Good one!
The Beatles did “Lola?” 
I got “I know what I am, I’m a man, I’m a man, and so was Lola”, so no ambiguity here.
No, but those aren’t the lyrics so it don’t matter much.
Never mind. I’m retarded. After a little google research I see I’m not the only one who thought the beatles sang lola. :smack:
Heh…the thing that amazes me about even the possibility of thinking that is that the song doesn’t sound ANYTHING like the Beatles, in any of their musical periods.
It is, it is from the period when Eric Clapton joined them for vocals and competitive dominoes tournaments.
Songs do better in Cafe Society rather than GQ. MOved.
samclem, moderator
Thanks. But seriously, I didn’t think any ambiguity was intended. A naive guy meets a person who walks like a woman but talks like a man, and by the end reveals it was a man.
It could mean either, or even that the speaker is glad that he and Lola are both men. The line was intended to be somewhat ambiguous, although the rest of the lyrics make it pretty clear that Lola is a man. (IMHO the more interesting ambiguity is whether the narrator is pleased about this or not. He does tell us that he’d “never ever kissed a woman before”.)
In everyday speech I think the construction “I’m glad I’m X, and so’s Lola” would more commonly be used to mean “Lola and I are both glad that I’m X”, but the narrator of this song is telling a story and not just making a casual remark. It makes sense that the narrator would save the revelation of Lola’s sex for the end. Phrasing it in an ambiguous way also helps put the listener in the same frame of mind as the narrator was – “Wait, so Lola’s a man?”
This essentially says that Ray Davies, instead of being the cleverest and wittiest songwriter of his peers - an exceptionally clever and witty lot - was an idiot. He wasn’t.
But it really doesn’t matter, because you got the lyrics wrong. We know what the correct lyrics are: they’re in the OP. Everybody’s known them for a full 40 years except for you. Everybody else understands that the real lyrics were intended to have exactly the ambiguity that we’re talking about and it’s that extra bit of wit that makes the song so great.
Me, I like wit.
He does go on to say “that’s the way I want it to stay, and I always want it to be that way”. I think there that he’s referring to the moment just before the big reveal, but it’s not clear.
That’s a mondogreen for me too, because I always thought that was the lyric. A look at some lyrics sites and closer listen to the song, and I’m wrong.
This is not the worst of the Kink’s grammar problems. It always burns me up when I hear:
“The only time I feel alright is by your siiiiiide.”
That’s not a time. That’s a place. Either make it “the only *place *I feel alright is by your side” or “the only time I feel alright is when I’m by your side.”
Back in the day, Ray was kinda kryptic when asked about the song. He said it was inspired by two separate incidents. “Probably I wanted the incident to happen and kind of stage-managed it. I put two people through that incident, and I was one of them.”
ps: Part One: Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround is a great, great album.
Nah, it’s both a time and a place. People use places to refer to times they are there, all the time, particularly for places that were regularly returned to. “At work.” “In New York.” “At the beach.”
He only feels all right during those times when he is by your side. It’s both a time and a place.
Rock and Roll developed in part as a reaction against elitist attitudes such as yours.
Keep up the good work.
As mentioned earlier, Tommy James was the correct writer of the song. James said in an interview that if he had looked out the other window, the song might have been called “Hotel Taft.” 
And if he had written it on a real computer rather than a sham Dell…