Rarely seen as big a deal as I believe it to be, but the Kinks never had a logo. The Beatles had the drop T, The Who had the male gender symbol, The Stones were slow, but their tongue was the most iconic of all. If the K in the name Kinks was to look like a boot - it was a poor design, and they didn't stick with it. As insignificant as it may seem, I think this really hurt their ability to 'stick' with a casual fan. The Kinks would always be awful at branding - and even worse at hiring competent management who would recognize the power of a logo.
Holy ****. Can't believe there's finally an album-by-album thread for a favorite band of mine that I'm actually around for the beginning of. What a day to be alive. I love the hell outta the Kinks. I don't listen to their debut as much anymore but I loved it when I first started getting into them. Their first few singles helped define rock as we know it today. And Dave Davies basically invented fuzz guitar.
"Long Tall Sally" Single by the Kinks B-side "I Took My Baby Home" Released February, 1964 Recorded January, 1964 Studio Pye, London Genre Rock and roll Label Pye Songwriter(s) Enotris Johnson Robert Blackwell Richard Penniman Producer(s) Shel Talmy Also in 1964, the Kinks recorded "Long Tall Sally" as their debut single, released in February of the same year.[10] The Kinks' version was a modernized arrangement of the song, omitting the piano and moving away from R&B and toward a contemporary rock sound.[11] The single was backed by "I Took My Baby Home", from their debut album released later in the year. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On January 17 1964 The Kinks entered the studio to record some tracks .... It wasn't the first time they had been in the studio, in October and November of 1963 they had gone into the studio and recorded two versions of I'm a Hog For You Baby, and also I Believed You, but Long Tall Sally recorded in January 1964 ended up being the first that the world heard of the Kinks as a recorded band. The guys rearranged the song to some degree, and that's a wise move for a song that it seems like every man and his dog recorded a version of. We open with a clucky riff guitar and a pretty solid rhythm section. Mick Avory knocks out some solid drum fills and the band put their own mark on the track to some degree. We have Shel Talmy behind the desk, who was also producing The Who in their early years. The b-side I Took My Baby Home is on the debut album so we'll look at that when we get to the album. I think the vocals come across really well, the guys also add some good harmonies. I think the screams come across really well, and show that there could certainly be some grit about this band. I would be really interested to know if this made any impact when it came out, if anyone here was around at the time.
I quite like the 'Merseybeat'-style arrangement, but it's not something I would seek out to listen to (although it's a nice bonus on the deluxe of the debut album).
The Kinks' ' Long Tall Sally ' has a raucous charm of its own but if you want to hear this song in all its unbridled glory The Beatles version is your ticket ( to ride ).
I'm A Hog For You Baby This actually appears later in the catalog, but as we are at the start, and as this was the first song the band recorded I thought it would be nice to stick it in here at the start. We have the band showing , me at least, that they were very capable at this stage. This is really a demo, before the band were really firing in the zone. I also believe that they recorded this under the name The Boll-Weevils. It is one of those bouncy sixties pop/rock songs, and I reckon, I assume, Dave's guitar playing sounds really cool, even at this early stage of the game. This isn't really a track that is going to set the world on fire, but I reckon it is a pretty good effort for a first time in the studio.
"Long Tall Sally" is a good example why I never really warmed to early UK beat. Why would I want to listen to four white boys imitating Little Richard? B-b-boring!
Beatles or not, I was never a fan of all this cover version business. That's probably why I prefer albums from 1966 onwards.
Those early sixties releases, by what would become the prime movers of sixties rock and roll, are interesting to me, because it is like having a recorder in the garage of hundreds of bands of teenagers learning the ropes... I suppose through the seventies or whatever. Very few are in my top bunch of songs, but there is a weird voyeuristic thing of seeing them grow up in public, or something like that.
That's probably the reason why I think "My Generation" is the best debut by a British band from the 60's. Lambert was spot on when he forced Townshend to do mostly original material.
Got to be 'that guy' sorry and say it's sessioneer Bobby Graham on drums on this track, as it would be on all their singles up to and including 'Tired Of Waiting For You'. As it turned out, Avory was competent and could have done the job, but session guys were employed for expediency. Also it should be noted that Avory had only been in the group for a matter of weeks when this was recorded. As for why The Kinks did 'Long Tall Sally' for their debut release? It was a cynical move on the part of their management: basically they had observed that The Beatles version of the song was going down a storm live at the time, but that they had yet to release their cover on record, so it was hoped that The Kinks could get in there first with their version and pip the Fab Four to having a hit with the song. What they didn't reckon on was that The Beatles had a top Little Richard impersonator in their ranks, and had played the song as a show stopper night after night for years. Meanwhile The Kinks had Ray Davies, who is many things but isn't a vocal ringer for the Georgia Peach, and AFAIK 'LTS' was even not among the regular covers in their repertoire. So they put 2 and 2 together and got - 5. It is unfortunately a dog of a version of the song, although as someone else observed on this forum a while back, they might have achieved better results with Dave on lead vox, as he at least had the raving required of the song down pat at the time. Ray just sounds listless.
I'm talking about the UK version of the "My Generation" album. I know that it also has some (three to be precise) covers. That's why I said "mostly originals".
This historic clip is the first surviving pro-shot footage of the band when they were known as 'The Kinks' and had Avory in their ranks (there is earlier home movie footage of the pre -Kinks band which has been glimpsed in at least one documentary) and as you mentioned shows them playing The Cavern Club in spring 1964, just like the earliest pro footage of The Beatles with Ringo was shot there 18 months earlier: unfortunately while The Beatles are captured tearing up the place, The Kinks are documented playing their awful version of a song any local Scouse band could have wiped the floor with them with: the current video available on Youtube that you posted has the single version overdubbed, but the original footage (which has appeared in part in documentaries) is live, and it's even worse! In fact it actually slows down in the middle at one point! Despite that, it is very important historic footage and we're lucky to have it: it's just a shame the full thing has never seemingly been made available: the docs only used partial clips and the edit posted above uses the available footage looped. The full live audio track has appeared on bootlegs so the full visuals are almost certainly about somewhere.
This Long Tall Sally is sung in such a way that the lyrics are more audible than in other versions. It loses some of its rock n roll character.
As a cover, this is nothing remarkable but it's a lot better than 'Long Tall Sally', almost certainly because it was a song that they'd been playing live regularly. It's also notable for (I think?) a very rare Pete Quaife vocal line, unfortunately saying the somewhat off colour stereotype line 'Ying Tong'!
