Edit 2 (alt.st.) for headphones. Source file is a bonus song from "The Kink Kontroversy" (1998 remastered ESM CD 507). A 1966 #1 hit in Holland and New Zealand*, #4 in the UK, #11 in Canada and Germany, #36 in the United Snails eh States and Australia.
Ray Davies claimed that the song was inspired by a fight he had with a fashion designer at a party. "I got pissed off with [a fashion designer at a party] always going on about fashion. I was just saying you don't have to be anything; you decide what you want to be and you just walk down the street and if you're good the world will change as you walk past. I just wanted it to be the individual who created his own fashion. According to a 2011 NME interview with Ray Davies, despite its fey overtones, the song is actually a scathing attack on a fop who made fun of the singer's trousers.
About the guitar sound on this song:
When Ray Davies wrote "You Really Got Me" in March 1964, it was a very different song to the version the Kinks ended up recording. One of Ray’s first compositions, it was initially envisaged as "a tribute to all those great blues people [he] loved: Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy." But, the laid-back jazz-blues number took on a different dimension when Dave Davies started playing a line intended for saxophone on his guitar.
Even with Davies’ driving guitar part in place, the song still hadn’t fully taken shape by the time the Kinks came to record it later that year. The first version, recorded in June 1964 was slower and less emphatic and, according to Dave Davies, covered in a reverb by producer Shel Talmy that all-but-buried the guitar.
Ray Davies petitioned for the song to be re-recorded and, later in the summer, the Kinks went back into the studio for a second pass. It was then that Dave Davies presented the band with a new guitar sound; one born of anger and frustration that transformed the record.
Dave Davies: "My childhood sweetheart Sue got pregnant and we wanted to get married. But our parents said we were too young and they split us up. I was a rebellious, angry kid anyway, but that had a profound effect on me. I was full of rage. A little later, I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, "I'll teach it" – and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar. Then, when I wired that amp up to another, a Vox AC30, it made it a lot, lot louder."
The sound of the slashed-up Elpico was the breakthrough that the song needed: released in August 1964, "You Really Got Me" was the first Kinks single to top the UK charts.
DEDICATED FOLLOWER OF FASHION
(Raymond Douglas Davies)
They seek him here, they seek him there
His clothes are loud, but never square
It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best
'Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion
A
