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Stations En Route to Ray Davies Film Masterpiece: ‘Return to Waterloo’
11.23.2010
05:44 pm
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Haymarket, Edinburgh

I once met Ray Davies in a bar. I literally bumped into the great man just as I was exiting the toilet. Which isn’t the most auspicious place to meet a pop legend - between cubicle and urinal - or to announce an undying love for the man’s god-like talent.  But ‘carpe diem’ and all that, so I did, and also said how brilliant I thought his film Return to Waterloo.  Considering the amount of daft punters, myself included, he no doubt has to deal with on a daily basis, The Kinks’ genius was exceedingly gracious and kind.

Waverley, Edinburgh

I guess it was because I was rather middle-aged in my teens that unlike my contemporaries, who were out drinking, taking drugs and enjoying the folly of youth, I was at home the Friday night Return to Waterloo aired on telly. I’m glad I was, for Davies film was an incredible piece of TV, and unlike anything I’d seen before.

Looking back, it was a daring commission by the broadcasters, Channel 4, for here was a first time director’s film with no real plot, no dialog, just a series of vignettes tied together by a cycle of songs, about the day in the life of a Traveler (played by the superb Kenneth Colley) - his hopes, his fears, his desires, his failings, his loss. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But believe me, it was.

Waterloo Underground

The film erupts out of a dark railway tunnel into a summer’s day. The Traveler wanders a railway station, through its crowds, then follows a girl with blonde hair, a newspaper headline with identi-kit picture - a rapist / murderer is on the loose. The Traveler follows the blonde (a memory of his missing daughter? a possible victim?) down into the underground, he passes a Busker (Davies, himself), and follows the girl along the platform. An underground train approaches. The Traveler’ nears the platform’s edge, its lights bleach out his face, and suddenly, as the day’s events rattle by, we return to the beginning.

It’s an opening that makes you sit up and take notice, as we are presented with several possible scenarios. Are we watching a murder mystery? A thriller about a missing daughter? A tale of sex/adultery/incest? It soon becomes clear these story-lines are unimportant, as what Davies is doing is something far more clever, subtle and personal.

Davies was thirty-nine when he made Return to Waterloo and it is filled with the disillusion of a man creeping towards his middle age and possible mid-life crisis. At the time, Davies was splitting up from his lover, Chrissie Hynde, with whom he had a daughter, and the film is tinged with a remorse for family life, for things that could have been, the pain of love lost. The question is how much does the Traveler represent Davies? How much is it a refraction of his own feelings?

Dear lonely heart, I wish things could be the way they were at the start…

But as we see, they can’t.  Actions, or the lack of them, bring their own unexpected results. 

Clapham Junction

Ken Colley has a list of credits from The Music Lovers, through Ripping Yarns to Star Wars and Return to Waterloo. He is one of cinema’s and television’s greatest character actors - a far better performer than most leading men. Colley does what many actors forget to do, he acts with his eyes.  When you watch Colley, you know what his character is thinking, what he’s feeling, what is going through his mind.

The train journey is a metaphor for the Traveler’s life, in much the same way as Sylvia Plath once used it to describe her pregnancy:

Boarded the train there’s no getting off

Nearing Waterloo Station, the Traveler fantasizes of a way of “getting off” - by giving his younger self the keys to his future, here’s what will happen, kid, here’s what you can do.

Lime Street, Liverpool

Did you know that Waterloo Sunset was originally Liverpool Sunset? It was Davies’ paean to the city he loves:

“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.”

Waterloo Station

As we approach our destination, there’s a question: why did Davies call his film Return to Waterloo? What was he returning to?

Millions of people swarming like flies ‘round Waterloo Underground
But Terry and Julie cross over the river
Where they feel safe and sound
And they don’t need no friends
As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset
They are in paradise

This description from Waterloo Sunset does not fit with Britain in the 1980s. The sixties promise of “paradise” has been bartered and sold, by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Tory policies during that decade knew the price of everything, but the value of nothing. But let’s not get too political, for the next song is as much about a private heartbreak as it is about public disillusion.

Now all the lies are beginning to show,
And you’re not the country that I used to know.
I loved you once from my head to my toe,
But now my belief is shaken.

And all your ways are so untrue,
No one breaks promises the way that you do.
You guided me, I trusted you,
But now my illusion’s shaken.
...

We had expectations, now we’ve reached
As far as we can go.

London

Return to Waterloo reaches its destination, a brilliant and original film, which leaves one wondering why Davies hasn’t written and directed more for film and television?

A few years ago, a friend told me Ray Davies allegedly has this burning ambition to write a sitcom - now wouldn’t that be something?
 

 
Excerpts from Ray Davies’ ‘Return to Waterloo’ after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.23.2010
05:44 pm
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Save the 100 Club - The Fight Continues
11.19.2010
04:45 pm
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The campaign to Save the 100 Club continues apace with support from a host of rock musicians including Mick Jagger, who came out in support of the campaign earlier this month saying:

There’s a real need for these places - they have a connection with the past. And what is important is that you have places where bands can cut their teeth and places of a certain intimacy and size, that new bands can experiment in. There aren’t that many great places in London, or indeed any city, that you can say that about.

Jagger isn’t the only legend offering his support, Ray Davies of The Kinks has said:

Simon Cowell should underwrite the money needed to save the 100 Club, that would be a real payback. The amount of money he takes out of pop music he could put some back in. I’‘m very concerned about the 100 Club, The Kinks played there and it’s such an iconic venue we shouldn’t allow things like that to close down. Everything is being overrun by the chain stores and the conglomerates and it such a pity that the 100 Club has to suffer like that.

Other musicians including Mick Jones and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie have also spoken out against the possible closure, while Brian Travers from UB40 said:

It feels like live music is being pushed out of our cities to make way for car parks and duplex apartments. You are not on your own, all over the UK small live venues are being closed down. Just last November in Birmingham, the city’s premier live music venue The Rainbow was threatened with closure as well as noise abatement orders because a private property company had built downtown duplex apartments for the upwardly mobile who now don’t like the sound of downtown and wanted to turn it into a haven of peace and tranquility, live music being the first noise they wanted to mute.

This is a much bigger issue than just a noisy musicians being told to turn down the volume, this an all out attack on the UK’s finest export, music. If we are not careful our culture will be irreversibly damaged. As you have quite rightly said pretty soon there will be no where left for young bands to learn their craft.

Steve Diggle from The Buzzcocks said:

The 100 Club is as important as St Paul’s Cathedral!

While Frank Black from The Pixies has pledged £100,000 to the campaign and Liam Gallagher wrote a letter in support saying the 100 Club is “very rock n roll” and that its a shame as he “fancied playing there with the mighty Beady Eye.”

Save the 100 Club organizer, Jim Piddington tells Dangerous Minds that £150k has already been raised, but more is needed if they are to reach the target of £500k. A fund-raising gig is to be held at the venue on Thursday, 25 November, headlined by Specials guitarist Roddy Radiation and the Skabilly Rebels, and a line-up that also includes Chas Hodges, and a selection of “very special guests” who “are also expected to join the bill”.

If interested in attending the gig or in Saving the 100 Club please check details here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
 

Save the 100 Club


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.19.2010
04:45 pm
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Kinks feud continues: ‘You’re not a genius. You’re a fucking arsehole.’
10.30.2010
01:13 pm
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You’ve really got to hand it to Dave Davies: neither a stroke, nor advanced age, has seemed to mellow the former Kinks guitarist’s… intense hatred for his older brother, Ray. If this new interview from the Daily Mail is anything to go by (!) don’t expect the famously feuding Muswell hillbillies to reform the Kinks anytime soon, if ever. This is classic!

“The last time we were all together was at my 50th birthday party.

Ray had the money and I didn’t, so he offered to throw it for me.

‘Just as I was about to cut the cake, Ray jumped on the table and made a speech about how wonderful he was. He then stamped on the cake.”

A Kinks reunion? Never! Not since my brother Ray stamped on my 50th birthday cake (Daily Mail)

Below, a clip of Dave Davies performing “Death of a Clown,” a song about the great Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame. From the Kinks LP, Something Else.
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion of Berlin, Germany!

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.30.2010
01:13 pm
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National Geographic: “Shangri-La” Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons
11.18.2009
07:10 pm
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An archaeological team that discovered caves full of Tibetan manuscripts in the Himalayas thinks it could be linked with the fabled paradise of Shangri-La. Real, or History Channel fodder? Read on…

A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in “sky high” Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery.

The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang?

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.18.2009
07:10 pm
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