The Kinks live, raw and rocking at Le palais de la MutualitÃ, Paris France April 24, 1965. At this point in their evolution, The Kinks were a killer garage band covering American r&b , The Kingsmen’s version of Louie Louie and mutations of Johnny B. Goode. While back in the States, garage bands were covering You Really Got Me.
The crowd goes nuts.
This is fuckin’ beautiful. Thank you, lads!
Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny”...
Greg,
yes, I know the Kinks are playing Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny”. I was being a little bit sarcastic in reference to the Brit and American bands tendency to rip off Chuck even in their “original” tunes. Thus, “mutations”.
I was thinking last night as I was watching this clip, where would British rock and roll be without Berry? Virtually every British Invasion band, from The Beatles to the Stones to The Kinks, on and on, started out playing Chuck Berry tunes. And some Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley.
Tis true Marc! The new innovation was having cute little long haired white boys doing it, wasn’t it? :D
Awesome, earlier examples of live, hard edged live rock are tough to find! Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this band kinda ‘invented’ the distorted guitar sound ubiquitous with hard rock and metal ever since, by cutting slits in the speaker cones in their amps. Genius!
Great document indeed. Leave it to France to have three or four cameras and wind up with only good shots of the audience…. Ray Davies looks like Keith Richards on a really bad day.
While I’m a fan of the early Kinks, on record they were totally different than live version, especially if the fights broke out- I can appreciate that and all, and it was nice to see them as a working band, I agree they brought the sonic distortions, really dirty sounds in. The randb vamping wouldn’t be required once Ray had more of his observations in song form, and it seemed he stopped yelling and also generally cooled down. Seeing this document, it’s funny to compare to same-era Beatles live to understand how DIFFICULT it was with those with screaming fans and puny monitors (were there any?) to still manage to replicate the harmonies and be in tune on stage.
