Commentators variously describe "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains" as a blues, R&B or rock number. Davies based the song's distinctive guitar riff on that of "Smokestack Lightning", a 1956 blues song by Howlin' Wolf.; ; . In the early1960s, "Smokestack Lightning" was commonly covered by British rhythm and blues groups, like the High Numbers (later the Who), the Yardbirds and Manfred Mann. The Kinks regularly included the song in their early live set lists but stopped playing it in the mid-1960s as the popularity of R&B began to diminish in the UK.
