Long live incomprehensible genius of Louie Louie

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/05/2021 (1966 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I have sad news for anyone who has ever cranked the radio in their car to a decibel level somewhere above nuclear blast, rolled down the windows, clenched the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip, and belted out the lyrics to a rock ’n’ roll classic at the top of their lungs.

There is no easy way to say this, so I’m going to just blurt it out — Mike Mitchell passed away last month at the age of 77. No cause of death was provided other than Mitchell “peacefully passed away.”

I can tell by the confused look on your face that a little more information might be helpful.

What you need to know is that Mitchell was a founding member of the 1960s-era rock group the Kingsmen and the guy who, 58 years ago, delivered one of the greatest guitar solos of all time on the band’s legendary cover of the song Louie Louie.

“My sincere condolences. I learned to play the guitar because of Mike Mitchell. I know every one of his solos, mistakes and all. We’re losing the good guys,” guitarist Joe Walsh, famed for his work with the Eagles, said of Mitchell, the lone remaining founding member of the Kingsmen.

For anyone who has just fallen off a turnip truck or spent the last six decades hiding inside a drainpipe, Louie Louie is one of the most famous songs — make that infamous — in history, a cult hit that became a rock ’n’ roll classic.

It was written as a calypso song in the mid-1950s by L.A. musician Richard Berry and has been covered thousands of times, but the low-budget recording produced by the Kingsmen in a tiny recording studio in Portland in 1963 is the definitive version, the one most of us have drunkenly imitated at frat parties at some time in our shadowy pasts.

Along with being incredibly enduring, Louie Louie is also arguably the most incomprehensible song ever recorded. Everyone who hears it — and it only takes a couple of notes to recognize Louie Louie — feels an irresistible urge to sing along, even though no one actually knows the (bad word) lyrics to the song.

Supposedly the lyrics go something like this: “Louie Louie, oh no, Me gotta go, Aye-yi-yi-yi, I said Louie Louie, oh baby, me gotta go.” When leather-lunged party-goers belt it out, it sounds more like: “ LOUIE LOUIE! OHHHHH, BABY! WE GOTTA GO! BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!”

In 1963, the Kingsmen were going to record the song as an instrumental, for a reported $52, but at the last second band member Jack Ely decided to sing, which is when he discovered the only microphone in the studio was dangling 15 feet over his head, so he had to shout with his head tilted back, while sporting huge braces on his teeth.

It’s kind of like the rock ’n’ roll version of the Christmas carol wherein the only part everyone knows is “fa la la la la.” With Louie Louie, even though no one is sure of the official lyrics, they feel comfortable shrieking out some demented version that sounds identical to the one Ely famously slurred back in 1963.

Adding to the song’s charm, is the fact the Kingsmen thought they were only doing a soundcheck, so they kind of stumbled through it, but when they were finished the producer shouted: “That’s it! That’s the take I want!” And then he bolted from the control room. The band was reportedly furious that what they thought was a piece of garbage would become their debut single? In hindsight, the producer was a (bad word) genius.

Here’s what Rolling Stone magazine said in naming Louie Louie No. 55 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All time: “A blast of raw guitars and half-intelligible shouting recorded for $52, the Kingsmen’s cover of Richard Berry’s R&B song hit No. 2 in 1963 — thanks in part to supposedly pornographic lyrics that drew the attention of the FBI.

“The Portland, Oregon, group accidentally rendered the decidedly noncontroversial lyrics (about a sailor trying to get home to see his lady) indecipherable by crowding around a single microphone.”

Because nobody could understand the lyrics, everyone wrongly assumed it had to be packed with filthy words, which led to the song being banned in Indiana, and the FBI, after receiving a complaint from a concerned parent, launching a two-year investigation, which ended with them deeming the song “unintelligible at any speed.”

What with being banned and the FBI probe, young people couldn’t get enough of Louie Louie, and they still can’t. It only had three chords and an impossible-to-forget whomp-whomp rhythm, so any teenager with the musical ability of a cinder block could strum along. As teenagers, my tone-deaf buddies and I, wielding tennis racquets as air guitars, would shriek our high-pitched version in the basement until my parents’ ears were bleeding.

Six years ago, I wrote a mournful column after Jack Ely, the guy who growled those indecipherable lyrics into a microphone dangling over his head, died at the age of 71. Today, I am lamenting the loss of Mike Mitchell and his frequently-imitated guitar solo.

Rock historian Peter Blecha has said: “Far from shuffling off to a quiet retirement, evidence indicates that Louie Louie may actually prove to be immortal.”

No question Louie Louie is immortal, but, sadly, the guys who made it the soundtrack to our lives were not.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca