In the ever-evolving landscape of popular music, certain artists carve out a niche for themselves, leaving an indelible mark that transcends generations. One such luminary is Huey Lewis, whose soulful voice and timeless hits have solidified his place in the annals of music history. Born Hugh Anthony Cregg III on July 5, 1950, in New York City, but raised from the age of five in Marin County, California, after his parents’ divorce, Huey Lewis’ early life was a tapestry of diverse experiences that would lead him to the vibrant music scene of the San Francisco Bay Area. Lewis excelled academically, even scoring a perfect 800 on the math portion of the SAT and attended Cornell University to study engineering. However, his love for music – particularly the harmonica – would eventually steer him away from academia and toward a life of rhythm and melodies.
Lewis’s musical journey took flight in the late 1970s when he co-founded the band Huey Lewis and American Express, later renamed Huey Lewis and the News. With Lewis as the frontman, the band truly burst on to the radar of music fans with their sophomore album, Picture This (1982), which featured the hit single “Do You Believe in Love.” This catchy tune served as a precursor to the band’s meteoric rise to fame and set the stage for a string of chart-topping songs that would dominate the airwaves throughout the decade.
In the summer of 1983, the music world was abuzz with anticipation as Huey Lewis and the News prepared to release their third studio album, aptly titled Sports. For Lewis, the stakes were high – his band’s previous albums had achieved moderate success – but Sports was poised to be their real breakthrough into the mainstream. Sports quickly became a cultural phenomenon, with a series of anthems that would come to define the sound of the 1980s. From the exuberant optimism of “The Heart of Rock & Roll” to the irresistible charm of “Heart and Soul,” each track was a testament to the band’s powerhouse of musical talent.
The decade would prove to be a golden era for Huey Lewis and the News, as they churned out hit after hit, including classics like “The Power of Love,” “Hip to Be Square,” and “Stuck with You.” Their signature sound of feel-good music resonated with a broad worldwide audience, earning them legions of devoted fans and critical acclaim. However, amidst the peak of their success, Lewis faced a formidable challenge that threatened to derail his musical career.
In the mid-1980s, he was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a chronic inner ear disorder that causes vertigo, tinnitus, and hearing loss. Though his battle necessitated adjustments, Lewis continued to create music and perform live, inspiring audiences with his unwavering passion, proving that even in the face of adversity, the power of music prevails.
Today, Huey Lewis’s impact on the music industry continues, his timeless hits serving as a testament to his impressive legacy. As a pioneer of the pop-rock genre, he has left a lasting imprint on the hearts and minds of music lovers around the world, reminding us that true greatness lies not only in talent but in the ability to persevere despite hardship. Huey Lewis’s musical journey is a testimony to the transformative power of music and the enduring spirit of a true artist.
You grew up in Marin County, California, right at the epicenter of the 1960s counterculture movement. Were you very affected by everything taking place at the time?
They were heavy times, obviously, with the hippie movement just starting and [with] music.
The Summer of Love had an influx of people coming to California from the East coast. It was huge. There were signs out like, “New Yorker Go Home!” San Francisco and Marin were invaded by people from all over the country, and we rebelled against that. In those days, everybody was in a band, and there were so many live venues, and so many places to play. The exciting part was that the genres were being broken up, like the Grateful Dead. Those bands in 1967, they were the first bands that didn’t play 3-minute songs. They took a jazz player’s approach to pop music if you will, or a kind of country music, in the Dead sense. They were marvelous times for music.
Did you feel at that time that it was all happening in San Francisco, or was LA still the place where bands went to break?
No, it was definitely happening in San Francisco. I went to prep school in New Jersey, took a year off to bum around Europe, and then I was in my first year at Cornell University. San Francisco was blowing up. I was playing in charity bands, and I said, “I’ve got to get home,” so I quit school and went home to San Francisco and joined the action. Everybody knew that’s where it was happening, that’s why we were so surprised when we heard that the best rock’n’roll town in America was Cleveland. (Laughs) I thought, “You gotta be kidding me! How can Cleveland be the best? We have everything here in San Francisco: we got Santana, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane...” We had so much. San Francisco was on fire.
After high school, you hitchhiked across the country from California to New York. What was behind that decision?
I went to prep school in New Jersey. My mom was one of the first hippies, and my dad was worried… he wanted to get me out of San Francisco. It was blowing up; it was like 1962 or 1963. My dad convinced me that I needed to go away to prep school because it was a wonderful opportunity for me: I could compete with the best. In his mind though, he wanted to get me out of my mother’s house and out of San Francisco, so I went. I skipped second grade, so I was a year younger, and when I graduated from Lawrenceville Prep School, I was 16, and then turned 17 the next month. I was accepted into the Cornell University College of Engineering, and my old man said to me, “Congratulations, you’ve done everything. As far as I’m concerned, you can make decisions on your own, you’re a man now, and you can do whatever you want.” But there was one more thing that he was going to make me do. He wanted me to take a year off and bum around Europe. I didn’t have any money, but in those days you could hitchhike. I hitchhiked everywhere. I was on my way to Europe but needed to fly from the East Coast. It was cheaper and easier.
Hitchhiking is sort of romanticized from back then; from the Dust Bowl era all the way through to the 1950s. Now of course, we see it as a little more dangerous. When you were hitchhiking, especially across America, were you ever afraid of any of the people who offered you lifts? Did anything dodgy happen?
Oh yeah, we had some close calls. I got picked up by an ex-convict, a guy who had just gotten out of jail and he didn’t have any money. We had to siphon gas all the way from southern California, where I started, to Denver, Colorado. I had money – I had a couple hundred bucks – but I didn’t want to tell him that, so I pretended not to have any money either. So, we would go somewhere, find a car, and siphon gas at night. I thought that was a little risky and he was a crazy guy, but it worked out.
I remember freezing my butt off in Ohio waiting for a ride, though. I hitchhiked to Boston, I had classmates at Harvard University, and I hung out in their dorm for four or five days. I saw Muddy Waters at Club 47 in Boston!
Did you sleep in motels as you traveled, or did you manage to drive the entire way?
No, I had a sleeping bag. I would sleep by the side of the road a lot of times, in the car, or wherever––just stowed away.
When I was in Europe, it was the same thing; we slept anywhere. People would take us in sometimes. I remember in France, a family took us in, and the dad was a physical fitness nut, and he got the whole family up at like 5:30 in the morning to do calisthenics. (Laughs)
You learned to play the harmonica while waiting for rides when you hitchhiked across the States?
I carried a few harmonicas that Billie Roberts gave me, he was my mom’s boarder, and he was a folk singer; he wrote “Hey Joe” and he used to play harmonicas with one of those harnesses. He gave me a bunch of old harmonicas. I was playing them already in prep school, but when I took a year off, as I was hitchhiking by the side of the road I would play, so I got better.
Over in Spain… this is 1968, which was Franco [era] Spain. They had the three-corner cops, and they were super strict, so it was very hard to get a ride. Because I had long hair it was very difficult to get a ride, so I would play for hours on the side of the road. (Laughs) But I played harmonica in the squares of Europe for a year.
When you went back to America, that was when you started Cornell?
Yes, I spent a year abroad and then I went back to Cornell. I walked into the engineering quad, and I looked around at all the engineering students, and it didn’t look nearly as fun as hitchhiking through Europe and playing the harmonica. At that point, a little bell went off in my head and I thought, “I don’t know about this engineering thing.”
When did you decide that you wanted to be a singer-songwriter?
It happened when I was bumming around Europe. I went to North Africa, to Morocco, and I had a travel companion, a guy called Michael Jeffries. He and I met in London, and he was from South Africa. He had hitchhiked all the way from South Africa to London. He was the expert and he’d never been to Morocco, so we said, “Let’s do that.” We hitchhiked to Morocco – we were only going there for Casablanca – and we were gonna be there for, I don’t know, a week or something. But they had the marijuana pipes, and we got so stoned. We kept thinking we were going to leave the next day, but we could never leave. (Laughs) So, I spent like, two or three months in Morocco. Then, on the way out, we were hitchhiking, and we crossed the border of southern Spain, heading to Portugal. We got a ride with a really crazy guy, his name was Jimmy Van Der Haag, he was a Dutch guy. He was in his 80s and he had a little handlebar mustache. We were hitchhiking in Spain, where you can’t get a ride because it’s Franco Spain, and here comes this 1930 Chevrolet pulling an Airstream trailer. Apparently, the car had been used in the movie Casablanca in Morocco. It was his car. He was gonna drive it all the way back to Holland and he picked us up.
He liked to drink a bit, so he’d stop at bars along the way and have a shot of slivovitz and then we’d get going again. At some point in the evening, we were on this dirt road with water on both sides, and I guess he got a little hammered and drove the car into the water. I remember this specifically; he gets out and he gets a fire extinguisher—he had a fire extinguisher—and he scorched the motor with it. Then gets back in and the car started right up. (Laugh) We drove out of there, but my knapsack was back in the Airstream trailer, and it floated, because everything got wet, and somehow my passport was lost. Now, we get to the border of Portugal, and I have no passport, so they refused for me to enter without a passport. My South African partner went on and the driver went on and I hitchhiked back to Seville, Spain, to go to the embassy to get a new passport. I had no money, so I get to the passport office of the embassy at 4PM. It was Friday and they were about to close. I knocked on a door and said that I needed a passport. They asked if I had 20 bucks, I said, no, and they said, “Come back when you got 20 bucks,” and shut the door. Now, I wandered into town in Seville, and I played my harmonica.
I’m playing, and these students come and see me. They’re interested: I have real long hair, I come from San Francisco, and the hippie thing had just blown up and it was catching on in Europe. They had found a real hippie, and they were full of questions about San Francisco and the hippie stuff. I explained to them that I needed a passport, and they said, “No problem, we’ll throw you a concert.” So, we auditioned for a guitar player; we found an Australian kid who played a little blues. We [practiced] for about three or four days… these students put up posters all over town advertising “Los Blues: Huey and Michael.” It was really well marketed.
Now, it comes time for the gig at the art center and we were the headliners, me and Michael, and the opening act was a Spanish band called Los Nuevos Tiempos, and they were fantastic. They were, at least, a nine-piece, maybe 11-piece group. They had the same wardrobe, dressed to the max, and choreographed. They were amazing. I thought, “We are going to die here!” (Laughs) They had the whole stage and then they put a little pod out in front for us, a little round stage in front of the major stage, so we’re kind of in the audience a little bit. There were two chairs, a microphone for his guitar, and a microphone for my harmonica. So, two mics and two chairs. We follow this amazing band and now we walk out, receive an introduction applause, and then pin-drop silence. So, we start; I can’t remember what we played, but we start playing, and the place is super quiet, and I’m thinking, “Man, we are dying here.” (Laughs) “This is not going to be pretty.” But for some reason… we played the whole song, we finished the song, and the place goes crazy. They just went crazy, and that’s when a bell went off right there, and I said, “Bingo, this is what I want to do.” But it was years later before I joined my first professional band.
In 1971 you joined Clover. Were they already together when you joined?
Yeah, they were a four-piece band. They’d had two records out that hadn’t really done anything, but they were the most successful band in Marin County at the time.
I met them all because we had a moonlighting gig. We had an eight, almost 10-piece bluegrass band. We would go to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco and busk. We had a stand-up bass, a couple of fiddles, a banjo dobro, harmonica, [and] a couple of guitar players. We did all this bluegrass stuff and we made $120 and split it. We each got like $15 apiece. We’d go and have a couple of drinks, and that was our evening. Three of the members of that band were members of Clover too, so they asked me and Sean Hopper, our keyboard player, to join Clover.
In 1976, the group finally found a bit more commercial success.
Yeah, Clover’s earlier albums had been released on Liberty Records in London because they had a licensing deal with Fantasy Records. There was an A&R guy called Andrew Lauder who loved this country rock thing that was happening. Clover was one of the very first country rock bands. The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Clover, and Commander Cody were the very first hippie-country bands. We joined that band and we got signed to Phonogram Records (UK) because Andrew Lauder loved all of that. He believed that this would be the next thing, that country rock would take over.
It was called pub rock because nobody ever played in pubs before. There was a band from Marin County called Eggs over Easy that set up and played in a pub, and it started to take off in London. These two managers, Jake Riviera, who managed Elvis Costello, and Dave Robinson who managed Graham Parker and Nick Lowe, formed a company called Stiff Records. They also managed Clover, so their plan was to sign Clover, bring us over to Britain, and take Britain by storm. But the day we landed in Britain, Johnny Rotten [vocalist for the punk rock band the Sex Pistols] spit in the face of the first New Musical Express (NME) reporter, and the game was on: punk hit and we were out. We were a longhaired, country music band.
In 1978, Clover disbanded, and you went out on your own.
We disbanded. We had made two records, neither of which did anything, but both produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange. They were the only records produced [by Mutt] that didn’t sell 18,000,000 records. (Laughs) But I had witnessed the punk movement firsthand because our management was in the Stiff Records office. The one thing I liked best about the punks was not the music necessarily, because I was into my own music, but I loved their stance. Clover had spent so much time grooming ourselves for the major labels and listening to their advice, which is always to be like the band that’s popular right now. The punks were just thumbing their noses at the music business and saying, “Hell no, we’re going to do our own thing, we don’t care.” I thought, “Wow, how liberating,” and I vowed that if this band ever broke up, that’s what I was going to do. I was going to go back to Marin County, find my favorite musicians, form a band, and sing all the songs myself.
Why did you choose the name Huey Lewis and American Express as your original name?
I think it was a great name; it was what we sounded like. We were very American; we had a kind of R&B foundation… it wasn’t heavy metal by any means; it was more of a Rhythm and Blues kind of rock’n’roll. I thought that’s what we sounded like, very American. We called ourselves Huey Lewis and American Express, and on the eve of the release of our first album, the label was afraid that we’d be sued by American Express, so we had 24 hours to come up with a new name, and we thought of “the news.” It was the only name we could come up with. It kind of rhymed a little, “Huey Lewis and the News,” it came off the tongue a little bit. It was all we could come up with, we were thinking of “the royals,” or “the fools,” but none of those were very good.
The first album didn’t perform great, and you realized that you needed to have a hit on the second album, or the label may end up dropping you.
You think about 1978: there was no Internet, no jam bands, and there’s no FM radios [or] contemporary hit radio (CHR) programs then, so the only avenue to success was a hit single. If you wanted to play your own music and make a living, you had to have a hit single. After our first album, we were no spring chickens. I was 29 years old and had been playing in bands for 15 years, cut two records with “Mutt” Lange already, and I knew something about the studio. We petitioned our manager and he agreed; we insisted on producing the next record ourselves. We knew we needed a hit; we knew that we had to make commercial choices, and we wanted to make those commercial choices ourselves so that we could live with them.
Our second record was pretty good, but we came to our own with our third album, Sports. In that record we aimed all those songs right at radio and if you listen to it today, it’s a collection of singles. They’re all from different genres, because we didn’t know what was gonna hit; here’s a rocker for you, here’s a kind of R&B one for you, here’s kind of a country flavored thing. All we knew was that we needed a hit and we thought that we may have five of them on Sports.
When you did crack the Top 10 with “Do You Believe in Love,” from the second album, how did your life change with that success?
Well, it certainly improved the hotel rooms we were staying in, and we kept our heads above. I’d toured Europe with Clover – with Thin Lizzy – and Philip Lynott [lead vocalist, for Thin Lizzy], was a mentor to me. He taught me how to be a rock star. Phillip is an amazing guy, who is brilliant on stage, but he also knew how to be a star. He knew how to deal with fans, how to deal with promoters, the press, how to treat your other bandmates, and all this stuff. I learned so much from him. When our wave happened, I began to realize that we’re going to have a few hits here.
Our first single from Sports was “Heart and Soul” but the second one was “I Want A New Drug,” which isn’t a hit single, but it was. I thought, “If this one is a hit, we’ve got three or four more on here that are going to be hits,” and sure enough.
We were opening for different bands, like 38 Special, and our record [had] taken off. In some cases, there were as many people coming to see us as the headliners. I said to the guys, “It does not get any better than this. The way this is going we’ll be doing our own tours soon. Then, we’ll have all the responsibility and pressure.”
We were opening for these bands, and we would show up at 7PM, the show started at 8PM, and we had a great meal backstage, then got on stage for 45 or 50 minutes, and that’s it. We always got great reviews because nobody was expecting anything from us, so it was a wonderful place to be. I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that you can only go from nowhere to everywhere once in your life. You need to enjoy that rocket ship ride, otherwise it’s over before you begin to experience it. I think we honestly knew what was going on and enjoyed it as best we could.
The year 1983 was an interesting time for Sports to come out, because you had MTV at this point. You did videos for every one of these songs and it was constant radio rotation, but now video rotation as well. People were not just recognizing you from an album cover, but from the videos as well.
Well, it was a reality, here comes MTV, so you got to make a video; we had already embraced it. There was an outfit called Videowest in San Francisco, this was the advent of video for cable TV, which was brand new. This is late 1970s cable TV, it was the first time there was cable, and there were video cameras that could play back, film it, and then play it right back. Nobody could do that before the late ‘70s, it just wasn’t done. This girl called Kim Dempster said, “If you guys let me shoot a video of you and show it at our show at midnight on cable TV, we’ll give you the video.” I said, “Great.”
We did two videos: one out by the ocean on a sewage pier all dressed up in ties and stuff, and another one on Mount Tamalpais at the [Cushing Memorial] Amphitheatre. [Dempster] did them in video, they gave us the videotape, and those videotapes got us our record deal. It was a wonderful way to promote the band. [Chrysalis and EMI Records] saw it and they signed us. Our second album, [Picture This] has “Do You Believe in Love” as a single and the label says we’re going to do a professional video this time. They hired an advertising guy, a pro in advertising, and we shot all day long. He made the video— this is the video where we’re in the bed singing to the girl and all that. We shoot the video all day and then we go to see the rough cut.
We go to the record label, it was a week later, and we’re all in the room. We’re probably 12 people, six guys from the band, a manager, a road manager, a bunch of people from the label, and then a bunch of people from the video company. There were probably 30 people, and the guy gets up and goes, “It’s not colorized yet, and it’s going to look great when it’s colorized, but here you go, this is just a rough cut.” He shuts off the lights and shows the video. My heart sank, it was so bad. There was no direction, it was just terrible. When the video was over, he turned the lights on, everybody stood up and gave us a standing ovation. I remember thinking, “Clearly there’s no work to this at all, nobody knows anything, or what’s going on.”
We were writing our own songs, we were producing our own records, and we were going to do our own videos. It was a necessary evil. I was never afraid to be funny [in our videos] because it was a shame to do a video and retell the story that you had written, since the song tells the story. I avoided that, so when the song would zig, I would zag, and have fun, be silly.
Interestingly enough, your biggest hit was just down the line with “The Power of Love.” Steven Spielberg had approached you to write a song for Back to the Future. Had you known him before that?
No. Spielberg was the executive producer, and Bob Zemeckis was the director. They asked to have a meeting and they said, “We wrote this movie, and our lead character’s favorite band would be Huey Lewis and the News. Would you write a song for the film?” I said, “I’m flattered, but I don’t know how to write for film necessarily.” They said, “We don’t care, we just want one of your songs,” so I said, “We’ll send you the next thing we work on.”
Had “The Power of Love” already been in the works?
Chris [Hayes—guitarist—] had the progression, and it was my turn to write the melody and the lyrics. I set to work on it, but I hadn’t seen the film, I hadn’t even read the script. It was a song. Actually, it was inspired by my kids. I had two young kids at the time. We wrote the song and sent it down. Sports had been really big, so this was an opportunity to not have to write a whole other record, but to still stay in the public eye. We gave them “The Power of Love,” and it went straight to #1, and it only took nine weeks. Nine weeks in those days, was like the fastest you could ever get to #1 from a released record.
Back to the Future holds the record for the shortest time between the end of principal photography and the release of the movie: nine weeks. At the end of principal photography, they edited and then released in nine weeks, and nobody has ever done that that quick. It was so short because our song, which was in the movie, was racing up the charts. The movie company was telling them to get this movie out. I remember when the movie was released at the premiere, the song was number one that week. Zemeckis, to this day, says it’s the best kickoff any movie ever got. People forget but, in those days, we were the biggest thing in the country. Nobody had ever heard of Marty McFly or Back to the Future at that stage.
Did you enjoy the movie?
Yeah, it’s great, it’s amazing. It’s turned into The Wizard of Oz. Their 40th anniversary is coming up and I’m sure we’ll go do Good Morning America again, like we did [on] the 25th, 30th, and 35th. (Laughs) The movie keeps getting bigger and bigger; it’s amazing.
In 1985, you were approached by Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones about taking part in the “We Are the World” project? What memories do you have from that legendary night?
I remember that my manager sent me a cassette tape of the song. I was writing this song with Ry Cooder that day at my house and I remember, I got the tape and I put it in, and we played it. (Laughs) Cooder didn’t like it, but I said, “You may not like it, but it’s gonna be a hit.” So, they asked us to do it and it was unbelievable, there are so many memories from that night. I was probably 32 and I knew then that this was the career event of my life. The memories of that evening are still vivid.
We would take breaks every couple of hours, like union breaks that you’re supposed to, and during one break, Willie Nelson comes over to me and says, “I hear you guys are playing golf on the road.” I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “We do too, we put the clubs on the bottom of the bus and on a day off it’s a good thing to do during the day.” I thought about how we’re doing the same thing and wow, that’s cool. Then Bob Dylan comes over and he says, “Are you guys talking about golf?” We said, “Yeah,” and he says, “Wow, that’s outrageous.” He wrote me a great, lovely little note saying how much he liked my records. I still have it; it was very sweet.
Almost everybody who was successful on pop radio at that time was in the room that night. Did you already have relationships with any of them, so was it getting together with friends to make the song?
I’d never met any of those people. I got to meet Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. You’re lucky if you get to meet those people in a lifetime, let alone work with them for a whole evening; it was incredible. Bruce Springsteen is very funny, I don’t know if people realize that or not; but he’s sharp, he’s funny, and he’s a good joke teller. We had fun.
Lionel was amazing and Quincy Jones was amazing. I remember during one break; Ray Charles was there, and I was just so enamored by him, I couldn’t introduce myself. I followed him around and he starts playing this bluesy thing and he says, “Hey Quincy, remember this one?” Quincy says, “Yeah, Lionel was five years old when we cut that record.”
That must have been overwhelming to be in a room with so much talent and so much history.
No kidding. The idea that people got to check their ego at the door is crazy because nobody was gonna pull an ego trip on that group.
You took part in the recent documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop”. It showcased how by 3AM, Lionel and Quincy were getting frustrated because they want to get the track done, and they were trying to rein in everybody to stay focused.
Yeah, we were there all-night working, and they were a little worried about this kind of thing, but it was so well done, the vocal arrangements were great, and there were tons of talent. It was fun, [but] it was nerve-wracking because you need to sing your line in front of Stevie Wonder (Laughs) and some of the greatest singers in the world. When we did the documentary, we did the premiere and they invited me to go, which I did. The press was asking us questions and they asked Lionel, “Could this ever happen today?” And he said that he didn’t think so because the personalities aren’t there.
The most amazing moment about the whole night happened after the chorus was cut. It was time to do the solo lines and I didn’t have any solo lines. I got Prince’s lines because Prince didn’t show up; somebody tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Quincy wants to see you.” I go to see Quincy at 8PM, and he said, “Huey and ‘Smelly,’ come here.” “Smelly” is what he called Michael Jackson. So, MJ, comes over, and Quincy says, “Sing the line for Huey.” He sings the line, and Quincy says, “Huey sing that,” so I sing it, and he says, “Great, you got it.”
Then the first thing we did was to gather around the piano, all of us lead singers. Stevie Wonder was playing. And we ran it. You could hear, for the first time, each personality.
Oh man, the hair just stood up on the back of my neck. It was that unbelievable.
Let’s talk about some of the hits. What was the inspiration behind “Stuck with You”?
It was a pop song, a love song, and I had the idea to make it funny. It’s meant to be funny: “We are bound by all the rest / Like the same phone number / All the same friends / And the same address.” The idea being that love is never perfect, it has imperfections and you got to bite the bullet every now and then.
What about “If This Is It” from the Sports album?
It was a progression that Johnny Colla had. I was supposed to write the lyrics, but I couldn’t get it. It was the hardest thing for me because it’s a complicated song; it’s not a happy song, and it’s not a sad song. It’s both of those things. I realized, “That’s it! It’s both of those things!” I got the idea on the tour bus. I was in my bunk, and I’d been grinding on this song forever, trying to figure out what the lyrics would be. I jumped out of my bunk, went to the back lounge, got a piece of paper, and wrote it down.
Do you still have the drive to stay relevant on today’s top 40 radio?
I stopped caring about it a while back. I had Kenny Loggins on my radio show recently, and he said a funny thing, he told me somebody said that you have a moment, it’s a bit like standing on the side of the train tracks, and the train goes by. As the window goes by in the lounge, they see you and you’re all they see. You get them for that amount of time and then they go past you. Sometimes the train goes by slower, and you get a bit longer, but the train is still going, and you’re not going to be in their window forever.
These days you’ve left the busy California life and live in Montana on a serene ranch. Your town has under 2,000 residents. What made you retreat and call Montana your home?
It’s really simple. More cheese and less rats. I’ve always loved the outdoors. I’m a fly fisherman, I have horses on the ranch, which we can pleasure ride, and I love being with mother nature. It has served me well with my hearing loss, I’m not nearly as social as I used to be, and I can’t hear anything. (Laughs) But I’m fine out in nature. I’ve been here for 35 years, I’m a local guy now.
Have you watched the show Yellowstone?
Not really, I don’t watch TV much because I can’t hear it. But I know Kevin, and they film it right here in my valley. I love to flyfish, I have a raft and a boat, and all of that stuff. I guide people down the river sometimes and I’ve had Kevin in my boat a couple of times. My neighbor here is a house full of the Yellowstone people, we know some of them.
The fastest growing state in the country is Idaho and the second fastest is Montana. Our county grew by 10% last year, there is 40,000 people in this little county, we had 3,700 new residents last year.
That is going to really change the culture of the county.
You’re almost 74 years old, but you have the lifestyle of a 50-year-old. What do you tribute that to?
Yeah, I guess. I’ve always had a high metabolism and I’ve always been a get-out-there-and-do-‘er guy. But I’m slowing down to be honest. Clint Eastwood said, “Don’t let the old man in.” Toby Keith wrote the song, but that was Clint’s mantra. Well, not only is the old man in, in me, he’s calling the shots now. (Laughs)
You told Rolling Stone some years ago that when you were first diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, you would lay in bed and despair. A lot of people don’t understand what Ménière’s is.
Yeah, it’s called Ménière’s disease but it’s not a disease, it’s a syndrome based on symptoms. If you have tinnitus, a feeling of fullness in your ears like you just got out of the swimming pool and you can’t clear it, hearing loss usually in one ear, and most importantly, bouts of vertigo that last longer than 20 minutes, but no longer than two hours. We call that Ménière’s. They don’t have any idea what it is. I’ve been to the House Ear Institute in California, Stanford, University of California San Francisco, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Eye and Ear, and Harvard Medical School. Nobody knows anything.
When did this first start? I know it started in one ear.
Yeah, I lost my right ear in the late 1980s. My father was a doctor, and he suggested I go to see this legendary engineering and technology guy, the best Ear, Nose & Throat guy he knew. I went to see him, and he said, “Get used to it.” I said, “What do you mean get used to it?” (Laughs) He said, “You only need one ear,” and I said, “I’m a musician and a singer.” He said, “Jimi Hendrix had one ear, Brian Wilson had one ear, I got one ear and I’m in a barbershop quartet.” I existed on one ear for 30 years, then six years and four months ago I lost my left ear. I’m really deaf, probably headed for a cochlear implant.
Will the implant potentially bring back more of the hearing?
Well, it’s different; it’s complicated. You’ve got to learn to hear again. It’s all very confusing and not very good. But, whaddya gonna do?
Are you frightened?
Yeah, a little bit because you don’t know. It works great for some people and not great for others.
On an exciting note, you have a new Broadway show, The Heart of Rock and Roll. That’s been a great adventure for you.
Yes, that’s been very exciting. We just got it up, it just opened, we got unexpectedly great reviews for a jukebox musical. The odds are stacked against you, and nobody really likes these jukebox musicals. (Laughs) But our show, I think, is a cut above, and that is what the reviews have said, so far so good. We still need to find a larger audience because there are 19 new shows out. So, we need to outperform them, and I think we will, we’ll see. The jury’s still out – you have to run for several months – so we’ll see.
What is the background and your connection?
My neighbor is a musical theatre buff. One day he took me to see Mamma Mia; I wasn’t gonna like Mamma Mia cause I’m a rocker, but I loved it. Then, they asked me to play Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago, and I did that in 2006, two stints which was 222 performances, and I fell in love with everything that is Broadway. It’s amazing talent. So, the same neighbor who took me to see Mamma Mia, his son-in-law is a film producer and works for Imagine Entertainment with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. He suggested to his son-in-law, you should do a musical of Huey’s music and they did. He and his pal Jonathan Abrams came up with a wonderful first draft. That was nine years ago, this is 20 drafts later. (Laughs)
You are an actor, musician, singer-songwriter, you have traveled extensively, done cameos in film and television, you’ve done a lot. You have grown children and are a grandfather. When people look back and remember Huey Lewis, what do you want them to remember the most?
That we carved our own path; the thing I’m most proud of is that we produced our own records, wrote, and produced them, stayed out of LA, and did our own thing. We were home grown and tried to find an original niche somehow.
