In 1968, I became one of the “millions of people, swarming like flies round Waterloo Underground”, not to mention hopefully mooching my way round the underground music movement that was just gathering pace as I left school.

The previous year, the Kinks had released this classic single, and, as an 18-year-old, you don’t pick your station: you travel from where your parents live to the station that interfaces with London. Mine happened to be Waterloo. The fare was two quid, which I borrowed from my mum.

My journey up to London happened twice a week after I left school, hoping to sell my songs to some eager A&R man and become the next Cat Stevens. My most regular visit was to a talent scout called Peter Shelley at Decca’s head office at 9 Albert Embankment. Twice a week during the summer of 1968, I took the train from Hampshire, through the back gardens of Clapham and up into the big glass shape of Waterloo, from where I walked for half an hour along the Embankment to Decca.

This was freedom at last. People say that the “Terry” and “Julie” in the song were Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, but I don’t remember caring who they were. I’ve since read that Ray Davies said they were two friends of his. The words just threw an atmosphere at me – I didn’t analyse them intellectually. The song Waterloo Sunset rang around my head every time I walked through the real Waterloo sunset twice a week, watching 100 Terries and Julies, and millions of other flies.

There was a resigned, happy feeling to the song. I had been surprised when the band who had come up with All Day and All of the Night so early on suddenly started doing lighter songs such as Sunny Afternoon and Dedicated Follower of Fashion, songs that owed something to the wittier side of the Beatles and the tone of musical theatre.

It was a fascinating combination, and it couldn’t have happened the other way around. Starting out as a mean and lean rock-pop band gave them licence to kill when it came to changing to the more inventive, observational, “down the pub” songs that really lie at the heart of Davies’s writing.

Most people who love the song have probably never seen a real Waterloo sunset. I remember hundreds.

Mike Batt’s latest album, A Songwriter’s Tale, is just out

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