Louie Louie
The back story of the FBI investigation into the song Louie Louie. From the NY Times
Back Story
There’s an F.B.I. investigation currently in the headlines, but it was on this day in 1965 that a different one ended: a two-year inquiry into “Louie, Louie.”
The song was originally recorded in 1956, but it was the muddled lyrics of the 1963 version by The Kingsmen that many listeners thought might be obscene.
“Parents were concerned, and they figured, ‘My gosh, this sounds like a dirty song, I don’t understand it - maybe we should have an investigation,’ ” said Eric Predoehl, who is making a documentary about the song’s history.
One parent’s letter to the serving attorney general, Robert Kennedy, prompted the investigation. “This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation,” the parent wrote.
The lyrics may have been indecipherable because, when the band recorded the single in a studio in Portland, Ore., there was only one microphone, hanging several feet above Jack Ely, the lead singer. To be heard, he reportedly shouted lines like (maybe) “Me gotta go” and “All the way.”
The F.B.I. spent two years analyzing the lyrics, and although its report includes possible interpretations that involve obscene references to sex, no one could definitively figure out what Mr. Ely was saying.
Evan Gershkovich contributed reporting.
Back Story
There’s an F.B.I. investigation currently in the headlines, but it was on this day in 1965 that a different one ended: a two-year inquiry into “Louie, Louie.”
The song was originally recorded in 1956, but it was the muddled lyrics of the 1963 version by The Kingsmen that many listeners thought might be obscene.
“Parents were concerned, and they figured, ‘My gosh, this sounds like a dirty song, I don’t understand it - maybe we should have an investigation,’ ” said Eric Predoehl, who is making a documentary about the song’s history.
One parent’s letter to the serving attorney general, Robert Kennedy, prompted the investigation. “This land of ours is headed for an extreme state of moral degradation,” the parent wrote.
The lyrics may have been indecipherable because, when the band recorded the single in a studio in Portland, Ore., there was only one microphone, hanging several feet above Jack Ely, the lead singer. To be heard, he reportedly shouted lines like (maybe) “Me gotta go” and “All the way.”
The F.B.I. spent two years analyzing the lyrics, and although its report includes possible interpretations that involve obscene references to sex, no one could definitively figure out what Mr. Ely was saying.
Evan Gershkovich contributed reporting.