On the night the Kinks finished recording “Waterloo Sunset”, in April 1967, the long-suffering wife of the 22-year-old Ray Davies drove him from the studio down to the riverside spot. Ray wanted to see whether he’d got it right. He stood on the bridge, surveyed the scene, decided that he had and told her to drive him home. For the next twenty years, the women in Ray’s life would be his chauffeurs. In his mid-forties, he met one he liked who couldn’t drive, so he was forced to learn. He took his first test in Wood Green in north London, went up a busy side street with his foot quivering on the clutch and, he tells me, “ran over a lady”. He got out to help but forgot to put the handbrake on, so the car rolled over her shopping.
Five tests later, he passed: at 8am in Woking, sockless and emboldened by alcohol from the night before. Now he is “just another person on the road”. His instructor forgot to do roundabouts with him, so he hates the North Circular. He also hates the Dartford Tunnel. And he still gets lost in south London.
Content from our partners
