Review: The Kinks - Kinks (1964)

Tracks: 1) Beautiful Delilah; 2) So Mystifying; 3) Just Can’t Go To Sleep; 4) Long Tall Shorty; 5) I Took My Baby Home; 6) I’m A Lover Not A Fighter; 7) You Really Got Me; 8) Cadillac; 9) Bald Headed Woman; 10) Revenge; 11) Too Much Monkey Business; 12) I’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountain; 13) Stop Your Sobbing; 14) Got Love If You Want It; 15*) Long Tall Sally; 16*) You Still Want Me; 17*) You Do Something To Me; 18*) It’s Alright; 19*) All Day And All Of The Night; 20*) I Gotta Move; 21*) Louie, Louie; 22*) I Gotta Go Now; 23*) Things Are Getting Better; 24*) I’ve Got That Feeling; 25*) Too Much Monkey Business; 26*) I Don’t Need You Any More.

History has been kinder to the back catalog of the Kinks than to quite a few of their contemporaries; all of their original LPs on Pye Records (and even all of their later RCA and Arista records) have been re-released in CD format as ex­panded versions, including all the accompanying singles (as well as some hitherto unreleased demos and outtakes) as bonus tracks and saving us from the problem of having to hunt down scattered individual gems, and/or to rely on the parallel American catalog in order to get a more comprehensive, but also more confusing, picture of the band’s output — see the Rolling Stones for a good example. In the case of the Kinks, just as in the case of the Hollies or, in fact, in the case of pretty much every British Invasion band with the possible exception of the Beatles, this is particularly important since, for the first couple years of their existence, true gold from this band only came in the form of 45 rpms.

Well, maybe not in the form of their first 45 rpm, an oddly slow cover of ʽLong Tall Sallyʼ with an unexplicably swampy harmonica solo. The slowing down means that it does not even begin to compare to the maniacal Little Richard original or, for that matter, to the Beatles’ version in terms of overall craziness. Its choice for the band’s first single was probably dictated by brother Dave Davies, the quintessential «rocker» in the group, and his none-too-pretty nasal vocals and overdubbed waves of screaming (arguably the only exciting thing about the recording) are all over the place here, but they failed to convince UK audiences at the time.

With brother Dave failing at his task, brother Ray steps into the game with his original composition ʽYou Still Want Meʼ — a pretty little bit of power pop whose opening ringing power chords strongly predict the band’s classic early sound, as well as that of the Who and other upcoming pop-rock bands with a whiff of garage aesthetics. Unfortunately, the song in general sounds way too much like... no, not like the Beatles, as you might have guessed (Ray always had too much condescension towards the Fab Four), but rather to contemporary Dave Clark Five (Mick Avory’s thumping drumming here pretty much apes the Dave Clark jackhammer approach) without being able to match or better the DC5’s glossy production values, and, once again, the record-buying public was bored.

The same problem also manifests itself on the B-side, ‘You Do Something To Me’, which also sounds like a song that should have rather been donated to the DC5. Perhaps part of the problem lies in the fact that Ray and Dave were never that great at singing in harmony — or, if I am mistaken here, that Ray was never that great at multi-tracking his own voice. Isolated, they have a ton of personality; together, they exude neither beauty nor power, but rather just a tolerable background buzz, and the added echo effect does not help in the least. That said, I will be the first to admit that at least ‘You Do Something To Me’ is a finely written composition with clear signs of Ray’s melodic genius — with a better, more «Kinky» type of arrangement it could have nicely fit inside their hot parade of pop nuggets.

Anyway, neither of these two songs made an impression on the charts, meaning that both would be shunned and humiliated when the time came for their first LP. Third time around (under heavy pressure from Pye to move it or lose it), the Davies brothers decided to go with something edgier — and, as legend would have it, ended up accidentally inventing garage rock with ʽYou Really Got Meʼ, the song that launched a thousand ships and is still a matter of controversy among those who insist that the guitar solo was played by Jimmy Page rather than Dave Davies. (Non-spoiler: it was not; but the drums, apparently, were played by session man Bobby Graham rather than the Kinks’ regular drummer, Mick Avory). Not that the solo is some sort of technical marvel or anything — no, it merely features Dave figuratively setting himself on fire and acting a bit Neanderthal, which, in the timid days of 1964, was still a novel thing to do. (There is also not the least doubt on my part that the solo was heavily influenced by Keith Richards’ simi­larly Neanderthal break on ʽIt’s All Over Nowʼ, considering that the Stones’ single had only just come out in June and must have been in heavy rotation in the Davies’ camp).

Regardless, I think that even today it is easy to see how the riff of ʽYou Really Got Meʼ could have produced the effect of the fuckin’ mother­lode — especially the realization that you could record something wild and simple like that in the studio, get it distributed through an official network and make serious royalties on it. Up to this day, Ray and Dave Davies continue to fight about the recording, which Ray defends as quintessentially his song, one that helped him form his own artistic identity, and Dave treasures as that one song which helped him find the quintessential hard rock sound of the Kinks, with his semi-legendary story of poking the band’s little amplifier with a pin and discovering early rock nirvana. I would say the dispute is a little futile, considering how quickly the band would move away from that sound altogether — it is, in fact, quite ironic that they would forever be branded as the «forefathers of hard rock» when the absolute majority of their greatest songs would have nothing to do whatsoever with hard rock (no to mention their late Seventies / early Eighties «comeback», when the harder they tried to rock, the more they usually failed at it). But then again, the early-to-mid Sixties were a great time for all sorts of wonderful historical accidents and absurdities, and if we can even accept Ted Nugent as a psychedelic rock hero, what’s wrong with accepting Ray Davies as a dangerous, sexually menacing, hard-rocking caveman?

That the Kinks were not able to immediately capitalize on the success of ʽYou Really Got Meʼ with a consistent LP is no big surprise. The brothers were, after all, still only learning their song­writing craft when the single began to really took off and, in a fairly predictable move, Pye Records and producer Shel Talmy immediately pushed them back into the studio where they simply did not have enough time to come up with much of anything. Sure, six out of fourteen songs were still credited to Ray Davies — a re­spectable recognition of the man’s talent by the industry superiors — but of these six, ʽRevengeʼ (co-credited with manager Larry Page) is just a Link Wray / Ventures-style harmonica-driven surf-blues-rock vamp, and ʽSo Mystifyingʼ, once you listen closely, is a hilariously embar­rassing — and utterly pointless — rewrite of the very same ʽIt’s All Over Nowʼ which had already just influen­ced the guitar solo in ‘You Really Got Me’.

Of the remaining originals, ʽJust Can’t Go To Sleepʼ is another clumsy piece, this time written more in the Merseybeat than Tottenham style, with its crudely swallowed syllables ("every night I jes can’t goat sleep...") contributing to an altogether unconvincing atmosphere of I-don’t-really-know-what. ʽI Took My Baby Homeʼ (which, by the way, was originally the B-side to ‘Long Tall Sally’) is a rewrite of Allen Toussaint’s ʽFortune Tellerʼ, with only the last line of each verse rewritten to give the song more of a nursery-pop feel; less irony, more corn. Only ʽStop Your Sobbingʼ has more or less endured as a very minor Ray classic (enough to be chosen by the Pretenders as their debut single in 1979) — it is here that we actually see the man beginning to uncover the magic of his own voice, which works best in a context of emotional sympathy and consolation. Fate would rather have Ray Davies become not one of the great romantic lovers, but one of the great musical psychotherapists, and ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ is his first attempt at graduating — still a relative failure, because I think the chorus gives us a fussy and generally unsatisfactory resolution (that "better stop sobb’n now" would have never gotten the Paul McCartney seal of approval), but at least he is definitely on the right track here.

In between these beginner’s exercises, we have the usual stuff so typical of contemporary UK R&B. Namely, there are a couple of Chuck Berry covers: ʽBeautiful Delilahʼ opens the album with an early example of brother Dave’s distinctive voice, nasal and guttural at the same time, grossly exaggerated and making him sound like the local snotty teenage wimp trying to pull off a tough guy image (for the record, I’ve always found Dave’s vocal overtones strangely off-putting even in real life, compared to the softer and more distinctive voice of his brother — see for yourself, for instance, in this short interview with both from 1968). ʽToo Much Monkey Businessʼ partially compensates for this travesty with the best lead guitar impression of Chuck Berry this side of Keith Richards (do check specifically the alternate take included in the CD bonus tracks — it is sped up to an insane proto-Ramones tempo and was probably rejected as too sloppy and vulgar, but in retrospect it is one of the fastest, craziest rave-ups from 1964 that Father Time was kind enough to leave us).

If the band’s Chuck Berry has about 50/50 chance of working, their bluesier R&B grooves are even less lucky. Slim Harpo’s ʽGot Love If You Want Itʼ is bold enough to stretch out for almost four minutes, but the band is nowhere near as tight, loud, or convincing as the Yardbirds for such rave-ups, and Dave Davies as the devil-ridden terrifying womanizer has nothing on Mick Jagger. Meanwhile, Bo Diddley’s ʽCadillacʼ shows that, while they could be as musically tight as the Animals if the stars aligned all right, the lack of a convincingly raunchy singer of the Eric Burdon type in the band still rendered their Animalisms essentially useless. Tommy Tucker’s ʽLong Tall Shortyʼ, an obscure rarity (actually, just a re-write of his own better known ʽHi-Heel Sneakersʼ, and sounding on the whole like a completely generic Jimmy Reed blues-rock number), could be inoffensively forgettable if not for another one of Dave’s barely bearable vocal performances. Finally, there is no reason to listen to Dave’s equally unsavory take on the song ʽI’m A Lover, Not A Fighterʼ if you can lay your hands on the obscure original by Lazy Lester from way back in 1958 (Leslie Johnson plays that guitar with just as much flair as Dave here, and he is a much better singer by a country mile).

Adding insult to injury are two «songs» forced on the band by Shel Talmy, in a standard-for-the-time arrangement which helped the producer make more cash from record sales — ʽBald Headed Womanʼ and ʽI’ve Been Driving On Bald Mountainʼ, both of them just covers of old blues / folk tunes with no copyright restrictions. Actually, ʽBald Headed Womanʼ does not really sound that bad — the band, augmented by several distinct keyboard parts (it is rumored that Jon Lord himself, of future Deep Purple fame, plays the organ here), gets a cool wall-of-sound going on by the end, somewhat presaging the controlled chaos atmosphere of the Who’s debut a year later (not that surprising, considering that it would also be produced by Shel Talmy... and that the Who would be another band to whom he’d peddle ʽBald Headed Womanʼ). But the very fact of presenting this stuff as Shel Talmy originals, along with references to bald mountains and bald headed women on both of the tracks, makes the whole thing look ridiculous.

Still, looking back on it as a whole, Kinks is not such a complete embarrassment as it is often made out to be in critical circles. ʽYou Really Got Meʼ and ʽStop Your Sobbingʼ act as anchors here, showing that the band had already found its main voices — the hard rock groove and the soothing pop serenade — and simply did not have enough time in store to follow them exclusively. The rock’n’roll covers already show Dave Davies as a fiery-spirited, crunchy guitar player with garage-punk ambitions, even if his singing leaves a lot to be desired (then again, I openly admit that there are people who really appreciate the timbre of his voice here, considering it to be suitably arrogant and obnoxious for this material — no accounting for taste indeed). And even when they are at their objective worst, the record remains listenable — there is a healthy rock’n’roll vibe running through it all, showing that they were clearly on the «authentically genuine» side of the newly emerging pop sound, rather than the «commercially glossy» side. Even those early originals which try to emulate the Dave Clark Five, through their very sloppiness and shagginess, show that the Kinks would not be the ones to powder up their music for mainstream public appeal.

So I guess you could call the album an auspicious debut, if nothing else; and in this particular case, even the bonus tracks are of questionable quality, concentrating on the early and still under-cooked singles. Of course, at least one of them is essential — ‘All Day And All Of The Night’, the immediate follow-up to ‘You Really Got Me’ which almost (but not quite) made it to #1 itself. However, pretty much the only thing distinguishing it from ‘You Really Got Me’ is a slightly more complex, though equally catchy and somewhat self-resolving riff — other than that, it is almost ridiculous how the song completely apes the structure and mood of its predecessor, which is why I have always been sitting on the fence about it. In some ways, I almost prefer the B-side of ‘You Really Got Me’, the R&B vamp ‘It’s Alright’ on which Ray seems seems to be intentionally trying to pull off the intensity and nastiness of Eric Burdon — and almost suc­ceeds! (Not the B-side of ‘All Day’, though: ‘I Gotta Move’ is just a slight variation on Billy Boy Arnold’s ‘I Wish You Would’, though they do get a nice acoustic / bass groove going on).

The bonus tracks also include all of the KinksizeSession EP from November ’64, on which you can hear the perennial classic ʽLouie, Louieʼ sung with marginally comprehensible lyrics; ʽI’ve Got That Feelingʼ, which is about as much of a collective rip-off of all sorts of music ideas from A Hard Day’s Night as one could stomach (though "let me tell you ’bout a girl I know" is, of course, rather quoted from Chuck Berry); and ‘I Gotta Go Now’, notable for Ray’s vocal stretching and exploring his breathy falsetto range for the first time in Kinks history, something that would become quite common for him already in 1965. All in all, most of this stuff is absolutely indispensable not just for a historian of the Kinks, but for any aspiring young songwriter in need of understanding how to hone one’s songwriting craft, and go from clumsy raw talent to breathtaking genius over the shortest time span possible.

• Only Solitaire: The Kinks reviews