October 21, 2021 • 44 mins
This 80s pop-rocker is best known for his vocals on chart-topping songs like "The Power of Love" and "The Heart of Rock and Roll" by the band Huey Lewis and The News. Singer Huey Lewis entertained audiences on stage and on the big screen with cameos in films like Back To The Future, but it wasn't an easy road to stardom. Tragedy struck when Lewis was diagnosed with Meniere's Disease in 2018 that threatened his music career. Learn more about his career and continued battle with hearing loss in this episode of Behind the Music. You'll also hear special interviews with Huey's fans and friends, Jimmy Kimmel and Topher Grace.
For more on Huey Lewis, watch Behind the Music now streaming on Paramount+.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Okay, this is the hot seat over here. Really, your
last interview from Behind the Music was in two thousand one.
Can you hear me? It's not easy. Okay, let's go
do the your pieces. Let's see that. Okay, testing testing.
Can you hear me? Hear you? Did you ever think
(00:25):
back then that you would be where you are today?
I had no idea where I would be, especially since
I lost my hearing. I'm happy to be alive. Let's
face it. They were a group of friends with a
simple dream, but Huey Lewis and the News became an
eighties phenomenon, selling more than thirty million albums. For a time,
(00:47):
they were the biggest band in the world. But the
road to startom Moist paved with struggle. But the band
never gave up, and soon there R and B sound
and upbeat tunes where captivating audiences, leaving the band to
tour the world for decades to come. But fans had
no idea. Hughie was struggling with a serious health issue.
(01:13):
Then suddenly the music stopped, but from darkness came inspiration. Now,
nearly two decades after his original episode of Behind the
Music aired, the rock and roll eicon is reflecting on
key moments of his life, giving new insights on his past,
and looking ahead with an inspiring message about resilience. This
(01:37):
is Huey Lewis and The News, the story behind the music.
In early Huey Lewis and The News were ready to
jump into a new year of touring. We were a
(02:00):
live band. It's really what we do best. I like
the harmonies, I like the horns, and I love the songs.
You know, they're just like kind of what pop songs
are supposed to be. But in a hotel room in Dallas,
life is Huey Lewis knew it suddenly changed two thousand
eighteen January for a gig, last gig I've played, I
(02:25):
lost my hearing. It's probably the worst night of my life.
I've just woken up from my neck and my tour
manager came to get me from my room and I'm
realized the media. I couldn't hear much of what he
was saying. And then because we went through the bowels
of the hotel, we're getting rid of the stage. It
(02:46):
sounded like there was a war going on or something.
It was explosions or something. I couldn't figure it out,
so what's that And they said, well, that's the opening act.
I said what And we started to play and it
was cacophony. I couldn't hear anything, and it's very possible
that I may never perform again. Huie's long road to
(03:15):
musical start and began in the shadow of the Golden
Gate Bridge, just north of San Francisco, in He was
born Hugh Craig the Third, a blue blood name given
to him by his beat nick parents. I treated him
like an adult from the time as this side, and
he managed to be an adult very early in the game.
The game with advantage is all the way up the line.
(03:39):
Huie's father was a part time radiologist with a full
time passion for jazz. He taught Huie how to swing.
My old man used to put me on the drums
and he you know, and he made me play swinging stuff,
you know, uh raba duke, rab duke rayba duke. And
he's just he always just tell me, if you can
do that, you can give great time. Time is everything.
(04:01):
While his father turned him on to jazz giants like
Bassie and Mingus, his mother introduced him to underground artists
like Ginsburg and Dylan Kwie and I would go Saturday
afternoon to the film or to whatever concerts were going on,
poetry readings, concerts. Both my father and my mother were
(04:23):
always very progressive, I guess as the word for it,
and they always encouraged me to try and try anything,
you know, try it. They're both Bohemians really. My dad
was a legit Boheemian. Well, my mom was one of
the very first hippies. They had parties and you know,
they were quite quite lively. But my dad was was
(04:44):
a hard ass. You know, he loves me a lot,
but he was a hard ass. My dad never said
I love you. One time later in life, I remember
I told him, I said, gay Hubbs, I love you,
and I could just hear him going, oh, So I've
never bothered with that again. But you know, he's from
that generation. I tell my kids I love him all
(05:05):
the time. A happy, go lucky kid who loved listening
to music. Kuwie began suffering painful earaches at the age
of six. The remedy was five penicillin shots, one each
day for five days. And in those days, the syringes
were that big and the needles were about that big,
(05:27):
and I was about this big and I remember just
eighting those shots that would happen every winner. And I
remember my dad was a radiologist and he always said,
you know you got crappy, you station tubes. Despite the pain,
Quie excelled in school. He was an academic whiz who
skip second grade and an athletic ace who was a
natural on the mound, A charismatic kid who always had
(05:50):
a smile for his mother's camera. But the carefree days
of beat poets in baseball came to an end when
his parents divorced he was just thirteen. There was court case,
which is really tough for me. You know, my dad
on the one time in mom and the judge actually
called me back in his chambers and he says, what
do you want to do? Huie refused to choose between parents,
(06:12):
so his father suggested he enrolled in a private prep
school three thousand miles and a world away from the
Bohemian Bay area. Or I didn't know that it was
a competitive world. And I was sure that he'd be channels.
And he went to prep school. The kicker was he
gave me a manual from the school, uh, you know,
a handbook, and on the cover was this guy, kind
(06:35):
of a prepping guy walking across this gorgeous quad with
ivy covered buildings, a bear, and a cute little buffy
co ed. I thought, yeah, that looks good. Hughie immediately
regretted his decision. Lawrenceville School was an all boys academy,
a toughest Nails throwback to the nineteenth century. Students were
required to wear a jacket and tie, attend chapel daily,
(06:58):
and studies silently three hours each night. Hughie was a
stranger in a strange land. My freshman sophomore years at
prep school. I was literally just trying to keep my
head above water. Academically, it was tough. Socially, it was
really tough. I remember, you know, being really homesick for
my first six months there, and I was definitely the outsider.
(07:19):
And he came in with a pointed shoes and the
shark skin pants and it was just totally different. I
think he sort of looked around at everybody went ooops.
If you know the loneliness that he experienced as a child,
it helps you to understand what a tough guy he is.
It was tough for me early. I had a little
(07:40):
tough period there, but I learned that, you know, you're
gonna have to make your own way in this world.
And I don't know, somehow it stealed me to where
I look on the bright side of things. I've since
that time, I've been very, very optimistic about things. Hughie
did his best to fit in. Rolf Ronaldo was his
(08:03):
roommate and his best friend at Lawrenceville. Together they learned
to party prep school style. Rolf was a free spirit,
shall we say. And we was in New Jersey and
there apple groves everywhere, so you could buy apple cider
and then let it ferment. And Rolf had this down
(08:24):
pretty good. We didn't know what we were doing, but
then you know, any port in the storm. Huie was
a two sport athlete and a member of the drama club.
But it was back in the dorm after lights out,
listening to a transistor radio where Hue found his true
love music. By his junior year, he was sneaking off
campus and into smoky blues bars. He used to go
(08:52):
into the clubs and Trenton and trent was really rough,
and nobody went into Trenton because you know, killed in Trenton.
I remember a great gig at the town Hall in
New York City where I saw Butterfield Blues Band for
the first time, and he always seats they had available
were on the stage, and it was just amazing to me.
He became obsessed with the blues and took up the harmonica.
(09:14):
When my parents split up, my mother rented a room
to a folk singer and he'd give me his old
harmonicas That's how I first started to play. Always the overachiever,
Hui practice endlessly. He's a great harmonica player now, but
in the beginning, it wasn't so rosy. In my senior year,
knowing about some of the bands and and beginning to
(09:36):
play the harmonica, and that's how I could establish my identity,
you know, wh I was somebody, and I realized now
that I was struggling for something to distinguish myself. But
he was already a distinguished student, scoring a perfect eight
hundred on his math s a T s x seven.
(09:56):
Hue graduated from prep school and he was eager to
jump to college. When he arrived back home, his father
had other plans. He informed me that I was sixteen
years old and pretty much on my own, and he
wasn't you know, he wasn't gonna bother me much more.
It was all the decisions were pretty much my accept
There was one more thing that he was going to
(10:17):
make me do. I said, it's a big world out there.
I told him just stop education right now and just
see something of the world, get get a feeling for it,
and decide where you fit in it. He says, you're
a year young. I want you to take a year
off and bum around Europe. With only a few hundred
dollars in his pocket, Hugh he charmed an airline employee
(10:40):
into helping him sneak on to a plane to London.
For the next year, he and a friend would travel extensively,
living day to day, meal to meal. I just literally
hitchhike through Europe with a knapsack and a sleeping bead,
and and many times I slept on the side of
the road. He quickly learned he could of off the
(11:00):
one thing he loved most in the world. Music. We
went to North Africa for three months, lived in Marrakech
in the square where I played harmonica with the hat
amidst snake charmers and uh bicyclists you know, acrobacks, And
there I was playing blue with the harmonica in the street,
and I make two dollars over an hour or so,
(11:24):
and I said, I'm supporting myself. I like this. I
think I think I'll be a musician. After traveling the
(11:48):
world for a year, Hugh's dreams of music followed him
back to school. The seventeen year old math whiz enrolled
in Cornell University's engineering program. What I really was excited
it about was music and poetry, which is the antithesis
of the engineering stuff I'm studying. And so first thing
I did was joined a band which was called Slippery Elm.
(12:10):
The band quickly became a frat house favorite and who
we decided he had found his life's calling. In seventy
he quit college and moved back to California to pursue
music full time. Harmonica in hand, he joined a Bay
Area band called Clover, a group with tons of talent
but no musical direction. We have multiple singers lead singers,
(12:32):
we had incorporated a lot of different musical styles, and
nobody could really ever figure out what we really were.
Clover straight by by playing an endless string of clubs
up and down the West Coast. The end of the week,
each member was lucky to bring home a hundred bucks
every year or so. We head down to l A
and try and get a record contract and never could
(12:53):
do it. Finally, after a decade of frustration, Clover landed
a recording contract. In seventy seven, the English label Vertigo
gave them a two record deal. Static the band race
to London. I consider England that it was like being
in rock and roll boot camp. I mean we we
got dragged through the mud. Clover's records bomb and British
(13:14):
audiences all but chased them from the stage. We got
booed every time we played. We didn't get booed off necessarily.
In fact, that was our little thing. Could we actually
get to the end of the set without getting booed
off the stage? After two years in London, Clover was
Wilton in In In nineteen seventy nine, after eleven frustrating years,
(13:34):
they made the agonizing decision to break up. I mean,
in retrospect, I probably should have quit a hundred times,
but when you're struggling, you're convinced you're gonna make it.
And I always tell people, look, unless being a musician
is the only thing you want to do, then to
do something else. But because because the odds are long.
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But if it is the only thing you want to do,
then keep trying. Pushing thirty, with no job, no money,
and his music career at a dead end, Hueie Lewis
needed to make a change. In back of my mind,
I thought, if this band Clover ever breaks up, I'm
gonna go start my own group, and I'm gonna it's
(14:16):
gonna have horn blairs in it more sort of R
and B that, and I'm gonna sing every song and
so and when Clover broke up, That's pretty much what
I did. Heading home to California, he gathered a group
of friends and began jamming at a club called Uncle
Charlie's with himself as the lead singer. All of a sudden,
(14:39):
Hui was singing, and he had his great Julie Lewis voices, ras,
br and B wonderful voice and the it was really
neat to see a guy come out as a singer.
My idea was to just invite all my favorite musicians
from town, which happened to be what became the News,
and create a house band. And of course I'd sing
all the months, and I thought to myself, I could
(15:02):
get I could get an extra gig, maybe a couple
of gigs a month. Out of this, I could make
another hundred fifty bucks. The object always for me has
been to be able to be in a band with
your pals, playing music and have people show up and
make a living. Within months, the shows were selling out.
As the show's got bigger, they started adding little steps
(15:24):
to their routines or just little jumps or things, and
they would feed off the crowd. The crowd would feed
off of them. It was incredible. Encouraged by the bar
room cheers, Hughie begged and borrowed a week of studio
time to cut a demo. It was just something about it,
and I liked his voice and even though if I
could found very primitive. After hearing Huey's take, veteran manager
(15:46):
Bob Brown felt compelled to see the band lot. They
may have been fifteen people there, and they got on
stage and he played it like they were in the coliseum.
The songs were great and the energy was up, and
it was like I was just taken. Brown signed on
as their manager, and with demo in hand, he set
out in search of a record deal. I went through
(16:07):
Capitol Records, Atlantic record of Warners. I went to every
American label there was a and m wasn't interested. After
just a couple of minutes, I just said, the guy
can't sing. We really weren't as good as Bob thought
we were. Bob pretended we were, and I think he's
simply bold people over with his enthusiasm. Finally, Chrysalists Records
decided to take a chance, and in the fall of
(16:29):
eighty the newly named Huey Lewis and The News released
their self titled debut. That video which is some of
my Liza True, which is done on a sewage pier.
That was my idea, and we shot that with a
with a video camera which were brand new. That was
cut in. There was a gal who said, well, I'll
(16:49):
shoot the video for you guys if we can show
it on our channel at two o'clock in the morning
and then we'll give you the video. We said great,
but few tuned to the News and the album flopped.
Hughie's musical career was on the line. I distinctly remember
thinking I just turned thirty, I had three dollars to
(17:12):
my name, and that we needed a hit and if
we didn't, we're gonna lose the record label and this
was really do or die. By the early eighties, Huey
Lewis and the News had faced their first disappointment as
a bad and needed a hit record. The second album
definitely had a little more pressure on it because you
only had so many shots. The cock was taken for
(17:32):
a pop career. With their future on the line, the
band insisted Chrysalis Records allow them to produce their sophomore
release themselves. In the early eighties, it was all about radio.
You needed a hit record or you didn't exist, and
I wanted to make those decisions ourselves because I knew
I'd have to live with them. With Huye at the Helm,
(17:54):
the band returned to the studio, but after six long
months of laying down tracks and make a break records
still felt like a bust. We needed to have a hit,
so there was a discussion about whether there was a
Quotes single or not, and none of us were convinced
that there was. Stumped Hugh, he turned to an old
friend from his London days, Robert mutt Lange, the legendary
producer behind a c d CS monster album Back in Black.
(18:18):
I'd asked him if he'd had any songs uh, And
he sent us a tune called uh we Both Believe
in Love that was obviously commercial and changed the lyrical
a little bit. He changed the words until do You
Believe in Love? From we Both Believe in Love? And
it was the most pop thing we've done, but but
it lived for me. You know, it was fine, It
(18:39):
was good. Do you Believe in Love? They really think
they got a chance at a hit, and so they said,
we're gonna do a really big video here. They hired
a professional guy who did this video with the pastel
sets and that we were dressed in kind of similarly
pastel clothes and rouge on our cheeks and really made
(19:00):
it up. And my heart sank. I thought it was horrible.
Hughie's funny because some of the things he hates I love.
I sometimes find myself in the position up telling him, no,
that was great. He's like, no, it wasn't, and I'm like, yes,
it was, And then I'm like, why am I fighting
with this man about his own work. Hughie may have
hated the video, but the song was to break the
band desperately needed. When they released Picture This in the
(19:23):
spring of a d two, the song shot to number
seven on the charts. It was the most exciting thing
in the world being got you know, twenty twenty three
years old and hearing yourself on the radio. It was
just overwhelming. Kewie and his friends had struck a sonic
nerve with their smile inducing songs and upbeat vibe, and
they soon found the perfect way to keep the good
(19:43):
times rolling. We were one of the MTV's first darlings.
You know. We were one of the first American bands
and made videos. That was an early concert footage. In
April of eighty two, The News were one of the
first bands to appear live in concert on fledgling music
television channel MTV. The timing of Hugh's rise to the
beginning of MTV was perfect. Um he was a good
(20:05):
looking rock and roller who played good rock and roll music.
Suddenly we're getting fan mail from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because cable
was new and so MTV was only in tertiary markets.
We didn't have it in San Francisco, we didn't have
it in l A. We had it in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
and Detroit, Michigan. And we could literally feel the impact
(20:29):
of MTV when we would hit the road and play
the songs and everything. It was amazing on the road
for a national tour. The news were winning fans and
finding inspiration in clubs and cities across the country. We
just played a show in Cleveland and just killed them,
and it came out and we're just high as a
(20:49):
kite on the bus and I said, you know what, guys,
the Harder rock and Roll was in Cleveland. And I said, hey,
wait a minute, that's a good idea for a song.
And three guys went, the Harder can Roll was in Cleveland.
You gotta be crazy, And Kuwie turned the simple hook
into a catchy travelogue and with a heart of rock
and roll, the band hit a groove. In the fall
(21:11):
of eighty two, they returned to the studio to work
on a rollicking record that would make music history. When
I got the tapes of this new album, eventually called Sports,
I just knew it was. It was it. I mean,
it was absolutely the best thing I'd ever been involved in.
We sat there and our mouth just dropped hope, I mean,
and and stayed dropped open, you know. Forty minutes, he
(21:35):
played six songs that were obvious at top ten hits
when Sports hit record stores in late eighty three, Who
was an immediate smash, but it took a few lonely
weeks for fans to find Hue on the road. The
record company start phoning me every day to tell me
how great the record's doing. And I'm playing a disco
in Odessa, Texas. I mean it's literally fifteen people there,
(22:00):
four of whom are cowboys and cowboy hats and couldn't
care less about Hue. Thus in the news. You know,
when we started the tour, they were booing us off
the stage. By the end of the tour they were
starting to come to see us, and the people were
going nuts. Jui came out with real rock and roll,
with R and B roots you could dance to. It
was speaking to them, and he was the guy every party,
(22:20):
every college kid, and every senior in high school. That
was their music of first Hue Lewis concert I went to.
I got up like four o'clock in the morning to
wait the line to buy tickets. It was very strange
to go from listening to cassette tape and seeing the
videos on MTV to being in this huge room with
(22:42):
all these people who knew the songs was one of
the best concerts I've ever been to. In a matter
of weeks, Sports rocketed to number one. Huie and the
News were still playing modest halls that had been booked
months earlier, but now the three thousand seat theaters had
ten thousand screaming fans outside fighting to get in. In
the early to mid eighties, they were as big as
any band around as far as commercial sales. You know,
(23:04):
they were up there with Madonna and Bruce Springsteen and
Michael Jackson. I knew we were riding a wave. I
never from the beginning thought, hey, we're the best band
in America. Propelled by a parade of hits like I
Want a New Drug, Sports stayed on the Billboard charts
for a mind boggling one hundred and fifty eight weeks.
I've realized, hey, we're gonna be able to do this
(23:25):
for the rest of our lives. The record would eventually
sell over ten million copies, but for Hue, making music
was more important than stardom. My dad always used to
say that, you know, if your songs number one, it
can't be very good because all the best stuff isn't
the most popular. And I guess I kind of agreed
with him, you know a little way, because I remember
(23:46):
when I record went number one, at number one, you know,
I thought it was better than that. I've never seen
anyone handles starting better than Hui Um. He treated everyone
with respect, and he remember people's names. He was great
with autograph seekers and particularly great with kids. We would
go through, uh, all these special things to get the
(24:06):
band back to the hotel and whatever. Bring him in
through the back door, take him in through this way
and get him back and then here we would go
down to the bar and have a drink with all
of the fans. After a decade and a half of
(24:34):
hard work, Huey Lewis had hit the big time. We
were realizing our dream, which was stay on the road,
play the songs. Now we're filling colosseums, and this was
a dream come true. But that dream was tested in
when hue was suddenly struck with a severe case of
vertico before a show. I was violently ill and dizzy
(25:00):
and I couldn't you know, it was nauseous. I went
to the hospital and nobody knew what it was. With
no explanation for his vertigo, Huey Lewis pushed on trying
to keep up with his growing popularity. Those couple of years,
not only would you hear you stuff on the radio
all the time, but at every sporting event and and
(25:22):
all the commercials began to sound like your records, and
you know, it was just silly. Then Hollywood came calling.
In five Hueie and guitarist Chris Hayes were asked to
write two songs for the soundtrack of the movie Back
to the Future. The Power of Love was instantly transported
to number one, becoming Huey's six top ten two. For
(25:45):
many bands, the pressure to repeat the successful multi platinum
album like Sports would be overwhelming that Hughie and the
Boys took it all in stride. I remember going to
the store and grabbing a six pack of beer and thinking,
you know what, I'm gonna write a song and I'm
gonna need beer. And I went into the studio and
I sat down. I started playing this pick the you know,
the guitar part, and then I made this demo up.
(26:08):
I mean, I just kind of recorded it over the
period of a six pack. Four was released in the
spring of eight six. The first single, Stuck with You,
shot straight to number one. It would be just one
of the album's five top ten hits. The hooks were memorable,
but the band one of the music videos to be unforgettable.
So the News took charge in fusing the clips with
(26:28):
their own offbeat brand of a reverence humor. Before MTV,
audio was all that matters, and so the visual component
wasn't so big, and so we kind of stumbled under that.
We actually got more involved and more creative with our videos,
which is really some of the fun times we had
was creating and making the early videos that we did.
They all had a sense of humor to them, and
(26:49):
everybody got to put their two cents in. One of
the things that endeared them to the public in the
early days was on their very first MTV videos, they
were kind of inspired by the same sort of any
tongue in shake, poking fun with themselves things that the
Beatles did with a hard day's night. Our attitude was
always to avoid a literal translation of the song at
all costs and simply goof and we really had a
(27:12):
good time doing them. I mean it was it was funny.
Huey's videos were always goofy, a little bit corny, but funny.
I also like how he would suddenly abuse the rest
of the band, like by burying them up to their
necks in the sand. And he knows that the band
would just be a series of heads. And when you
(27:33):
get you get into show business and you know how
things work, you'll realize how much they must have paid it.
Then four sold over three million copies, and Huey Lewis
and the News played to pack stands around the world
for the next two years. I think what people see
him to be square there, Oh, this guy's are real square.
But I will tell you this is not a square.
(27:55):
I originally wrote that song and the third person he
used to be a renegade. He used to cool rep
and it was meant to articulate a phenomenon of the
bohemian's dropping back in and becoming body law, which was
an eighties thing. But I thought it would be funnier
if I told it in the first person, and not
everybody got the joke by Huey Lewis and the News
(28:21):
had ruled the pop charts for six years. As they
returned to the studio, they had a new mission. Between
Sports and Four, the band has told well over fifteen
million records. Selling millions of records wasn't the object anymore.
Hughey and and the whole band took a step and said,
we're gonna show you what we can do. We're gonna
show you what's in our soul. They needed to stretch
out a little bit and see what they were capable
(28:42):
of doing. On the album, Hughie and the News employed
the talents of legendary jazz saxophonist stand Gets and the
mighty horns of Tower of Power. It's an R and
B tour to force you know, I think the whole
album and it's my favorite. Hugh lewis, It's got great
music on it. I think he was a little over
his audience head in they released Small World. It was
(29:06):
a critical success, but couldn't match the sales of Huie's
previous albums. I was so proud of that single, and
yet it was the first one in a chain of
twenty not to break the top twenty. Wasn't a humorous
is some of our stuff? And and you know, and
it was Unfortunately people don't really kind of want that
stuff from me sometimes that the crowd are small. I
(29:26):
could see that Hughie was disappointed. But I'll say this,
The Allways gave a great show. Remember having a discussion
with the guys band meeting. I said, guys, we only
go from nowhere to everywhere once, and I said, let's
enjoy it, you know, let's let's not being a hurry
to go to get through this thing. Let's just enjoy it.
You know, in retrospect, I think we did. Despite the
(29:47):
drop in sales, the band continued doing what they loved,
playing music and touring around the world. But unbeknownst to
their fans, Huie's vertigo had returned. Yea, My video episodes
were intense, and we get so nauseous. I couldn't stand up,
(30:10):
the room spinning, and I called Lowell, our tour manager,
and Lowell came and saved me, and then brought me
a five milligram value in which they'd give you to
take and put you out and then when you wake up,
you're fine. But things weren't fine out of Nowhere. Hughey
(30:32):
lost hearing in his right ear one day. It just
went away. It felt like I'd been swimming in the
swimming pool and it was all clogged up and I
couldn't couldn't clear it. I went to this a NT friend.
He examined me and then he said, well, get used
(30:53):
to it. I said what he said? He said, get
used to it. You only need one here, I said, will,
But I'm a musician, I'm a singer. It carried me.
Kuie Lewis was a superstar with a career threatening secret.
He was grappling with the early stages of hearing loss.
(31:13):
I went to my doctor in Montana, prescribed me the
Monks of cylind or some kind of antibiotic and didn't work.
And I came to California saw another doctor gave me
some heavier antibiotics. They didn't work either. With a concert
on the books, Jewe had to make a decision try
to sing or canceled the show, So I thought, let's try.
(31:37):
I still didn't have my right ear, and I was
super apprehensive about putting in my in ears and how
is it going to be? It was different, but I
could sing. Everything was fine. If you have dinner with him,
you know that he doesn't hear very well in one ear,
(31:58):
so you kind of figure it out on which side
you talk. But it turns out you only need one
year to sing. Quie soldiered on and In two thousand one,
the band released Plan B. The album was a return
to the soul and blues hue we loved before he
became a pop star. We called it Plan B because
(32:18):
it's the record we would have made if Plan A
hadn't worked out. We wrote Plan B for that nine
piece horn section, and the idea was to just capture
those performances as opposed to creating them piece by piece
in the studio, and that's how that record was cut.
It was really fun, with a slate of new songs
(32:44):
and classic hits. The band spent the next two decades
doing what they loved the most, hitting the road and
playing more than seventy shows a year. That's, you know,
a hundred and twenty days on our own. Almost some
years we worked even more than that on the road.
The band jotted down lyrics for a new album. We
(33:05):
were compiling songs all along, but you kind of have
to wait for the ideas to come to you. And
so when we have an idea, we'd worked the song up,
go play it live bunch, and then recorded and put
it in the camp. And we had seven songs in
the camp over the course of ten years. But recording
(33:26):
came to a screeching halt. On January, the News were
about to take the stage in Dallas when suddenly Hughey
heard a pop in his left ear. My left ear
crashed and it was a nightmare that we tried to
do the show. I couldn't hear pitch a base part
(33:47):
were trud to go, boom boom boom boom boom would go.
I looked at John and he's just playing away. And
I looked at me, go, what's going on that? I
thought the amplifier was blown or something. It was my
hair nearly deaf, and his righty are already. He was
now struggling to hear music at all while in front
(34:10):
of an unsuspecting crowd. I couldn't hear anything. Stumbled through
the gig somehow, I don't. I don't even know how.
I mean, I sang out of tune. It was. It
was awful. It was. It was horrible. I said, guys,
I don't know what happened. I'm sorry. My hear him
blah blah bub. I went straight to bed, woke up
(34:31):
next day, flew to l A to see any NT
guy that justin timber Lake recommended put me on a
twenty nine day program of steroids and that didn't work,
and then I got read in his own shots in
my ear. I woke up the next morning violently ill.
I had I had vertigo. When he was experiencing symptoms,
(34:54):
he was staying at my house. He was unable to
stand up, and um, it was. It was bad and scary.
You know. My son came over and you know, put
me to bed, and when I woke up, I could hear,
and I went thank God, and three hours later crashed again.
(35:15):
Doctors eventually diagnosed Huie with many Years disease, an inter
ear condition which currently has no cure. Julie told me
that he'd been diagnosed with Manyears disease and I didn't
know what it was. I'd never heard of it, and
I don't think he knew a whole lot about what
it was ben Ear's disease. But it's not really a disease,
(35:37):
it's a syndrome based on symptoms. They really don't know
what it is. So I went immediately to House here
Institute and started on this journey to try and find help.
And you know, I've been everywhere since then. I've been
to Stanford, our institute Mayo Clinic, the UCSF, and nobody
has any idea. I've I've tried all kinds of Eastern
(35:58):
chiropractic occupied juror, all organic diet and supplements and that
CBD oil and other kind of essential oils, and nothing works.
With the help of hearing aids, Hughie could still hear
some sounds, but music was no longer recognizable. Speech is
(36:20):
easier to listen to the music because even one note
occurs in all frequencies with harmonics and overtones and stuff.
The problem is when there're too many instruments and they're
too loud, it goes cacophony for me and I can't
can't find pitch. He also struggled with a NonStop roar
in his ears. That major tended is. I mean, I
(36:43):
have tended this now, I have it all the time,
and it was roaring in my head. You know, it
was just miserable without a lead singer. The news were
forced to immediately cancel all the remaining tour dates. That's
when everybody said, what's happened tonight? I usue to statement
that I've lost by Ariam, you can't really schedule any
(37:05):
professional engagements because you don't know if you show up
if you'll be able to hear. So it makes it
virtually impossible two perform at a concert. I've never been
a great singer, but I was always reliable and the
boys that you know, the guys depend on me. I
feel like I let all these people down. So there's
(37:26):
twenty five guys that are out of a job. His
musical life, as he knew it, was over singing. It's
not just what he loves to do, it's what people
know him for. And losing that ability, at least, you know,
(37:47):
not being able to bank on it. I just can't
imagine it. Hue had a difficult time coming to terms
with that loss. Yeah, that was horrible. I mean that
was I spent I spent two months pretty much in
bed contemplating my demise, thinking I can't live like this.
(38:08):
You know, that was horrible. He was really down for
a long time, and it's hard to find words to
cheer somebody up in a situation like that. I think
he knows that we are genuinely concerned for him and
for his not just physical well being, put for his
(38:29):
mental well being. Because this is a lot to deal with,
but he handles it I think as well as as
a person can handle it. Now. My kids have been great,
and you just look at pictures of your granddaughter and
they make you happy. And I had to remind myself
that there's so many people out there worse off than me.
You know, even if I can't hear it all. You know,
(38:51):
don't be a baby about this. You know, you lot
to be thankful for So figure out, now, what are
we gonna do? Hugh we was determined to get his
mind off his illness and back to what he loved most. Music.
John Abrams and Tyler Mitchell. You know, they came to
me early on and said, wow, we'd like to try
to write a musical and music. I said, well, congratulates
(39:15):
your number fifty five, you know, I mean I've heard
this for years and years and years, and I always said,
you know, just show me the script, and that pretty
much got rid of everybody. But their first draft was incredible.
It was really really good. Needing a creative outlet and distraction,
Hughie threw himself into work on his musical titled The
(39:37):
Heart of Rock and Roll. The musical really saved my
bacon because I was really in the worst state and
By the way, my hearing was so bad. Many times
I couldn't hear anything, so I couldn't even really contribute.
But just being there, knowing that there was some creative
happening and and our songs and all that and looking
(40:00):
after it was therapeutics. Somehow. The musical also gave Hughie
the strength to try songwriting again. I had this idea
for I want to be someone I can't sing, but
I heard it into my head a little bit. I
can hear it in my head when the show premiered
in San Diego in the Fall of the Heart of
(40:23):
Rock and Roll gave Hughie an opportunity to experience his
music in an entirely new way, to completely objective look
at your songs, which is fascinating. There's a lot of love,
there's a lot of heart, there's a lot of working,
there's a lot of power. These are words that just
seemed to come up on our songs. I realized, Wow,
(40:46):
there really is a kind of a thread that runs
through all this stuff, and so it made me feel
good about our catalog. After the musical successful role, Huie
Lewis was inspired to release the album he put on
hold when he lost to see. We waited kind of
a year to see if my hearing would get better,
and it didn't, so I thought, why not share the
(41:06):
songs with the fans, you know, with seven of them
on only seven. But we all are very proud of
that record. Released in February, the album's title summed up
the band's long career and the struggles they have gone
through together that we had sports we are the news,
So there's that. And it was a kind of a
(41:28):
tough couple of years for us anyway. So we've we
have experienced some weather, and I hope, I hope people
here because it really is some of our best work
anything with famous friends pitching into hell. The music video
for her Love Is Killing Me became a visual reminder
of all the support UI has received over the years.
(41:48):
Michael Keaton did it, Jimmy Buffett did it, and Joe
Montana did it, and Jimmy Kimmel did it. The production
value is tremendous. It makes you feel great when you have,
you know, friends like that. The release of Weather was
bitter sweet because it's the only album they weren't able
(42:09):
to play live. It's a team sport. The way we
played music it's really a band, and really if it's
all of us together, and that's really the fun part
is the camaraderie and the laughs, you know they have
and this is a tough thing for them because you know,
we've all lost our livelihood and they've been they've been very,
(42:29):
very supportive. I mean, it's it's three years now, so
that our crew has all moved on and everybody's pretty
much got gigs and and we had pension plants for everybody,
so everybody's pretty much taken care of. But if I
missed the guys. A rock and blues icon who wanted
nothing more than a life making music, Hueie Lewis has
(42:53):
found peace in the songs of his past and the
creative ambitions of his future. One of the great things
in all of entertainment is if you become synonymous with
the time. It was really special for people. They always
have that place in their heart for you. And he
has definitely left his mark. Manyear's disease is very mysterious
(43:16):
and why I hope that there are people working on it,
because you know, I'd like to go to a Huey
Lewis and the News concert again. I think I can
I hope I can, and that's what I'm aiming for.
I haven't given up on music a word. I'm never
gonna sing again, and I may not, but I'm not.
(43:38):
I'm not willing to say that yet. Listen to Behind
the Music on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Want more episodes,
you can watch remastered best of the ball and new
episodes Behind the Music only on Paramount Plus
Okay, this is the hot seat over here. Really, your
last interview from Behind the Music was in two thousand one.
Can you hear me? It's not easy. Okay, let's go
do the your pieces. Let's see that. Okay, testing testing.
Can you hear me? Hear you? Did you ever think
(00:25):
back then that you would be where you are today?
I had no idea where I would be, especially since
I lost my hearing. I'm happy to be alive. Let's
face it. They were a group of friends with a
simple dream, but Huey Lewis and the News became an
eighties phenomenon, selling more than thirty million albums. For a time,
(00:47):
they were the biggest band in the world. But the
road to startom Moist paved with struggle. But the band
never gave up, and soon there R and B sound
and upbeat tunes where captivating audiences, leaving the band to
tour the world for decades to come. But fans had
no idea. Hughie was struggling with a serious health issue.
(01:13):
Then suddenly the music stopped, but from darkness came inspiration. Now,
nearly two decades after his original episode of Behind the
Music aired, the rock and roll eicon is reflecting on
key moments of his life, giving new insights on his past,
and looking ahead with an inspiring message about resilience. This
(01:37):
is Huey Lewis and The News, the story behind the music.
In early Huey Lewis and The News were ready to
jump into a new year of touring. We were a
(02:00):
live band. It's really what we do best. I like
the harmonies, I like the horns, and I love the songs.
You know, they're just like kind of what pop songs
are supposed to be. But in a hotel room in Dallas,
life is Huey Lewis knew it suddenly changed two thousand
eighteen January for a gig, last gig I've played, I
(02:25):
lost my hearing. It's probably the worst night of my life.
I've just woken up from my neck and my tour
manager came to get me from my room and I'm
realized the media. I couldn't hear much of what he
was saying. And then because we went through the bowels
of the hotel, we're getting rid of the stage. It
(02:46):
sounded like there was a war going on or something.
It was explosions or something. I couldn't figure it out,
so what's that And they said, well, that's the opening act.
I said what And we started to play and it
was cacophony. I couldn't hear anything, and it's very possible
that I may never perform again. Huie's long road to
(03:15):
musical start and began in the shadow of the Golden
Gate Bridge, just north of San Francisco, in He was
born Hugh Craig the Third, a blue blood name given
to him by his beat nick parents. I treated him
like an adult from the time as this side, and
he managed to be an adult very early in the game.
The game with advantage is all the way up the line.
(03:39):
Huie's father was a part time radiologist with a full
time passion for jazz. He taught Huie how to swing.
My old man used to put me on the drums
and he you know, and he made me play swinging stuff,
you know, uh raba duke, rab duke rayba duke. And
he's just he always just tell me, if you can
do that, you can give great time. Time is everything.
(04:01):
While his father turned him on to jazz giants like
Bassie and Mingus, his mother introduced him to underground artists
like Ginsburg and Dylan Kwie and I would go Saturday
afternoon to the film or to whatever concerts were going on,
poetry readings, concerts. Both my father and my mother were
(04:23):
always very progressive, I guess as the word for it,
and they always encouraged me to try and try anything,
you know, try it. They're both Bohemians really. My dad
was a legit Boheemian. Well, my mom was one of
the very first hippies. They had parties and you know,
they were quite quite lively. But my dad was was
(04:44):
a hard ass. You know, he loves me a lot,
but he was a hard ass. My dad never said
I love you. One time later in life, I remember
I told him, I said, gay Hubbs, I love you,
and I could just hear him going, oh, So I've
never bothered with that again. But you know, he's from
that generation. I tell my kids I love him all
(05:05):
the time. A happy, go lucky kid who loved listening
to music. Kuwie began suffering painful earaches at the age
of six. The remedy was five penicillin shots, one each
day for five days. And in those days, the syringes
were that big and the needles were about that big,
(05:27):
and I was about this big and I remember just
eighting those shots that would happen every winner. And I
remember my dad was a radiologist and he always said,
you know you got crappy, you station tubes. Despite the pain,
Quie excelled in school. He was an academic whiz who
skip second grade and an athletic ace who was a
natural on the mound, A charismatic kid who always had
(05:50):
a smile for his mother's camera. But the carefree days
of beat poets in baseball came to an end when
his parents divorced he was just thirteen. There was court case,
which is really tough for me. You know, my dad
on the one time in mom and the judge actually
called me back in his chambers and he says, what
do you want to do? Huie refused to choose between parents,
(06:12):
so his father suggested he enrolled in a private prep
school three thousand miles and a world away from the
Bohemian Bay area. Or I didn't know that it was
a competitive world. And I was sure that he'd be channels.
And he went to prep school. The kicker was he
gave me a manual from the school, uh, you know,
a handbook, and on the cover was this guy, kind
(06:35):
of a prepping guy walking across this gorgeous quad with
ivy covered buildings, a bear, and a cute little buffy
co ed. I thought, yeah, that looks good. Hughie immediately
regretted his decision. Lawrenceville School was an all boys academy,
a toughest Nails throwback to the nineteenth century. Students were
required to wear a jacket and tie, attend chapel daily,
(06:58):
and studies silently three hours each night. Hughie was a
stranger in a strange land. My freshman sophomore years at
prep school. I was literally just trying to keep my
head above water. Academically, it was tough. Socially, it was
really tough. I remember, you know, being really homesick for
my first six months there, and I was definitely the outsider.
(07:19):
And he came in with a pointed shoes and the
shark skin pants and it was just totally different. I
think he sort of looked around at everybody went ooops.
If you know the loneliness that he experienced as a child,
it helps you to understand what a tough guy he is.
It was tough for me early. I had a little
(07:40):
tough period there, but I learned that, you know, you're
gonna have to make your own way in this world.
And I don't know, somehow it stealed me to where
I look on the bright side of things. I've since
that time, I've been very, very optimistic about things. Hughie
did his best to fit in. Rolf Ronaldo was his
(08:03):
roommate and his best friend at Lawrenceville. Together they learned
to party prep school style. Rolf was a free spirit,
shall we say. And we was in New Jersey and
there apple groves everywhere, so you could buy apple cider
and then let it ferment. And Rolf had this down
(08:24):
pretty good. We didn't know what we were doing, but
then you know, any port in the storm. Huie was
a two sport athlete and a member of the drama club.
But it was back in the dorm after lights out,
listening to a transistor radio where Hue found his true
love music. By his junior year, he was sneaking off
campus and into smoky blues bars. He used to go
(08:52):
into the clubs and Trenton and trent was really rough,
and nobody went into Trenton because you know, killed in Trenton.
I remember a great gig at the town Hall in
New York City where I saw Butterfield Blues Band for
the first time, and he always seats they had available
were on the stage, and it was just amazing to me.
He became obsessed with the blues and took up the harmonica.
(09:14):
When my parents split up, my mother rented a room
to a folk singer and he'd give me his old
harmonicas That's how I first started to play. Always the overachiever,
Hui practice endlessly. He's a great harmonica player now, but
in the beginning, it wasn't so rosy. In my senior year,
knowing about some of the bands and and beginning to
(09:36):
play the harmonica, and that's how I could establish my identity,
you know, wh I was somebody, and I realized now
that I was struggling for something to distinguish myself. But
he was already a distinguished student, scoring a perfect eight
hundred on his math s a T s x seven.
(09:56):
Hue graduated from prep school and he was eager to
jump to college. When he arrived back home, his father
had other plans. He informed me that I was sixteen
years old and pretty much on my own, and he
wasn't you know, he wasn't gonna bother me much more.
It was all the decisions were pretty much my accept
There was one more thing that he was going to
(10:17):
make me do. I said, it's a big world out there.
I told him just stop education right now and just
see something of the world, get get a feeling for it,
and decide where you fit in it. He says, you're
a year young. I want you to take a year
off and bum around Europe. With only a few hundred
dollars in his pocket, Hugh he charmed an airline employee
(10:40):
into helping him sneak on to a plane to London.
For the next year, he and a friend would travel extensively,
living day to day, meal to meal. I just literally
hitchhike through Europe with a knapsack and a sleeping bead,
and and many times I slept on the side of
the road. He quickly learned he could of off the
(11:00):
one thing he loved most in the world. Music. We
went to North Africa for three months, lived in Marrakech
in the square where I played harmonica with the hat
amidst snake charmers and uh bicyclists you know, acrobacks, And
there I was playing blue with the harmonica in the street,
and I make two dollars over an hour or so,
(11:24):
and I said, I'm supporting myself. I like this. I
think I think I'll be a musician. After traveling the
(11:48):
world for a year, Hugh's dreams of music followed him
back to school. The seventeen year old math whiz enrolled
in Cornell University's engineering program. What I really was excited
it about was music and poetry, which is the antithesis
of the engineering stuff I'm studying. And so first thing
I did was joined a band which was called Slippery Elm.
(12:10):
The band quickly became a frat house favorite and who
we decided he had found his life's calling. In seventy
he quit college and moved back to California to pursue
music full time. Harmonica in hand, he joined a Bay
Area band called Clover, a group with tons of talent
but no musical direction. We have multiple singers lead singers,
(12:32):
we had incorporated a lot of different musical styles, and
nobody could really ever figure out what we really were.
Clover straight by by playing an endless string of clubs
up and down the West Coast. The end of the week,
each member was lucky to bring home a hundred bucks
every year or so. We head down to l A
and try and get a record contract and never could
(12:53):
do it. Finally, after a decade of frustration, Clover landed
a recording contract. In seventy seven, the English label Vertigo
gave them a two record deal. Static the band race
to London. I consider England that it was like being
in rock and roll boot camp. I mean we we
got dragged through the mud. Clover's records bomb and British
(13:14):
audiences all but chased them from the stage. We got
booed every time we played. We didn't get booed off necessarily.
In fact, that was our little thing. Could we actually
get to the end of the set without getting booed
off the stage? After two years in London, Clover was
Wilton in In In nineteen seventy nine, after eleven frustrating years,
(13:34):
they made the agonizing decision to break up. I mean,
in retrospect, I probably should have quit a hundred times,
but when you're struggling, you're convinced you're gonna make it.
And I always tell people, look, unless being a musician
is the only thing you want to do, then to
do something else. But because because the odds are long.
(13:54):
But if it is the only thing you want to do,
then keep trying. Pushing thirty, with no job, no money,
and his music career at a dead end, Hueie Lewis
needed to make a change. In back of my mind,
I thought, if this band Clover ever breaks up, I'm
gonna go start my own group, and I'm gonna it's
(14:16):
gonna have horn blairs in it more sort of R
and B that, and I'm gonna sing every song and
so and when Clover broke up, That's pretty much what
I did. Heading home to California, he gathered a group
of friends and began jamming at a club called Uncle
Charlie's with himself as the lead singer. All of a sudden,
(14:39):
Hui was singing, and he had his great Julie Lewis voices, ras,
br and B wonderful voice and the it was really
neat to see a guy come out as a singer.
My idea was to just invite all my favorite musicians
from town, which happened to be what became the News,
and create a house band. And of course I'd sing
all the months, and I thought to myself, I could
(15:02):
get I could get an extra gig, maybe a couple
of gigs a month. Out of this, I could make
another hundred fifty bucks. The object always for me has
been to be able to be in a band with
your pals, playing music and have people show up and
make a living. Within months, the shows were selling out.
As the show's got bigger, they started adding little steps
(15:24):
to their routines or just little jumps or things, and
they would feed off the crowd. The crowd would feed
off of them. It was incredible. Encouraged by the bar
room cheers, Hughie begged and borrowed a week of studio
time to cut a demo. It was just something about it,
and I liked his voice and even though if I
could found very primitive. After hearing Huey's take, veteran manager
(15:46):
Bob Brown felt compelled to see the band lot. They
may have been fifteen people there, and they got on
stage and he played it like they were in the coliseum.
The songs were great and the energy was up, and
it was like I was just taken. Brown signed on
as their manager, and with demo in hand, he set
out in search of a record deal. I went through
(16:07):
Capitol Records, Atlantic record of Warners. I went to every
American label there was a and m wasn't interested. After
just a couple of minutes, I just said, the guy
can't sing. We really weren't as good as Bob thought
we were. Bob pretended we were, and I think he's
simply bold people over with his enthusiasm. Finally, Chrysalists Records
decided to take a chance, and in the fall of
(16:29):
eighty the newly named Huey Lewis and The News released
their self titled debut. That video which is some of
my Liza True, which is done on a sewage pier.
That was my idea, and we shot that with a
with a video camera which were brand new. That was
cut in. There was a gal who said, well, I'll
(16:49):
shoot the video for you guys if we can show
it on our channel at two o'clock in the morning
and then we'll give you the video. We said great,
but few tuned to the News and the album flopped.
Hughie's musical career was on the line. I distinctly remember
thinking I just turned thirty, I had three dollars to
(17:12):
my name, and that we needed a hit and if
we didn't, we're gonna lose the record label and this
was really do or die. By the early eighties, Huey
Lewis and the News had faced their first disappointment as
a bad and needed a hit record. The second album
definitely had a little more pressure on it because you
only had so many shots. The cock was taken for
(17:32):
a pop career. With their future on the line, the
band insisted Chrysalis Records allow them to produce their sophomore
release themselves. In the early eighties, it was all about radio.
You needed a hit record or you didn't exist, and
I wanted to make those decisions ourselves because I knew
I'd have to live with them. With Huye at the Helm,
(17:54):
the band returned to the studio, but after six long
months of laying down tracks and make a break records
still felt like a bust. We needed to have a hit,
so there was a discussion about whether there was a
Quotes single or not, and none of us were convinced
that there was. Stumped Hugh, he turned to an old
friend from his London days, Robert mutt Lange, the legendary
producer behind a c d CS monster album Back in Black.
(18:18):
I'd asked him if he'd had any songs uh, And
he sent us a tune called uh we Both Believe
in Love that was obviously commercial and changed the lyrical
a little bit. He changed the words until do You
Believe in Love? From we Both Believe in Love? And
it was the most pop thing we've done, but but
it lived for me. You know, it was fine, It
(18:39):
was good. Do you Believe in Love? They really think
they got a chance at a hit, and so they said,
we're gonna do a really big video here. They hired
a professional guy who did this video with the pastel
sets and that we were dressed in kind of similarly
pastel clothes and rouge on our cheeks and really made
(19:00):
it up. And my heart sank. I thought it was horrible.
Hughie's funny because some of the things he hates I love.
I sometimes find myself in the position up telling him, no,
that was great. He's like, no, it wasn't, and I'm like, yes,
it was, And then I'm like, why am I fighting
with this man about his own work. Hughie may have
hated the video, but the song was to break the
band desperately needed. When they released Picture This in the
(19:23):
spring of a d two, the song shot to number
seven on the charts. It was the most exciting thing
in the world being got you know, twenty twenty three
years old and hearing yourself on the radio. It was
just overwhelming. Kewie and his friends had struck a sonic
nerve with their smile inducing songs and upbeat vibe, and
they soon found the perfect way to keep the good
(19:43):
times rolling. We were one of the MTV's first darlings.
You know. We were one of the first American bands
and made videos. That was an early concert footage. In
April of eighty two, The News were one of the
first bands to appear live in concert on fledgling music
television channel MTV. The timing of Hugh's rise to the
beginning of MTV was perfect. Um he was a good
(20:05):
looking rock and roller who played good rock and roll music.
Suddenly we're getting fan mail from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Because cable
was new and so MTV was only in tertiary markets.
We didn't have it in San Francisco, we didn't have
it in l A. We had it in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
and Detroit, Michigan. And we could literally feel the impact
(20:29):
of MTV when we would hit the road and play
the songs and everything. It was amazing on the road
for a national tour. The news were winning fans and
finding inspiration in clubs and cities across the country. We
just played a show in Cleveland and just killed them,
and it came out and we're just high as a
(20:49):
kite on the bus and I said, you know what, guys,
the Harder rock and Roll was in Cleveland. And I said, hey,
wait a minute, that's a good idea for a song.
And three guys went, the Harder can Roll was in Cleveland.
You gotta be crazy, And Kuwie turned the simple hook
into a catchy travelogue and with a heart of rock
and roll, the band hit a groove. In the fall
(21:11):
of eighty two, they returned to the studio to work
on a rollicking record that would make music history. When
I got the tapes of this new album, eventually called Sports,
I just knew it was. It was it. I mean,
it was absolutely the best thing I'd ever been involved in.
We sat there and our mouth just dropped hope, I mean,
and and stayed dropped open, you know. Forty minutes, he
(21:35):
played six songs that were obvious at top ten hits
when Sports hit record stores in late eighty three, Who
was an immediate smash, but it took a few lonely
weeks for fans to find Hue on the road. The
record company start phoning me every day to tell me
how great the record's doing. And I'm playing a disco
in Odessa, Texas. I mean it's literally fifteen people there,
(22:00):
four of whom are cowboys and cowboy hats and couldn't
care less about Hue. Thus in the news. You know,
when we started the tour, they were booing us off
the stage. By the end of the tour they were
starting to come to see us, and the people were
going nuts. Jui came out with real rock and roll,
with R and B roots you could dance to. It
was speaking to them, and he was the guy every party,
(22:20):
every college kid, and every senior in high school. That
was their music of first Hue Lewis concert I went to.
I got up like four o'clock in the morning to
wait the line to buy tickets. It was very strange
to go from listening to cassette tape and seeing the
videos on MTV to being in this huge room with
(22:42):
all these people who knew the songs was one of
the best concerts I've ever been to. In a matter
of weeks, Sports rocketed to number one. Huie and the
News were still playing modest halls that had been booked
months earlier, but now the three thousand seat theaters had
ten thousand screaming fans outside fighting to get in. In
the early to mid eighties, they were as big as
any band around as far as commercial sales. You know,
(23:04):
they were up there with Madonna and Bruce Springsteen and
Michael Jackson. I knew we were riding a wave. I
never from the beginning thought, hey, we're the best band
in America. Propelled by a parade of hits like I
Want a New Drug, Sports stayed on the Billboard charts
for a mind boggling one hundred and fifty eight weeks.
I've realized, hey, we're gonna be able to do this
(23:25):
for the rest of our lives. The record would eventually
sell over ten million copies, but for Hue, making music
was more important than stardom. My dad always used to
say that, you know, if your songs number one, it
can't be very good because all the best stuff isn't
the most popular. And I guess I kind of agreed
with him, you know a little way, because I remember
(23:46):
when I record went number one, at number one, you know,
I thought it was better than that. I've never seen
anyone handles starting better than Hui Um. He treated everyone
with respect, and he remember people's names. He was great
with autograph seekers and particularly great with kids. We would
go through, uh, all these special things to get the
(24:06):
band back to the hotel and whatever. Bring him in
through the back door, take him in through this way
and get him back and then here we would go
down to the bar and have a drink with all
of the fans. After a decade and a half of
(24:34):
hard work, Huey Lewis had hit the big time. We
were realizing our dream, which was stay on the road,
play the songs. Now we're filling colosseums, and this was
a dream come true. But that dream was tested in
when hue was suddenly struck with a severe case of
vertico before a show. I was violently ill and dizzy
(25:00):
and I couldn't you know, it was nauseous. I went
to the hospital and nobody knew what it was. With
no explanation for his vertigo, Huey Lewis pushed on trying
to keep up with his growing popularity. Those couple of years,
not only would you hear you stuff on the radio
all the time, but at every sporting event and and
(25:22):
all the commercials began to sound like your records, and
you know, it was just silly. Then Hollywood came calling.
In five Hueie and guitarist Chris Hayes were asked to
write two songs for the soundtrack of the movie Back
to the Future. The Power of Love was instantly transported
to number one, becoming Huey's six top ten two. For
(25:45):
many bands, the pressure to repeat the successful multi platinum
album like Sports would be overwhelming that Hughie and the
Boys took it all in stride. I remember going to
the store and grabbing a six pack of beer and thinking,
you know what, I'm gonna write a song and I'm
gonna need beer. And I went into the studio and
I sat down. I started playing this pick the you know,
the guitar part, and then I made this demo up.
(26:08):
I mean, I just kind of recorded it over the
period of a six pack. Four was released in the
spring of eight six. The first single, Stuck with You,
shot straight to number one. It would be just one
of the album's five top ten hits. The hooks were memorable,
but the band one of the music videos to be unforgettable.
So the News took charge in fusing the clips with
(26:28):
their own offbeat brand of a reverence humor. Before MTV,
audio was all that matters, and so the visual component
wasn't so big, and so we kind of stumbled under that.
We actually got more involved and more creative with our videos,
which is really some of the fun times we had
was creating and making the early videos that we did.
They all had a sense of humor to them, and
(26:49):
everybody got to put their two cents in. One of
the things that endeared them to the public in the
early days was on their very first MTV videos, they
were kind of inspired by the same sort of any
tongue in shake, poking fun with themselves things that the
Beatles did with a hard day's night. Our attitude was
always to avoid a literal translation of the song at
all costs and simply goof and we really had a
(27:12):
good time doing them. I mean it was it was funny.
Huey's videos were always goofy, a little bit corny, but funny.
I also like how he would suddenly abuse the rest
of the band, like by burying them up to their
necks in the sand. And he knows that the band
would just be a series of heads. And when you
(27:33):
get you get into show business and you know how
things work, you'll realize how much they must have paid it.
Then four sold over three million copies, and Huey Lewis
and the News played to pack stands around the world
for the next two years. I think what people see
him to be square there, Oh, this guy's are real square.
But I will tell you this is not a square.
(27:55):
I originally wrote that song and the third person he
used to be a renegade. He used to cool rep
and it was meant to articulate a phenomenon of the
bohemian's dropping back in and becoming body law, which was
an eighties thing. But I thought it would be funnier
if I told it in the first person, and not
everybody got the joke by Huey Lewis and the News
(28:21):
had ruled the pop charts for six years. As they
returned to the studio, they had a new mission. Between
Sports and Four, the band has told well over fifteen
million records. Selling millions of records wasn't the object anymore.
Hughey and and the whole band took a step and said,
we're gonna show you what we can do. We're gonna
show you what's in our soul. They needed to stretch
out a little bit and see what they were capable
(28:42):
of doing. On the album, Hughie and the News employed
the talents of legendary jazz saxophonist stand Gets and the
mighty horns of Tower of Power. It's an R and
B tour to force you know, I think the whole
album and it's my favorite. Hugh lewis, It's got great
music on it. I think he was a little over
his audience head in they released Small World. It was
(29:06):
a critical success, but couldn't match the sales of Huie's
previous albums. I was so proud of that single, and
yet it was the first one in a chain of
twenty not to break the top twenty. Wasn't a humorous
is some of our stuff? And and you know, and
it was Unfortunately people don't really kind of want that
stuff from me sometimes that the crowd are small. I
(29:26):
could see that Hughie was disappointed. But I'll say this,
The Allways gave a great show. Remember having a discussion
with the guys band meeting. I said, guys, we only
go from nowhere to everywhere once, and I said, let's
enjoy it, you know, let's let's not being a hurry
to go to get through this thing. Let's just enjoy it.
You know, in retrospect, I think we did. Despite the
(29:47):
drop in sales, the band continued doing what they loved,
playing music and touring around the world. But unbeknownst to
their fans, Huie's vertigo had returned. Yea, My video episodes
were intense, and we get so nauseous. I couldn't stand up,
(30:10):
the room spinning, and I called Lowell, our tour manager,
and Lowell came and saved me, and then brought me
a five milligram value in which they'd give you to
take and put you out and then when you wake up,
you're fine. But things weren't fine out of Nowhere. Hughey
(30:32):
lost hearing in his right ear one day. It just
went away. It felt like I'd been swimming in the
swimming pool and it was all clogged up and I
couldn't couldn't clear it. I went to this a NT friend.
He examined me and then he said, well, get used
(30:53):
to it. I said what he said? He said, get
used to it. You only need one here, I said, will,
But I'm a musician, I'm a singer. It carried me.
Kuie Lewis was a superstar with a career threatening secret.
He was grappling with the early stages of hearing loss.
(31:13):
I went to my doctor in Montana, prescribed me the
Monks of cylind or some kind of antibiotic and didn't work.
And I came to California saw another doctor gave me
some heavier antibiotics. They didn't work either. With a concert
on the books, Jewe had to make a decision try
to sing or canceled the show, So I thought, let's try.
(31:37):
I still didn't have my right ear, and I was
super apprehensive about putting in my in ears and how
is it going to be? It was different, but I
could sing. Everything was fine. If you have dinner with him,
you know that he doesn't hear very well in one ear,
(31:58):
so you kind of figure it out on which side
you talk. But it turns out you only need one
year to sing. Quie soldiered on and In two thousand one,
the band released Plan B. The album was a return
to the soul and blues hue we loved before he
became a pop star. We called it Plan B because
(32:18):
it's the record we would have made if Plan A
hadn't worked out. We wrote Plan B for that nine
piece horn section, and the idea was to just capture
those performances as opposed to creating them piece by piece
in the studio, and that's how that record was cut.
It was really fun, with a slate of new songs
(32:44):
and classic hits. The band spent the next two decades
doing what they loved the most, hitting the road and
playing more than seventy shows a year. That's, you know,
a hundred and twenty days on our own. Almost some
years we worked even more than that on the road.
The band jotted down lyrics for a new album. We
(33:05):
were compiling songs all along, but you kind of have
to wait for the ideas to come to you. And
so when we have an idea, we'd worked the song up,
go play it live bunch, and then recorded and put
it in the camp. And we had seven songs in
the camp over the course of ten years. But recording
(33:26):
came to a screeching halt. On January, the News were
about to take the stage in Dallas when suddenly Hughey
heard a pop in his left ear. My left ear
crashed and it was a nightmare that we tried to
do the show. I couldn't hear pitch a base part
(33:47):
were trud to go, boom boom boom boom boom would go.
I looked at John and he's just playing away. And
I looked at me, go, what's going on that? I
thought the amplifier was blown or something. It was my
hair nearly deaf, and his righty are already. He was
now struggling to hear music at all while in front
(34:10):
of an unsuspecting crowd. I couldn't hear anything. Stumbled through
the gig somehow, I don't. I don't even know how.
I mean, I sang out of tune. It was. It
was awful. It was. It was horrible. I said, guys,
I don't know what happened. I'm sorry. My hear him
blah blah bub. I went straight to bed, woke up
(34:31):
next day, flew to l A to see any NT
guy that justin timber Lake recommended put me on a
twenty nine day program of steroids and that didn't work,
and then I got read in his own shots in
my ear. I woke up the next morning violently ill.
I had I had vertigo. When he was experiencing symptoms,
(34:54):
he was staying at my house. He was unable to
stand up, and um, it was. It was bad and scary.
You know. My son came over and you know, put
me to bed, and when I woke up, I could hear,
and I went thank God, and three hours later crashed again.
(35:15):
Doctors eventually diagnosed Huie with many Years disease, an inter
ear condition which currently has no cure. Julie told me
that he'd been diagnosed with Manyears disease and I didn't
know what it was. I'd never heard of it, and
I don't think he knew a whole lot about what
it was ben Ear's disease. But it's not really a disease,
(35:37):
it's a syndrome based on symptoms. They really don't know
what it is. So I went immediately to House here
Institute and started on this journey to try and find help.
And you know, I've been everywhere since then. I've been
to Stanford, our institute Mayo Clinic, the UCSF, and nobody
has any idea. I've I've tried all kinds of Eastern
(35:58):
chiropractic occupied juror, all organic diet and supplements and that
CBD oil and other kind of essential oils, and nothing works.
With the help of hearing aids, Hughie could still hear
some sounds, but music was no longer recognizable. Speech is
(36:20):
easier to listen to the music because even one note
occurs in all frequencies with harmonics and overtones and stuff.
The problem is when there're too many instruments and they're
too loud, it goes cacophony for me and I can't
can't find pitch. He also struggled with a NonStop roar
in his ears. That major tended is. I mean, I
(36:43):
have tended this now, I have it all the time,
and it was roaring in my head. You know, it
was just miserable without a lead singer. The news were
forced to immediately cancel all the remaining tour dates. That's
when everybody said, what's happened tonight? I usue to statement
that I've lost by Ariam, you can't really schedule any
(37:05):
professional engagements because you don't know if you show up
if you'll be able to hear. So it makes it
virtually impossible two perform at a concert. I've never been
a great singer, but I was always reliable and the
boys that you know, the guys depend on me. I
feel like I let all these people down. So there's
(37:26):
twenty five guys that are out of a job. His
musical life, as he knew it, was over singing. It's
not just what he loves to do, it's what people
know him for. And losing that ability, at least, you know,
(37:47):
not being able to bank on it. I just can't
imagine it. Hue had a difficult time coming to terms
with that loss. Yeah, that was horrible. I mean that
was I spent I spent two months pretty much in
bed contemplating my demise, thinking I can't live like this.
(38:08):
You know, that was horrible. He was really down for
a long time, and it's hard to find words to
cheer somebody up in a situation like that. I think
he knows that we are genuinely concerned for him and
for his not just physical well being, put for his
(38:29):
mental well being. Because this is a lot to deal with,
but he handles it I think as well as as
a person can handle it. Now. My kids have been great,
and you just look at pictures of your granddaughter and
they make you happy. And I had to remind myself
that there's so many people out there worse off than me.
You know, even if I can't hear it all. You know,
(38:51):
don't be a baby about this. You know, you lot
to be thankful for So figure out, now, what are
we gonna do? Hugh we was determined to get his
mind off his illness and back to what he loved most. Music.
John Abrams and Tyler Mitchell. You know, they came to
me early on and said, wow, we'd like to try
to write a musical and music. I said, well, congratulates
(39:15):
your number fifty five, you know, I mean I've heard
this for years and years and years, and I always said,
you know, just show me the script, and that pretty
much got rid of everybody. But their first draft was incredible.
It was really really good. Needing a creative outlet and distraction,
Hughie threw himself into work on his musical titled The
(39:37):
Heart of Rock and Roll. The musical really saved my
bacon because I was really in the worst state and
By the way, my hearing was so bad. Many times
I couldn't hear anything, so I couldn't even really contribute.
But just being there, knowing that there was some creative
happening and and our songs and all that and looking
(40:00):
after it was therapeutics. Somehow. The musical also gave Hughie
the strength to try songwriting again. I had this idea
for I want to be someone I can't sing, but
I heard it into my head a little bit. I
can hear it in my head when the show premiered
in San Diego in the Fall of the Heart of
(40:23):
Rock and Roll gave Hughie an opportunity to experience his
music in an entirely new way, to completely objective look
at your songs, which is fascinating. There's a lot of love,
there's a lot of heart, there's a lot of working,
there's a lot of power. These are words that just
seemed to come up on our songs. I realized, Wow,
(40:46):
there really is a kind of a thread that runs
through all this stuff, and so it made me feel
good about our catalog. After the musical successful role, Huie
Lewis was inspired to release the album he put on
hold when he lost to see. We waited kind of
a year to see if my hearing would get better,
and it didn't, so I thought, why not share the
(41:06):
songs with the fans, you know, with seven of them
on only seven. But we all are very proud of
that record. Released in February, the album's title summed up
the band's long career and the struggles they have gone
through together that we had sports we are the news,
So there's that. And it was a kind of a
(41:28):
tough couple of years for us anyway. So we've we
have experienced some weather, and I hope, I hope people
here because it really is some of our best work
anything with famous friends pitching into hell. The music video
for her Love Is Killing Me became a visual reminder
of all the support UI has received over the years.
(41:48):
Michael Keaton did it, Jimmy Buffett did it, and Joe
Montana did it, and Jimmy Kimmel did it. The production
value is tremendous. It makes you feel great when you have,
you know, friends like that. The release of Weather was
bitter sweet because it's the only album they weren't able
(42:09):
to play live. It's a team sport. The way we
played music it's really a band, and really if it's
all of us together, and that's really the fun part
is the camaraderie and the laughs, you know they have
and this is a tough thing for them because you know,
we've all lost our livelihood and they've been they've been very,
(42:29):
very supportive. I mean, it's it's three years now, so
that our crew has all moved on and everybody's pretty
much got gigs and and we had pension plants for everybody,
so everybody's pretty much taken care of. But if I
missed the guys. A rock and blues icon who wanted
nothing more than a life making music, Hueie Lewis has
(42:53):
found peace in the songs of his past and the
creative ambitions of his future. One of the great things
in all of entertainment is if you become synonymous with
the time. It was really special for people. They always
have that place in their heart for you. And he
has definitely left his mark. Manyear's disease is very mysterious
(43:16):
and why I hope that there are people working on it,
because you know, I'd like to go to a Huey
Lewis and the News concert again. I think I can
I hope I can, and that's what I'm aiming for.
I haven't given up on music a word. I'm never
gonna sing again, and I may not, but I'm not.
(43:38):
I'm not willing to say that yet. Listen to Behind
the Music on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Want more episodes,
you can watch remastered best of the ball and new
episodes Behind the Music only on Paramount Plus
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