Animal house.
It’s safe to say my life changed when I heard the first 11 chords of this song. Well, 12 if you count the slide-up/hammer-on thing at the beginning.
The Kingsmen’s version of Richard Berry’s ‘Louie Louie’ is the messiest, most unpolished song I have ever heard. It sounds like a rehearsal. A bad rehearsal. A rehearsal in a garage with broken instruments after everyone’s had way too much to drink. The drummer sounds like he’s playing with his head, and it easily has the dirtiest bass sound I’ve ever heard, but the most outrageous aspect of the song is that you can barely understand a word of it. I’d actually go as far as to say you can only understand the chorus. Vaguely. The singer even comes in too early at one point.
For me, this is rock ‘n’ roll in it’s purest, most dizzying form.
The Kingsmen’s version of Louie Louie was the subject of an FBI investigation and it was voted number 55 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. But this isn’t why I love it.
Although it does make me love it that little bit more.
I think the thing that makes this song stand out so much is its passion. The Kingsmen are playing with such overwhelming passion, you begin to believe that there’s no tomorrow. And who needs skill when you’ve got passion?
The guitar solo. Is it the greatest ever guitar solo of all-time? No, definitely not. Far from it. It’s probably the most technically simple, rushed, confused piece of guitar work in music history. You might be reading this and thinking “wow, that’s a bit of an exaggeration”, but I don’t think it is. Put it on. Go on, right now. Listen to it, or listen to it again, and I bet you’ll agree. Ok, maybe you won’t but you will agree it’s terrible. But that’s precisely why it’s my favourite ever guitar solo and that’s why I think it’s perfect. It’s like the guitarist is actually having a seizure from the amount of fun he’s having, and he’s just blindly punching at the strings. It’s the kind of guitar solo my brother used to play when he first got his Squire Strat and was imitating early Green Day in his room. What makes the solo even cooler - and elevates it to a thing of almost divine beauty (ok, that is exaggerating) - is how it’s introduced by the manic shriek of “Ok, let’s give it to ‘em right now!” (The only other introduction of a guitar solo I can think of that’s maybe as cool is Eddie Vedder’s “Make me cry” from Pearl Jam’s elusive gem, ‘Yellow Ledbetter’. Which I might have to write about on Reindeer Armies some day.)
And finally, when the frenzied psychedelia of the electric guitar hesitantly subsides, the singer comes in too early. But no one seems to care. They didn’t even bother with another take.
For me, this little slip up epitomises the whole feeling of the song. It’s about freedom. It’s about cathartic joy. It’s about rock ‘n’ roll. I think the fansite (yes, it has a fansite) louielouie.net got it right when they said, “Louie Louie represents a feeling, a groove, a state of being that can’t always be completely verbalized.”
I don’t just like this song, I have absorbed its essence. I actually think it was Louie Louie that first instilled in me that relentless, rock ‘n’ roll lust for life. It might have even been the birth of my love for electric guitars. Every time I hear it, it instantly changes my mood and awakens that wild part of me that’s been lying dormant for too long. I don’t think there’s anything left to say. Just listen to it and live it.
So, in the infinite knowledge of the song’s last words,
“Let’s go!”
P.S. Iggy Pop also does a cool version.
