How an Off-Color Remark From a Fan Predicted The Kinks’ Follow-up to Their Hit Song, “Lola”

Controversy can sometimes push a song from a snoozer to a smash hit, and that seemed to be the case for The Kinks’ Top 10 hit “Lola”. The song’s gender-fluid implications were highly divisive at the time. But as history would show, this kind of hubbub around a single can bolster public interest and boost record sales, not harm them.

After the release of “Lola”, The Kinks were in an interesting place in their career. They could lean into these revolutionary philosophies on sexuality and gender expression, further alienating some fans and attracting others. Or they could take a left turn, essentially juking their audience into getting distracted over some other apparently absurd idea. Ultimately, the band chose the latter.

That left turn landed them on the single “Apeman”, which, interestingly, a fan seemed to predict before they would have had any way of knowing what was on the horizon for The Kinks.

A Kinks Fan Predicted Their Follow-Up to “Lola”

If “Lola” was about challenging societal expectations, then The Kinks’ follow-up to that single, “Apeman”, was about leaving society altogether. The song defies the idea that humans are inherently better than other creatures, like primates. In fact, the narrator argues, he would rather be like an ape anyway. “Cause the only time that I feel at ease is swinging up and down in a coconut tree / Oh, what a life of luxury to be like an ape man.”

Strangely, one fan confirmed that the band was moving in the right direction before “Apeman” even came out. “I’d already made ‘Apeman’”, songwriter Ray Davies explained years later. The follow-up to “Lola” was “just ready to come out, when I met a fan in San Francisco who said, ‘You’ve got to make a record after ‘Lola’ or they’ll all think you’re gay or something. You gotta make a record like ‘Superman’ or ‘Gorilla Man’!’” He told the fan that they were right on the money. His next song was “Apeman”.

“Apeman” was less successful than “Lola” in the States, which suggests that the fan’s theory that primates would outwin femme love affairs was actually incorrect. Still, it wasn’t a total wash. The Kinks’ “Apeman” peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 but enjoyed higher rankings in their native United Kingdom and New Zealand (No. 5), Germany (No. 8), and Switzerland (No. 7).

Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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