Huge crowds turned up to see Ray Davies‘s headline set in the Acoustic Tent at Glastonbury tonight (June 26).
The Kinks legend played an hour-long greatest hits set that saw fans inside and outside the tent sing along for the duration.
Davies had the audience in raptures as he played an extended version of ‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’ early on – stopping and starting the song several times and ad libbing its lyrics throughout.
“I’m feeling really good about this,” Davies quipped before playing a spirited version of ‘Sunny Afternoon’.
Davies‘ laid back approach continued throughout his set. He turned ‘Dead End Street’ into a rockabilly pastiche, before ordering his band to stop playing so he could scat the song’s lyrics a capella.
On a break between songs, he asked the crowd, “You don’t mind if I drink do you?” before picking up a nearby can of beer and yelling “Stella!” into the mic.
At the song’s end, he and his band left the stage, thanking and waving at the audience on their way off.
After a short break, Davies returned to the stage and sang a nursery rhyme-like version of ‘Days’ a capella, garnering a huge response from the crowd.
Davies then introduced what was scheduled to be his final song of the evening – ‘All Day And All Of The Night’ – as “the tune that no record company wanted to buy”.
He then left the stage for a second time, but with the crowd chanting “we want more!”, Davies returned once again to perform perhaps his best-loved song, ‘Waterloo Sunset’.
Stripped down to a simple acoustic ballad, he had the whole crowd singing along. After singing the “I am in paradise” line from the song, Davies stated “so am I”, and again left the stage – though again he returned and kicked straight into ‘Lola’, his last song of the night.
Ray Davies played:
‘I Need You’
‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone’
‘Til The End Of The Day’
‘Apeman’
‘Dedicated Follower Of Fashion’
‘One More Time’
‘Autumn Almanac’
‘Sunny Afternoon’
‘Celluloid Heroes’
‘A Well Respected Man’
‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’
‘Dead End Street’
‘Tired Of Waiting For You’
‘Days’
‘All Day And All Of The Night’
‘Waterloo Sunset’
‘Lola’
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