6. The KinksKinks

In those days it was all singles. Bands would put out an album with all the singles on so you’d already heard most of it. But this was the first album with great guitar riffs that repeated themselves – AC/DC and The Kinks are definitely related. It had a great guitar sound for the time: a great riff with a great melody on top is the essence of rock music for me; you can’t get away from it, that distorted guitar with the great riff. They weren’t as bluesy as some of the others – they didn’t go to the 12-bar blues all the time, like some bands did. Ray Davies’ lyrics always appealed to me because they were so straightforward – they were always about life. Probably at the time I didn’t notice, but later everyone looked at his work more as poetry.