What ‘Tired of Waiting For You’ by The Kinks is really about
It involves Winston Churchill
“The Kinks are like the NHS, they remind us of who we are,” iconic filmmaker Julian Temple said in his film, Imaginary Man, a documentary on Ray Davies, the mastermind behind The Kinks.
Released as the band’s third single in 1965, ‘Tired of Waiting For You’ was their highest-charting hit only tied with ‘Come Dancing’ released in 1983. It was one of the first songs Davies wrote and remained an instrumental tune until ’65 when Davies finally wrote lyrics for the track while en route to the recording studio via a tube train.
The track was reminiscent of that classic guitar sound that the Kinks established with previous singles ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day And All of the Night’. These were simpler times and bands had to rely on analogue technology and hours upon hours were spent in the recording studio just to edit 10 seconds of a track. There were no distortion pedals at this time, so how exactly did The Kinks establish that classic proto-punk and gritty guitar sound? They did so by slashing their amps with razor blades, and it created a ‘natural’ distorted sound.
Fellow Kinks member and brother of Ray, Dave Davies, recalls recreating this signature sound on ‘Tired Of Waiting For You’:
