Thursday 18 June 2020

Songs that influenced me, part 2

Following on from An Influence which WAS Number One, 3 June, here are some of the nine songs I've chosen to follow on from The Beatles Please Please Me as the songs that most influenced my taste in music:

You Really Got Me - The Kinks, 1964
I first heard this when it got in the charts in early September 1964. We must have just been back at school because I recall hardly anyone else in the class liking it at first. They all seemed to think it was a raucous noise. To be fair, a record company executive had described the guitar sound, courtesy of Dave Davies's deliberately slashed speaker, as sounding like a "barking dog". The song is credited as the first to use deliberate distortion. Producer Shel Talmy recorded two guitar tracks, one distorted, the other not to make it sound louder. And he used an unprecedented 12 microphones to record the drums, so it would sound like they were "bouncing off the walls". A couple of weeks later it was number one and you can trace a direct line from here through to hard rock, punk, heavy metal, garage and grunge. It's not just me saying that but also Ray Davies's biographer Thomas M Kitts* who also quotes Mike Rutherford of Genesis saying "I heard it when I was at school and it really blew me away. I’d never heard a riff like it. It’s still one of the greatest riffs of all time”.
One of the greatest riffs of all time is also one of the simplest, based around two chords, F and G. While it then goes up a tone to G and A and then to C and D it's still basically a two chord riff (the joke a decade later being that you needed three chords to play punk rock). There a fascinating interchange between guitarists on the riff on a site called kindakinks.net**
Ray Davies was a songwriting genius but his vision of the song was jazz/bluesy and it was his brother Dave who created the guitar sound. He slashed his speaker cone with a razor blade in anger because his childhood sweetheart got pregnant. Their parents said they were too young to get married and split them up. Fortunately he decided not to slash his wrists.....

Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops, 1966
Arguably there were two great worldwide sounds of the 60s - The Beatles and Motown. I could have picked a Supremes song but I think it was this song that made me realise there was a lot more to Motown than Diana Ross and Smokey, Marvin et al have been a constant source of pleasure ever since.

Purple Haze - The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967
Dave Davies was a pioneer but Hendrix virtually re-imagined what the electric guitar could be and made guitarists all over the world see their instrument differently overnight. Hey Joe was a good song but this was the song that made me realise something special was going on.

See Emily Play - Pink Floyd, 1967
Pop music's vintage year, 1967 had lots of great songs: Waterloo Sunset, Paper Sun, San Francisco, All You Need Is Love and so on. But it was this particular song that paved the way for me to psychedelia and one of the other great musical loves of mine, progressive rock.

Five more to go in a post to follow.

* From Ray Davies - Not Like Anybody Else, Thomas M Kitts
**  Chords for You Really Got Me, https://www.kindakinks.net/discography/showsong.php?chord=470#:~:text=However%2C%20just%20one%20correction.,Got%20Me%20are%3A%20F%20G%20F%20G.
See also How The Kinks Changed Rock Music With One Riff, https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kinks-you-really-got-me-anniversary/

5 comments:

  1. Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops, 1966 - We've found a shared musical like Phil!

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    1. I thought that might be the one intersection!

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  2. Liked the inclusion of "You've really got me" Phil - inspired me to check out and practice my power chords! Andy P

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    1. Give it a thrash, Andy! I'd forgotten you play as well as Graham Scott. Wish I'd learned.....

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  3. I think Graham is some way ahead of me Phil, but I'm enjoying making slow progress all the same. I only started three years ago. There is still time Phil....... 🎸

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