Re: the song 'Lola's place in the concept narrative: my mind was blown when I read the following interpretation online: have since forgotten the source, may have been the late great CapnMarvel's music review site, anyway here it is: 'Lola' is the protagonists hit single. It totally makes sense: think about it, all the songs before 'Lola' are about pre-fame, and all the songs after about post-fame life. That can't have been a co-incidence. I truly believe that 'Lola Vs Powerman etc' is the Kinks most cunningly sequenced thematic LP. At first glance it just seems like a grab bag of stuff with a vague umbrella theme but eventually you realise piece by piece that nothing on this LP is where it is by accident, even the hit songs that had to be included like this one and Apeman. It doesn't hit you over the head with it's story, but it's there, masterfully laid out, waiting to reveal itself to you if you give it the time. And this isn't even my favourite Kinks album, far from it, but I do think it's the most carefully and subtly assembled in that respect. .. now this is not to take away from the literal intepretation of the song in the storyline either, as laid out by Mark above. Indeed the Denmark Street/Soho connection is a great spot. I take it as the events of Lola happened to the protagonist and then he wrote the song, so it's both at once. And of course in the real world Lola was very specifically designed as a hit single, and became one, not as a debut for the band as in the story on the LP but as a re-launch that gave them a new signature song for the new decade and indeed the rest of their career, recasting them as something entirely distinct from the 60s hangovers they were in danger of otherwise being perceived as. In the context of the album, this song is seriously meta!
The 1970 Top Of The Pops performance. This is one of only 3 Kinks TOTP performances the BBC bothered to keep in their official archive (others I've posted on here were saved by others) and has thus been repeated endlessly over the years, as the only contemporary footage of the song at large becoming almost the de facto video. It is a great clip though, you can see the their joy at being on top again, and John Gosling makes his public debut (looking particularly hirsute here)
An amazing track, and I liked this as a teenager before I had much of an idea who the Kinks were. But at this stage I have probably come to like the b-side just as much, if only because it is less familiar.
I think that is part of the reason I always loved this band, even when I knew very little of their material. There is something, special, personal, about them. They're different, unique, but not in a pretentious, or avant garde way.... they just created this special world in which only they exist.
Nice observation from @ARL and @ajsmith .... I hadn't even thought about this being "the hit". Cheers
I remember when this first came out on the radio. Being drawn into the story and then the great reveal. I guess I would have been around twelve years old and recall laughing and thinking it so cleverly worded. Yes Exactly. I mentioned upthread about how I was thinking of taking a line or two from the lyrics of each song to weave together the overall narrative. And then how I was stumped when I came to Strangers. But when I looked at ‘Lola,’ within the parameters of the album, that’s the conclusion I came to. That this is the band’s hit song. Lola: perfection. Truly a masterpiece.
Of course, the title of the album reinforces the idea that "Lola" is the hit song. It's "Lola" the song versus the powers that be.
In Kink, Dave said they nicknamed John Gosling 'Baptist' because he looked like how they imagined John the Baptist would or should have looked like. Strangely, Dave also says "in spite of his classical training he was a talented musician who possessed a genuine enthusiasm for our music and had a unique creative flair."
And/or Lola the person? emphasizing this is a positive portrayal of the transvestite character in the song. Very lyrically ground-breaking. Lola is one of the best pop songs ever written and it bestrides this album like a colossus. I have never got tired of it.
It's an interesting statement, but to some degree contextually true. Often classically trained instrumentalists are at a loss if they don't have a piece of paper telling them what to play in front of them. Conversely, most non-classically trained players are at a loss if they do have a piece of paper telling them what to play.... obviously there are exceptions..... for rock music, unless you're playing with Zappa, being classically trained can be a hindrance
Yes, Lola isn't meant to be part of the narrative. It's a hit single and how the band and music industry deal with it - hence Lola (and the band) VERSUS Powerman and ... The song itself could be about sand castles in Nevada. What happens to a band when they have a hit comes next.
And some (like that hilarious story Pete Quaife told about himself) look at the piece of paper upside down!
Well, I said the Top Of The Pops clip is the 'de facto video' upthread, but I'd temporarily forgotten that the Kinks plc put out an 'official lyric video' last year to promote the 50th box. It's designed by Chris Garrett and Mick Kidd, creators of the absurdist collage comic strip 'Biff' which ran in UK newspapers in the 80s and 90s, and which to be honest I've never been able to make head nor tail of.
Or if you really fancy a laff, check out this incredibly literal video made in 1985 for the UK programme The Golden Oldie Picture Show, the brief of which was, in a post MTV 80s world. to create promo videos for older songs that didn't benefit from having one at the time. The problem was, the new videos were often rather low budget and overly literal. Check this out from around 10 minutes in, introduced by The Kinks old trombone playing pal from the Mr Pleasant clip, Dave Lee Travis:
Lola I love this song, always have, but it doesn't hold that special place in my heart like so many of these other Kinks songs. I feel this, as described by Avid @Fortuleo, immensely: It is one of the best songs of the 1970s. Dave's guitar lines are almost like a chorus in and of itself. So immediately catchy and recognizable. It is indeed very Kinkian, with Ray/Dave vocals, and Ray's lyrical wizardly ("electric candlelight") and the pattern of opposites in the lines: "Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy, but when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine" "Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand, why she walked like a woman and talked like a man" "She picked me up and sat me on her knee" "Well, I'm not the world's most passionate guy, but when I looked in her eyes, well I almost fell for my Lola" "Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls..." "She said, "Dear boy, I'm gonna make you a man."" And of course that great ambiguous line at the end: "Well I'm not the world's most masculine man, but I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man, and so is Lola." The klassic kwuestion: Is Lola also a man? Or is Lola also glad that the singer is a man? Or is it both? I think it's both. I agree with this theory completely, and I am glad so many of you all mentioned this: This is the "hit". Ray knew exactly what he was doing, and sequencing this album. The rise up, the peak, and then the aftermath. It's neither here nor there whether the "story" of Lola was something that the singer of the band experienced at some point in the past. This is the Billy Shears song of Sgt Pepper's band. If you look at the tenses of the songs, Intro/The Contenders, Strangers, Denmark Street, and Get Back In Line are all sung in the PRESENT tense. You are in the narrative of the rise up. Lola, the hit song, may be something that the singer experienced (its in the PAST tense), or it just may be a made-up story from the singer. But it itself is a story. It's like the "play within a play" of Hamlet, if I could make that comparison to another famous writer from England. And then pay attention to the tense in the next few songs we will discuss. We will be back in the PRESENT tense. We are back in the concept. Let's see where it goes.
Especially when the organ comes in. It's a wonderful song, a great recording, and a highlight on an album full of them. Lola is my favorite Kinks album by far. It's also the last one (chronologically) I own. I'm looking forward to Muswell Hillbillies and beyond, as I need more Kinks in my life. I'm looking to this thread for guidance.
It was Ken Emerson in his Kinks entry in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, who pointed out a prototype of "Lola" that existed 6 years before. It was actually the B side of their debut single, "Long Tall Sally", "I Took My Baby Home", Ray's debut as a songwriter. It's about a guy who brings his gal home & she's not acting too feminine, hugging her guy "like a vise" & giving "pile driving kisses". This wasn't the way women were usually portrayed in song back in 1964. I suspect Ray had this in back of his mind when he wrote "Lola". As for the song itself, a perfect hit single that people still remember to this day. It's also has Ray's touch of ambiguity, especially at the end. Is Lola glad that the protagonist is a man or is she a man? A highlight of Side One because it is The Hit Single. There was actually a time that I didn't care to hear it in concert, especially when Ray would play a couple of bars & say "We're not going to play it tonight" & then play it anyway, but I made my peace & now enjoy the song.
Rushing out the door in a moment to take my kids to their respective schools and may be back to add more later, but wanted to make a handful of observations about "Lola" before I forget: (1) Obviously 5/5. Not a thing I would change. (2) The muddy/murky production perfectly reflects that feeling of a drunken late night when everything sort of blurs together and hours feel like minutes. Probably just happenstance, but Ray Davies is so damned clever and subtle he could easily have done it on purpose. I feel like this song's story spans several hours from meeting Lola to trying to run away to saying screw it, whatever. (3) Everyone (not anyone in particular here, just the general everyone) always seems to say the song is about Lola and that the bog reveal is that "she's" a transvestite, but actually the song is about the narrator and his experiences as a naïve young man (fresh from the village green?) in the big city and in fact Ray Davies cleverly gives the "reveal" plausible deniability due to ambiguous phrasing: Lola could be an unusual woman, a man in drag, a transsexual, who knows? Let the listener decide. Maybe a good way to get around any "moral" objections: "No, that line means Lola is also glad I'm a man!" (4) The story that Ray Davies wrote a hit by design: doubtful, or why could he not do so in the several years before or after this? Also, would he really stake his chances on a song "about a transvestite"? I doubt it. I think it was just the right sound at the right time and a fluke. A wonderful fluke. Great, great single!
Lola I don't really play this track a lot these days because I'm in danger of becoming over-exposed to it. Lots of listens over the years beginning with the worn out single right through to last years release. It must be on more of my Kinks albums than any other track but I will forgive that because, as well as being the best track on the album, Lola is a masterpiece in the Kinks catalogue. Great lyrics, great music, and great production. I always assumed that "a dark brown voice" was that of a heavy smoker but now I am not so sure. On those occasions when I used to drink and smoke a lot my voice would take on a different tone, or timbre, the following morning. This was pointed out to me many times but it didn't need to be because I could hear it myself. Did Ray use this lyric to confirm Lola had a deep manly voice rather than someone who smoked? If the answer to this question is yes then how do we explain the line “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola.” Emphasis on the word "except" here. Does this mean Lola IS a woman? In a world that boys and girls can be mixed up then the singer seems certain Lola is a woman. So we all know the story about Ray having to break off a tour of the US and return home to redo the single for the BBC but how exactly did that come about? Was it the intention to just release the album track as a single? If so, when, and who waved the red flag? At what point did the BBC say the single was unplayable?
