(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 28 March 2026 14:00, UK
Once you become known as the man who wrote ‘You Really Got Me’, the ultimate rock rebellion of the 1960s, appeasing those expectations becomes something of a chore, particularly if – like Ray Davies – you are positively brimming with songwriting masterpieces.
A songwriter of lesser quality might have seen the otherworldly, transatlantic success of a track like ‘You Really Got Me’ in 1964 and spent the rest of his days aiming to recapture that same youthful adrenaline. While Ray Davies certainly had his follow-ups in tracks like ‘All Day and All of the Night’, he quickly moved on to more ambitious – albeit less commercially successful – climbs.
Capturing the phoney nostalgia of middle England on The Village Green Preservation Society and soundtracking the era of angry young men on ‘Dead End Street’, Davies wasted no time in establishing himself among the most versatile writers of the Sixties.
There was substance behind that Carnaby Street style, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Davies was totally free of expectations. Having amassed a reputation as the rebellious, working-class voice of the swinging sixties, penning a soppy love song was largely out of his expected mandate.
Nevertheless, in 1967 Davies released perhaps his ultimate masterpiece, in the form of the pulchritudinous ‘Waterloo Sunset’. With harmonising vocals, a gentle rhythm, and a Dave Davies guitar line far less angular than ‘You Really Got Me’, the single was certainly out of character for The Kinks, which is perhaps why it took the songwriter so long to actually introduce the track to his bandmates.
During a 1995 interview with Goldmine, Davies recalled, “It started as a real personal song. […] I knew I’d done my best work. It was a good piece of work when I finished the song, not when I made the record.” Explaining, “I wanted to keep it inside me, keep it for me.” After all, this was the late 1960s when the personal emotions of men were not supposed to be uttered to even their closest comrades, never mind the music-buying population of the entire world.
“It’s a very selfish thing and also very stupid, lack of business sense,” Davies continued, lamenting his trepidation at the thought of sharing such a vulnerable song. “That’s why I took my time making it, and I gradually let it out in small bursts because everybody had to like it in the band.”
Luckily, everybody did like the track, and the single ended up becoming one of The Kinks’ most successful, peaking at number two in the UK singles charts, kept from the top spot by the inarguably inferior ‘Silence Is Golden’ by The Tremeloes.
To be fair to Ray Davies, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ has such a timeless quality to its quintessentially English romanticism that it likely wouldn’t have mattered if he had kept it under his hat for another few months, or even years. There was never any doubt that the song would succeed as Davies’ ultimate masterpiece, encapsulating everything that made The Kinks’ songwriter such a defining voice both in the Sixties and beyond.
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