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Home ❯ Songs ❯ The Kinks ❯

Lola

by The Kinks • Lesson #427 • Apr 1, 2022

Licensed Song Sheet 4 pages

Follow along with my print-friendly guide for this song! It’s available for purchase at Musicnotes.com, the web’s leading provider of licensed sheet music.

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Editor’s notes

Hey there, friends! New guitar lesson today showing how to play Lola by The Kinks, from beginning to end. I’ll tackle the intro riff, verse, chorus, bridge, and break down the distinctive lead guitar fill heard at the end of each verse. In total, this song uses a moderate number of chords (with some tricky rhythmic bits in the bridge) – but I’ll show you few options on how to approach strumming during the tricky parts. Let’s do it!

Timestamps for my full video lesson:

  • 0:00 Lesson Summary
  • 1:27 Intro
  • 4:11 Verse
  • 7:49 Chorus
  • 10:15 Bridge
  • 15:24 Lead Fill Riff
  • 20:10 Playthrough

Extended Intro & Verse Riff (Lesson #165)

Here’s my initial video, which focuses on the instrumental intro & verse riff. This is inspired by Mike Massé’s acoustic cover, which is shown below. The tab for this section is included in my 4-page sheet music linked above.

Mike Massé’s Acoustic Cover

Here is the video of YouTuber Mike Massé playing this song. Great cover! This inspired me to learn it. I teach his extended intro riff (or a close-enough version of it) in my video lesson #165, shown above.

The Kinks live version from 1980

In this version you can hear the extended acoustic intro that Mike Massé plays in his acoustic cover up above. They start playing in 1:06 of this video:

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