The Kinks had the guitar sound. The recording needed another try.

The Kinks rejected an early recording of You Really Got Me because of its echo, Dave Davies told MusicRadar in 2014. They tried again in a smaller studio, dropping effects to capture the guitar sound they already liked in the room.

That sound had come from cutting the speaker in a small Elpico amplifier. “I didn’t even expect it to work,” Davies recalled. Finding the roughness and recording it were separate problems.

Later that year, WBUR’s Jim Sullivan asked whether he tired of the speaker story. Davies did, but acknowledged that people wanted to hear it. The blade makes a more memorable anecdote than taking echo away.

His recollections suggest a useful distinction: deliberately distorted tone can still be something a musician wants recorded faithfully. The razor gets the glory. It could not do the studio’s remaining work.