Feds Spent Two Years Deciphering Lyrics to ‘Louie Louie,’ Failed to Realize Copyright Office Already Had Them

Apparently kids at a junior high school were passing around notes with what they believed to be the lyrics, since no one could understand the words to the song.

One mother, whose daughter bought the banned album, said of the interpretations: “The lyrics are so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter.”

The complaints set off a chain reaction that took up a ton of agents and hundreds of man-hours across multiple agencies, even utilizing an FBI crime laboratory.

Evidenced by the documents, federal agents listened to the song forwards and backwards numerous times “at various speeds but none of the speeds assisted in determining the words of the song on the record.”

Interestingly, the version of “Louie Louie” that was popularized by The Kingsmen was actually a cover, previously recorded by Richard Berry and subsequently by other bands, meaning the FBI could have actually looked at those versions to find out the lyrics.

The documents also reveal it was almost two years before someone realized the copyright office probably had the lyrics on file.

The investigation ultimately concluded the song’s lyrics contained absolutely no vulgarities.

Producer Eric Predohl, who’s making a documentary on the song and its controversy, says the FBI exhausted nearly every method of investigation, yet failed to question the man who sang the lyrics, Kingsmen singer Jack Ely, who died recently.

In a hilarious twist pointed out by TechDirt’s Mike Masnick, the feds actually still failed to discover an obscenity that actually appeared in the song not uttered by Ely, but the band’s drummer.

Oh, and as a general postscript, for all the hand wringing about possible obscenities in the song… there actually is one. Just not in the lyrics. At 54 seconds into the song, the drummer Lynn Easton actually fumbled his drumsticks banging them together and yells out “fuck.” The FBI never caught on to that, but you can actually hear it if you listen…

FBI Investigation into the song "Louie Louie"