Oh, zwei Experten. Das Riff hat Dave Davies gespielt. „Diesen“ Sound konnte Page nicht spielen, weil er durch einen eigentlich kaputten Amp der Daviesbrüder gespielt wurde, der vor die Vox AC30 geschaltet wurde. Page war wohl bei den Aufnahmen von Shal Thalmy wie auch bei den frühen Who-Sessions mit in der Hinterhand dabei, hat aber keine der herausragenden Parts der frühen Hits gespielt.
Hier ein weing O-Ton von Ray Davies:
GW: Tell me about the legendary ‚green amp‘ that was used to get that raucous guitar sound on ‚You Really Got Me.‘
Davies: Dave informs me that the green amp was called an ‚El Pico.‘
GW: In books, I’ve seen it referred to as an ‚El Pedo.‘
Davies: I’m pretty sure he said it was said it was an El Pico. But if it was an El Pedo, hey, what’s a ‚d‘ or a ‚c‘? If I could get my hands on one, I’d love to have it again.
GW: In your book, you said it was a five-watt. But in John Mendelssohn’s Kinks book (The Kinks Kronikles, Quill, 1984), Dave said it was an eight-watt.
Davies: Well, who would argue with John Mendelssohn? It may have been a five, but the way Dave played it, it sounded like eight!
GW: Did Dave really poke knitting needles into the speaker cone to get that sound? Or is that one of rock’s great myths?
Davies: No, it true.
GW: And Dave would use the green amp as a pre-amp to a Vox AC-30?
Davies: Yeah. Because we didn’t have fuzz boxes or any of those boxes back then. We had a Vox AC-30 and we’d use the green amp as a pre-amp. So we’d plug into that first, then send that signal into the AC-30 to get more power. That’s now we got that sound on ‚You Really Got Me‘ and ‚All Day and All of the Night.‘
GW: Was Dave playing a Harmony Meteor guitar at the time?
Davies: Yeah, a Harmony guitar. He had a Epiphone for a while as well. I played a Maton. It was a fake Australian Gretsch.
GW: But eventually you switched to a Telecaster.
Davies: Yeah, Eric Haydock, the bass player for the Hollies, told me I should get one. So when ‚You Really Got me‘ hit the charts, I sold the Maton, went to Selmer’s music store and got a Tele, which I had until it was stolen about three or four years ago. But for the recording of ‚You Really Got Me,‘ I still had the Maton. I played the rhythm part on it through a Wallace amplifier. A Wallace was a custom-built amp–by a man called Wallace, obviously. He made amps for jazz people. And the person who had the amp before me was a vibes player. So it’s not really a guitar amp; And we had Arthur Greenslade playing piano on ‚You Really Got Me‘–to double up the bass chords. Pete [Quaife, the Kinks‘ original bassist] played bass, Dave played lead. And a guitarist who worked for our publishing company, who I believe was named Al, came in just to play the double of my part, to make that big wall of sound. We couldn’t do overdubs. We had to put it all down on one track.
GW: We should deal with the persistent rumour that Jimmy Page played lead guitar on ‚You Really Got Me‘ and/or ‚All Day and All of the Night.‘
Davies: Yeah. I don’t like going to court, but if I’d been Dave I would have sued somebody about this. I’m particularly incensed with Jimmy for actually perpetrating this untruth. Dave played ‚You Really Got Me‘ and ‚All Day and All of the Night.‘
GW: Of course. But Page did play some rhythm guitar on the first Kinks album [You Really Got Me, Reprise, 1965], right? [The album was recorded some months after the single–GW ed.]
Davies: Well, see, when the Kinks started, you know, it was the hottest new band. Everybody wanted to be in on the sessions, to see how we got the sound with the green amp into the Vox. Jimmy was doing a session next door. He came in and played acoustic guitar, I think, on that Bald Mountain track [‚I’ve Been Driving on Bald Mountain‘]. The following day, I think, he came in and played 12-string acoustic on ‚I’m a Lover Not a Fighter,‘ doubling Dave’s electric part; and he played tambourine on ‚Long Tall Shorty.‘ And that’s all that I seem to remember him doing. As for playing the lead guitar on ‚You Really Got Me‘ or ‚All Day and All of the Night,‘ that’s absolute nonesense.
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Staring at a grey sky, try to paint it blue - Teenage Blue