhythm backing (save for the method of playing the pentatonic scale in a manner that "seems" sloppy; this technique is a major watershed in the history of rock and roll, arguably an influence on punk rock). However, the story has circulated for decades that the solo was played by Jimmy Page who later joined The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. Page was in fact hired by Kinks producer Shel Talmy as a session player to play rhythm guitar on a handful of tracks on the Kinks' first album, but those sessions took place several weeks after the "You Really Got Me" session. Page, incidentally, has never publicly taken credit for playing the song's guitar solo, going so far as to state in a 1977 interview, "But I didn't play on 'You Really Got Me' and that's what pisses him [Ray Davies] off." Rock historian and author Doug Hinman makes a case that the rumor was begun and fostered by the established UK Rhythm and Blues community, many of whose members were resentful that an upstart band of teenagers such as the Kinks could produce such a powerful and influential blues-based recording, from seemingly out of nowhere. The rumor gained huge momentum in the 1970s after Page rose to legendary prominence with the band Led Zeppelin, with his legions of fans eager to believe he played a major role in a prototypical heavy metal song.
The musician that actually did session work on "You really got me" is keyboardist Jon Lord of Deep Purple. He played piano on this song and probably some organ on Kinks' first album. As quoted on fan site Pictured Within, Lord comments: "All I did was plink, plink, plink. It wasn't hard".
According to Ray Davies, the song's characteristic riff came about while working out the chords to The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie." The Kinks' use of distorted guitar riffs continued with songs like "All Day and All of the Night," "Tired of Waiting for You," and "Set Me Free," among others. Pete Townshend of The Who has stated that their first single, "I Can't Explain," was an intentional soundalike of The Kinks' work at the time (bolstered by the fact that The Who, too, were produced by Shel Talmy at the time).
The Kinks would go on to perform successfully together as a band for over 30 years, through many musical styles, but they would always play "You Really Got Me" in concert, to great reception. Both Ray and Dave Davies still perform the song in solo shows, generally as a closing number. The song appears at number 82 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. In early 2005, the song was voted the best British song of the 1955-1965 decade in a BBC radio poll. In March 2005, Q magazine placed it at number 9 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks.
[edit] Van Halen cover version
| "You Really Got Me" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| Song by Van Halen | ||
| from the album Van Halen | ||
| Released | February 10, 1978 | |
| Recorded | 1977 | |
| Genre | Heavy Metal | |
| Length | 2:38 | |
| Label | Warner Bros. | |
| Writer(s) | David Lee Roth | |
| Producer(s) | Ted Templeman | |
| Van Halen track listing | ||
| Eruption (2) | "You Really Got Me" (3) | Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (4) |
In 1978, "You Really Got Me" was recorded by the band Van Halen. A song that jumpstarted their career, just as it had done for the Kinks almost 15 years earlier, it remains the most popular cover version of the song.
The Van Halen version of this song is playable in the PlayStation 2 game, Guitar Hero II.
[edit] BoyBand cover version
| "You Really Got Me" | ||
|---|---|---|
| Image:BoyBand Cover-1-.jpg | ||
| Single by Boyband | ||
| Released | October, 2006 | |
| Recorded | 2006 | |
| Genre | Pop | |
| Length | 2:11 | |
| Label | WEA | |
| Producer(s) | Ted Templeman | |
| Chart positions | ||
| ||
In 2006, New Zealand radio station The Edge created New Zealand's first ever manufactured boy band in a promotion. This group released one single in their promised '15 seconds of fame', a cover version of You Realy Got Me. This single spent one week at number one in the RIANZ New Zealand Singles Chart.
| Preceded by: "London Bridge" by Fergie | New Zealand number-one single October 9th 2006 - October 16th 2006 | Succeeded by: "SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake |
