What a privilege it was to be at the Royal Festival Hall last evening for what must have been the gig of the year, if not the decade. I may have to revise this statement in the days and weeks to come, but it surpassed even the sublime Leonard Cohen at the O2 in 2008, a concert about which I went on at length, here.
Alexis Petridis had everything right in his review for The Guardian, but he didn't give much of a sense of what it was like to be there. I can't remember such an atmosphere at the RFH, and I must have been a hundred times over the years: Baba Maal at his peak, even the great Ray Charles didn't set the place alight like the ex-Kinks man did last night.
To combine a rock band, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and a 92-voice choir - the exceptional Crouch End Festival Chorus - and produce something greater than the sum of the parts was a remarkable achievement. And to be able to play so many of the best songs from the last fifty years, and still have the likes of Waterloo Sunset, You really got me, Sunny Afternoon and Lola in reserve for a glorious multi-encore just goes to show what a great songwriter Davies is.
It'll remain with me for a very long time, not least because the first half was given over to the first ever complete live rendition of the Kinks' 1968 classic The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society. Simply superb.
As long as they gaze on the Waterloo sunset, they are in paradise. Four thousand delirious souls were in paradise last night, as the sun set over Waterloo.
There's not much on Youtube yet - no doubt because most of those present were far too old to own a camcorder, or know how to operate the equivalent iPhone app - but there is this: Days indeed!
