Lend Me Your Love
Memphis Slim’s Lend Me Your Love is, like Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell a fine example of a lyric that correctly, if metaphorically, employes technical legal terminology. Memphis seems to be in the business of borrowing and rehypothecating, or possibly short-selling, love. He sings:
- Now lend me your love, little girl, please lend me your love
- Lend me your love, baby, please lend me your love
- I know you hear me keep moanin', moanin' just like Noah's dove
- You got a mortgage on my love, girl, there really is no doubt
- You got a mortgage on my love, girl, there really is no doggone doubt
- But someday I be lucky enough to find another woman,
- Gonna buy your love mortgage out
Transaction analysis
The transaction seems to be this:
- Baby agrees to lend a quantity (unspecified) of love to Memphis Slim.
- As collateral security for his obligation to return her love, Memphis grants Baby a mortgage over his own love, which for the time being, he is holding on his own balance sheet.
- We surmise that Mr Slim is intending to take Baby’s love and reuse it elsewhere.
- Seeing as he has at least an equivalent amount of his own love which he is holding subject to a fixed charge, we can only surmise that Baby’s love and Memphis Slim’s love cannot be fungible (otherwise this would be a transaction without any economic substance. Which would get Memphis Slim’s tax lawyers in a lather.)