Monday June 6, 2022 “Louie Louie” The Kingsmen”
Back at the beginning of rock & roll the music was considered by many parents and members of the conservative elite to be the devil's music and they tried their darndest to stop it but to quote Danny and his friends the Juniors “rock & roll is here to stay, it will never die”. As for the devil's music, we know from the Charlie Daniels song that the devil ain’t no decent musician.
But truth be told ‘the man’ still had influence on rock & roll music and would at least try to have many songs banned for a variety of reasons so this week we are going to be looking into some of the music that was banned.
Let’s go back to one of the early banned records “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsmen. This was a completely harmless song about a guy going to sea and missing his girl, think the reverse of “Brandy (You’t a Fine Girl)” ten years later. The problem for the sensors was that they couldn’t understand the lyrics, contributed to largely by alcohol consumption by the band and bad recording equipment, so it was assumed there was some bad stuff going on with “Louie, Louie”. You can check the lyrics below and see that they are completely harmless.
However, the FBI wasn’t buying that and conducted a two year investigation into “Louie, Louie” only to determine that they had their heads up their asses and there was nothing wrong with the song…which BTW was not the official conclusion but the investigation was quietly ended. Our tax dollars at work.
The original recording was such fun though. The drummer drops his stick at :54 and if you listen carefully you can hear him exclaim “F$ck!” (where was the FBI on that) and the lead singer starts to sing a full bar early after the instrumental break and has to start again at the appropriate moment in the song…the benefit of alcohol? In subsequent live performances The Kingsmen would usually replicate this mistake.
Stay safe and well…and ‘the man’ couldn’t stop “Louie Louie” from being an international number one song and one of the favorite three chord garage band songs…ever.