Huey Lewis

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin Back to the Future turns thirty five this year, and for many people, Power of Love by Huey Lewis in the News is forever tied to Marty McFly hitching a ride on the back of cars with his skateboard waving at a jazzercize class. It's the quintessential eighties movie montage. But the string of top ten hits in his perfectly feathered bouffont, Huey Lewis catapulted into Michael j. Fox level fame. But Hue is far from a prefab pop star. In this interview, he talks to Bruce had Them about his career that spans nearly fifty years. He shares details of his tragic family history, his bohemian upbringing that includes late night parties with Alan Ginsburg, and how he bonded with Michael Jackson during the recording of We Are the World. Hue has tons of great stories and we wanted to spend time mining them before we get into talking about his music, including his classic eighties record Sports. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam and Huey Lewis. They start off talking about Hugh's recent health scare that's left him severely hearing impaired. How are you feeling today? I'm okay, I'm I'm actually pretty good. I'm a five today, which is almost as good as I get. But I was like two yesterday. Okay, And we should back up. You've got maars disease. It affects your hearing, your balance. Yeah, yeah, man, years is you know it? First of all, it's just it's a syndrome based on symptoms, so it's called a disease, but it's not really a disease. And frankly they don't know. I mean, I've been House Here Institute, Stanford Here Institute, Mayo Clinic, UCSF, UCLA, talk with doctor Stephen Rausch at Harvard Medical School, and Mass General Ironeer and nobody knows anything. Luxford told me. The real diagnosis for what you have, Hughey, is we don't know. So. But having said that, it fluctuates and it can get better and then it can get worse. The trouble. When it's bad, I can't hardly hear anything. When it's good, I'm with hearing aids. I'm pretty good, and I might even be able to sing, but I don't know that yet because I haven't been good long enough to try. So that's it I need. I need to stabilize. I need to get better and stabilize and then figure out a way to sing. Okay, but you do have a new album out, which we're going to talk about soon. But I want to back up first, okay and ask you a question everybody wants to know, which is did you really get a perfect score on your math SAT? Yes? I did did, and and I and I got a perfect score on my level two SAT as well. Okay, Now, were you this kid who studied all the time? No, I know, I don't know. I had a math aptitude that I cared nothing for because I you know, I took a break between high school and college, took harmonic and pitchecked around Europe, went back to Cornell, and you know, went to engineering school. I went to walked into the classroom and took a look around and said, this is not where I want to be. And you know, I wanted to be a poet. I wanted to be Bob Dylan, not a Boeing engineer or drunk a ge. Now your father was he was a doctor, right, what kind of doctor was he? He was a radiologist radiologist, but he was also a jazz drummer, jazz drummer and piano player. Where was he? Where did he perform? In San Francisco? He would just have jam sessions on the weekends with he and he played with a guy called Ralph Sutton, great Stride piano player. I was a neighbor and my I played drums with him and uh and we had people over the house all the time. We had Eddie Figure Role played bass um, my dad would play drums, Ralph play piano. We had Ben Webster in my living room at one point. Really well, when whenever these musicians would play San Francisco, sometimes Ralph would invite him out and then on a Sunday, my mom would make a big bunch of spaghetti and they have a bunch of red wine and they'd have a jam session. This happened when you were around. It was like yeah, yeah, was like nine or ten years old. They'd run the Marine outdoor Art, Art and Gardens Center in Mill Valley and they would have a jam and all the families and invite people. It was just like a Sunday afternoon and these cats are jam and they have fun and that was you know, a light went off when I saw that. I said, that looks like fun. Wow. And your mother is a fascinating story too. She escaped Europe during the war. My mother was born in Wood, Poland and in nineteen thirty nine. She's born in nineteen twenty four. In nineteen thirty nine, when the Nazis invaded Warsaw, word came down that the Nazis were coming, and my grandparents, although they were Catholic, thought well, I think we'll be okay. They thought maybe would just kind of blow over, but then apparently it wasn't going to. So they sent the kids out with their furs and all the you know, the jewels and the gold coins sewed into the lining of the furs, and my mom hitchhiked, basically got lifts from fans people, and all the way to Portugal and then Brazil with her. She was fifteen and her brother was ten, and they moved to Brazil. They had a relative there who put them up in a youth hostile arranged for them to stay in a youth hostile and my mother lived there for almost five years, at which time finally her parents, my grandparents got out of Poland because my grandmother had a thyroid condition that some Swedish surgeon was the only guy on the planet who knew about this, and the Germans were very interested in the procedure, so they allowed her a visa to leave to go to Sweden to have this procedure done. And they just kept going and went to America. They stated, they moved to Mathuin, Massachusetts, which was the textile capital of America, because my grandfather was a dichemist. He had a textile mill in Poland and he knew all about it, and they were kind of a wealthy, very cultured family and so on. Now in America, he was struggling tough to get a job with all the all the returning gis. He wasn't making any money. So he and my mother, he and my grandmother committed suicide together, and it was a huge blow to my mom. My mom, who was a commercial artist and was in New York City designing album covers and Walt Whitman's little primers and all this doing wonderful commercial work and you know, well dressed and neat and prim That's when she flipped out because America had been the had been the voice of freedom and everything for her because when she was traveling through Europe, whenever there was jazz, she was safe because there were gis gis and jazz met ah safety. So she was a music lover, so it was musical over two. So she marries my dad, who was playing jazz in New York, and they marry and then she reunited with her parents, and then her parents commit suicide, so she kind of drowsed. My uncle later explained to me that's when she turned off to the idea of America is a great place and became a kind of a bohemian, and my dad moved to California. My whole family moved to California nineteen fifty three or fifty four, and then she started hanging out with the beat Nicks in the early sixties and my parents split up. They got divorced in sixty two sixty one, I guess, so she was connected with what was going on in San Francisco with the Beats. Okay, did you know those guys when you were growing up. Well, yeah, then my mom and my parents split up. My mother would hang at the No Name Bar, which is in Sasolito. It was the Tides bookstore in the No Name Bar, which were the two kind of beat nick enclaves, and the No Name Bar had jazz musicians and all that, and my mom would bring the bar home. You know, occasionally I'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning in the place I would be jammed with people and hippies and finger down Ginsburg in the corner and all kinds of poets and musicians and stuff. And then she married Blue Welch. She did well, they didn't actually get married, but they, yeah, the sixties version of getting married and did. He was a well known beat poet. He was friends with Furlingetti. He was I think a character in one of Jack Carrollax's character in one of Carrollas books. He went to read with Philip Whalen and Gary Snyder, and you know, a knew Kirby Doyle and Ferlingetti and all those people, and that was that was their world, you know, that was my mom's world for for a long time, did you know. And he was he was an amazing guy because he was a he was a great orator. I mean he could he you know, he was a William Carlos Williams devote the beats where W. C. Williams was a big influence for them. And that was street talk, right, that was poetry as speech speak, as as as people speak, and and that poetry should be spoken and not necessarily read, but spoken. And Lou was a great reader. He was a great teacher and a and a good poet. But he was an amazing reader. And in those days, there were poets on all the bills, you know, in the early sixties. I mean, I mean not only Neil Cassidy with the Dead and this, but poets typically would have a you know, in between bands, you'd have a poet. And Lou was a star. He was a really big star. But then he committed suicide as well. Well, that must that must have been a terrible shock to your mother. Then, yeah, but my mother, you know, my mom had had escaped Poland and right, and and then I mean I could tell you my mother's story in Brazil and all the stuff she experienced. It's just an unbelievable story my mother. I mean also, you know, her brother got captured by the Nazis and then released when they realized he was Catholic barely, and she had all kinds of she's got all kinds of stories. So for what she's experienced, she's never been sentimental or any of that. And she after her after her parents had committed suicide. It must have been to win the big thing for her. Really, she thought Louis had just disappeared. He engineered his own disappearance. What lou did really is he wrote a poem called the song Mountamil by his sings. In it, he describes his demise. He wanted to be recycled by vultures. What he did is he went in Nevada to Gary Snyder's camp and they were gonna There was a bohemian camp there and lou was gonna build a place there. But he was a vicious alcoholic. He was just and he could barely get up in the morning, and I was shaped. I would talk to him, said, Louis, you can do this. You gotta go. You got And I was probably one of the last people to talk to him. But when he ended up to Gary Snyder's, my mom had left. She'd gone to South America to leave him. She says, you don't need me, you're a drunk. I'm gone. My mom had gone to South America to travel and he went to Gary Snyder's and he was just totally depressed, and so he took his favorite revolver and went out for somewhere and then oh, shoot, Lou else was missing. And then the next day they said, oh, somebody saw him. It's okay. They called off the search. And that was Gary, who, having read the poem, understood that Lou what Lou was doing, and didn't want anybody to, you know, bother him or any of that stuff. So that's what And my mother would never really come to grips with it. She never really came to grips with the fact that he committed suicide. She thought he disappeared. Well, there was always that mystery, right, that did he disappear? But you're in your mind just like Jimmy Hoffa, Yeah, he was gone. You went through something very difficult. Your parents actually made you decide where you wanted to live, didn't they when they split? Is that true? No? No, I had custody. My mother had custody, okay, and I was only twelve. My mother customer. My father had visiting rights, visiting privileges, and he convinced me. He talked to me like he says, look, there's this school, you know, and you're a smart kid, and if you want to get on in life, you got to compete with the best. And he says, and I think there's an opportunity for you to go to prep school. I think it'd be a great thing for you to do. I said, Okay, says, but you're gonna have to want to do it because your mother's got custody. And if you want me to do this, I'll petition the court. But it's going to be a big pisson match, you know. And I said, well, I think it's probably a good idea. So then we went to court. My mother my mother was over here and my dad was over There was a horrible day and she's there screaming at one another, and the judge fortunately said let's go back in my chambers. So we go back into the judge's chambers and I was I was twelve, And he said, um, what do you know about this place? I said, well, you know, I a little bit of Do you want to go there? I said, I think I think I do. He says, how many people in a classroom? And I said eight to fifteen. I just read the brochure. I had just read the brochure, I said eight fifteen. He goes, how many in the student budd He said six hundred. He said, okay, that's enough. He went back and he said the kids can go to prep school. In July of sixty three, I turned thirteen. In August, I went away to prep school for four years, coat and tie, all boys, and neither one of my parents ever attended. They never visited you there, never now, So I really was gone by at that age. Nothing. My parents didn't love me, mind you, you know, it was just a different generation. My dad was a hardass. He was just you know, I never ever told him I loved him, even though I loved him and he loved me. And towards late in life, because you know, with my kids we say he love you, dad, I mean we tell each other we love each other, like six times a day, you know. My dad, so later on in life, and he was I bet he was in his eighties, and I finally said I I said, Pops. I called him pops, Pops. I love you, Pops. And I heard him on the other end go oh. I was also like I'm sorry, which I hadn't said that. He was thinking I only had a few more years to go. I don't the year that I would have got there. Uh did you like prep School? I hated it at first? I just you know, when I first went away, I cried myself to sleep. I was homesick, like crazy. It was horrible and it was all you do to keep my head above water. But after four years, uh, you know, I after four years did I a lot? Did I like it? You know? Yeah? Kind of you. I'm really glad I went there. Let's put it that you were a baseball player, right, a baseball player? You what did you? What position do you play? Pitched and played shorts up? Okay, what are you going to play at Cornell? Was that part of the was? The box was checked when I went to Cornell? But I had been to Europe for a year, yeah, and been to North Africa. I went to Marrakesh for like a day and got so stone I couldn't leave for three months. Playing harmonica in this where you know? Were there players you were listening to back then? Were you listening to harmonica music? Yeah? Well yeah I was. I was. I was a blue snop. I was listening to you know, Walter and Sonny Boy, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, right, and and then then then big Walter and uh and James Cotton, I mean James Cotton. You know, Cotton was probably our biggest influence. Walter Cotton, Sonny Boy, that guy. Yeah, were you singing by singing a little? But I never sang that I went to Europe. When I went to Europe, I had and my busking, I sang, that's that was part of my stick. And how did the how did the busking go real good? Really? I mean, well, yeah, I mean in Morocco, I'm in Marrakesh, and I'm you know, I would play on the square. I mean the snake charmer was over here, and the you know, the the bicyclist acrobat who would ride around doing handstands on the bicycle was over here. And the two hash dealers who did their their spiel, the two growers, they had a whole big stick they did and they smoked these big hookahs and and there were there was a it was an entertaining thing. All this happened in the square. And I would busk on the square and I'd make like three dirhams. And the youth hostfelt was where I stayed. We called it Mukta's Home for Wayward Boys and Girls. We got one costs one dirham and all I could eat was a half a dirham, so I was I was a Derham and a half to the good. I said, yeah, the day I can't affordly, we'll be back with Huey Lewis and Bruce had them after a quick break, we're back with more from Huey Lewis. How did you first get connected with Clover? That's a good question. So now now I'm at Cornell and I'm playing harmonica in bands, and I finally decided I want to be a musician at Cornell. The African American Student Society and the STS took over Willard Straight Hall the on Parents weekend, all the African Marian kids took kicked all the parents out in the middle of the night and took over the place with guns. And this was on the cover of Newsweek magazine, and so the whole campus shut down and big. So you could take past fail for that that semester, because we're two weeks old. Immediately I took past fail on everything, and I didn't, you know, another semester didn't have to work right, So but eventually it started to catch up with me. Yeah. I called my dad and said, look, I'm dropping out. I want to be a musician. And he said, well, fine, you either know what you're doing or you don't. Your dad is a radiologist, says take a year leave of absence. I can't imagine a lot of radiologists having that conversation with their sons these my dad is, my dad is a bohemian. I mean, you know, both parents are far out, you know. But so now I go back to I want to go back to California, because this is sixty nine. I finally say, Dad, I'm dropping out. He says, no prompt and I go back to California and I joined a some of my high school grade school friends a bluegrass band called Herford Heartstringers. They were like ten of us and we would busk at Fisherman's Wharf. That's where we really made some money. We had a ten piece bluegrass band, four of whom were in the band Clover, and so they recruited me for Clover. I played harmonica and they recruited me for Clover, and I joined Clover in about seventy two. I guess okay, and by that point Clover had made a cup, they'd made a couple of Albus. They made two albums in the sixties YEP with which were very well regarded in England for some reason. For some reason, they were very well because they were Andrew Lauder, who was who was at time a and R at Liberty Records inherited those records from Fantasy and the record was set was distributed by Liberty in England and it only sold about nine copies. It was an amazing record because the cover was the Clover four Clover guys including John McPhee with hair down to his waist, wearing coveralls like hippie coveralls, hair down to his waist, standing in front of seven foot high marijuana plants. And this is when Willie Nelson had a coat and die on you know, I mean, this is this is early days, you know, early country rock days. Well in London that was They just that blew their minds. And Andrew Lauder passed the album along to his bands, Brindsley Schwartz, Chili Willie and the Red Hot Peppers and those pub rock bands, and they really took to Clover and in fact, Brinsley Schwartz wrote a song and said going to saddle up and ride away to the hills where Clover play. So we we now were in Clover and we're playing clubs everywhere, and we don't know, you know, we don't know any of this, and now we go. We hear from it was a John Stewart who was from one of the old Kingston trio's, had a ROADI named Mark Ford and his drummer. John Stewart's drummer was Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello's drummer. Pete Thomas and Mark and U. Mark Ford, the ROADI lived in Mill Valley and we knew him real well. So on a break, Pete Thomas came with Mark Ford because he had mentioned to Mark Ford, have you ever heard of a band called Clover? And Mark says, yeah, they live in my hometown. So now we go. This English guy comes to our rehearsal Pete Thomas. He says, man, you guys have a big following in England. We said we do, We didn't know anything about it. So he told everybody in Britain that we were still alive and well. And then next thing we know, we're playing the Palomino in La and these four guys walk in flexually, six guys in little gray suits and short air and it was Doctor feel Good and Jake Riveria and Nick low was. Nick low was Wilco's guitar roadie, and they found out that Clover was playing. Oh my gosh, they show up to our show and that's we meet, and Jake and Dave Robinson hatched the plan to bring Clover to England to be produced by Nick Lowe and to take the country by storm. But the day we landed Punk Rocket, So this is like seventy six exactly simultaneously. In our first few months, our managers were Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson and within signing us and bringing us to London. In the first few months, they signed Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, created Stiff Records, Are Signed Reckless, Eric the damned all that stuff, and so Nick, they too pulled Nick off Clover and let him produce all that other stuff. And for Clover, they they hooked us up with Mutt Langer uh To. The theory was with us, we had long hair and all this stuff. Let's make these guys a rock and roll American rock and roll record and compete and aimed them for America because because it ain't gonna work here in Britain. Right, did you tour at all in England? Oh? Yeah, we toured with Linda Lewis. First we toured with Graham Parker, and then we toured with Thin Lizzie. How was Graham Parker's one of my favorites? How was it touring with Graham Parkers? Horrible? We got can't they hated us, we got we got ship thrown on us in every gig. Graham was a lovely guy. Yeah, but there was a horrible, horrible tour. And then we went on tour with Lizzie and the same thing. I mean, our road manager was a guy called Frank Martinette. Frank real great guy. So he said, Frank, you're gonna have to introduce because we're building support Finn Lizzie plus support. Right. I mean, this is like you might have just walk the plank, you know what I mean? I mean, this is the this is the rock and roll version of walking the plank. So curtain's down, we're barely getting it together. Now, curtain goes up as the audience just going Lizzie right, and then Frank comes out and goes hi, everybody, and they go. He goes, hey, Finn, Lizzie will be right out, and they go, but first here's clover and they go boom, and then stuff starts flying and and uh, I mean, it was a horrible first night. It was all we could do to get through most of the songs. But as soon as it ended and I walked offstage, waiting in the wings was Philip Linnip and Philip said, may I have a word? Yeah, he says, come, come, come to my dressing room. We get in the dressing room and he started to critique our set and helped me. It really became my mentor, helped me with everything on the set list and what songs we should play and what I should do. And eventually, you know, I stayed with him once in a while. He dressed me out of his closet. He played on all his solo records, and he really taught me more than not musically necessary, but everything else. How to run a rock band? What did he what did he tell you about that stage stuff? How to run how it wasn't It wasn't how he told me. It's how he conducted himself, how how he ran his crew, and his band. It was fascinating and how he treated the fans. He was Philip was an amazing guy. And he's the one that kind of gave me confidence that I could sing more and do more my own thing a little bit. And then so while you're there, I think it is at that time some of Clover backs up that and his first on my and is true his first record? And then you play is it was it that trip where you played for on Nickelo and Dave Edmonds? Right? That was that was a little later those two there. Yeah, Clover the rhythm section plays backed up Elvis for My Amis Troupe and Nick produced it. And then so we made two records and they didn't happen. We came really close, but didn't happen until the band breaks up. When John McPhee and drummer Kevin Wells have written a song and they want to go their own solo route. They mcpee eventually joins the Dubies. So we split up and I go back to Marin County and I just start a little jam session. They asked me to run a jam session every Monday night, and we just did a Monday night live fun, just a jam where we had comedians and and just goofy stuff, and I had a house band that I selected, which was four of them was new member you know, going soon to be news guys, and I started singing all the songs and I am seed the deal, and then I sang the songs and the thing got to be very popular. We got offered a free studio time, so we went into the studio with our Monday night live band and we cut a disco version of Exodus that we were playing them from ex Exi Disco. We called it, Yeah, it's really funny. But I was mindful that I wasn't going to try to make anything happen. I was going to do things for the heck of it like the punks did. So when I got the free studio time, I said, you know what, We're gonna cut exa diisco because it was just fun. And so now at this point you've been in the music business for some time, though, did you for you were you just goofing off or did you think in your back and mind, no, this is going to be one day I'm going to be big and one day it's going to be Not Yet I'm not thinking I'm thinking to myself. The lesson here is don't worry about record deals or records or in just have fun, play music and do this thing. Do not worry about your stupid career anymore. So that's what we did. We cut Exo Disco. I mean, how stupid is using two days of studio time to cut a disco version of Exodus. It's ridiculous. So now I got this tape and like days later, Nick Low calls me and says, we want you to come over and I want you to play on one song of mine and Edmonds wants and we rock By wants to cut bad as Bad and Edmonds wants to sing it. I said great, Sure, so he says, well can we fly over? Yeah, So I fly over to London. I land, go straight to the studio, cut the Nicolos song, cut Bad is Bad. Then we the record company comes down, their record company and listens to the tracks. Everything's fine, there's there's a there's a kind of a lull. I say, you guys want to hear something funny? He's sure, So I play Exo Disco for him right. Well, the record company loves it. They go, wow, that could be a hit. I said, well great, Yeah, he said, come see us, we'll make a singles deal. I said, great tomorrow, okay, Sure they leave. So I go to Jake. I said, Jake, what do I do? He says, no problem. He says, get eleven points and three thousand pounds, which in those days was really good. It was almost six grand. So I get three thousand pounds, he says, and they might want you to do some other work, like saying on it or you know, put some if they want to do anything, say fine, but you pay for the studio time and don't leave without the three thousand pounds. I said, okay. So the next day I went to the record label. Sure enough, made a singles deal for Exo Disco. Come, I got a second three. I got a check for three thou. I go back to California. I call my Monday Night Live compadres. I go, hey, boys, we got a little action. You know, I got a singles deal here. So they say great, but they wanted me to sing on it a little more right. They want a little more voke. Because I hadn't didn't do a lot of vocals, mainly an instrumental. I said, no problem, I'll sing it at all problem. So we go back to the studio and I go, hey, I need to sing a little more on that I got, so we need some studio time. Come to find out they've erased part of the master that the multi track. So I screamed bloody murder. I said, what am I gonna do? I just made a singles deal. For this deal, they want me to sing. They I gotta recut it now. They said, well, no problem, We'll give you as much time as you need. I said, I'm gonna need a week. They said, no problem, you got it. I said, okay, wow. So then what I did is I took the master track, put it onto two of the tent of the twenty four track multi, sang on a third track, mixed it down to another two track, done with it took two hours, three hours, I lost a generation of tape, and it sounded you could tell actually wasn't very good. But I knew it didn't mean anything. And with the rest of the week, I cut three other songs with my band, the original songs that got us our record contract and our manager. You're saying, to hell with it paid off? Okay? See that was That was the zen Thriddle. For me was quit trying to make it and you will. We'll be right back with Huey Lewis after a short break. We're back with the rest of Bruce's interview with Huey Lewis for your second album, Though You Did, which you made with mud Lang. Yeah, you've called that the Deal with the Devil? What did you mean? They kind of coaxed that out of me, To be honest, That's why we insisted on producing our own record on Picture of This because I wanted to make those decisions, the commercial decisions, ourselves, because we knew we're gonna have to live with them forever. And so that's how we started producing ourselves. But you knew at that point, Look, we're going to be a pop band now, We're not going to be a jam band. We're not going to be well, there were no jam bands zero. It's nineteen eighty there's nothing but hit singles, and we, as you correctly surmise, we're more like a jam band than we were. So the hardest thing for us was to get a hit single, and that's what we So we wanted to produce ourselves because we wanted to make those decisions ourselves. But we starting with do You Believe in Love? And then later with Sports, because do You Believe in Love was our only hit on that record, and it sold two hundred fifty thousand copies, which is kind of break even for those times. But on Sports, which we produced ourselves, we literally aimed every track right at radio because we knew we needed a hit single to exist. We didn't know we're gonna have five of them, but we knew we needed one. And that's that's why Sports it sounds like it does a record of its time, a collection of singles. And we always confident you could deliver a single, though, that we could get a single, could deliver a single. No, that's that was I was not confident at all that we could do single. That's why I got the Mutt Langer song. That's why I cut Heart and Soul on Sports because they sounded like hits to me, and and that became your first hit, right Heart and Soul. Hart and Soul was our first single off of Sports, and that did did that do the Was that the best the highest ranking single on that Yeah? I don't know. He got to top ten. I think it got six. We didn't have the first number one we had was Power Love. I think all those sports singles none of them got to number one, but the album went to a number one, right because you had If This Is It, Heart of rock and Roll, New Drug, New Drug, Heart and Soul, Yeah, and If This Is It and Walking on a Thin Line was single. Okay, Now I do have one bone to pick with you about Heart of Rock and Roll because I grew up in Canada and the version we heard when you were listing the cities at in you say Toronto, Montreal, and everybody was so happy. And then I moved to the States twenty years ago. I hear the song and the radio that's not on the version down here, and they're funny. And I'll tell you another I'll tell you another funny anecdote to that same thing. How that happened. When the song looks like it's gonna be a single, I'm gonna be a hit. They got me back in the studio to sing every song every city in the world, basically, I mean they wanted me to do. So. If I'm in Sweden, I'm hearing Stockholm, and so now I'm in Canada, we're doing Canada in Toronto. Yeah, you know, but and nic goes Halifax, and I'd never been to Halifax, right, and I went time out. I can't say Halifax, Okay, why, I said, because the harder rock and roll can't be in Halifax. I said, I just can't. So I drew the line at Halifax. And what's funny about that is that now the next year we do we opened our tour in Canada and we started we started New and Land, uh and and and and now we traveled to Halifax, and I go see Halifax, and we go out, we have a night off. We go to this little pub and there's this great rhythm and blues band there at Halifax. And Halifax is the most soulful, little funky town I've ever been to. And I could put it could Halifax is a lot funkier than half of the cities I've mentioned in this song. It was funny. So when you when you hit it big here in your early thirties by this point, yeah, you've been doing this a long time. I think you're married, you may have one of one of your kids, that's try. What was it like to be suddenly one of the biggest stars in the world, Well, you know it was it wasn't overwhelming because I'd been doing it so long and I'd seen so much, right, I mean, I'd seen Philip, and I'd seen all this stuff, and so I understood, I mean, I understood that. And I even sat the boys down at a certain point when we were opening for thirty eight Special and and and our record was taken off and we were just killing it, and it was so much fun because we'd show up at the gig. All we do is support, you know, we play what an hour maybe in front of thirty eight Special. We show up at seven, eat a big crew meal, and then go on stage at seven thirty or eight, and we're done at nine, see you, you know. And I remember and we were tearing the crowd up because our record was what was going and we do as many encores as we wanted, and I remember sitting everybody down. We're in a nice little disguy. I said, boys, enjoy this because it's you know, Unfortunately, we're gonna be headlining our own shows pretty soon. We'll have to bring our own lights and our own sound, and the critics are going to be after us, and we're gonna have to cut. We're gonna have to sound checks is going to be at eleven in the morning and we're gonna bubble. And I said, this right here, this is as good as it gets. Riding on the bubble right now, feeling this momentum, riding this rocket ship to the top, and enjoy this because it only happens once in your whole life. And we did. We, I can honestly say, because we weren't spring chickens. We knew what was going on, and we took it with a measure of salt and had fun. Were you still enjoying it when you when you were the top, when you were the airliners? I didn't like the profile so much. You know, airports, malls, shopping malls, they were really hard because I get I was bombarded with stuff and and I you know, I'm used to it, and I got good, good at it. You talk them down, he says, wait, wait, Look, you have to talk to your crowd. You know, the more you try and be a recluse, the worst they get. So you got to go right after them and say, look, I can't sign all your autographs. There's a hundred of you. You got it, so just please, but thanks very much. But there was a lot of explaining, and a lot of moving out of places, and worried about going over there because of all those people. And and now I don't have to worry about that. But I mean, you would strange things. You were You were on the USA for Africa, but you weren't supposed to sing, and then you did sing? Right, How did that happen? Well, you know, we got invited to do that, do it. We do the chorus and now we're done, and they take breaks and we're in I'm in the lounge, um, you know, telling jokes and whatnot. We're just having fun. Thinking it's over and I get it. And a guy comes to assisted because he says, hey, Quincy wants to see it. Really, So I go out, say Quincy, hey. He says, hey, Hue, we're smelly smelling. Get over here. That they called Michael smelly because he was so clean. And Michael Jackson comes. Jackson was called smelling smelly, right, And so Quincy says, sing him your line, and Michael sings the line and he says, singing, Hue, I sang the line. He says, you got it. It was Prince's line, but Prince didn't show up. Prince boycotted the Prince's line. I got Prince's line, yeah, because you're early in the song. No, no, no, I'm on the bridge. I just believe there's Oh wow, that's right. That was gonna be Prince. Yeah. Did Michael sing it well when he sang it to you? Oh yeah. And Michael was right there for the whole recording session, Okay, him than me. I had the line right after Michael. So so we when we cut, we stood there while we cut, and you know, there were a bunch of bad takes and guys screwed up and everything. So I got to interact with Michael and he was amazing. I mean, first of all, he knew he didn't miss a trick, you know, in the terms of the recording. And to look at him, you think he was just kind of He had the big dark glasses, the aviator shades on, and tons of makeup. You know, he's just full pancake makeup. There were baby moons on his glasses. He had so much makeup on, you know, so you think, oh, this guy, he's out of it. Well he was not out of it. He knew exactly what was going on because I remember when we did the round the first pass to sing lead, we had like five microphones and they were fifteen singers, so we all three to each mic. One guy would would lean in, sing his part and get back, the middle guy would lead in sing back, and the last guy kind of like that. So when we start, it starts with here comes when we eat a certain call, when the world must come together as one. Then Steve, they have happy people dying. Oh wait, wait wait, stop stops up and so he stops everything, and then we go back and start again, and he intentionally messes it up. You know, he's cute. He's just messing around, you know, Stevie's just messing around. And so now they go back and they started again, and now they get maybe down to al Jaro, and he messes up. And now they started again, and they get down to somebody else before they stop and they go back. And now Humberto Gadaka, the engineer, comes out to tweets the microphones, and I go, hey, Humberto, what I said, Hey, could you just let it play all the way through so we can at least to have a whack in our line. I mean, Stevie Wonder has had four takes already, and I got none. He's Stevie wonder, you know. And and he goes back he said, oh sure, no problem, goes back in, and Michael says me, good idea, good idea. I said, thanks. And now we do a pass and it's not very good, and he lets it all go. You can test him, all right, Quince said, let's do another one. We do another pass, and we actually nail it. I don't know if it was the second one, our third one, but we do this one pass that's real good all the way around boom. And then I look and I see him say to a sequency through the glass to indicate the Combertica, save that one. And then he says, all right, let's do it. Let's just do another one. And right then Michael grabs my arm and says, are they going to save that last one? I said, yeah, they're saving the last one. He's just good. I said, yeah. He says, because that was it, wasn't it? I said, yep, that was it? Okay, and that was it anymore? Yeah? Oh wow? Uh. And then you you did Power of Love, you did for the for the movie. Yeah, and that was your first number one, first number one, and you I think we should mention you've written other than hart and Soul. You write all the songs as well or co write the songs. Yeah, yeah, and you wrote the Power of Love. Yeah, power Love. Power of Love is you know we Steven Spielberg and Bob Zamechas and Bob Gail and Neil Canton, who produced, directed and wrote the film, asked to take a meeting with usaid Ambulin Entertainment. Ambulin was brand new. Zamecha said, you know, we've just written this film called Back to the Future, and our our lead character, Martin Wickfly, his favorite band would be Huey Lewis and the news. How would you like to write a song for the film? I said, flattered, but I don't know how to write for film necessarily. And I don't mean to be offend you, but I don't fancy writing a song called back to the Future. And they said, oh, no problem, you can call it whatever you want to call it. We just won't one of yours. I said, great, I'll send you the next thing. We were right, and that was it. Yeah, that's the way I remember it. Zamechas remembers us sending down a demo of Power of Love and him saying to me that him told me that it wasn't up enough up quote unquote, And so the verses in a minor key, right, so, and I can't remember what version we had. I know we had two bridges. But and then according to Zamechas, we made some changes. And I suppose that could be what Johnny when Johnny's participation, which are those major stabs at the beginning, bom bom bom bom bomp. I think we might have Johnny kla our sax vote, guitar player and co writer. I think maybe he added those to Chris. But then Chris and I had written the song, and that's what Johnny did. I think he added that part and then we sent it down and then Bob Zamechas wrote, so it started with that verse which has the kind of funkier Yeah. Oh, I say they wanted a little happier sound off the top though, And then you had one of the great cameos in Hollywood history, was certainly one of the great seven second cameos. Was a line written for you? Or did you say? Did you say it is written? Or I pad it it was written? You're too loud and I put your too darn loud. Yeah, sorry, is it? Sorry? Boys? You're just sorry? Boys, You're just too darn loud. Oh it's fabulous. You've done some acting. But yeah, I love it, I dig it, I enjoy it. I'm not afraid to say that I have fesban aspirations. Okay, but you you only do that. You've done hot in Cleveland, You've done some TV. Uh. People must have been throwing movie scripts at you all the time. But but there's stuff where I'm Huey Lewis or I'm a rock star or yeah, I don't want to do I you know, that's not you know, Sports was we reduced ourselves and we literally went after we needed a hit single. Yeah, and so that was the last thing and we and we really just tore our hair out over hit singles and you know, and we were we were mean to each other over that because it wasn't good enough and the horn chart and stuff. I mean, I was, I was pretty pretty mean, you know, pretty ambitious and pretty mean. And I vowed when the Sports hit like crazy, I said, you know what, I'm not going to do anything for commercial reasons anymore. I'm gonna if it doesn't have a creative component to it, I'm not in and so you know, I've just pretty much kind of stuck by that right well for not the next AIB but the obum after that, you stand gets playing a couple of Yeah, that's another great story. But the way that worked is my dad was a jazzer, as I told you, and he tells me. I'm talking to my dad and he goes, hey, man, Zoot Sims died and they're doing a benefit for Zuit. I said, really, and he says, man, that'll be that'll be something. Man. They got Jimmy Jones trio and gets and all these people. I said, well whatever, So secretly I got tickets for my old man, for my dad and I to go see this this thing. So then I told him we got tickets. He said, oh, that's great. Great, So we go and and he doesn't know anything about my career because my dad's a jazzer and his advice to me always was, you know, I'd say, I'm making I'm working on a new record. Dad. You go great. He says, are you playing harmonica? I said, yeah, I'm playing a little bit. He says, hey, man, I mean you need to play harmonica. I said what I'm telling you, He says, play harmonica. Here's let me tell you something. Just keep practicing that harmonica because they can't take that away from you. He says this Huey Lewis shit here today, gone tomorrow. And that was my dad's advice to me. Did he ever come and see you? Much later? I pull him to Worcester Centrum. We sold out three nights of the centrum. I flew him back to Boston see his mother, who he hadn't talked to him forty years. You know. He was a hard ass Irish think Eugene O'Neill. Okay, okay, So now my dad I get tickets to this jazz benefit for zue Tims and we go to the place. We were there early and and they go, oh my gosh, there's Hughie you know. Oh yes, sir mister Lewis. And my dad can't believe how well I'm treated. And they march us down to the two aisle seats. Small club anyway, but two aisle seats in like the third row, perfect best seats in the house. And sitting right there's Phil Ellwood, the music critic. And my dad knows everything about jazz I mean, he plays jazz, but he knows everything. He's a music college. He can name everybody in Jimmy lunsford'span, he can name everybody in Chick Webb's orchestra. He knows everything, you know. And so he sees and he reads Phil Elwood all the time. And Phil Ellwood says, oh my god, Hughey, Lewis, how are you doing? Man? A big fan, says Ellwood. And my old man sees Ellwood recognizing his son, and can't even believe it. I said, this is my dad. He's, oh my god, you're Phil Ellwood. Yeah. But so I sit my old man down and Ellwood next to Elwood and they just start talking about jazz and stuff and all these guys and blah blah blah, all the stuff. I mean, while I'm sitting there, when we're kind of waiting for things, I feel a tap on my shoulder like this, and I turn around and it's gets and he's got his horn on and he's he's standing over me with his horn. He goes, you're Yue Lewis right? I said, yesis yeah, my girlfriend wants to eat your shorts. I oh, I'm sorry. He says, hey, and I look like, oh my god, it stand Yess. He says, hey, hey, why don't you let me play on some of your ship. He says, you know I can play that crap too. I said, yeah, I'm sure you can. Yeah, yeah, whatever. He's here. He gets a card out, and he gave me a card and said, stand gets. He goes have sacks, will travel and handed me the card and I put in my pocket. My old man's beside himself, and on the ride home, my old man says, if you don't take him up on that offer, I will never ever forgive you. He says, he has cancer and he's not going to be around that long. And you need you need. My dad was a radiologist and knew all this oncology stuff that in those days, and he knew about gets this condition and all this. So that's so that we spent six months looking for a tune that would work for Stand and then Chris came up with that little riff and I wrote small World just four gets as a as a vehicle. Now you did you guys kept touring, you kept making new albums, but you didn't before this album. You didn't do a new album for about twenty years, right, I think two thousand was your last. You're not an album of original material, right. We've done a couple of things since then, but they were due to Soulsville. We did an R and B. Stacks really a Memphis tribute right now? Were you a big Stacks fan? I was, okay, because what's great about that record? You do respect yourself? And I think a couple of Salomon Brook songs, but most of them are songs most people don't know. That's right, Like, you've got a couple of great Johnny Taylor songs free, just the one I'm looking for, right right? Good for you, that's see. The theory was because people have done original versions of old songs like Mustang Sally or or you know, man Knocking on Wood or soul Man or something. And I so it was either do a completely original version of soul Man or those of a really recognizable song, or find songs that weren't so recognizable that people didn't know anything about and do faithful versions of those. And I thought that would be more fun. Yeah, So tell me a little your new album U seven songs, and that's because you ran, because that's how many Kanye had No No that's the reason. No. Um, you know, some of it, like like your single her Love is Killing Me, that sounds very much like an eighties everybody says that. I don't know. I don't hear it. You know what, the comment I get more than anything else is that it's just vintage Huey Lewis and the News. It sounds like Huey Lewis and the News right away, you know, it's a Huey Lewis and the News record. I mean, all with all the songs, I go, really, what does Huey Lewis and the News sound like? I mean, we're all over the map. I don't. I don't well, I was gonna say, I think the single does. It's got that kind of crunchy eighties guitar. But some of the other ones like uh, when We're young and while we're young, young and remind me why I still love you, it's got they're more. They're kind of back to your seventies funk days a little more. It's got that kind of country thing. Was it nice to kind of feel like doesn't have to it doesn't have to sound like power of love. We can do what we want. Yeah, I mean, you know, The truth is, I just follow the song. I mean, the song is the hardest part the whole deal. You got to have. A song needs to be about something. You have to have a perspective, and at my ripe old age, I mean, you know, it's hard to find an original perspective. You're writing a rock and roll song, so it's really it's kind of like a haiku. I mean, you really are trying to reinvent the wheel here with a pop song, and you don't want to cover past stuff. And I've already written all bunch of stuff. So what am I going to do with this? Riple can't sing about cars and girls anymore? What am I gonna do? You know a second, you do sing about cars and girls? I do? Yeah, pretty girls everywhere? All right, Pretty well, that's Eugene Church singing about girls. Okay, fantastic. It is great. So what what happens now You've got this album out. You're dealing with these health issues we talked about, what's what's the prognosis for that? Well, it's not the end of the world, you know, I mean, did it ever seem like the end of the world? It did in the first for the first couple of months. I was so depressed, you know, and then I don't know why, I guess, you know, shame on me for that, I suppose, but I was. I was just horribly depressed, thinking I was never gonna sing again. You know. I don't miss doing five shows a week, you know, but I missed doing a show every now and again. And I miss I missed the camaraderie. I miss I missed the circus that was rock and roll touring the twenty five of us. You know, it was a fun thing. It's a great it's a great way to it's a great way to live. It's you get to kind of live like a teenager, you know, It's it's a lot of fun. Okay, Well, I hope you get to live that way again. Thank you so much. This has been so wonderful. Thank you. Thanks the Huey Lewis for sharing his story. We certainly hope he's back on stage soon. Hughey's new album Whether is out now. You can hear it along with the rest of our favorite be cuts by checking out the playlists we made for this episode at Broken record podcast dot com. Also, if you sure to check out our YouTube channel, where we can find all our past episodes and some great bonus material as well. You can subscribe at YouTube dot com slash broken Record podcast. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrel, Mia LaBelle Leah Rose, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. Thanks for listening. I'm justin Richmond.