I woke up this holiday weekend to the sound of magnificent birds hosannaing the dawn.
As the coffee brewed I switched on my radio and learned that 52 years ago to the day The Kinks released what will always be my favourite 45rpm single of all time.
The cultural historians of a thousand years hence will without question point to this Ray Davies masterpiece when they want to demonstrate the beauty those 1960s troubadours were capable of achieving.
So, today, 52 years on, The Jukebox punches once again the button and the unfading glory that is Waterloo Sunset floods the heart, mind and spirit with light and hope.
Ray Davies said :
It’s about how innocence will prevail over adversity. It starts out delicate, but by the end has become awesome in its power. Those triumphant chords come in, and the angels tell you everything is going to be OK”.
Everything is going to be OK.
And, that’s a message that will always be welcome.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Thank you Ray and God Bless The Kinks!
‘The most beautiful song in the English language’ (Robert Christgau)
‘Divine … a masterpiece’ (Pete Townsend)
‘As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset I am in paradise’ (Ray Davies)
A song about : London, The River, A Lonely Man and Two Lovers by A Great Songwriter leading a great Group.
The Voice of London:
It is, of course, a song about London.
Londinium. The Capital. The Big Smoke.
Now, there are other fine cities on other great rivers in this nation.
But, but, there is only one London.
And, if you want to find out who you are, not who you’ve been told you are, and how far you can go – well then, London, London, is the place to be.
Nowhere else. Nowhere else.
Kings and Conquerors. Poets and Peasants. Saints, Sinners and Scholars.
Those looking for the limelight and others looking to hide out – they’re all drawn to London.
Thinkers and Tinkers. Songwriters and Singers.
Look around! They’re all here.
All here telling stories. Making dramas.
Tired of London, tired of life.
Come for joy, jasper of jocunditie.
Come for a mighty mass of brick and smoke and shipping.
Treasures in its depths.
Confront your counterparts – hero or villain, mountebank or mystic.
Find yourself. Get lost.
Work, work, work or lounge and idle away your days.
All around you beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics and the one, the one, just waiting for you.
For you.
Ray Davies. A watchful London boy who became a watchful London man and artist.
Alive to all the sights and sounds and atmospheres on the breeze, in the fog, in the streets and alleyways of his home town.
Watching the people. Watching the taxi lights shine so bright.
Aware of the lovers meeting on Friday night and the lonely friendless souls in the chilly, chilly, evening time.
Aware of the dirty old river flowing, flowing into the night.
Aware that the same world can be frightening and a paradise at the same time – it all depends where you are standing and what you see.
Lovers finding each other and finding themselves.
Making plans to stay. Making plans to leave.
Somewhere they’ll be safe and sound. Together.
Millions swarming round Waterloo Underground.
Every one with a story.
Every one dizzy with the possibilities of London Town.
Every one looking to be found and to be safe and sound as the chilly, chilly, evening descends.
Every one feeling London, London, all around them.
Day flows into night. Spring flows into Summer. Summer flows into Autumn and on and on, always, into Winter.
Chilly, chilly, is evening time.
But, but, look up, look around!
Gaze out on the Sunset.
The Waterloo Sunset.
Bathing London in balm.
Flooding the heart and soul with feeling.
A Feeling more powerful than all your fears.
As long as Londoners can gaze out on Waterloo Sunset they are in paradise.
I’m a Londoner all my life. I’ve lived by The River all my life.
Seventy five years.
1967 now.
I was born in the 1800’s!
London and The River. Always the same. Always different.
London, The River and me. We’ve been through a lot.
We’ve seen two World Wars. I fought in the First one.
They call that The Great War. I lost a lot of pals, London pals.
Men who worked on the River with me.
It can make you lonely thinking of them.
Sometimes, as the chilly evening descends and I look into the dark waters of the River I think I can see them still, as they were, young men with bright smiles, bright smiles, making plans for after the War.
War teaches you that God laughs at your plans.
War teaches you fear and teaches you friends can lose their heartbeat in one of yours.
London was a hard old place in the 1930s.
Depression. They called it the Great Depression.
No work. For year after year after year.
Amazing we didn’t have a Revolution.
Still, somehow we got through.
I met Daisy, my wife, walking across Waterloo Bridge.
We were both looking down into the dark waters.
Watching the River flow on into the night.
Watching the taxi lights shining as the chilly evening descended.
I suppose we were both lost until we found each other.
Then, suddenly, we were safe and sound.
When we were courting (no one uses that word anymore!) we used to meet every Friday night at Waterloo Station.
There must be millions, millions, passing through there every day.
Funny though, as soon as I saw Daisy it always seemed as if they was just the two of us.
Safe and sound together.
Together, we didn’t need no friends and no matter how dark the times or chilly the evening we didn’t feel afraid.
We had each other.
Until the Second War.
A bomb can fall out of the sky and in a heartbeat your heart is broken and never the same again.
Never the same.
I did my best with the Nipper. But a girl, especially, needs a Mother.
She went out to Australia on one of those Assisted Passages.
A Tenner taking you tens of thousands of miles!
I get a card at Christmas and she says she’ll visit in a year or so.
Maybe, she’ll get married and I’ll be a Grandfather. I’d like that.
They say I’m lucky to have a flat in this block.
I preferred it when you had a garden and streets on the ground not in the sky.
Especially when the lifts break down.
One thing I will say. You get fantastic views out the window from the tenth floor.
I like listening to the radio and watching the football on the TV.
But mainly I like to look at the world from my window. From my window.
There’s a lot going on if you take the time to look.
The River keeps on flowing.
Always the same always different.
Something to do with the way it reflects to the light.
It’s a dirty old River. Oil and tar. But, it’s my River.
They say this Clean Air Act will have it sparkling again – alive with Fish.
Not sure I will be around for that day.
People are so busy these days.
They must make themselves dizzy rushing about.
Never time to stop and stare or to say hello to an old man looking into the dark waters of the River.
I like it when the chilly evening descends.
The taxi lights shine bright and somehow people look well in the dark.
I’ve noticed a couple meeting every Friday night just like me and Daisy did.
I call them Terry and Julie after that song on the radio about the Sunset.
Waterloo Sunset.
I don’t know much about this beat music but the chap who wrote that song knows a lot about London and The River and Love and Loneliness.
It’s a song that has happiness and sadness running right through it like a river.
You can tell they love each other and that they feel safe and sound when they’re together.
I stay home at night. But I don’t feel feel afraid.
I don’t need no friends anymore.
I got my memories.
And, no matter how chilly the evening there’s warmth in the Sunset.
So I am safe and sound.
And, I know that today will flow on into tomorrow and that Spring will flow into Summer and on into Autumn and always, always into Winter.
Of course the evening is chilly.
But, looking out my window I can gaze on the Sunset.
Friends or no friends.
I gaze on the Sunset.
The Waterloo Sunset.
And, somehow, that Sunset is more powerful than any fear.
As long as I can gaze out on Waterloo Sunset I am in paradise.
Paradise. Paradise.
That song. Well, of course, it’s about a Lonely Man.
A Song by a great Songwriter leading a great Group:
Ray Davies is a Londoner.
A Londoner who grew up in a house filled with music and the laughter and warmth generated by loving parents and six older sisters.
Yet, a boy and a man, who needed solitude to give birth to the dreams, the melodies and words in his head.
A young man who found that he had a peculiarly English gift for expressing the bitter sweet aspects of life.
A writer who had been taken by his father to see the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the River in 1951 where visions of a brave new world offered unlimited promise for the decades ahead.
A writer who seeing these new worlds being born could feel and express the loss as well as the gain in the new glittering times.
A writer who could evoke dreams in black and white as well as colour.
A writer who could evoke the flow of the River, the warmth of the Sunset and the chill of the evening.
A writer who could craft a song that had love and loneliness running through it like a river.
A writer who had as much in common with John Betjeman as he did with Chuck Berry.
The Laureate of English Pop Music.
A writer who could capture the light and the shadows of the world around him.
A world he watched with deep attention.
He took in the dirty old River, it’s dark waters and the glitter of the taxi lights.
The song of The River and the view from the windows above.
He gave voice to the young lovers and the lonely old man holding them in the embrace of his voice, his words and his aching melody.
A writer and performer who could make dark waters and the chilly, chilly, evening alive before us.
A writer who could tell the story of two lovers out of the millions of people emerging from Waterloo Underground.
Ray Davies was also a bandleader and producer who could capture all those elements in a record that will live as long as the dark waters flow and the sun sets over the River.
This Day won’t, can’t come again – though you may remember it for every Day you have left to live.
Bless the Light.
Today is all we have and whatever happens today you have the absolute existential freedom to choose how you act, how your react, to whatever this Day brings.
Bless the light.
And, when you come to the end of this Day you will have much to give thanks for – not least that the lightning bolt of death has stayed sheathed in the heavens.
Give thanks for the day that is done and pray that tomorrow will dawn for you and gift you one more sacred day.
Bless the light.
And, as you walk through the world of your alloted days you will find that the steps of others will from time to time fall in step with yours.
If you are very fortunate you will find that another’s steps will match yours for mile after mile after mile and that if you lose your footing and fall behind they will stay their steps until you catch up.
Thank you for the Days.
I won’t forget a single day believe me.
Bless the light.
There will be guides and spirits along the way who will befriend and show you t e way before going their own way.
On this road of Days you will find that those who once walked so companionably by your side now seem to marched ahead or taken another turn to take them out of sight.
Yet, as you come to give thanks for another Day of your alloted number you can give thanks for the miles you shared and wish them well wherever they are on the highway of their own Days.
The night is dark and sorrow comes to us all so give thanks for the Days you shared.
Thank you for the Days.
Those sacred days.
Bless the light.
Don’t forget a single Day.
A single Day.
Another bitter sweet classic from the pen of Ray Davies brought to vivid, shimmering life by The Kinks.
One of the hallmarks of Ray’s greatness as a songwriter is the ability to tell stories distilling complex emotions we all share into endlessly satisfying three minute vignettes which are faithful both the joy and the sadness in our lives.
Ray has acknowledged that a songwriter is frequently, at the time a song is created, unaware of the effect it will have on its audience :
‘The song has grown in intensity over the years … you don’t think about it, but it’s built up quite a mystique over the years. It certainly left me. It belongs to the world now.’
That’ll do for me as the definition of a great song!
The beauty of the lyric, tenderly evocative but unspecific, is that will be apposite for so many of us in so many times and stations of our lives.
Recollection of those sacred days will always as the days pass have elements of regret.
Loss and sorrow are not to be feared in this world – they come with the territory.
The song starts as an almost busked folk song before building to a tremendous crescendo as the piano, drums and harmony vocals take the song deep into our hearts.
And, as we will see below, it’s a song that can even surprise its author with its keening power.
In 2010 Ray Davies played the Glastonbury Festival just after the death of Pete Quaife, the Bass player in the original Kinks lineup.
Pete Quaife had quit The Kinks just after ‘Days’ was recorded so playing the song must have had particular resonance for Ray as he looked out on the thronged audience (each of whom will have had their own days to remember and bless as they sang along).
The Kinks debut LP was rush released in October 1964 to capitalise on the enormous success of their third single, ‘You Really Got Me’ which shot to Number 1 in the UK Charts in mid September before hitting the Top 10 in the U.S.A.
You Really Got Me is the standout track from the LP.
Of course it bears saying that it was also one of the greatest and most influential recordings of the 1960s.
It exploded into the consciousness of listeners and fellow musicians all over the globe searing synapses with its astounding energy.
Dave Davies’ guitar solo, a product of fire and fury and a slashed little green amp, remains one of the most seismic ever recorded.
The Kinks couldn’t match the intensity of that performance on the other 13 tracks that made up, ‘The Kinks’.
Lightning is not caught in a botte to order.
11 of the other cuts on the LP are covers of Rock ‘n’ Roll and R&B classics from the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Slim Harpo.
The Kinks approach to these songs is not that of knowing reverential devotees like The Rolling Stones.
Rather, The Kinks come at these songs slant wise and when their feral energy locks in the results can be tremendously exciting.
But, as Ray Davies knew in his bones, the core of his and The Kinks creative energy was an amalgam of his (correct) sense that he was not like everybody else and thus an ideal observer of the world around him coupled with deep fraternal harmony only exceeded by fierce fraternal dischord.
The Kinks and Ray Davies in particular didn’t dream of being American.
Though they loved American Music and were inspired by it they sensed their own songs, if they were to have authenticity and authority, would have to be reflective of their own lives – reflecting Muswell Hill rather than Blueberry Hill.
The song on that debut record that demonstrated that Ray Davies and The Kinks could convey nuanced emotions and beguile an audience, as well as exhaust them, was the only other Ray Davies original present, ‘Stop Your Sobbing’.
Pure Pop for Now People!
Well … Pure Pop in the fragile melody and tremulous arrangement.
Pure Pop in the way Rasa Davies’ ghostly backing vocals shadow Ray’s lead.
Pure Pop in the way Dave Davies’ chiming guitar rhymes with our hearts as the song progresses.
Pure Pop in the way Pete Quaife and Mick Avory unobtrusively hold everything together.
But, but .. not so Pure in the emotional nuances of Ray Davies’ lyric and vocal.
Is he appalled by all the sobbing?
Or is he fascinated?
Does the sobbing turn him off or turn him on?
Is he a mixed up, frustrated, Lover or a disinterested observer carefully recording how the emotions play out?
Remember this is Ray Davies – a man of passion who is also a man of reflection and contemplation.
A Lover who can’t stop being a Loner.
A writer who has that chip of ice in the heart that tells him, whatever the situation, to observe and record.
Observe, record and remember.
There’s a Song in this. There’s a Song in this.
Ray Davies never was and never will be just like everybody else.
And, savvy songwriters with a sense of the history of Pop songwriting know that Ray Davies is a master of the craft.
A savvy songwriter like Chrissie Hynde who wanted the world to know she was special. That there was nobody else here and now like her.
She just had to have our attention and she was going to use all her resources to make sure she got it.
Most of all she was going to draw upon the deep well of her imagination.
An imagination that could relish the role reversal of a sassy woman singing, ‘Stop Your Sobbing’ and singing the hell out of it.
Singing with the seductive charm of oh, oh, won’t you be my baby, Ronnie Spector.
Singing with the, you sure gotta lot of gall, dismissiveness of Bob Dylan.
Singing with the, Oh No, no, no, no, no, dramatic soliloquy intensity, of The Shagri Las’ Mary Weiss.
Singing so our attention is immediately captured and never released.
Singing that inspired highly imaginative guitar playing from James Honeyman-Scott.
Nick Lowe produced The Pretenders version of Stop Your Sobbing in late 1979 but amazingly he thought they ‘were going nowhere’ and stepped away.
Nick, Nick, Nick – you got that one one Wrong!
The Pretenders proved to be unstoppable Hit Makers.
They had Style and they had Swagger and big time success with a Songwriter and Singer like Chrisie Hynde was guaranteed.
Now, if we are trawling the annals of modern songwriting for the, ‘Not like everybody else’ category there’s one thing we gotta do – call up the unique sensibility of Jonathan Richman!
I’m a Londoner all my life. I’ve lived by The River all my life.
Seventy five years.
1967 now.
I was born in the 1800’s!
London and The River. Always the same. Always different.
London, The River and me. We’ve been through a lot.
We’ve seen two World Wars. I fought in the First one.
They call that The Great War. I lost a lot of pals, London pals.
Men who worked on the River with me.
It can make you lonely thinking of them.
Sometimes, as the chilly evening descends and I look into the dark waters of the River I think I can see them still, as they were, young men with bright smiles, bright smiles, making plans for after the War.
War teaches you that God laughs at your plans.
War teaches you fear and teaches you friends can lose their heartbeat in one of yours.
London was a hard old place in the 1930s.
Depression. They called it the Great Depression.
No work. For year after year after year.
Amazing we didn’t have a Revolution.
Still, somehow we got through.
I met Daisy, my wife, walking across Waterloo Bridge.
We were both looking down into the dark waters.
Watching the River flow on into the night.
Watching the taxi lights shining as the chilly evening descended.
I suppose we were both lost until we found each other.
Then, suddenly, we were safe and sound.
When we were courting (no one uses that word anymore!) we used to meet every Friday night at Waterloo Station.
There must be millions, millions, passing through there every day.
Funny though, as soon as I saw Daisy it always seemed as if they was just the two of us.
Safe and sound together.
Together, we didn’t need no friends and no matter how dark the times or chilly the evening we didn’t feel afraid.
We had each other.
Until the Second War.
A bomb can fall out of the sky and in a heartbeat your heart is broken and never the same again.
Never the same.
I did my best with the Nipper. But a girl, especially, needs a Mother.
She went out to Australia on one of those Assisted Passages.
A Tenner taking you tens of thousands of miles!
I get a card at Christmas and she says she’ll visit in a year or so.
Maybe, she’ll get married and I’ll be a Grandfather. I’d like that.
They say I’m lucky to have a flat in this block.
I preferred it when you had a garden and streets on the ground not in the sky.
Especially when the lifts break down.
One thing I will say. You get fantastic views out the window from the tenth floor.
I like listening to the radio and watching the football on the TV.
But mainly I like to look at the world from my window. From my window.
There’s a lot going on if you take the time to look.
The River keeps on flowing.
Always the same always different.
Something to do with the way it reflects to the light.
It’s a dirty old River. Oil and tar. But, it’s my River.
They say this Clean Air Act will have it sparkling again – alive with Fish.
Not sure I will be around for that day.
People are so busy these days.
They must make themselves dizzy rushing about.
Never time to stop and stare or to say hello to an old man looking into the dark waters of the River.
I like it when the chilly evening descends.
The taxi lights shine bright and somehow people look well in the dark.
I’ve noticed a couple meeting every Friday night just like me and Daisy did.
I call them Terry and Julie after that song on the radio about the Sunset.
Waterloo Sunset.
I don’t know much about this beat music but the chap who wrote that song knows a lot about London and The River and Love and Loneliness.
It’s a song that has happiness and sadness running right through it like a river.
You can tell they love each other and that they feel safe and sound when they’re together.
I stay home at night. But I don’t feel feel afraid.
I don’t need no friends anymore.
I got my memories.
And, no matter how chilly the evening there’s warmth in the Sunset.
So I am safe and sound.
And, I know that today will flow on into tomorrow and that Spring will flow into Summer and on into Autumn and always, always into Winter.
Of course the evening is chilly.
But, looking out my window I can gaze on the Sunset.
Friends or no friends.
I gaze on the Sunset.
The Waterloo Sunset.
And, somehow, that Sunset is more powerful than any fear.
As long as I can gaze out on Waterloo Sunset I am in paradise.
Paradise. Paradise.
That song. Well, of course, it’s about a Lonely Man.
A Song by a great Songwriter leading a great Group:
Ray Davies is a Londoner.
A Londoner who grew up in a house filled with music and the laughter and warmth generated by loving parents and six older sisters.
Yet, a boy and a man, who needed solitude to give birth to the dreams, the melodies and words in his head.
A young man who found that he had a peculiarly English gift for expressing the bitter sweet aspects of life.
A writer who had been taken by his father to see the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the River in 1951 where visions of a brave new world offered unlimited promise for the decades ahead.
A writer who seeing these new worlds being born could feel and express the loss as well as the gain in the new glittering times.
A writer who could evoke dreams in black and white as well as colour.
A writer who could evoke the flow of the River, the warmth of the Sunset and the chill of the evening.
A writer who could craft a song that had love and loneliness running through it like a river.
A writer who had as much in common with John Betjeman as he did with Chuck Berry.
The Laureate of English Pop Music.
A writer who could capture the light and the shadows of the world around him.
A world he watched with deep attention.
He took in the dirty old River, it’s dark waters and the glitter of the taxi lights.
The song of The River and the view from the windows above.
He gave voice to the young lovers and the lonely old man holding them in the embrace of his voice, his words and his aching melody.
A writer and performer who could make dark waters and the chilly, chilly, evening alive before us.
A writer who could tell the story of two lovers out of the millions of people emerging from Waterloo Underground.
Ray Davies was also a bandleader and producer who could capture all those elements in a record that will live as long as the dark waters flow and the sun sets over the River.
The Immortal Jukebox 