Lola (song)
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- For other meanings, see Lola (disambiguation)
| "Lola" | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
||
| Single by The Kinks | ||
| from the album Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One | ||
| Released | June 1970 | |
| Format | Single | |
| Genre | Rock and roll | |
| Length | 4 min, 3 sec | |
| Label | Pye | |
| Writer(s) | Ray Davies | |
| Producer(s) | Ray Davies | |
| Chart positions | ||
|
||
| The Kinks singles chronology | ||
| Victoria
(1969) |
Lola | Apeman
(1970) |
Lola is a popular song by the Kinks which details an encounter between a naive young man and a person named "Lola" in a Soho club. The single, taken from the album Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, was released in June, 1970, and reached #2 in the UK charts and #9 in the US. It was chosen for the List of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 (ranked #422).
Contents |
[edit] Lyrical ambiguity
There is a lingering question as to Lola's gender caused by the fact that the lyrics include several ambiguous passages. The question is whether Lola is a woman who looks and acts like a man or a man who looks and acts like a woman (possibly a transvestite or transexual).
One of the key lyrics is "I'm not dumb but I can't understand/Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man" which many take to indicate that Lola is a man dressed as a woman, although it could just as easily mean that Lola is a very masculine woman. The singer adds that "when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine," and "she picked me up and sat me on her knee." She is clearly very masculine indeed.
Other lyrics such as "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It's a mixed up, munged up, shook up world/'cept for Lola" indicate that the song is concerned with gender confusion. This is also supported by the notion in the song that the narrator is not the most manly man. The narrator is portrayed as naive, weak, and as having "never ever kissed a woman before." He is obviously not, as he says in his own words, "the world's most masculine man".
The most telling lyric likely occurs during the bridge, in which the narrator/singer, realizing Lola's true nature, reacts violently. He sings, "I pushed her away, I walked to the door, I fell to the floor," then the lyrics continue suggestively "I got down on my knees, then I looked at her and she at me." And then "I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know what I am and in bed I'm a man/so is Lola."
By Ray Davies' own account (see below), the song was inspired by a transvestite.
[edit] Inspiration for the song
In the book The Kinks: The Official Biography, Ray Davies says that he was inspired to write this song after the band manager Robert Wace had spent the night dancing with a transvestite. Davies said,
| I remembered an incident in a club... Robert Wace had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really on to a thing here.’ And it was OK until we left at six in the morning and then I said, ‘Have you seen the stubble?’ He said ‘Yeah,’ but he was too pissed [drunk] to care, I think. |
Accounts also indicate a similar incident occurred at about the same time during a Kinks European tour in the mid-1960's, cementing the song's scenario in Davies' mind for later use.
In late 1969, Davies' father encouraged him to focus his energy on writing another worldwide hit single after a long dry spell for the band, and "Lola" was the result. Davies and the Kinks spent extra time and effort recording and crafting the song at Morgan Studios in London during early 1970.
[edit] Album version vs. the single release
Originally released as a single in the UK by Pye records in June of 1970
- Pye 7N17961
The first single release of this song had to be censored slightly: not because of its controversial sexual content, but because of the mention of Coca-Cola on the original version. The BBC refused to play the single because of this commercial reference, and so it was re-recorded with the phrase cherry cola instead. Davies actually had to fly back to England from a tour in the US to overdub the master tape, then return to the US; this true story was widely used in the song's promotion on AM radio.
A second rumour about the censorship also exists: that the reference to Coca-Cola was in fact an underground term for cocaine, and therefore unacceptable for play on the BBC.
The altered single was available only in mono while the album version was available in stereo.
[edit] Covers and other versions
In 1971, a rocked-out instrumental version of the song was released by the Kinks on the soundtrack to the film Percy.
"Lola" was covered by The Raincoats on their 1979 album The Raincoats, Bad Manners on their 1993 album Fat Sound, and also by Madness on their 2005 album The Dangermen Sessions Vol. 1.
The song was also covered by Andy Taylor of Duran Duran in 1990.
In 1981, "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded a parody of the song, which he called Yoda, replacing "Lola" with the character Yoda from Star Wars.
In 2004, brit pop-rock bands McFly and Busted covered Lola, as a b-side on McFly's first single.
In the Futurama episode, "Amazon Women in the Mood", Zapp Brannigan sings a spoken-word karaoke version of Lola, but replaces "Lola" with "Leela".
In his book 'Have A Nice Day', Mick Foley claims that he wrote a song to the tune of Lola, called 'Boner', which he performed at his high school talent show w/ the BP (Brothers Penis). Foley and the BP were stripped off the crown of $40 worth of Chinese food because the song was deemed 'inappropriate'
In 2005, transsexual musician Dana Baitz recorded a cover version of the song, telling the story from Lola's perspective.
[edit] Trivia
Soho and nearby locations in London feature in several of Ray Davies' other songs, including "Denmark Street" and "Life on the Road".
Lola was also mentioned in another Kinks song, Destroyer.
[edit] External Links
[edit] References
- The Kinks. Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround: Part One. Reprise, 1970. First reissued CD in 1987.
- Morris, Jeff. ""Details for Yoda - "Weird Al" Yankovic ." The Doctor Is In!. rec.music.dementia. 03 Feb. 2006 <http://mypage.iu.edu/~jbmorris/cgi-bin/plinfo_view.pl?SYN060243>.
- Savage, Jon. The Kinks: The Official Biography. London: Faber and Faber, 1984.
