"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:
“She walks—the lady of my delight—
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)