In 1978, Generation X slapped back at The Who with “Your Generation”. Punk upstarts scorned the rebels of 1965 with typical insolence.
Across the Atlantic, Van Halen re-recorded the Kinks’ immortal garage ode “You Really Got Me”. Less an update than a slap at the face of older mores. A changing of the guard.
Halfway between the Netherlands and California, VH was an odd mix – the Dutch brothers with down-to-Earth introspection plus affable Mike Anthony and flamboyant narcisist Dave Lee Roth.
Scales in personalities reflected shades of their sound – at times called “brown sound”, other times just “Big Rock”. As The Who, they collided with craving sparks. As The Kinks, they had an ease for lingering melodies.
As nobody before or since, they upstaged Rock N`Roll scales.
It was down, dirty and fun in 1955. Bludgeoning, wicked, funnier after their eponymous release. Add superhuman doses of showmanship, plus 10 million copies….
Like Led Zeppelin 10 years after, they unassumingly re-wrote the rules of the Hard Rock book. If Zep borrowed a lot from American Bluesman, VH ransacked the British Invasion.
So, generational reprisals apart, they provided retribution of sorts. And then, some more.
Both Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones played in the Kinks’s version. Their debut single was a nearly direct comparison with the biggest Hard Rock band in the world circa 1978.
Amidst all the fury unleashed by Edward Van Halen and cohorts there was a clarity of sound and purpose, a laserbeam resolve to trend what came before out of the water. They sounded high and dry with sonic trickery unknown to almost everyone at the time. Out of the blue Van Halen was playing familiar tunes in uncomfortable, exciting ways.
Their “You Really Got Me” lacked the Honky Tonk piano (of Deep Purple`s Jon Lord). However, they had a solid rhythm in dumbfounding Anthony (better backing vocals to boot). Therefore, no need to challenge vocal lines, that Roth borrowed unceremoniously from Ray Davies until near the end when double-entendres rear their heads. Alexander Van Halen tops Mick Avory with dunderhead repeats. As for Edward, his solo drives cavities out of the original Country & Western brevity. The buzzsaw main riff – Rock’s cheapest dirty glory – he turns into a blast of delayed post-nuclear feedback decay.
All said and done, VH’s interpretation comes across as mid-pace Power Pop, not primal Hard Rock. Morose yet menacing, a space oddity for Star Wars age. Dave Davies hated it.
Released in January 28 1978, it reached #36 in Billboard (the Kinks’ Top 10 hit in 1964).
In the meantime, VH also provided a rousing sendup to contemporaries with B-side “Atomic Punk”. Upping the ante for frantic activity, VH oozed like ragged Aerosmith preaching, poking on street life. This time taking no prisoners with continuous motions after the initial scratch fest, slabs of guitar feedback funneled into beats, bass barely distinguishable from the incessant guitar dripping, Roth rocking lungs out to exhaustion.
This band, after shrugging past and present, rode the wastelands as a rodent Colossus.
Tracklist:
8.5 You Really Got Me
9.0 Atomic Punk
Carlos Frederico Pereira da Silva Gama
delubravestra 