Lola (1970) The Kinks
Ever since Little Richard left his native Georgia dressed in satin, costume jewelry, and displaying equivocal mannerisms; and above all, from the moment in which the British singers of the sixties let their hair grow beyond their necks, generations of parents and grandparents did not miss the opportunity to blurt out that set phrase: "You don't know if it's a boy or a girl"
With this single, taken from the Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One album and released on June 12, 1970, The Kinks upped the ante even further, putting the whole issue on the table. And it is that «Lola» talks about the attraction that a boy feels for a transvestite whom he meets in a nightclub. Ray Davis predicted gender blurring ten years before Boy George made it fashionable.
Davies himself commented years later on where the inspiration for the theme came from. The group's manager, Robert Wace, spent a night dancing in Paris with a companion who, at first, seemed to be a very beautiful woman. At the last minute, Wace discovered that the first impression of him was wrong. According to the drummer of the Kinks, Mick Avory, what the song tells is something that he also knew in some West London bars, frequented by drag queens and trans.
"He wanted to write a hit," says Ray Davies. But it wasn't just the song. The key was the musical design. It wasn't a power chord track, like 'You Really Got Me'. There was a fifth chord (power chord) at the beginning. I needed a special acoustic guitar sound…loud, insistent, on the attack.”
However, «Lola» is appreciated today for another virtue, and that is that it was a clear anticipation of glam rock. «This song ‒writes Federico Romagnoli in Onda Rock‒ appeared in June 1970. T. Rex had not yet released 'Ride A White Swan', the masterpiece that inaugurated the era of glam. However, if we look closely, 'Lola' already contains many of the elements of glam: a muscular rock, a strong folk component (think of the acoustic guitar that serves as the introduction), a catchy and foul-mouthed chorus, a state of ambiguous and morbid mood… Of course, the orchestral component and the feeling of excess typical of Marc Bolan's pieces are missing. However, it is clear that the Kinks had understood the direction of this new style»
«Recorded and released in 1970 ‒adds another Italian critic, Claudio Lancia‒, Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One is a concept album whose bite is directed at the world of the recording industry. It was written after an unpleasant series of contractual circumstances, with which the band had stumbled. The album aspires to be, in the words of Ray Davies, a true 'celebration of artistic freedom', obviously including that of the author himself. The LP, one of the most appreciated by critics and fans of the Kinks' vast discography, is an eclectic stylistic mix, which starts from the bluegrass of 'The Contenders', crosses the declensions of the pop universe, more or less Beatlesian, and modulates the guitar riffs that undoubtedly anticipate hard rock . The list of songs is ennobled by the presence of 'Lola', one of the most successful singles of the English band, considered one of the first examples of glam rock, both for its musical implications (a powerful folk-rock that anticipates what would be T. Rex) as per the text, which tells of a meeting in a Soho club between a man and a transgender person. 'Lola', the first Kinks song released with keyboardist John Gosling, reached number two in the UK charts and number nine in the US, becoming one of the year's best-selling singles. .
