Punk
thus. Asides from the song’s latent optimism and lack of aggression, the Kingsmen , as shown by their matching suits, was a relatively clean-cut garage band, which – it would seem – somewhat unwittingly sparked controversy and rather prudently sat back and let it bloom.
In 1964, the Kinks followed Louie Louie with their two hit singles, You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night . The band was greatly influenced by the Kingsmen’s debut – indeed, a cover of the track features on the Kinksize Session E.P. and imitates Ely’s distinctive, slurred vocal style. Louie Louie inspired the Kinks, previously an R.&B. act, to adopt ‘a more direct and aggressive approach’. 23 The Kinks’ two singles feature a simplistic riff, built around power chords, which is made all the more potent by the guitar’s ‘gritty, distorted sound’, which shows a profound influence on punk rock. 24 The unique, overdriven tone came about – rather like Link Wray – after ‘Dave Davies sliced his Elpico amplifier with a razor blade’, creating a sound, which ‘set The Kinks apart from their contemporaries’. 25 Furthermore, their on-stage altercations are legendary; a 1965 performance of You Really Got Me in Cardiff culminated in Dave Davies informing drummer, Mick Avory, that he would sound better if he played ‘ with his cock ’ , prompting Avory to retaliate by rendering Davies unconscious with the cymbal end of his hi-hat stand. 26 Despite the decidedly punky sound of these two records, aptly complimented by the band members’ violent tendencies, one would be mistaken to dub the tracks as ‘punk rock’, since there is too sophisticated a level of professionalism to the songs, and one cannot help but feel that they lack a certain griminess, both lyrically and musically, that is integral to the genre. The Who’s 1965 single, My Generation followed, which adopted the Kinks’ raw, more aggressive sound. Its impact on punk rock is clear: the tempo is fast; the instruments are played with a brutal energy, epitomized in John Entwistle’s crude, scrappy bass solo; and the vocals are gritty – Roger Daltry spits and stutters the lyrics, a vocal style, which led to the song being banned by the BBC for ‘fear that it might be offensive to other stutterers’. 27 While the song’s anarchic outro would sometimes ‘involve Pete Townshend smashing his guitar to pieces’, it is the lyrics of My Generation , if anything, that truly make the song deserving of the title ‘punk rock’. 28 Lines, such as ‘ I hope I die before I get old ’ capture the youthful zeitgeist of the time, and – according to Townsend – ‘ draw a line between all those people who had been involved in the second world war and all those people who were born right at the end of the war ’ . He added: ‘ we were expected to shut up and enjoy the peace … and we decided not to do that ’ . 29 Before terming the song ‘punk rock’, however, it is important to address the fact that My Generation is a stand- alone song within the Who’s oeuvre; this is definitely an undermining factor. The view that ‘punk is not a style; it’s a … way of life’ is central to the genre, and it is surely important, therefore, in the assignment of the term, that the track be in keeping with an artist’s larger stylistic canon. 30
The mid- sixties saw the arrival of ‘garage punk’, a label that encompasses some of the ‘toughest, angriest garage rockers’, whose similarities with punk rock can be cited from a larger discography, as
23 faroutmagazine.com, Were The Kinks the first-ever punk band? , [online]. 24 Ibid., [online]. 25 Ibid., [online]. 26 Janovich, God Save the Kinks: A Biography , 88. 27 bbc.co.uk, 8 songs banned by the BBC for the strangest of reasons – BBC Music , [online]. 28 Ibid., [online]. 29 faroutmagazine.com, The true inspiration behind The Who’s ‘My Generation’ , [online]. 30 thatonerule.com, Punk Quotes: Express Your Rebellion with Powerful Words , [online].
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