The Kinks: They really got me

I first heard the Kinks at the age of 11 – listening to Radio Caroline on a crystal radio set beneath my bedclothes. It was August 1964, and the rabid-dog riffs of You Really Got Me came crackling through my tiny earpiece, blowing my world apart like a dirty bomb. Those distorted guitar chords went on to rearrange the sonic architecture of the 1960s – but frontman Ray Davies's lyrics also heralded something new and profound.

In contrast to the saccharine Mersey sound, Davies sang of obsessive teenage love, teetering on madness. It seemed a more honest, rebellious way of understanding the world: you didn't have to unquestioningly accept what your school and parents were teaching – or omitting to teach – you. You could read between the lines of those great, raucous singles and discover your own way of looking at things.

Prefiguring punk, the songs seemed to belong as much to the listener as to the band. Unlike the other groups who emerged from the R&B boom, like the Rolling Stones, the Kinks had in one stroke made US music their own, reinventing it as north London blues. I used to bunk off school to watch the band drink on a bench outside the Flask pub in Highgate. One day I saw Davies walking along Hampstead High Street with tears streaming down his face. I knew then that this was a pop star unlike any other.

The Kinks are the ultimate underdog band. Songs like Waterloo Sunset exist in the atmosphere, surrounding us, defining who we are. And Davies, the principal songwriter, remains ludicrously undervalued.

I have finally made a film about Davies, for the BBC. As a Kinks obsessive, I thought I knew all there was to know about him. Yet as we did the interviews, I began to realise how conflicted his relationship with both himself and his own success remains; how fragile the line between him having a good or a bad day has always been. His documentary approach to lyrics might seem to be a distancing device, exploring other people's lives rather than his own – but it became clear that it's therapy. The songs' characters function almost as friends, providing ways of analysing aspects of himself.

In 1965, the Kinks were refused permits to tour the US by the American Federation of Musicians. The British invasion, at the time, was regarded by the US music business as a coup d'état. The Beatles were too big to be stopped, while the Stones were more than happy to play the game and cut their hair to go on the Ed Sullivan Show – so the Kinks were made the sacrificial lambs. "There was something in the air that a British band was going to be banned," Davies told Q magazine in 2005, "and, with the way we looked and sounded, we were the ones."

Listening to Davies, I finally understood how profound an impact that four-and-a-half year ban had actually had. Drawing on the songs of Noël Coward and the music-hall culture his father had loved, Davies turned his back on the riff-driven rock that had propelled his early hits and reinvented himself as wilfully English. From this rebirth sprang a miraculous run of hits, from A Well Respected Man to Waterloo Sunset, which still hold a mirror up to our lives.

It's extraordinary how political these songs are. In a coded, nuanced way, they delivered messages of rebellion, couched in a wry humour that allowed them to fly under the radar to the top of the charts. I'm sure not many of those fans who broke into Sunny Afternoon on the Wembley terraces when England won the World Cup knew the song was a direct response to the devaluation of the pound.

There is in Davies something of that other great, self-taught London poet, William Blake: a dark innocence laced with a dogged belief in the truth of his own work. In the end, his influence rests in his willingness to put his life and sanity on the line – to preserve the honesty of his songs.