Richard Berry Biography

Richard Berry

Berry is best known for writing “Louie, Louie,” the three-chord rock song that Frank Zappa dubbed “an archetypal American musical icon.” Convinced the song was obscene, the FBI investigated Berry. But when the songwriter explained that the song was about a Jamaican sailor talking to a bartender named Louie about his girlfriend, the agents dropped the case and concluded that the song was “indecipherable at any speed.”