Waterloo Sunset - History

History

The lyrics describe a solitary narrator watching (or imagining) two lovers passing over a bridge, with the melancholic observer reflecting on the couple, the Thames, and Waterloo Station. The song was rumoured to have been inspired by the romance between two British celebrities of the time, actors Terence Stamp and Julie Christie stars of 1967s Far from the Madding Crowd. Ray Davies denied this in his autobiography and claimed in a 2008 interview, "It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country." In a 2010 interview with Kinks biographer Nick Hasted he said Terry was his nephew Terry Davies, "who he was perhaps closer to than his real brother in early adolescence." Despite its complex arrangement, the sessions for "Waterloo Sunset" lasted a mere ten hours; Dave Davies later commented on the recording: "We spent a lot of time trying to get a different guitar sound, to get a more unique feel for the record. In the end we used a tape-delay echo, but it sounded new because nobody had done it since the 1950s. I remember Steve Marriott of the Small Faces came up and asked me how we'd got that sound. We were almost trendy for a while." The single was one of the group's biggest UK successes, reaching number two on Melody Maker's chart, and went on to become one of their most popular and best-known.

The record reached number 2 on the British charts in mid 1967 (it failed to dislodge the Tremeloes' "Silence Is Golden" from the number 1 position). It was also a top 10 hit in Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe. In North America, although "Waterloo Sunset" was released as a single it was not a hit, as it completely failed to chart. As a result, while "Waterloo Sunset" is well-known amongst Kinks fans and anglophile music fans, it is not necessarily a song widely known to the general public in the US or Canada.

Davies considered the song a professional milestone, where he managed to blend the commercial demands of a hit single with his own highly personal style of narrative songwriting. The elaborate production was the first Kinks recording produced solely by Davies, without longtime producer Shel Talmy. In subsequent arguments with Kinks management over the direction of the band, Davies would say "I've done 'Waterloo Sunset', now I want to do something else".

In 2010 Ray Davies stated the song was originally entitled 'Liverpool Sunset'. In an interview with the Liverpool Echo he explained 'Liverpool is my favourite city, and the song was originally called Liverpool Sunset. I was inspired by Merseybeat. I'd fallen in love with Liverpool by that point. On every tour, that was the best reception. We played The Cavern, all those old places, and I couldn't get enough of it. I had a load of mates in bands up there, and that sound – not The Beatles but Merseybeat – that was unbelievable. It used to inspire me every time. So I wrote Liverpool Sunset. Later it got changed to Waterloo Sunset, but there's still that play on words with Waterloo. London was home, I'd grown up there, but I like to think I could be an adopted Scouser. My heart is definitely there.'

The song derives from the period 1965-73 when Ray Davies lived at 87 Fortis Green, the semi-detached suburban home where almost all his songs were written at this period. "I didn't think to make it about Waterloo, initially", Davies said in a 2010 interview, "but I realised the place was so very significant in my life. I was in St Thomas' Hospital when I was really ill and the nurses would wheel me out on the balcony to look at the river. It was also about being taken down to the 1951 Festival of Britain. It's about the two characters - and the aspirations of my sisters' generation who grew up during the Second World War. It's about the world I wanted them to have. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife and all the dreams that we had." Davies' first wife was Rasa Didzpetris, the mother of his first two daughters. They divorced in 1973.