"Lady Godiva's Operation" is a song by American avant-garde rock band The Velvet Underground, appearing on their second album, White Light/White Heat (1968). The lyrics to the first half of the song (sung by John Cale) describe Lady Godiva. The lyrics of the second half (sung by Cale alternating with Lou Reed) are full of oblique, deadpan black humor and describe a botched surgical procedure.
The person's name is taken from the British legend of Lady Godiva, a noble English lady who rode naked through the streets of Coventry.
The song was covered by The Fatima Mansions as a single.
Famous quotes containing the words lady and/or operation:
“I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)