‘Louie Louie’ looked like a harmless song. Until the FBI examined her two and a half years in search of obscenities

It is very possible that there have been numerous songs in the history of pop that have deserved a exhaustive monitoring by the FBI. When rock’n’roll was considered a poison that destabilized youth, The songs abounded qualified by parents and educators as obsceneeven many that today sound harmless. But none reached the extreme of being investigated for two and a half years by an incomprehensible letter … In case the flies.

In 1963, ‘Louie Louie’, a modest song performed by The Kingsmen Group and that was a previous version of Richard Berry in 1955 It became one of the greatest successes in the history of pop music. Sold millions of copies, forming such a notorious phenomenon that He caught the attention of FBI himself. The reason? The lyrics were so confusing that it suggested that it could include pernicious hidden messages.

And that the original trail of the song came by long. Berry, in fact, had inspired a Cuban bole The title ‘El Loco Cha-Cha’. The lyrics of Berry’s version He talked about A sailor who sails back to Jamaicawhere his girl awaits him. Its simplicity (a single riff throughout the song) made Berry himself value it too much and sold the rights to the Flip Records record.

In this way the song would circulate as a repertoire song, with groups like The Wailers versioning it before The Kingsmen. Interestingly, the singer of these, Jack Ely, had only heard the song once previously in a Jukebox And the melody caught badly, with what The Kingsmen song is slightly different from all the abovereceiving a special air, as a counterpoint touched. When his manager saw that the band spent an hour and a half concert playing only that song, he decided that he had to record it urgently.

For that same reason, it was decided that they would try to recreate the sound of a live interpretation, hang the micros from the ceiling and with all the instruments sounding at the same time. The recording was full of problems: Ely wore orthodontics and was barely understood. And the instrumentalists did not listen to their voice, so each one goes to their air: hence the famous mistake in the 1:57 minute, when Ely advances to his entrance after the single and the battery filled his mistake with a redouble while the rest of the musicians continue. They believed that it could be correct, but there was no time to record more shots. To positive.

The FBI arrives

The success, which led the song to sell a million copies in its first year of life, of course, caught the attention of different associations of parents and leagues of decency that they wanted to ban it for its indecent content. Although no one was very clear about what exactly the indecency consisted. Because The singer was not even remotely understood. Although imagination could distinguish a slight Fuck Murmured half -song.

The Governor of Indiana ended up prohibiting its dissemination in 1964 for its “obscene content”, which redoubled its attraction for youth. The politician came to say that his ears “buzzed” when he listened to the song, which undoubtedly turned the film into a demonic object. This triggered moral panic and led the song to get the attention of the government.

The inquiries They ended up to the FBI: Cryptographers were hired by analyzing each sound And, of course, the singer was interrogated on numerous occasions. Officially, the FBI declared that the song was “incomprehensible at any speed.” But to heal in health, the seal that had edited the song published in the magazine ‘Broadcasting Magazine’, oriented to professionals and the industry, the full lyrics. So that there would be no trace of doubt.

But the thing would not be there: a letter from an enraged father because of a letter “so obscene that he could not replicate it” caught the attention of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The investigation reopened, interviewed Richard Berry, the Kingsmen (curiously, there was no talk with Ely, who had left the band) and the record staff. Two and a half years later, the FBI concluded that the letter was so cryptic that it did not admit interpretations, and therefore, it was not obscene.

In 2005, when ‘Louie Louie’ had become an impeccable monument in rock history, the controversy fled: the superintendent of a University of Michigan prevented the orchestra from playing ‘Louie Louie’ in a local march. There will always be paranoid delusions among high educational positionsIt is seen.

Today the song is considered an icon whose influence on current rock is impossible to quantify: 4,000 versions of the theme have been counted and figure without possible discussion, again and again, in the periodic lists of the best songs of all time. Nothing bad to have been forbidden by the FBI.