117 Hello The Kinks - You Really Got Me

Chart  entered  : 13  August  1964

Chart  peak  : 1

Number  of  hits  : 22

This has already been covered on Popular  (Kinks ) , so it may appear needless to add much more. I can't claim to be a huge fan of the band, owning only a decent compilation of their 60s material, but perhaps I can approach the song from another angle.

Like "Louie Louie" or Them's "Gloria", "You Really Got Me" remains a garage rock staple. The riff CRUNCHES into you - I can't remember the first time I heard it, probably in the car from a tape my dad had, but it works in both it's immediacy and that it's easy to sing along too.

When I was 16, I took up the bass guitar, primarily because I wanted to be like Peter Hook, and promptly formed a band with my best friend David on guitar, and another guy called Paul, who offered to sing. For the record, we were called "The Something", inspired by a line in the film the Commitments: "all the best sixties bands were called "The" something..."

The innocence of youth, eh?

Writing our own stuff was a bit of a stretch for a trio of 16 year olds who could barely tune up, but we worked "You Really Got Me" out easily enough. I barely had to move my hands.

Of course, then there's the solo. Famously, Dave Davies slashed his guitar amp with razor blades to create the dirty sound that struck a note with countless aspiring guitarists. Well, THAT wasn't going to happen. Like me, Dave had spunked his life savings on a tiny 15 watt training amp, and even that was too precious to risk destroying. So we never quite got it sound like we wanted - not helped by the lack of a drummer, so we always fell out of time.

Over the subsequent 16 years, I've played "You Really Got Me" more times than I care to remember, usually as a jam number when playing with other musicians for the first time. Everybody knows it, though I find a few singers need to improvise the words.

Put simply, it's there for us who like to be in bands. It's part of the fabric of my musical heritage: put it on now, and my instinct is to go for my bass to play along. The sound of youth, high energy, teenage kicks and too many other things.

D.C. Harrison