Did you know that the 1963 song “Louie Louie,” famous for its garbled lyrics, inspired a two-year FBI investigation?
Part of the FBI’s job is to fight obscenity, and in the FBI’s files on the case, they explain that someone from Sarasota High School complained that the lyrics to the song were obscene. “The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter,’” the complaint read. “We all know there is obscene materials available for those who seek it,” it went on, “but when they start sneaking in this material in the guise of the latest teen age rock & roll hit record these morons have gone too far.”
The alleged obscene lyrics and the actual lyrics are here. How the FBI handled the case:
[R]ather than attempting to figure out where the different, dirty versions of the lyrics came from, the FBI spent two years analyzing the song. They even played it at different speeds to see if they were missing some hidden obscene message. And in all that time, the bureau never once contacted Jack Ely, the man who sang the words of the song in the first place. At the end of the two years, the FBI didn’t even exonerate “Louie Louie,” they simply said that “the lyrics of the song on this record was not definitely determined by this Laboratory examination, it was not possible to determine whether this recording is obscene.”
The Dish 