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
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 that love, Memphis grants Baby a mortgage over his own love, which for the time being, he is holding on his own balance sheet. This suggests he is intending to take the Baby's love and used 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. Whcih would get Memphis Slim’s tax lawyers in a lather.