Illustration by Lusco y Fusco
It’s one of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock ‘n’ roll history and it was written by a bipolar musical genius from London, England. The main musical phrase of “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks is only two chords, and the song itself is only two minutes long, but just try to get it out of your head once you’ve heard it: “Girl, you really got me goin’, you got me so I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Kinks frontman Ray Davies, who is bipolar, wrote the rock masterpiece that catapulted the band to the top of the British charts at the peak of the British Invasion. American teens, too, were spellbound.
With a decidedly unique artistic point of view, The Kinks were grittier than The Beatles, less bluesy than The Rolling Stones, and more pop than The Who. They were the redheaded stepchild of the British Invasion.
The Kinks were one of the most influential bands to come out of the ‘60s, bringing their British garage-rock aesthetic to the masses.
Sir Ray Davies — yes, he is now officially a knight, as of a few months ago — takes comfort in music. “Songwriting is my release,” Davies recently told The Daily Mail. “It defines me as a person, but it’s lonely… Some sort of strange voodoo occurs.”
Sir Davies is not one to talk much about his bipolar, but he did have a major depressive episode in 1973, after his then-wife left him. Shortly thereafter, The Kinks frontman attempted suicide while dressed up like a clown.
“I’d just come offstage and sunk a bottle of downers because I wanted to kill myself,” he said in an interview. “Then I changed my mind. I was dressed as a dandy, it might have looked like a clown to everyone else. But even clowns can have bad days.”
After some downtime in the mid-seventies, the Kinks re-emerged, putting out records in the late seventies and early eighties. Their songs have been covered by Green Day, Van Halen, The Pretenders, The Jam, and The Fall.
The power chords used on such songs as “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night” would be used incessantly in punk rock.
The band broke up in 1996, after a major feud between Ray and his brother Dave Davies — they have never really gotten along — and a string of albums that were commercial duds. The Kinks have since been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1990.
The band was a major influence on nineties Britpop bands like Blur and Oasis. Sir Ray Davies went on to have a solo career, most recently releasing an album called Americana this past spring, based on his biography of the same name.
Check out a classic clip of The Kinks doing “You Really Got Me” live in 1965 below.
