@@kathysmith5674 The song is from the 70s (just) and was from just before the time when it was OK to be openly gay. Bowie and glam-rock probably had something to do with that. And if you think it was easier to be gay, even in post-glam rock seventies, than it is now, you really weren't paying attention.

@@kathysmith5674 I also lived in the 60s and 70s. Gay people, especially at work or otherwise in the public eye, had to hide their sexuality in a way that just doesn't happen today.

@@kathysmith5674 You don't remember 'queer-bashing', then? You don't remember homosexuality being actually illegal in England and Wales until 1967 and in Scotland and NI until 1981? You don't remember poor old Wilfred Brambell and cottaging? You are either deluded or come from some strange artistic/theatrical/hippy background unlike ordinary people.

@@timarmstrong3251 There was plenty of openly gay poeple in the 70's in the UK, don't believe the propaganda.

@@timarmstrong3251 I lived in the 70's too, plenty of openly gay men. But most didn't talk about it becasue it was nobodies business.

Half right, their manager was in a club in paris with the band, they told him the next morning.

nooo! nooooo!!!!! lul

@@stevenknight1198 Parisian transvestites are far more refined than their London counterparts lol

My wife thinks "in a dark brown voice" could mean Lola was black. Could that be true?

@@Dr.PlatoZorba That I don’t know. I’ve only seen accounts of the actual incident. They never really said too much about Lola himself

And this in 1970.

Lola is glad the narrator is a man. The lyrics are ambiguous.

@@seanmatthewking In the late 1960's and early 1970's, you HAD TO BE ambiguous if you wanted to tell such a story, in song like this! The British sense of humour MASTERED the "double entendre", primarily because of "public decency laws" about stuff happening in the world that we ALL knew about! Songs, plays, books, were all censored to "protect" public from "outrage", which is why DH Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" wasn't FULLY published until 1960, even though it was written in the 1920's! The Kinks broke a lot of taboos with this song, as did a few others at the time!

It's such a clever line - obvious in context what he means, but there's a tiny bit a wriggle room that people have grasped onto for 50 years.

Second only to the Beatles

You’re so right there, buddy!

That was only Ray Davies with a different band .

One of the most influential bands of the sixties, some great songs

I was 11 when Lola came out, no pun intended. I didn't understand completely, but I knew there were hidden meanings and I've loved it since I first heard it. It's a bit of harmless fun that still makes me smile.

I hope that you soon managed to replace what your mother took away. This band has an incomparable collection of songs, the third part of the Stones/Beatles debate.

😆 I remember hearing it on a.m. radio when it came out, and I lived in a podunk town in the Midwest. Lovely, but a pretty conservative part of the country.

Wow, really?

@@jemmajames6719 Maybe those old fogeys just didn’t know what it was saying, but yes. It was on a.m. radio for weeks and weeks. 😆

Strange that as it hardly lifted an eyebrow in the UK.

I see what you did there. 🤣

@@danjohnson2986 :) I knew some would pick up on that! Also a very great old classic.

Said, "Hey, Babe...."

Love Lou Reed

More like Lola WAS a walk on the wild side!

Spot on, I think Dee thought so too😜

That is one of my favorite song lyrics for its wit and its intentional use of ambiguity. As an honorable mention in the use of ambiguity, I like the line in the Eagles' Life in the Fast Lane, "They went rushin' down that freeway, messed around and got lost / They didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off" which has three obvious meanings.

I swear, listen to it again. I believe he's actually saying, "well, I'm not the world's most masculine man. But, I know what I am, in the bed, I'm a man. And so is Lola.". I swear that's the actual lyric. And works better.

@@rohe4077 lol no, those aren't the lyrics.

I always though the lyrics were "I know what I am, what I am is a man, and so is Lola". It's amazing how many lyrics I've been wrong about over the last 55-60 years! I guess every girl/woman I've ever known has been right. I don't listen! Lol

She was packin' sumpn 🤣

That wasn't a pistol in her pocket. She was just happy to see him.

Lola would fit in today.

😅😅😅 You guys are cracking me up.

Lola remains my favorite. I once wanted my to do a cover of it but the singer didn't agree to sing those lyrics ! A shame. Adding to those you chose I also like a lot Apeman and All day and all night…

Much more than hits !!!! Fantastic and diverse brilliant albums !!!

Ape Man is my favourite

Wonderful songs. The lyrics of Autumn Almanac are beautiful too and Dedicated Follower of Fashion is sublime.

There might be one from the 1920s. I have it on my laptop and USB, but I will look on KZfaq for it to link it. It gives hints but could be taken two ways.

Yes that but also BBC radio wouldn't play it . Same thing happened with some Beatles songs

@@shanenolan8252 It was banned by the BBC, but as niteowl789 said, only because it used the word Coca-Cola. The ban was very short lived as the song was quickly re-recorded substituting cherry cola for Coca-Cola and the ban was immediately lifted. The song was banned in Australia for it's content. Although there were a few radio stations in the US that wouldn't play it, it was never actually banned here.

@@ptournas yes i remember that coca cola thing and the re recording. But banned anywhere for any amount of time , counts as banned. Lots of songs get banned or forbidden to be played for various reasons.

@@shanenolan8252 Technically true even though the BBC ban was lifted before the single was even released.

@UCeiP_ZMrIi6eLMVcZ-n8Fow i agreed with that . Did you not rrad that . No shovel. And i dont need a shovel to talk about radio censorship in the 60s and early 70s . The reason something is banned like copyright infringement are a separate Matter . And other comments mentioned other countries didn't they bob ? ( America and Australia)

No presumption about it they have stated that it was poking fun at one of their band mates, who did not catch on to the fact he was dancing with a trans.

@@markkauder1288 It was their manager actually.

He actually said the inspiration for the song was “One of our crew at the time met this beautiful blonde and he took her back to the hotel. In the morning, he saw the stubble growing on her chin. So, he got a surprise!”. But he didn't say the song was about that, he said Lola was a character he created, "“When I write songs, I put myself in the part ...In Lola’s journey, I did a bit of research with drag queens.” _scource: The New York Times, Dec. 2, 2020, ‘Lola’: Still Inspiring at 50_

At the time he was well known around Soho. He was well known to Ray Davis. For people not in the UK there is more tolerance here than a lot of countries. Gay sex has been legal since 1967. Lesbian sex has never at any time been illegal. The first open lesbian was elected to our parliament in 1972. Our current parliament has 45 elected LGBT MPs.

Just like The Stones had to change "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together".

What's White and slides across the Ballroom Floor? .... Come Dancing!

The Soho is Soho London

Soho is a seedy area in London it’s like London’s red lights district..like Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley or Sydney’s Kings Cross.

Yes, Love conquerors all!

It says everything when he refers to her as "my Lola"... That's love

Thanks, it's not many that state the truism of how great the music and arrangement is, Rays melodies were as innovative as his lyrics, the man's a genius in my book.

Waterloo Sunset, You Really Got Me, All Day and All Of the Night, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Dead End Street, Autumn Almanac, Days, Come Dancing, Sunny Afternoon

No, it's not that it couldn't be played in the UK. It just couldn't be played on the BBC, because they aren't allowed to have anything that even sounds like an advert. Change it for the non-branded "cherry cola" and it was ok.

@@donaldb1 Yeah I am sorry To an American there is little difference between the two I always assumed back then that the BBC was all the UK had

Better than the Beatles, love the kinks

Seems to be forgotten that not everyone was a Beatles fan,there were many other great bands

The BBC wouldn't play it due to product placement, which was banned on the BBC at the time. Ray Davies had to fly back from a US tour to record the Cherry Cola lyrics.

nothing wrong with these lyrics.

Play "Black Messiah" by the Kinks.

@@AL-jb1mh Sex reassignment surgery started in Germany in the 1931. The first one performed in America was in 1950. The one that was widely publicized was Christine Jorgensen, an American who went to Sweden for the change in 1952. By 1968 there were already 5 major hospitals in the U.S. Even in junior high in 1962 I remember us kids making jokes about it.

@@AL-jb1mh Shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. And before you say "I lived through this time" you still clearly don't know what you're talking about. Do us all a favor, and shut up with your reactionary crap.

@@AL-jb1mh I too am just tired of the pronoun crap and most if not all of the sex change attempts were horrible failures but they were stepping stones that led to the success all the current indoctrinated can now enjoy

@@AL-jb1mh I'm sick of all this nonsense also. Too many people indoctrinated for way too many years. Don't go to college go to trade school. SNOWFLAKE GENERATION

@@AL-jb1mh Jorgensen didn't go to Sweden because it was illegal in the United States, it simply hadn't been done yet here. The doctor the of the three sex change operation patients in Germany fled the country in 1933 as Hitler was rising in power, one of the three doctors who performed the operation one also left the country, another tried to flee, but was denied a passport. He spent the next four years frequently moving and changing his name before comitting suicide in 1937. only one of the three doctors remained in Germany throughout the Third Reich. All the operations took place before Hitler took power. The patients were two actors and one painter. No I didn't go to school in California. You seem to base your ideas about people on wrong assumptions, just like your ideas about history. Didn't talk about it or know about it? I'm going to assume that you're probably younger than me, because even 12 years after her operation there were periodic stories and interviews in national magazines like Life, Saturday Evening Post and Readers Digest about it, and less frequently short articles in the newspapers. I don't what it was like in Michigan, but I lived just north of Boston, and we didn't lead sheltered lives as kids. All the kids I knew by 12 years old were capable of reading newspapers and magazines and most parents didn't try to hide the real world from their kids. Sure we were more interested in the comics, the sports and what was playing at the movies in the papers, but when you're 13 and you see a story headlined "Ex-GI tells what it's like after changing into a woman", it piques your interest. You find it weird and funny and tell your friends about it and the next thing you know you're all making up jokes about it. Nobody may have talked about it to their kids, and I never heard adults discussing it around us. I'm sure they if they were asked about it they would have talked to us about it. But we were quite aware of what was going on in the world back then. Like I said, you may be younger than me, and by around '64 the story finally seemed to be losing it's appeal in the media, but Dave Davies was a year older than me and Ray Davies three years older than me, so I'm quite sure they were as familiar with the Jorgensen case and probably familiar with the B-movies that came out concerning sex changes in the late fifties to the sixties. Two came out in the same year as the song, one directed by Bob Clarke called She-Man, and he later went on to direct "A Christmas Story" and "Porky's". So it's quite conceivable that this story could have been about a man who had a sex change. Doesn't mean it was or wasn't, could be based on a transvestite or just a composite character of both with no actual person as it's subject.

I'm GLAD I'm a man... makes a big difference. Is Lola glad or a man?

@@randy8297 Splitting hairs there bro 😄

@@RicoBurghFan That's what ambiguity does.

@@RicoBurghFan Not really, it makes a huge difference. Is Lola glad the author is a man or glad Lola is a man.