Trebay writes: "In his 20s, when he sought a life beyond the straitened circumstances of his upbringing, he became a favorite of the London tabloids that relentlessly chronicled his relationships with the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Julie Christie. His romantic life was at one point so well known that he and Ms. Christie inspired the 'Terry and Julie' in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset,' released at the height of the mid-1960s music and fashion scene known as Swinging London."
If we go over to Genius.com to find the lyrics, we see: "Terry meets Julie, Waterloo station/Every Friday night/But I am so lazy, don't want to wander/I stay at home at night/... Millions of people swarming like flies 'round/Waterloo underground/But Terry and Julie cross over the river/Where they feel safe and sound."
We don't get the sense that we're hearing about beautiful celebrities, and in fact, there's an annotation:
It has been speculated that this line is about the relationship between actor Terence Stamp and actress Julie Christie, who starred together in Far From The Madding Crowd the year the song was released, but Davies has denied this on several occasions.
"It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country."
Who are you going to believe — The New York Times or some random annotator at Genius? Can't I presume the Times checked the assertion? Or is this an example of that old journalistic adage: Too good to check.
I decide to do my own checking and Google "It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country." Now, Google doesn't google like it used to. It intrudes on the old searcher/search-results relationship with its "AI Overview." In this case, the intrusion is unusually up in my business:
My dream! Isekai?! Google, back off. And don't put that "dream" in that psychological profile of me you might be assembling. I'm not dreaming about my sister. I'm checking this Ray Davies quote.
I switch to Grok, but it's hard to tell what it's done with the many repetitions of the original idea and the Davies denial: "Davies has repeatedly dismissed the Stamp/Christie interpretation. In his 1994 autobiography X-Ray, he explicitly denied it. He reiterated this in a 2008 interview, describing the song as 'a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country.' In other accounts, Davies has elaborated that the characters represent the aspirations of his sisters' generation, drawing from personal family memories—such as his sister Rene and her husband emigrating to Australia, or time spent with his nephew Terry Davies during his teenage years.... There are hints of possible conflicting statements from Davies over time. Some sources and fan recollections suggest he may have playfully acknowledged or not corrected the rumor in the past, leading to speculation that he changed his story. For instance, in a 2015 interview, Davies reflected on the song as 'a kind of film,' where 'Terry would be Terence Stamp and Julie would be Julie Christie,' but this seems more like a hypothetical musing than a confirmation. Overall, his consistent public stance since the 1990s has been a denial, emphasizing the song's roots in personal, non-celebrity nostalgia."
I'm going to take the position — based on the text, not on what Davies has said or not said over the years — that the Terry and Julie in the song are not Terence Stamp and Julie Christie. The Terry and Julie in the song are an ordinary couple that ride the subway. Terence Stamp and Julie Christie must have had far more glamorous modes of transportation. It's just a coincidence that the names are the same. But it's such a good story. No, it's not. It undermines the meaning of the song.
But weren't they beautiful?
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28 comments:
Stamp on Brando
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOXTeJAyOaM
He comes off as a very charming smart guy.
One of my favorite old songs. Stamp was in great form in “The Hit” and “The Limey”, the two films that stand out for me.
Not a lot films that I saw. As for Julie Christie, she's one of those actresses that looks very beautiful from one camera angle and then looks sorta odd from another.
Why would Stamp and Christie meet at Waterloo Station? They odn’t
Now do Brenda and Eddie?
Jack and Diane?
Candy and Ronnie?
Young Terence gives off a Robert Shaw vibe...
I never understood the Julie Christie mystique.
AI Overview: Terence Stamp, the British actor known for his "brooding silence".
Lazarus said...
“Now do Brenda and Eddie?
Jack and Diane?
Candy and Ronnie?”
I was just at a wedding over the weekend. If you go by their middle names (which neither one does), the bride and groom were William and Kate.
“But weren't they beautiful?”
Julie certainly was. I kept hoping the bees would get to Terry. But he was pretty good as Clark Kent’s father.
"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls,
It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world, except for Gina Lollobrigida."
Great scene from The Limey, where Stamp lays out a criminal scheme to a black American gangsta, in his full East End accent. There's a pause, and the gangsta replies, "The only part of that I don't understand is every fucking thing you just said."
RR
JSM
one of those actresses that looks very beautiful from one camera angle and then looks sorta odd from another
So, even odds.
General Zod was probably my introduction, he was only 30 then
"General Zod was probably my introduction, he was only 30 then."
Huh? Superman II was released in 1980. If Stamp was 30 in 1980, he was born in 1950. However, Terrance Stamp was the eponymous hero of Billy Budd, costaring with Peter Ustinov and Robert Ryan. Stamp was quite young then, but he wasn't 12.
in the original (1978) he had a brief segment with Sarah Douglas and the other guy, who played his henchman,
"Billy Budd" is an unaccountably obscure film. It's based on an unfinished story by Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Foretopman and quite shocking in its treatment of justice in practice rather than theory.
Great scene, Mr. Mosby. Another actor from The Limey passed away in April ‘25… Nicky Katt.
you can kind of see the subtlely of Stamp's performance, vs Sheehan playing the same character by screaming his lines,
stupid Zach Snyder, of course Mario Puzo worked on the first script,
Is Billy Budd the film as unaccountably obscure as Billy Budd the opera by Britten?
Come to think of it, did you mean obscure in the sense of little known, or in the sense of hard to follow? Or both?
The "other guy" was Jack O'Halloran. The script called for him grunt rather than speak, which was another weakness of a generally weak movie, IMAO. O'Halloran did an effective job in Farewell, My Lovely as Raymond Chandler's hulking and lovestruck ex-con, Moose Malloy, playing opposite Robert Mitchum as the rusty knight-errant, Philip Marlowe, and Charlotte Rampling as la femme fatale. Great movie. I recommend it highly. (Bonus: Sly Stallone has a bit part as a wheelman for some rather colorful gangsters.)
"Is Billy Budd the film as unaccountably obscure as Billy Budd the opera by Britten?"
Obscure only in the sense of being little known and difficult to obtain for viewing. It's available through Amazon Prime, but you'll be lucky to find it by browsing rather than searching by title.
Many years ago, I watched a VHS of a Met production of Billy Budd. In the immortal words of Damon Wayans and David Allen Grier, hated it!
well its a sentimental favorite or two, yes the first half hour of opening could have been trimmed, the suggestion, was they formed a trio of brain, deception and brawn, Zod as the strategist, Ursa as the seductress assasin and the muscle,
Mike Mazurki was a far better Moose Malloy, but Dick Powell was no Philip Marlowe.
Robert Montgomery's version from Lady in the Lake was promising, although Bogarts was the first version,
Marlowe not the other character, kind of like Clive Owen's latter day Spade
Elliot Gould, on the other hand, is the anti-Marlowe.
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