From Robyn on Patreon in 2024
Waterloo Station was always my portal to London. I came up there as a child from Weybridge and Woking, as a teenager from Winchester, and then from the Isle of Wight on and off over the following years. Whole lotta Ws there. It was the first place I tasted fast food: a greasy burger flipped on a lake of singeing onions cost sixpence back in the days of Freddie & The Dreamers - and you could taste every penny. People with nowhere to go often spent the night there.

The station and the neighbourhood were scuzzy, sketchy - definitely not Chelsea, darling. The Soft Boys found a home in the fungal arches of nearby Alaska Studios, where the trains rumbling overhead sometimes left an electronic whine on the tape. Many of my songs, from ‘I Wanna Destroy You’ up to ‘Balloon Man’ were cut in its main studio there. The smell of tobacco, beer, spores and disinfectant combined to give Alaska a distinctive aroma; if you’d brought your guitar case from there, when you opened up it in LA this nasal bouquet would be there to greet you.

None of this is in Ray Davies’ song; apparently he originally called it ‘Liverpool Sunset’. But the Kinks’ manor was London, so Waterloo sounded more appropriate. As soon as I heard it, spinning around on the purple and black Pye record label, I was magnetised. It appeared in mid-1967: you can read about this and other musical epiphanies of mine in my upcoming memoir of that year: “1967 - How I Got There And Why I Never Left”. I’ve also recorded an acoustic version with Kimberley Rew and Lee Cave-Berry for my forthcoming album “1967 - Vacations In The Past”. Both will be available for pre-order soon.

To me this song evokes standing on the South Bank of the Thames, just a few hundred yards from Waterloo Station, and staring across at the orange, pink and lilac sky as dusk creeps over the river. I’ve done this so many times, just as I’ve been singing this song over 50 years now. So, any excuse to sing it again….