Dave Marsh, renowned rock and roll music critic, prolific author, and political activist passed away on Friday the 14th.
Marsh was a pioneering voice in music journalism and a major enthusiast of the LOUIE LOUIE phenomenon. I was honored when he reached out to me as he was writing his book on this very subject.
At the time he contacted me, I had been working on the documentary for a few years and wasn’t super-excited about collaborating on a project that felt like competition. My initial trepidation soon dissipated, as I realized I now had an ally in our mutual quest to dig up and document the convoluted story of this special song.
Dave praised my work various times – not only within his book, but also in interviews about the book. According to his research, I was the first non-government employee to request the files of the F.B.I. investigation of the song LOUIE LOUIE, utilizing the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make that happen.
A year before the book was released, I had an opportunity to meet Dave in person, in my home state of California.
in May 1992, the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock band of professional writers (featuring Dave Marsh, as well as Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Berry, Matt Groening, and various others) would be at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California for their premiere performance. At this event I was able to meet Dave, as well as a lot of other lovely people.
When the book was finally printed, the full title of his book was “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” – which I thought was a perfect title.
Of course, I absolutely loved the book. Dave was a great writer and did an excellent job of telling some engaging stories. This book was truly a labor of love.
A few years later, Dave hosted a panel discussion about Louie Louie at the North by Northwest conference in Portland (Oregon) as a spinoff from the South by South by Southwest conference in Austin (Texas). It featured Jack Ely of the Kingsmen, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders, Buck Ormsby of the Wailers, Roger Hart, manager of Paul Revere & the Raiders, Stretch Riedle of KFJC Radio and yours truly.
The Portland event was the last time I saw Dave in person. Over the years we’d stay in touch via email or phone calls, sharing jokes, comparing discoveries of new LOUIE recordings, finding Chewy Louie dog treats, and other things. I remember at one point he was trying to set up a 24-hour LOUIE show for an April’s Fool Day event at Sirius, but some of the folks in charge weren’t ready for that sort of thing.
Dave suffered the loss of both of his daughters. His youngest, Kristen, died in 1993 from sarcoma, leading to the family founding the Kristen Ann Carr Fund. In the acknowledgements for his LOUIE book, Dave wrote that Kristen was his main supporter at home for that project, as she would ask every day about it, and she sadly passed away before the book was published. His other daughter Sasha, a clinical psychologist, passed in 2024.
I recently tried to reach out to Dave, but his email was no longer working, and I never got a reply from the letter I wrote. I meant to call, but never followed up. As I found out later in the obituaries, he had been suffering from some type of long term illness.
My heart goes to his wife Barbara Carr, his family and long list of friends. As his friend Bruce wrote, Dave was a man of conscience and commitment. He will absolutely be missed.
Here’s a few webpages about Dave that I enjoyed..
Dave Marsh’s Facebook page
Dave hasn’t been on this thing for years, but it’s currently a place for a gazillion nice words about him!
Dave Marsh at Rock’s Backpages
Rock’s Backpages is an amazing resource. It’s the largest online archive of music journalism with 60,000 articles and over 900 audio interviews. There’s a TON of articles by Dave, including the May 1971 Creem article where Dave was the first journalist to write about “punk rock” – a genre that wasn’t even invented yet!
DavidMarsh.us
This was Daves’s personal blog, which lasted from 2009-2017, and is now preserved by Wayback Machine/archive.org.
Dave Marsh at Counterpunch.org
Dave was a regular at CounterPunch (a political page), and it looks like his last post was in 2016.
Dave Marsh at Rock & Rap Confidential
This is the online version of Rock & Rap Confidential, which ended in 2011 and is also preserved by Wayback Machine/archive.org
Land of Hope and Dreams: A Tribute to Dave Marsh
This is a Youtube channel created 5 years ago to celebrate Dave Marsh!
Caryn Rose‘s jukeboxgraduate dot com – Why Dave Marsh Matters
Holly Gleason – KICK OUT THE JAMS:: Dave Marsh Heads Straight for the Hopes + Dreams
Last but not least…
With my quest, I uncovered some historic corrections to the big story presented in Dave’s book that neither Dave or I were aware of when this book was published. I’m hoping to provide a more-definitive history with the completion of this darned documentary of mine!
– E.P. of LouieLouie.net