Posted on 08/05/2014 12:43:42 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
...You Really Got Me delivered something very different. It is taut but increasingly hysterical, hard driven and explosive, an out-and-out rocker. It is more riff than song. And what a riff. It consists of just two power chords, three strings of the guitar, sliding up and down over two frets, striking five times in three beats of the bar then restarting after the fourth beat. It has a feeling of being chopped off in its prime and constantly restarted, spluttering like a motorbike getting ready to race, a jerky, stop-start quality that creates an incredible sense of urgency.
It was their third single for Decca, and after two flops, everyone knew this was make or break. Ray wrote the song, influenced by the riffs of American blues, and was the driving force in the studio. In the days when recording sessions tended to last about as long as it took to play the song once, Ray rejected several early takes, insisting on re-recording it to try and capture his band’s live energy. He was unhappy with the slow, bluesy tempo and kept urging the band to play faster....
Released on August 4, 1964, You Really Got Me crept up the charts for a month before eventually giving the Kinks their first number one. Heavy rock, as we think of it now, took a few more years to get a grip, and it wasn’t really until the last years of the decade that it became almost the definitive sound of a more adult popular music. The Who blatantly imitated The Kinks on their classic Talmy produced debut, I Can’t Explain, in 1964. The Rolling Stones fuzzy riff (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction appeared in 1965....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Bein’ an American I’d say the first heavy rock recording is guitarist Pat Hare on James Cotton’s “Cotton Crop Blues” (1954)- a full 10 years before the Kinks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqTrbuxCRI
Sorry guys. Heavy Metal began with Da Da Da-Da-Da Da Da Da Da. Who know what other noises were made before then, but Iron Butterfly invented Heavy Metal.
Howlin Wolf had some pretty awesome vocal distortion on Smokestack Lightning (1959)
And Pat Hare’s true precursor to heavy metal “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” made without pedals and distortion effects units:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26dBq-98Po
is that In a gadda da vidda?
Del Shannon - Runaway - 1961
Right you are, as far as I’m concerned-I’ve been a metal/heavy rock fan since my teens, and that was the tune that started it for me-I’m still a head banger...
Oh, yeah-
The best opening guitar riff EVER is from Sweet Child O’ Mine.
This is just my opinion and I mean no disrespect. I know we have serious music buffs here. Just thought I would chime in.
“In the Garden of Eden” a.k.a. “In a Gottta DaVida” after a bottle of Jack D.
Sorry Kinks, Link Wray was doing this stuff in the fifties.
The guitar intro in the tune “Love is Like Oxygen” by 80’s group Sweet is a fav of mine.
They’re talking about heavy rock and roll.
It was Leo Fender that went with one of his engineers to a Dick Dale Concert to see what Dale was talking about with the difficultly of finding an amp that would take Dale’s playing. Fender and his engineer saw the problem and went back to Fullerton and built the Fender amp. Sorry, Freddy Fender was noted for Texas Rock and Roll as well as country.
” Iron Butterfly invented Heavy Metal.”
Naw. Jeff Beck Group/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKsHh3BFPI
My fave from the Kinks...
My girlfriend’s run off with my car,
And gone back to her ma and pa,
Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty.
Now I’m sitting here,
Sipping at my ice cold beer,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
Del Shannon was hugely underrated as a songwriter. He wrote many hits including the great “I Go To Pieces” that Peter&Gordon made into a big hit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d24GoE1gGvI
That’s a good one. I also like Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), Aerosmith’ s version of Train Kept a Rollin, and Gimme Shelter for great opening guitar riffs.
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