The British Rock Band That Helped Invent Heavy Metal Before Black Sabbath

When no less than Ozzy Osbourne himself is calling you the originator of a genre, you might be on to something. Black Sabbath may be regarded as the band that officially launched heavy metal, but the seed was planted for Osbourne with the Kinks and their 1964 smash hit "You Really Got Me." The track, a choice cut from their debut LP, was the first of five classic albums that define their rock legacy.

A seminal tune of the British Invasion, "You Really Got Me" shot to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and quickly became a rock standard. Van Halen's epic 1978 reinvention of the classic further added to that legendary mythos (and the true story behind their cover is fascinating in its own right) but its status as the spark in the imagination of a generation of burgeoning metalheads was already secure.

So what set the Kinks' breakout hit apart from a sea of similar-sounding Britpop rockers washing up on American shores in the wake of the Beatles? The song is a fairly simple power chord-driven rocker with all the sonic accouterments of the time period — save one.

Some new styles begin with harmonic or rhythmic innovations. Miles Davis' reimagining of hard bop structures into modal jazz or the polymetric claves of bossa nova are examples of the former. But heavy metal begins in the guitar amplifier and the willful mutilation of a pristine tone. That sonic debauchery launched the guitar distortion revolution that came to define rock for all subsequent generations and became a staple of the biting tone of "You Really Got Me."

The track certainly doesn't have any of the percussive, rapid-fire pummeling of vintage Metallica or the other sonic set pieces of metal's popular subgenres, but it laid the groundwork for what was to come. To that end, one has to wonder how guitarist Ray Davies created the group's signature tone without the technology that's so readily available today.

The bizarre history of heavy metal was spurred on by an unplanned bit of property damage. As it turns out, Davies had hit on the sound after taking a Gillette razor blade the speaker cone of his amplifier to vent his frustration with his then girlfriend. The future of hard rock was the result. New, exciting, and decidedly less destructive methods of extracting amplifier distortion would emerge, but for the time, Gillette was the best tone a guitar man could get.