THE BIZ : But Is Paul Really Dead?

They ran it backward and forward, at slow and high speeds, using filters and computers and cryptographers. But according to a 120-page file made public recently through the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI flubbed its attempts to prove that the lyrics to the Kingsmen’s hit 1963 song “Louie Louie” were explicitly naughty.

“There were a number of reasons for this (failure),” explains Eric Predoehl, a Santa Clara-based documentary filmmaker and publisher of the Louie Report, a newsletter devoted to the song. The recording quality of the Kingsmen version--the third after composer Richard Berry’s and one by the Whalers--wasn’t great; the mike was suspended far above the singer, and “it probably didn’t help,” he says, “that the lead vocalist wore braces.”

Predoehl began publishing the Louie Report in the mid-’80s, when he began his documentary film-in-progress, “The Meaning of Louie.” He describes the project as “a Zen quest for the meaning of the most misunderstood rock and roll song of all time.”

Contacts worldwide send him press items mentioning it. He learned of science fiction stories based on extrapolations of the song’s hidden intent and “Louie Louie” wine coolers. “Whenever the material becomes too much,” says Predoehl, “I knock off another issue.” So far he has put out four; his last mailing to other devotees was about 2,000.

Predoehl hesitates to give his own view of the song, but notes that composer Berry insisted that it was just a slightly salty chanty about an old sea-dog’s plans to see his mistress, as recounted to Louie, a bartender. This news shouldn’t put an end to interest, though, or to the Louie Report. “As long as I keep getting more material,” he says, “I’ll keep publishing.”