{"id":8424,"date":"2013-01-01T21:06:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T04:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=8424"},"modified":"2013-01-01T21:06:37","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T04:06:37","slug":"the-kinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2013\/01\/the-kinks\/","title":{"rendered":"THE KINKS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

\u201cWaterloo Sunset\u201d<\/strong><\/h1>\n

THE KINKS<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"\"WRITTEN BY:<\/strong> RAY DAVIES<\/p>\n

RECORDED:<\/strong> PYE RECORDS STUDIO,
\nLONDON, MARCH 1967<\/p>\n

PRODUCED BY:<\/strong> SHEL TALMY AND
\nRAY DAVIES<\/p>\n

RAY DAVIES:<\/strong> VOCALS, ACOUSTIC GUITAR<\/p>\n

DAVE DAVIES:<\/strong> ELECTRIC GUITAR,
\nBACKING VOCALS<\/p>\n

PETE QUAIFE:<\/strong> BASS, BACKING VOCALS<\/p>\n

MICK AVORY:<\/strong> DRUMS<\/p>\n

NICKY HOPKINS:<\/strong> PIANO, HARPSICHORD<\/p>\n

RASA DAVIES:<\/strong> BACKING VOCALS<\/p>\n

DAVID WHITAKER:<\/strong> STRINGS<\/p>\n

FROM THE ALBUM:<\/strong> SOMETHING ELSE (1967)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

One morning in February 1967, Ray Davies rolled out of bed and there was a song waiting for him. \u201c\u2018Waterloo Sunset\u2019 came to me in a dream,\u201d Davies says. \u201cI woke up and it was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the song that turned into one of the Kinks\u2019 signature hits and an enduring anthem of London began as a love letter to a different city. \u201cOriginally, I wanted to call it \u2018Liverpool Sunset,\u2019\u201d Davies reveals. \u201cI loved Liverpool and Merseybeat. But you know what they always say as advice for writers\u2014write what you know. I knew London better than I knew Liverpool, so I changed it. \u201cWaterloo was a pivotal place in my life,\u201d he continues. \u201cI\u2019d seen Waterloo sunsets. I was in St. Thomas\u2019 Hospital when I was really ill as a child. Later, I used to go past the station on my way to art college. And I met my first girlfriend\u2014who became my first wife\u2014along the embankment at Waterloo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Appropriate for a song born in a dream, the lyric had a dappled, impressionistic feel that\u2019s more about mood than linear storytelling. As Davies free-associated on memories of his youth, two names spilled out unexpectedly. \u201cAs soon as I sang \u2018Terry and Julie,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cit seemed that they didn\u2019t need description. I like to let the listener do some work and conjure up some images in their own way.\u201d<\/p>\n

On March 12th, the band gathered in the tiny basement studio at Pye Records to tackle the backing track for Ray\u2019s new song. It was recorded live to four-track. But exactly who produced the session has long been subject of debate. During the making of Something Else<\/em>,
\nthe Kinks and Shel Talmy ended their partnership. Davies has said that he wasn\u2019t happy with early takes of \u201cWaterloo Sunset,\u201d so he produced it himself. Talmy disagrees: \u201cAll the records in which I was listed as the producer, I produced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wherever the truth lies, there\u2019s no disputing that the band\u2019s performance was magical. After Davies added his lead vocal, he overdubbed a cascading choral arrangement of \u201coohs\u201d that featured his brother, bassist Pete Quaife and Ray\u2019s wife Rasa. But there was still one final touch needed. \u201cWe messed around with various guitar ideas before we finally put the guitar part through a tape delay,\u201d recalls Ray\u2019s younger brother, Dave Davies. \u201cIt was almost like a \u201950s-type triplet delay\u2014and it worked like a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a springtime ripe with such dream-like classics as A Whiter Shade of Pale<\/em> and Strawberry Fields Forever<\/em>, the Kinks\u2019 single was perfectly in sync, climbing to
\nNo. 2 on the U.K. charts. For Davies, one early memory about the song\u2019s first chart run stands out. \u201cI remember a moment with Jimi Hendrix when we were on Top of the Pops<\/em>
\ntogether,\u201d he says. \u201cWe met in the corridor, and he said, \u2018Man, I love your tune.\u2019 And he played \u2018Waterloo Sunset\u2019 with that wonderful Hendrix feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hendrix wasn\u2019t the only one taken by the tune. Pete Townshend called it \u201cdivine,\u201d while Paul Weller and Blur\u2019s Damon Albarn have declared it\u2019s their favorite song. Critic Robert Christgrau called it \u201cthe most beautiful song in the English language.\u201d Rolling Stone<\/em> tagged it number 42 on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.\u201d It has since been covered by artists ranging from David Bowie to Peter Gabriel. In 2010, Davies revisited the song for his See All My Friends <\/em>album with duet partner Jackson Browne.<\/p>\n

While Davies enjoys different cover versions of his signature song, he admits, \u201cNothing can recapture the original Kinks record. When my brother\u2019s guitar comes in, something magical happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Bill DeMain<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWaterloo Sunset\u201d THE KINKS WRITTEN BY: RAY DAVIES RECORDED: PYE RECORDS STUDIO, LONDON, MARCH 1967 PRODUCED BY: SHEL TALMY AND RAY DAVIES RAY DAVIES: VOCALS, ACOUSTIC GUITAR DAVE DAVIES: ELECTRIC GUITAR, BACKING VOCALS PETE QUAIFE: BASS, BACKING VOCALS MICK AVORY: DRUMS NICKY HOPKINS: PIANO, HARPSICHORD RASA DAVIES: BACKING VOCALS DAVID WHITAKER: STRINGS FROM THE ALBUM: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5264],"tags":[5659,5475,5658,5660,5656,5657],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8428,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8424\/revisions\/8428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}