I first saw The Kinks live in April, 1973, at Winterland in San Francisco, where they played a flawless set with stops on almost every album. When Dave Davies delivered the power-chord F-G-G-F-G riff of “You Really Got Me,” I suddenly realized I’d let out an uncharacteristic scream – like a little girl at a Monkees concert.
When the Kinks came onto the scene in 1964, I bought their singles, one after another; when the band appeared on “Shindig!,” I was spellbound. There was the long hair, Davies’ Gibson Flying V, and that dark, visceral sound. The recent two-disc retrospective The Journey, Part 1 spans 1964 to ’75. From early R&B to English dance-hall, it displays the Kinks’ range, with Dave’s guitar work following older brother Ray’s songwriting all the way.
I interviewed Davies in ’77 and 2017, when he released Open Road, a duo album with son Russ Davies.
“My role and my objective with whoever I’m working with is to make it somewhat collaborative,” Dave said. “From a young lad, I was always into arrangements and placement. My thing is it’s as much about what you leave out as what you put in.”
He started playing at 11 or 12.
“My sister Peg’s husband was named Mike Picker, and he was a really good guitar player. We’d go to their house and he had a guitar he built himself; he even made pickups. I remember actually helping him wind a coil around a magnet, using a gramophone for the revolutions. We learned an awful lot from him. He introduced me to Django Reinhardt and Duane Eddy. Duane was a phenomenal influence – that tone, the sound of the guitar. Mike also introduced us to Big Bill Broonzy, so I started to get into blues. He and Lead Belly were big influences on me. Lead Belly’s 12-string sound really mesmerized me. A lot of those riffs were haunting. Those guys were prime inspirations for us.”
Though their styles are radically different, I think of Davies’ work as similar to George Harrison’s with the Beatles. Both were able to cover a stylistic gamut that bands today would need a battery of studio musicians to approach.
“One great joy of mine was the fact that the Kinks covered so many genres of music,” he agreed. “Ray and I were big country fans growing up, and I was a big Eddie Cochran and Little Richard fan. My sisters liked Dean Martin, Perry Como; so many types of music echoed through the house. Growing up, all the important guitar players were American, or banjo pickers like Earl Scruggs. You couldn’t hear people play like that in England or Europe. Chet Atkins was an immense influence, and James Burton on some of those beautiful Rick Nelson recordings. ‘Hello, Mary Lou’ has always been one of my favorites. A lot of that came from country music. It was embedded in James Burton’s picking style, part of the character of whatever he played.”
Davies laughed when I told him that Elpico amps, like the little green one he used as a preamp on “You Really Got Me,” now sell for $1,000. He famously slashed its speaker cones to get that distorted sound. “I was just about starting to shave. I used a Gillette single-sided razor blade. Must’ve been 15. On ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day And All of the Night,’ I was playing a Harmony Meteor. It had DeArmond pickups and got a lot of feedback.”
In ’77, Dave brought up an alleged Jimmy Page claim I was unaware of it at the time. He said emphatically, “Jimmy Page did not play the guitar solo on ‘You Really Got Me,’” before unleashing a string of epithets I couldn’t put in print. Stories vary, but Ray and producer Shel Talmy have plainly stated the solo was Dave’s. I recently spoke to Doug Hinman, author of the definitive The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night: Day by Day Concerts, Recordings, and Broadcasts, 1961-1996 and one hell of a researcher. He acknowledged that Page played 12-string and rhythm on some songs, and provided the feedback at the beginning of “I Need You” (to which Davies supplied the solo), but said, “Jimmy Page did not play lead on any Kinks hits.”
If people just use their ears, the gnarly solo in question is clearly the rough and ready work of the same teen as on the Kinks’ “Milk Cow Blues.” Or as Hinman asserts, “Just watch the ‘Shindig!’ performance, where he plays the solo live.”
I asked Dave if he thought he hadn’t gotten the credit he deserves, and if the Page controversy clouded that. “Yeah, to a degree,” Davies reflected. “There’s always someone around the corner ready to put you down, take credit from you. You get older, you just expect that sort of thing.”How sad that someone who’s done so much, proving his mettle over decades, remains one of the most underrated guitarists of all time. As Ray put it on his “Storyteller” tour in ’97, “He played himself into rock and roll history.”
This article originally appeared in VG’s August 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
