Rock and roll's 'dirtiest' song turns 30

The dirtiest, filthiest, nastiest record in the whole shocking history of rock and roll turns 30 this year.

Strange, but yesterday's pop music scandals have a way of being forgotten overnight.

2 Live Who?

But, ah, "Louie, Louie!"

The Kingsmen's 1963 hit is just as dirty as it ever was -- which it never was -- and that, no doubt, is the secret of its longevity.

For baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s, those 2 minutes and 42 seconds of inspired garage-band mush will forever spark a million memories. Is it going too far to suggest that the whole history of rock and roll is right there in that cheesy electric organ's five opening chords?

In a just world, the record would have been remaindered into well-deserved obscurity as soon as it appeared in the summer of 1963. Fortunately, this is not a just world, and "Louie, Louie" has gone from musical mediocrity to archetypal rock myth. More than 1,200 "Louies" exist, recorded by everyone from Julie London to Frank Zappa to the Rice University Marching Owl Band. But The Kingsmen, a one-hit quintet from Portland, Ore., recorded the version everyone thinks of when they think of "Louie, Louie," and apparently we think of it quite a lot.

According to BMI, the song-licensing company that monitors radio airplay, The Kingsmen's Louie is heard about 200,000 times a year in the United States. It's inspired 24-hour "Louie, Louie" marathons on radio, a street parade in Philadelphia, a 2 1/2 -year FBI investigation, and now, to celebrate its 30th birthday, a whole book by the respected rock scholar, Dave Marsh.

Why a 238-page book about a 2 1/2 -minute song?

"In 1987, I was doing my book about the 1,001 greatest rock and roll singles ever made, and I had this "Louie, Louie" problem," Mr. Marsh recalled recently. "It either had to be number one, or I didn't know where to put it."

Clearly, "Louie, Louie" was too disreputable to be No. 1, so Mr. Marsh made it No. 11, and in researching the song's unlikely history, he became intrigued enough to tell his agent, "There's actually a whole book in this song."

The book has arrived, and the story it tells is as rambling and ironic as its title: "Louie, Louie: The History and Mythology of the World's Most Famous Rock 'n' Roll Song; Including the Full Details of Its Torture and Persecution at the Hands of the Kingsmen, J. Edgar Hoover's F.B.I., and a Cast of Millions; and Introducing, for the First Time Anywhere, the Actual Dirty Lyrics" (Hyperion Books, $19.95).