Jonathan Wilkinson: After The Shock

Description

Jonathan Wilkinson explains the background to the painting:

Many of my music heroes started out as bedroom dreamers and performers and the suburban beginnings of The Kinks story is no exception. There is something about the containment of four walls and the furnishings of a domestic setting that trigger the absolute need to explode and escape the everyday. I came to be a fan of their music a little later on in my teens, when I had exhausted my Beatles and Who albums and wanted something with a bit more of an edge to it. To me The Kinks are as important and more interesting than even The Rolling Stones and the afore-mentioned bands, but for some reason are somewhat underrated.

My painting “After the Shock” takes the genesis of what made The Kinks sound famous and more importantly changed the DNA of how future guitar music would sound. What you see depicted in the painting is how I imagine the scene to have been in the Davies home when Dave, angered and frustrated at the limitations of his guitar amplifier and the “clean” sound it was giving off, struck upon an idea. Determined to find a heavier sound he took to slashing the rear of the speaker cones with a razor blade. All this reportedly took place whilst the Davies brothers were composing their most famous hit “You Really Got Me” and having heard the basic riff played in a jazzy style by Ray on the piano, Dave was compelled to make it a beast unto itself and at first suffered an electric shock as a result of his modification. When he picked himself off the floor and immediately returned to his guitar it was as if he had somehow stored this electric energy and channelled it form his fingers to his guitar and created a riff that changed music forever.