Puzzles and contradictions lie beneath “Waterloo Sunset”, its composer and the city in which it is set. It is the quintessential London song – yet Ray Davies originally called it “Liverpool Sunset”. The song lauded by The Who’s Pete Townshend as “divine” and “a masterpiece” soundtracked the swinging 60s – but its composer had in mind the aspirations of an earlier generation. And though its lyric appears to be a narrative, “Waterloo Sunset” is as dappled and impressionistic as the summer of love that it heralded.
The original idea for what became The Kinks’ 1967 hit came to Davies in a dream. He wrote an early iteration in tribute to Liverpool – he adored the city’s Merseybeat sound and wanted to acknowledge The Kinks’ popularity in the city. But he relocated it after concluding that it was better to work with what you know.
Davies certainly knew Waterloo. In 1951, his parents had taken him to that celebration of all things British, the Festival of Britain, located on the South Bank around Waterloo; as a patient just down the Thames at St Thomas’ Hospital aged 13, he had gazed from a balcony at the Houses of Parliament; he had travelled from Waterloo Station as a Croydon School of Art student; and he had wooed his first wife, Rasa Didzpetris, on Waterloo Bridge. “It keeps popping up in my life,” he says. “The images got into my psyche.”
The “dirty old river” of the opening line is a benign force in the song, says Davies: “It’s like the artery of the city, where the blood flows, pumps through the city and gives it life.” But who were Terry and Julie, the characters in “Waterloo Sunset” who meet every Friday night? Many have assumed that Davies had in mind the actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, who were famous at the time for co-starring in the film Far From the Madding Crowd. In fact he was thinking about one of his older sisters, who used to tell Davies about her experiences in the war, growing up in Britain. Davies says that in the song he imagines her and her boyfriend going across to a better life north of the river.
Davies played the song to the rest of The Kinks at his semi-detached suburban house in Fortis Green, north London – though he felt protective enough over the lyrics to prevent his bandmates from hearing them until the recording, at Pye Records’ basement studio in Marble Arch.
The backing track was simple: Davies played acoustic guitar with bassist Pete Quaife and drummer Mick Avory, then overdubbed a piano at the coda and his brother Dave’s distinctive guitar part, which was innovatively recorded with tape echo. The harmonies, sung by Rasa, Dave Davies and Quaife, added a dream-like aspect to the recording.
The song has been covered many times, but none has been able to match the perfection of The Kinks’ sublime original. The Jam, who had had a minor hit with The Kinks’ “David Watts”, made a ham-fisted stab at it in 1980, but wisely left it unreleased for 30 years. David Bowie had recorded The Kinks’ “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?” for his 1973 covers album, Pin Ups, and covered “Waterloo Sunset” in a similar style, as a bonus track to some editions of his Reality album in 2003; that same year, he also sang it with Davies at a charity concert.
Def Leppard turned in a surprisingly faithful rendition for a 2006 covers album, doubling down on Dave Davies’s crunchy guitar sound. By contrast, Peter Gabriel’s orchestral takein 2010 departs from The Kinks’ arrangement – while managing to make it sound somehow even more English.
Davies himself has re-recorded it, as an autumnal acoustic duet with Jackson Brownefor his 2010 album See My Friends. He has also written a book of short stories entitled Waterloo Sunset and a film called Return to Waterloo. The location remains significant for him.
“If there’s anyone in my life who’s important,” he says, “I like to take them to Waterloo Bridge, to stand on the bridge with them to see if it feels good.”
We’d like to hear from our readers. Do you have any memories of “Waterloo Sunset”, or of Waterloo in the 1960s? Let us know in the comments below.
‘The Life of a Song: The fascinating stories behind 50 of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Castle Communications, UMC (Universal Music Catalogue), UMC (Universal Music Catalogue)
Picture: Ivan Keeman/Redferns