(Thinking further about the Q&A thread regarding the reasons behind books and films having different names in different countries...)
My favourite story in this theme is the one behind why The Kinks' song "Lola" was originally banned by the BBC.
You may recall the song - the lyrics describe a young man falling in lust with a beautiful woman one night. When they later hop into the sack our hero discovers that Lola is a he, not a she.
Not surprising it was banned you say?
Well, the reason given for the banning by the beeb was that the original lyrics included a reference to Coca Cola. Being a non-commercial institution, a brand name could not be mentioned over the airwaves - that was just not on!! The Kinks redid the lyrics, substituting the word "cherry" for "Coca", resubmitted the song and got a clean bill of health! (Apparently the story behind the song went straight over the Censors' heads - though when I consider some of the antics we hear about in British politicians' private lives, I wonder if they were really that near sighted?)
stales
Dear stales: you have a talent for generating excruciating suspense. I know neither had a cherry, but never mind what they drank. Who did what to whom? Violence like my Manila story, or joyous jiving? (yuk) Tonstant weader fwowed up.
http://kinks.it.rit.edu/YCLIU all lyrics to all songs by The Kinks. All will be revealed.
Hi, tsumn!
Dear consuelo, console me, I went to your site, did search for "Lola" and got some garbage about "Paranoia, the Destroyer". Nothing salacious at all, sob, sob.
My dear. Follow me. Click on the link. Go to the far right and scroll down until you see the box marked Lyrics and Chords. It's not very far down. On the left within that box is a box marked Song Lyrics. Click on that. The songs are in alphabetical order. It takes a little while to load all of the titles. Scroll down to #215. Click on it et voilá. All will be revealed.
Well, somebody had to do it!!
Lola / The Kinks
Lyrics by Ray Davies
I met her in a club down in old Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola [LP version: Coca-Cola]
See-oh-el-aye cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said Lola
El-oh-el-aye Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not the world's most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Well we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said dear boy won't you come home with me
Well I'm not the world's most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
I pushed her away
I walked to the door
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Well I left home just a week before
And I'd never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear boy I'm gonna make you a man
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
La-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
Lola la-la-la-la Lola la-la-la-la Lola
stales
I woulda, Stales, but I'm just not sure about copywrite laws. Easier to post the URL. Bruck Bruck Braaaaaaawk.[chicken-e]
The way I see it, the lyrics became public information once published on the web and, by attributing them to Ray Davies, I think we're safe.
stales
Dear stales: you are a titillating tantalizing tease. Spell out the sordid story. What was the denouement, the denutting of the phony filly?
Seeing them do Lola live was always really good. The recorded version was rather flat by comparison.
Bill: Get your brain out of the gutter and read the lyrics. That's all there is, old son!
Dear CK: Please don't give me a lecture until you read stales first post, about Lola being a transvestite who got in bed with him. I merely wanted to know how that episode ended.
Bill, the wonderful thing about these lyrics is that they can go either way, just like Lola!
I merely wanted to know how that episode ended.
and CK's point is that it's just a song about a man and his transvestite. what more could you want?
Stales said only change censors made was to eliminate commercial reference. The lyrics made no mention about bed, so I concluded censors had deleted more than just "Coca". This is a bait and switch.
Why, Bill, you just have to use your imagination. Did he ackshually go home with her? Didn't he say that was the way he wanted it to stay? What did he mean by that? Think, man, I'm givin' it all I've got here![not!]
Deviating a little from the path here, when I worked at the cosmetics counter of a large drugstore chainHi, Wally!my best customers were what I called "Lolas".
The way I see it, our hero INITIALLY said, "No" and pushed her away but - in the penultimate and final verses - there's a hint that he succumbed and was led away.
stales
Well, you see Stales set up a scene, and then abandoned it. That's why I said bait and switch. I have no interest in transvestites, but I do wonder how I would react if such a denouement had been sprung on me. I think I might have vomited, but I sure as hell would not have cared to participate any furher. Fooey on Katoeys. Double fooey on jade flutists.
this seems like an apposite time to bring up the aside that this song (Lola) is the source of a mondegreen. as printed above, the ultimate verse reads:
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...
if you search the net you'll find that many folks hear this as:
But I know what I am and in bed I'm a man and so is Lola
this makes it much less ambiguous, which of course is far more satisfying for a certain type. (I wonder if you could use mondegreens as a sort of rorschach test?)
So, tsuwm, are you saying we should color stales Monday Green?
It always amuses me in retrospect about all the ruffles put up about certain songs in the mid-Sixties due to sexual imagery, or supposed sexual innuendo. I'm a Kinks freak from way back, and love all their work...and
Lola was, as said, one of those judged lyrically startling for its time. Among others the list would include are The Kingsmen's
Louie Louie (so garbled I still don't think anybody knows what they were really saying), The Standell's
Dirty Water, and Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels'
Sock It To Me Baby!. You could actually go all the way back to Little Richard...just what
was it that Miss Molly sure liked to do? But then, after all this "controversy," just a few short years later in '72, Lou Reed charts a Top Twenty hit with
Walk on the Wild Side! How quickly times changed!
By the way, here's a great music site where you can look up the background and history to every artist and every song ever recorded in every genre!
http://AllMusic.com And there's a link there to a sister site for all classical music.
Thanks for the link, Sweet WO'N. It's handy indeed. And oh my, speaking of changing times--have you listened to current pop music lately?? Yow.
on blue berry hill..
there was an effort to have this song censored in NY back in the 50's...
and another commercial site with a music database (all song, all artist, all titles,) and down-loadable rippers and burners for them that have read/write cd's is
http://www.gracenote.com
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola
In the Kinks' recording, the word at "muddled" is indistinct, but it is clearly a word of one syllable, not two. Draw your own conclusions of what it may be.
I think it was in Reader's Digest that I read J. Edgar Hoover at times cross-dressed. But nobody ever dared to make a song about it.
See-oh-el-aye cola
[rant]What kind of cr*p is that? Why not just write "C-O-L-A cola"? [/rant]
As to the ending of the story, everybody knows that what Lola wants, Lola gets...
The Kinks were such a great band. The story goes that, to produce the desired dstortion in their guitars on "All Day and All of the Night" they stuck needles into the speakers in their amplifiers. I've always loved their song "Better Things" too. Well, not always, but ever since I heard it...
The Kinks were such a great band. The story goes that, to produce the desired dstortion in their guitars on "All Day and All of the Night" they stuck needles into the speakers in their amplifiers. I've always loved their song "Better Things" too. Well, not always, but ever since I heard it...They must've been new speakers. When I first saw them (let me count the years ... not) they didn't need to "produce" the desired distortion, their speakers were so knackered that they were rattling in their boxes.
I was playing in bands at that time (and for years afterwards), and I solved the problem of producing humbucking-type distortion by having my brother-in-law, who was an electronic technician, alter the amp circuitry so that I could get "11 out of 10" (hi there, tsuwm and Nigel!). He basically replaced the standard Holden pre-amp circuitry with Marshall pre-amp circuitry. You overdrive the pre-amp and a nicely, unevenly distorted sound is presented to the power amp to fire at the speakers. I don't believe that the Kinks didn't know about this if I did!
Producing electronic sustain was a completely different problem. Sheer volume is the only real answer to this in terms of the big boys ('ello, Led Zep, Deep Purple and Jimi), but the rest of us used various kinds of electronic gimcrackery to get what we wanted or near as dammit, at lower volumes. The pickups on my Gibson SG were specially overwound (as were Pete Townshend's), and I put the output from my Strat through a box which attenuated the sound to some extent before it hit the amp.
And despite what Keiva has said above (I think it was him), the Kinks didn't substitute anything for "muddled" in their live performances of Lola, or at least not the two I saw. Unlike the Stones' "Star Star", where they did substitute words on stage - "fuckin'" for "proper" - Jagger belting it out with gusto and with unsubtle pelvic thrusts for every substitution.
See-oh-el-aye cola
[rant]What kind of cr*p is that? Why not just write "C-O-L-A cola"? [/rant]
Mercy, Honey, calm down--it was just a phonetic spelling intended to illustrate the way it sounds in the song, ok?
{Aside--hmm, possibly another victim of the rush-through-to-catch-up malady, which I expect to fall victim to any old time now.)
See-oh-el-aye cola
When copying the text from the link I considered altering it to C-O-L-A but thought that the original poster's effort to get the sounds across was interesting and innovative. I've not seen it done this way before and, for the song under discussion, it doesn't matter. It'd be the way to go however if the letter Z was involved in the rhyme - "zee" or "zed" depending where you're from.
.... ecks, why and zee
Now I know my aye - bee - see
Won't you come and play with me
stales
FWIW, I'd pronounce see-oh-el-aye as coli. And as we're online, why not make it e-coli?
aye? Eh?
Oh eye, aye see.
stales
Coca-Coli...mmmmmm!