Classic Tracks | The Kinks ‘You Really Got Me’ : September 2009
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Producers: Chip Young, Billy Swan; Engineer: Chip Young In 1974 Billy Swan walked into Chip Young's Young'un Sound studio and, in two takes, recorded a million-selling single that had taken him 20 minutes to write. This is how it was done... Track: 'Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick' The story of how a characteristically chaotic and unorthodox 1978 recording session took Ian Dury & The Blockheads to the top of the UK charts. Producers: Nile Rodgers, Madonna, Stephen Bray • Engineer: Jason Corsaro In mid-1984 Madonna arrived at New York City's Power Station studios with Nile Rodgers to record the album that would make her an international superstar - using cutting-edge 12-bit technology. Producers: Richard Dashut, Ken Caillat, Fleetwood Mac In 1976, in the face of deteriorating personal relationships and massive record company pressure, Fleetwood Mac managed to create a record that would go on to sell 30 million copies. Producer: Alan Mair • Engineers: John Burns, Robert Ash Although never a commercial success, the Only One's 'Another Girl, Another Planet' has proved to be massively influential; and nearly 30 years after its original release, it's finally getting the recognition it deserves. Producers: Tricky • Mark Saunders  Producer: Billy Sherrill • Engineer: Lou Bradley 1973's 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The World' was one of the defining moments of the Nashville sound, and was the product of a finely-honed studio recording process. Producer: Phil Spector • Engineer: Larry Levine Phil Spector was one of the first producers to realise that a recording studio could be an instrument in itself - and the sound he created over 40 years ago has influenced popular music ever since. Producers: The Jam, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven • Engineers: Alan Douglas, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven 'The Eton Rifles' captured both Paul Weller's growing talent as a songwriter and the raw power of his band the Jam, and gave the group their first top 10 hit. Producers: Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller, Gareth Jones • Engineer: Gareth Jones Released in 1984, 'People Are People' perfectly combined Depeche Mode's love of pop music and experimentalism, and gave them their first US hit single. Producer & Engineer: Les Paul Les Paul made some of the most innovative records of the 20th Century, but he had to invent multitrack tape recording first... | Classic Tracks | The Kinks ‘You Really Got Me’Article Preview :: Producer & Engineer: Shel TalmyPublished in SOS September 2009 Technique : Classic Tracks There are very few records whose influence can be so strongly felt after 45 years as the Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’. At the controls was Shel Talmy, who tells us the story of a song that changed pop music.
It is the song that has been widely touted as the blueprint for hard rock and heavy metal, long before the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin came along. And it is also a number that has been shrouded in rumours and controversy for more than four decades with regard to who actually played what, especially the jarring, distorted two-chord riff that opens the track and continues behind the lead vocal, and the fierce, deliberately sloppy guitar solo that paved the way for punk rock. A UK chart-topper in September 1964, and a number seven hit in America at the height of the so-called British Invasion, ‘You Really Got Me’ was not only the breakthrough number for North London outfit the Kinks, but also a landmark recording that inspired the Who’s Pete Townshend to compose ‘I Can’t Explain’, and whose influence resonates to this day. All of which was quite an achievement for a group of teenagers who had only formed the previous year, and their innovative producer, who hadn’t been around a whole lot longer. “I’m very proud of the fact that the recording does still stand up,” says Shel Talmy, who secured the Kinks’ recording contract with Pye. “It has not dated, it has not aged, and it’s as good as — if not better than — anything that’s around today.” In The Beginning...
Born in Chicago in 1941, Talmy had an early interest in pop standards, folk and country music, as well as a love for rhythm and blues that was ignited by the Crows’ doo-wop hit ‘Gee’ when it charted in April 1954. That same year, his appearances as a contestant on the NBC-TV show Quiz Kids helped him realise that he wanted to be in the entertainment business, although not in front of the camera. “Even then I knew that I wanted to work behind the scenes,” he says, while acknowledging that, although he learned to play the guitar during his formative years, “I’m a good enough producer to never want to record myself.” After his family relocated to Los Angeles when he was in his mid-teens, Talmy began hanging out at Martoni’s Italian Restaurant on Cahuenga Boulevard, a regular music business haunt whose parking lot housed an echo chamber that was used by the Wally Heider Recording facility across the street. This led to him meeting Phil Yeend, who owned Conway Studios, and who indulged Talmy’s interest in technology by not only hiring him as a trainee engineer in early 1961, but also handing him his first solo session just three days later. “Obviously, the boards then were a lot simpler than they are today,” Talmy says, “but it was still like being tossed off the pier, sink or swim. Conway was a three-track facility with a fairly large room, as well as another one upstairs that we used from time to time because it belonged to one of Phil’s friends, and while I was there I did everything from folk to jazz, orchestral to Latin.” Thanks to working with such legends as guitarist/arranger René Hall, composer/producer Bumps Blackwell, session drummer Earl Palmer and jazz guitarist Tommy Tedesco, Shel Talmy learned quickly under the auspices of Phil Yeend, an Englishman who had previously engineered at IBC (International Broadcasting Company) Studios on Portland Place in Central London. “He was a damned good teacher and allowed me a lot of latitude,” Talmy remarks. “That’s why I spent a lot of time after-hours experimenting with the isolation of instruments and different recording techniques. We were one of the first studios — and certainly the first one in town — to construct platforms that were backed with old carpet to isolate things like guitar amps. Nobody, at that time, was doing that, and neither were they experimenting with multiple microphones on drums. We were using up to a dozen when everybody else was using three or four, and when I did the same in London I was told I couldn’t because it would phase. I said, ‘Well, so be it,’ and two or three months later everybody was using a dozen mics. “Today, when engineers have unlimited tracks to work with, what a lot of them don’t get is that decisions do have to be made at some point. We had to figure out how to balance things then and there, and if something worked out fine it was, apparently, because we had an ear for it. Certainly, with all of those extra mics the sound was infinitely better controlled than it would have been without them, and we were always breaking new ground because no one had done what we were doing back then. Anything went, and while a lot of things didn’t work, a lot of things did. Of course, the equipment was primitive by today’s standards, but we pushed it, and doing that was a hell of a lot more fun, quite frankly, than having everything at your fingertips.” A Voyage Of Discovery ...
Published in SOS September 2009 
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