The Herman’s Hermits classic “I’m Into Something Good” has the following lines in the chorus:
I walked her home and she held my hand
I knew it couldn’t be just a one-night stand
The use of the term “one-night stand” seems a bit daring for a 1964 feel-good pop song. In addition, the overall context of the lyrics implies that this relationship hasn’t been consummated (yet). So is there another, non-sexual meaning of that term in which these lyrics use it?
From Wiktionary:
one-night stand ( plural one-night stands )
An occasion when a performer or team of them (especially in vaudeville) expects to perform at a theater for a single evening.
(idiomatic) A single sexual encounter between two individuals, where at least one of the partners has no immediate intention or expectation of establishing a longer-term sexual or romantic relationship. As the phrase implies, the relationship lasts for only one night.
The first was always my understanding of it. Probably Gerry Goffin and Carole King meant the same. Perhaps their song contributed to the recalibration of the term?
One-night stands were originally single-night appearances in a theatre or show, either as a comic act, a musical act or a dramatic production such as a solo performance or recitation.
I don’t know what Herman’s Hermits are referring to exactly, but it sounds like they are using one-night stand to mean a single date.
A related term in older songs that might sound overly risque for the time is ‘making love’, but back then it meant the process of courting or ‘pitching woo’, not the actual sex act.
Charitably, in spite of being way in the past, 1964 was not the height of Victorian prudery. So, a commonly understood euphemism for sex would not have been the least bit shocking, particularly to the target market for Rock n Roll.
Yes, that’s also how I interpret the lyrics. I was wondering if that was a commonly understood meaning of the term at the time. Maybe it wasn’t, and they’re borrowing the term from the established show business usage you and others have mentioned?
Wasn’t a defining feature of 1960s culture much greater sexual freedom, a move away from judgmental attitudes and prudishness, especially for women?
Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street” also uses the phrase:
He’s got this dream about buying some land
He’s gonna give up the booze and the one-night stands
And then he’ll settle down
In some quiet little town
And forget about ev’rything
That could mean he’ll stop the casual promiscuity on the road but much more likely it refers to the musicians standard practice of moving from town to town for one-night performances.
Etymonline.com gives a 1963 date for the sexual meaning of “one night stand” so it’s possible that Gerry Goffin, who wrote the lyrices, to have slipped a double entendre past the straights.
Except that the next line squashes that theory.
I walked her home and she held my hand
I knew it couldn’t be just a one-night stand
So I asked to see her next week and she told me I could
No sex. Not even an invitation inside the house. They made a date for the next week. Even in 1964, that’s as innocent as can possibly be.
Etymonline has the phrase “one-night stand” first appearing in the sexual sense in 1963. It doesn’t have the context of the first usage, but I assume that’s in print – as these etymological sources tend to be – and print generally lags spoken usage by a bit.
ETA: DAMMIT, Ninja’ed
I wouldn’t be surprised if the sexual definition wasn’t as well known at that time but slipped into the song anyway for the few who would understand it. I was just a kid at the time, it took a music video age revival of the song before I had the chance to reconsider what it meant.
And looking at it a different way, referring to a one time date has the same meaning, it’s just the meaning of ‘date’ that has changed.
Sure, but as far as I know (I wasn’t around then), this process occurred during the sixties, and the cultural attitude of the early decade were quite different from those of the later part. I’m not sure which stream 1964 would fall into, but overall the song sounds rather innocuous to me, more akin to well-behaved 1950s music than late-60s revolutionaries.
I was going to make the same comment. I was a kid then, but at least a US kid.
IIRC, in 1964 stuff was still mostly late '50s prudish. But with more nudging and winking.
A couple years later the Pill, sexual freedom, and hippies and free love burst onto the scene like a bomb. And even then were much bigger in California and a few other forward-looking places than they were in, say, Iowa.
IMO as applied to that song in 1964, “one-night stand”, meant simply “a one-time event”. He’d just had a nice date and was saying he really wanted there to be a second such date.
Even now in 2021 I and other contemporaries use “one night stand” in contexts other than dating to mean nothing more than a one time event. As applied to dating it’s probably 90% assumed to mean having sex, but even then there’s room for one-time gettogethers short of sex.
The 60’s, in the cultural sense, didn’t start in 1960. They ran from about 1964 (when the Beatles became international) to 1975 (end of the US/Vietnam War.)
My older sister turned 18 in 1960. I turned 18 in 1969. Different worlds. But I remember the early 60’s, and they were a whole lot like the 50’s.
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Up to then there’d only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Also, there were different versions of songs floating around, so the song on the radio, the song performed for a live audience, and the song on Ed Sullivan might be three different versions.
Sometimes, apparently, the song played on the radio now of a sixties pop song is a song that was either recorded in the late 70s, long after the song was a hit, or even remastered from a live version, which is apparently a thing that can be done now, and is worth doing for a raunchier version of the lyrics.
I don’t know that that is the answer here: I’m inclined to think that the answer that the theatrical meaning was being used to describe a one-time date, wherever it led, myself.
It’s also possible that the term meant one thing to people over 30, and another thing to people who were younger, and the band was taking full advantage of the fact.
Agreed, the 60’s as we know them didn’t really start until '65 or thereabouts.
As others pointed out, people had been using “one-night stand” in both sexual and non-sexual contexts at that time. Rock and roll certainly had been slipping in those double-entendres for much longer than that.
So the song certainly could be sexual in nature, but based on the context, I don’t see that it must be so, nor that sex would have added any interesting double meanings. So I suspect that it was just talking about a single date that wasn’t repeated. Maybe sex, maybe not, but that doesn’t really add anything to the song.
And came of age in '83
With the official naming of HIV.
That’s great! Tell me you came up with it yourself!
Just now, as a matter of fact.
I recall when the herpes scare erupted; I was just out of college. That was the seeming death knell for the sexual freedom granted by the Pill.
Then AIDS/HIV showed up and really killed the buzz. We all wondered why we’d bothered being bothered by the comparative nothingburger of herpes.