Gimme Some Lovin' by The Spencer Davis Group

What was your greatest accomplishment when you were 18 years old?

When Steve Winwood was 18 years old, he helped write one of the greatest rock songs of all time, “Gimme Some Lovin’”. Well, so what when I was 18, I finally beat Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past on my Super Nintendo. Well, I also graduated from high school, but somehow that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time especially since my history teacher told me that the only thing you had to do to graduate from high schools was to breathe in and breathe out.

As a member of the British band, The Spencer Davis Group, Steve Winwood helped define the term blue-eyed soul, responding to the rock music of America with a fresh blues influenced rock.

“Gimme Some Lovin’” is a party song that has simple components that are masterfully arranged to reveal the groove of the song and express the righteous feeling that permeates every note of this song.

“Gimme Some Lovin’” begins with a bass line that has a huge accent on beat four. Four fast notes lead up into beat 4 building momentum throughout the measure to the last beat which abruptly drops down an octave. Your body can’t help but feel this beat four as the main back beat of the groove. It’s primal and in your fact and making you instantly feel the outline of the groove.

As the drums enter the accent on beat two becomes apparent, creating the standard rock groove which accents the off beats (beats 2 and 4). The song seems to speed up at this point as the back beats seem to double in time, going from a strong accent on beat 4 to two accents on beat 2 and 4. This opening propels the song forward into one of the greatest organ lines in rock history.

The organ is a primal call, starting with a simple sustained chord that is to another sustained chord by a simple descending line. The organ is an instrument that was innovated and used mostly in religious settings. It’s hard to hear an organ sound and separate it from its roots, so when is used rock it brings together the joy of religious spirituality with the youthful and liberated spirit of rock. Many have made the argument that this is wrong, but God know it feels right.

Other artists like Ray Charles combined religious and popular music taking Gospel songs and changing the lyrics to talk about sexuality. In a similar way, Steve Winwood, brought the organ, an instrument used for hundreds of years to celebrate the glory of God, to call out to people to get on down.

The sound of the organ in “Gimme Some Lovin’” is raunchy, dirty and full of soul. The sustained sound doesn’t shimmer like light coming through a church strained glass window but rather permeates like a spotlight bathing a crowd of people partying in dark club. There is atmosphere, emotion and style in the sound of that sustained chord, it’s like experiencing something that you know is not good for you but disregarding your conscious and exclaiming to the world “Glory Hallelujah.”

Steve Winwood, the keyboard player for The Spencer Davis Group sang the incredible lead vocals to this song. At times, he sounds so much like a grizzled old man in his sixties singing about the blues in his life, it’s easy to forget he’s a British kid who is 18 years old. At the edge of yelling with a youthful exuberance, Winwood manages to express the struggle of a hard days work in the verse with the euphoria of partying in the verses. This vocal performance is raw and real, proving that you don’t have either black nor American to have soul.

I don’t know if Winwood considers “Gimme Some Lovin’” one of his greatest accomplishments as an 18 year old. Regardless, “Gimme Some Lovin’” is one of the greatest rock songs of all time.

Really, if Winwood doesn’t consider this song his greatest accomplishments as a 18 year old, I’d really like to what else he did during that year of his life, because it must be something unbelievable.