The Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” is more than just the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded by wingless bipeds with workable thumbs—it’s the Zapruder film of rock and roll.
Recorded in Portland, Oregon some seven-plus months before the Kennedy assassination, “Louis Louis” attracted the same intense scrutiny as the 26.6 seconds of standard 8 mm Kodachrome II safety film recorded by Abraham Zapruder on his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera as he stood on a concrete pedestal along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
And from the same people. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. To say nothing of the Federal Communications Commission and the National Association of Broadcasters. And for all I know, the Central Intelligence Agency. And for the same reason: the powers that be smelled conspiracy, a criminal plot, some foul rot that could bring down the edifice of our entire American Way of Life, and they were looking for hard evidence to prove it.
But unlike the Zapruder film, the Feebees weren’t interested in what was right there, apparent to the senses. No, FBI technicians wearing headphones in windowless rooms in field offices across our Great Land spent some thirty-one months trying to parse the seemingly indecipherable words coming out of Kingsmen vocalist Jack Ely’s mouth, because in the minds of the kids who loved the song and the purple-with-apoplexy prudes (some of whom were upright decent teens themselves) who saw it as a vile portent of the end of Western Civilization, those words were so patently obscene they would bring a blush to the face of the most foul-mouthed tar ever to traverse the Seven Seas.
Meanwhile, and we’ll get back to the FBI and the controversy surrounding the song and its supposedly salacious lyrics shortly, what we have with “Louie Louie” is more than just one of the most-covered songs in the history of rock and roll—“Louie Louie” comes straight from the collective consciousness of our race.
The song began life with Cuban bandleader Rosendo Ruiz Jr. (his title, in English: “Tie Up The Madman” or “Tie Up That Lunatic”), then fell into the hands of ANOTHER Cuban bandleader, one René Touzet, who called it “El Loco Cha Cha.” It was then picked up by Latin group Ricky Rillera and the Rhythm Rockers, who gave it an R&B interpretation, before R&B singer Richard Berry snatched it and gave it the name that would make history. Berry immortally wrote the completely unobjectionable lyrics (which “just fell out of the sky” in his words) backstage at a gig—on, appropriately enough, a strip of toilet paper.
Berry’s 1961 recording became a regional hit in the San Francisco area. Still, it was his touring that brought “Louie Louie” to the eager ears of the kids forming bands in seemingly every family garage in the Pacific Northwest. And seemingly every band in every one of those garages played it, as is evidenced by the remarkable fact that Paul Revere and the Raiders would record a version of the song the day after the Kingsmen did, in the very same studio.
Why (and this piece is going to be all over the place, so you’ve been warned) is “Louie Louie” the greatest song ever? Paul Revere himself may have thought he was dissing “Louie Louie” when he described it as: “Three chords and the most mundane beat possible. Any idiot could learn it, and they all did.” Duh, Paul, it’s the idiot-proofing that makes it so great!
But what makes the Kingsmen’s version the best of the more than 2,850 (and I suspect that’s a grossly understated figure) versions recorded over the years, that’s the real question. (Why, none of the others even come close, although I give both Black Flag and the Sonics E’s for effort. And while I don’t think he left any recorded versions behind, the late Philly legend Mikey Wild performed a “Louie Louie” for the ages.)
First clue: The Kingsmen themselves were embarrassed by it. They thought they’d fucked it up and wanted to re-record it. And they had. Their “Louie Louie” is a mess, and not simply because the lyrics are hopelessly garbled. But band manager Ken Chase (a disc jockey at local AM rock station KISN) loved it, which tells me that Ken Chase was a genius who understood that chaos trumps good orderly direction every time.
Second clue: Florence Greenberg, the President of Wand Records, which picked up the record from tiny Jerden Records (which released it in May 1963) and re-released it in October 1963 (JFK had only a month to live!) had this to say of “Louie Louie”: “I was ashamed to put it out.”
In short, if the principal players had had anything to do with it, the song in its recorded form would never have seen the light of day. Because they thought it sucked.
Jack Ely was unhappy with the song for several reasons, the principal one being the exact thing that makes “Louie Louie” so great—you can hardly make out a word he’s singing. Now, Ely was no Darby Crash. Under normal circumstances, young Ely could enunciate and be understood by other human beings.
But these weren’t normal circumstances. The chief problem, and it boggles the mind to think that it led to a years-long investigation by the FBI and brought us the greatest song ever, was that the only microphone Ely could sing into was suspended several feet above his head. From (according to him) a “nineteen-foot ceiling.” Think about that for a moment. A shitty recording studio microphone set-up changed the world!
As a result, Ely was forced to stand on the tip of his wingtips and giraffe neck it, shouting over the rest of the band in a desperate bid to make himself heard. And while his words may be gibberish, what comes through is sheer ebullience. No one has ever sung the words “Oh, baby!” with more sheer joy, insouciance, I don’t give a fuck elan. It’s inspired. Jack Ely had the Holy Spirit in him that day, and it will ring down the ages forever.
But here’s where the mystery thickens. As I noted above, Paul Revere and the Raiders recorded the very same song in the very same studio the very next day, and guess what? Paul, you can mostly understand, although he spends most of the song just repeating the title. It’s just one of the many seemingly insoluble conundrums surrounding the song, such as how much the Kingsmen’s recording session cost—some say 35 bucks, others 50 bucks, still others somewhere BETWEEN 35 and 50 bucks.
I’m going to come out and say definitively that it cost $49.99. Maybe somebody will believe me, and I’ll be immortalized in a footnote.
There was another reason Ely and the boys may have been unhappy with the recording, and that comes at the beginning of the third verse, when Ely comes in two bars early, then shuts up and lets the band catch up. That lonely “Louie Louie,” which hangs out there in the middle of nowhere like Wile E. Coyote hovering suspended about three feet over the abyss, is the “Magic Bullet” of the Kingsmen’s version of the song. It (and his ad lib, mid-song, more about which later) lends “Louie Louie” added charm, all of us being, whether we admit it or not, lovers of fuck-ups in all of their myriad forms.
But I’ll tell you what ISN’T a fuck up, and that’s the titanic 26-second (I hope I got my math right) guitar solo by Mike Mitchell, which may sound simple to a know-nothing like me but is actually quite a complex thing and difficult to play, or so I’ve been told. But simple, difficult, who cares, the point is it’s inspired, incendiary, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” great, and if you don’t believe me take the word of Guitar Player magazine (I don’t subscribe—the only periodical I receive in the mail is Mustache Monthly), which had this to say of it: “Raw, lightning-fast, and loud, the solo’s unbridled energy helped make the song a No. 2 pop hit, but also helped set the template for garage-rock—and later hard-rock—guitar.” And how old was Mitchell? Nineteen? The guy was changing the course of rock and roll when I thought I was changing the course of marijuana abuse!
But back to the FBI. Their approximately two-and-a-half-year investigation, which spanned field offices in several states, resulted in a 455-page report, including testimonies by Berry and Ely. Bat-eared audio technicians wearing headsets played the single at 16, 33, and 78 rpm and were “unable to interpret any of the wording in the record.” Which is absurd, because even I can make out SOME of what Ely is singing. And I can only say the same for the FCC, whose experts reluctantly concluded the lyrics were “unintelligible at any speed.” Which has to be the greatest thing ever said of any vocal performance ever!
Is it possible the FBI and FCC weren’t thorough enough? Indeed, it is. When it came to methodical, leave-no-stone-unturned sleuthing, I can only say hats off to the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Flint, Michigan, one of whose members wrote directly to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in June 1965 to report, “I can realize that you are unable to comment on your current investigations. But dauntless we are, and we now have in our possession a recording made directly from the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie, Louie.’ The 45 RPM ‘Louie’ was played at 78 RPM, taped at twice the regular speed, and then slowed down so that it now plays somewhere between 45 and 33 1/2 RPM. At this speed, the obscene articulation is clearer.”
That’s dedication!
The alleged vile and depraved lyrics the FBI techs (presumably wearing Level 4 biocontainment suits) were listening for were submitted by concerned citizens with admirably filthy minds, and included the following:
“Lou-ai Lou-ai Oh, no
Grab her way down low
(Said an FBI technician, “This line least clear.”)
There is a fine little girl waiting for me
She is just a girl across the way
When I take her all alone
She’s never the girl I lay at home
Tonight at 10 I’ll lay her again
We’ll fuck your girl and by the way
And… on that chair I’ll lay her there
I felt my bone… in her hair
She had a rag on, I moved above
It won’t be long she’ll slip it off
I held her in my arm and then
And I told her I’d rather lay her again”
“I felt my bone… in her hair”! Now that’s filth. And if you ask me, the FBI should have been investigating the concerned citizen or citizens who submitted it. Who were obviously deranged perverts! And must have studied the song with the same dedicated attention to the smallest detail (“Play that again, dear, did he say ‘bone’ or ‘boner’?”) as the FBI put into their examination of the Zapruder film.
And the greatest irony, the best part? All of those FBI and FCC and NAB technicians listening to the recording at every speed known to mankind over and over and over again, to say nothing of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of Flint, Michigan, who were playing the recording at speeds generally unheard by the human ear, MISSED drummer Lynn Easton shouting “Fuck!” at the 54-second mark, after screwing up a drum fill. Think of it! Thirty-one months, and the sharpest ears in the Federal Bureau of Investigation miss a “fuck!” I hear it! And my ears are low-functioning at best! It’s hiding in plain sight! It’s as if Lee Harvey Oswald had popped up on a frame of the Zapruder film to say, “Hi, mom! Guess who just shot JFK!” and no one saw it.
But it just goes to show you, nobody ever pays attention to the drummer. I’ve been in bands. They scream at band meetings like gut-shot moose, and nobody even hears ‘em!
And that “fuck” has become such a well-known secret that if you go to Amazon Music to listen to “Louie Louie,” you’ll see an “Explicit” in italics after the title. Or at least I’m assuming it’s the “Fuck!” that’s to blame—maybe the folks at Amazon Music hired their own experts to listen to the record, and they found definitive proof that Levy’s lyrics were obscene!
Returning to the song, it’s important to note that Ely didn’t “invent” that great ad-libbed “Okay, let’s give it to ‘em right now!” that precedes the guitar solo. On the Rockin’ Robin Roberts & the Wailers’ 1961 recording, Roberts shouts, “Now let’s give it to them right now!” As for the Wailers’ version, it sounds thin, and Roberts foolishly enunciates, but it does include some great sax blurt (as does the Paul Revere and the Raiders’ version). And the timing is different, because Ely got it wrong, misremembered Berry’s take, whatever. But by getting it wrong, he got it dead right—that difference gives the Kingsmen’s version raw power.
Here’s a fun fact: As mentioned, “Louie Louie” led to an FBI report of more than 450 pages. The Zapruder film? No report, nada. The FBI never wrote one. It just goes to show you which event in American history is more important.
Here’s another fun fact: Band keyboardist Don Gallucci, who was ultimately forced out of the group because he was too young to tour, went on to produce the Stooges’ Fun House. The greatest garage rock album of all time!
And yet another fun fact: Depending on where you look, another factor in Ely’s garbled vocal performance was that he was either (1) wearing a brace or (2) wearing braces. I prefer the latter, and the latter is almost certainly the truth, although his braces (unless he lost them somewhere along the way) never impeded any of his other vocal performances.
But! It’s possible the reason that his braces only impeded his performance on “Louie Louie” was because (and I just found evidence of this just now!) was said braces had just been tightened. And think about that! We owe “Louie Louie” to a recent dental visit! Who was the dentist, is what I’d like to know. The man should be famous!
I would contact Ely to get the dirty lowdown on all of this, but he slipped the surly bonds of earth in 2015, after giving up rock and roll (drug and alcohol issues) to become a gospel singer and horse rancher. I hope he died happy.
“I was yelling at a mic far away,” Ely once poetically said, adding, “I always thought the controversy was record-company hype.” He was wrong. The controversy was real, and in many ways, “Louie Louie” would be a lesser song without it.
“Louie Louie” is such a great song that Dave Marsh wrote a whole book about it—with a 46-word subtitle. “Louie Louie” is such a great song that the only known act never to have performed it is ABBA. “Louie Louie” is such a great song that I listen to it every day and still go to bed feeling “Louie Louie”-deprived. “Louie Louie” is such a great song that the night before they went into the studio to record it for posterity, the Kingsmen played it at a local club—for nine hours straight. And the kids (I’m just guessing here) left disappointed because the Kingsmen cut it so short.
But, brace yourself, because this is world-altering news, I’ve saved the best for last. I hate mysteries, so I borrowed some of the equipment NASA and the NSA use to decipher space garble to ensure no one in other galaxies is threatening to pull an alien Pearl Harbor, then used it to listen to “Louie Louie.” And some fifteen thousand listens later, guess what? I’ve done what the FBI, apoplectic parents, and horny kids (who were circulating copies of the “real obscene lyrics” from hand to hand) couldn’t—I’ve deciphered the lyrics! Definitively! Once and for all! And here they are!
The continent of Atlantis was an island
Which lay before the Great Flood
In the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean
So great an area of land
That from her western shores
Those beautiful sailors journeyed
To the South and the North Americas with ease
Fuck!
In their ship with painted sails
To the East, Africa was a neighbour
Across a short strait of sea miles
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant
Of the Atlantean culture
The antediluvian kings colonised the world
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends, from all lands, were from fair Atlantis
Okay, let’s give it to ‘em, right now!
Knowing her fate (Ely comes in too early)
Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth
On board were the Twelve
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician
And the other so-called Gods of our legends
Though Gods they were
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice, and let us sing, and dance
And ring in the new
Hail, Atlantis!
Oh baby now, please don’t go!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
