September 13, 2024 —– Chart #263
Hello Music Friends,
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. We are in 1970 today with a great sing-along tune. “Lola” is a song by the English rock band the Kinks, written by frontman Ray Davies for their 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. The song details a romantic encounter in a Soho bar between a young man and the eponymous Lola, who is possibly a trans woman or cross-dresser. In the song, the narrator describes his confusion towards Lola, who “walked like a woman but talked like a man”, yet he remains infatuated with her.
The song was released as a single in the United Kingdom on 12 June 1970, while in the United States it was released on 28 June 1970. Commercially, “Lola” reached number two on the UK Singles Chart and number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. The track has since become one of the Kinks’ most popular songs and was ranked number 386 on Rolling Stone’s 2021 edition of its “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.
Ray Davies has claimed that he was inspired to write “Lola” after Kinks manager Robert Wace spent a night in Paris dancing with a cross-dresser. Davies said of the incident, “In his apartment, Robert had been dancing with this black woman, and he said, ‘I’m really onto a thing here.’ And it was okay 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 [intoxicated] to care, I think”.
Drummer Mick Avory has offered an alternative explanation for the song’s lyrics, claiming that “Lola” was partially inspired by Avory’s frequenting of certain bars in West London. Avory said:
“We used to know this character called Michael McGrath. He used to hound the group a bit, because being called The Kinks did attract these sorts of people. He used to come down to Top of the Pops, and he was publicist for John Stephen’s shop in Carnaby Street. He used to have this place in Earl’s Court, and he used to invite me to all these drag queen acts and transsexual pubs. They were like secret clubs. And that’s where Ray [Davies] got the idea for ‘Lola’. When he was invited too, he wrote it while I was getting drunk.”
Ray Davies claimed to have done “a bit of research with drag queens” for the song’s lyrics. He has denied claims that the song was written about a date between himself and Candy Darling – Davies contends the two only went out to dinner together and that he had known the whole time that Darling was transgender.
Well, I don’t know what story is the right one, and frankly don’t care. This song is catchy and fun, that’s all that matters to me. Play and sing along, it’s fun!
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw