Best known for songs like "I Want a New Drug" and "Hip to Be Square," Huey Lewis
and the News were one of the most popular bands of the 1980s. But what is the real
story behind these legendary hitmakers? This is the truth about Huey Lewis and the News.
Before the formation of the band known as Huey Lewis and the News,
front man Huey Lewis and keyboardist Sean Hopper were in a band from San Francisco known as Clover.
Clover first gained recognition by appearing on Elvis Costello's first album,
My Aim Is True, while visiting England. In the late 1970s, the group returned to California
and wound up joining up with another local band named Soundhole. That's when saxophonist
and rhythm guitarist Johnny Colla, bassist Mario Cipollina, and drummer Bill Gibson came onboard.
After they merged, Clover and Soundhole renamed themselves Huey Lewis and the American Express.
Previously, they had considered using the name The Fools, but a band in New England was already using
that moniker. Huey Lewis and the American Express dropped their first single, "Exodisco/Kick Back,"
in the United Kingdom. This drew the attention of Chrysalis Records, who demanded a name change,
fearing that the American Express credit card company would make a fuss about it. The band
agreed, renamed themselves Huey Lewis and the News, and soon got to work on their first album.
During a 1984 interview with Rolling Stone magazine,
Huey Lewis confessed that the band's first album wasn't actually very good — and that
his voice was, to put it nicely, not that great either. He told the publication:
"You should hear the early demo tapes; I was an awful singer. Not that I'm a great singer now."
The band's first record, the eponymous Huey Lewis and the News,
simply didn't resonate with audiences. The band soon decided that they wanted
to produce their own work. Decades later, Lewis told Rolling Stone:
"Well, our first album didn't do anything.
We produced the second album ourselves and kind of broke even."
The 1982 LP, Picture This, included the hit, "Do You Believe in Love," which was produced
by former Clover collaborator Mutt Lange. The album hit number 7 on the Billboard 200,
and remained in the charts for 35 weeks after its release.
During their early days, Huey Lewis and the News were friendly with the Doobie Brothers, and even
toured with them after releasing their first album. Unfortunately, audiences weren't exactly
enamoured with Lewis and his band. As he later recalled in an interview with Whitefish Review:
"It was all we could do to get finished with a set without being booed. We would
go immediately from song to song because if we paused, they would boo and start throwing s–t."
During a stop in San Antonio, Texas, Lewis decided to join the crowd to watch the Doobies play their
set. When the Doobies got on stage, the band thanked the audience for coming and asked them
to give it up for the opening act. That's when one man in the crowd loudly yelled that the opening
act had sucked - without realizing that the singer was standing right next to him. Thankfully, Lewis
is able to laugh about the incident these days - although it couldn't have been much fun back then.
In the mid-1980s, Huey Lewis and drummer Bill Gibson wrote "Hip To Be Square," a now-iconic
song that was supposed to mock the band's own clean-cut image. At the time, the band members
didn't have tattoos or piercings, and generally came off as a little more conservative-looking
than many of their contemporaries. They were also in their mid-30s at that point in their lives,
and were more focused on actually being themselves trying to come off as cool.
That said, Lewis did manage to pull in a pretty cool favor on "Hip To Be Square."
At one point in the song, you can hear Dwight Clark, Joe Montana, and Ronnie Lott of the San
Francisco 49ers singing back-up. Being from San Francisco, the band were friends with
some of the team's players, and they'd all often run into each other at local events.
This affinity with American football is also referenced on the cover of the 1983 album Sports,
which features an image of Dwight Clark catching a football during a game.
The main theme to the 1984 film Ghostbusters hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and quickly
became one of the most iconic movie songs of all time. Having initially refused to come
out of retirement for the song, Ray Parker Jr. ended up changing his mind and wrote the whole
thing in just a few days. To Huey Lewis and the News, however, the melody to "Ghostbusters"
sounded a little bit too familiar. They wound up suing Parker for plagiarizing their famous tune,
"I Want a New Drug." Columbia Pictures and Parker later settled the case out of court.
Ironically, in 2001, Huey Lewis talked about the lawsuit during an episode of Behind the Music,
which violated their pre-arranged confidentiality agreement… so Parker sued Lewis for speaking out.
Huey Lewis and the News wrote both "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time" for the 1985 time-travel
blockbuster Back to the Future. Lewis even made a cameo appearance in the movie as a judge in a
Battle of the Bands competition. During the scene, Marty McFly and his band The Pinheads performed
a cover of "The Power of Love," but Lewis' character is less than impressed with their set.
"I'm afraid you're just too darn loud."
The scene was actually something of an inside joke between Lewis and the film's
co-writer and director Bob Zemeckis. Lewis later explained in a interview:
"It was Bob's idea and let's face it, I nailed it. We thought it would be kind
of a nice inside joke you know, if we were uncredited and sort of disguised."
In 1985, when Huey Lewis and the News were peaking in popularity,
several musicians came together to sing "We Are the World," a song that raised $60 million for
those suffering from famine in Africa. Prince was expected to sing on the LP along with the others,
but he dropped out — and it was Lewis who was chosen to take his place. Lewis later
told Questlove that performing on the track was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He said:
"It was unbelievable. You don't get to meet all those people in a lifetime or a career.
And Ray Charles was there! I couldn't even introduce myself to Ray Charles.
I just hung back and watched him. I'm just totally in awe of Ray Charles."
Lewis had to sing the line, "But if you just believe,
there's no way we can fall," sandwiched between Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper. Other icons who
featured on the track included Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan - so it might not be much surprise
to hear that Lewis later admitted that, on the day, he was pretty much paralyzed by nerves.
Huey Lewis and the News' third album, Sports, was released on September 15th, 1983, and was one of
the biggest-selling records of 1984. In fact, the band would have had the number-one record of the
year if it wasn't for Michael Jackson, who had just released his album Thriller. Nonetheless,
Sports was a smash hit, scoring an impressive five Top 40 singles.
And that was very much part of the plan, too. By the time they were writing that third album,
the band were making very deliberate creative choices when it came to producing songs.
As Lewis later told Billboard:
"It was really a record for its time. In the 80s, the way radio was programmed, if you didn't have
a hit record you weren't going to be able to make any more records. That was it, period."
As such, the band set out on a mission to write songs that would do well on the radio…
but they weren't exactly sure which ones would do the trick. Lewis added:
"We just knew we needed a frickin' hit, period. And fortunately we got 'em."
In 1984, Sports was riding high in the album charts, alongside such
best-selling albums as Purple Rain, Born in the U.S.A., and the soundtrack to Footloose.
Basically, Huey Lewis and the News were at the very top of their game — and that's when
they were invited to join the American rock band .38 Special on tour as an opening act.
But things actually went a little too well for Huey Lewis and the News.
Every night, the band would play a string of hits from their latest number one album
and drive the crowds totally wild, playing encore after encore — and
infuriating the members of .38 Special. Lewis later explained:
"To their credit, if .38 Special were super-mad about it,
they would suck it up and play their show real hard."
He added that, during those performances,
he would tell his bandmates to relish that moment in their careers, saying:
"'This is as good as it gets, man. Just have fun with this right here.'"
Unfortunately, most bands don't sustain their popularity over the years, and interest in Huey
Lewis and the News began to wane once the 1980s ended. Following Sports, the band released 1988's
Small World, which veered away from the pop music sound of their previous album.
While they had intended on making hit music in the past, this album was a mix of jazz fusion, reggae,
and blues, and wasn't meant to cater to the pop crowd. Lewis later said:
"I didn't aim to make it commercial. If the record doesn't sell, we can still go out and play live."
One song, "Perfect World," managed to reach number three on the pop charts, but the album was
significantly less successful than Sports. Rolling Stone even dubbed it the worst album of the year.
Huey Lewis and the News followed up Small World with Hard at Play,
but had a difficult time attracting listeners, who at that point were getting more and more
into grunge and rap. Their type of music simply no longer resonated. Lewis said,
"All the big-time rock stations said, 'We can't play this. This is Huey Lewis and the News.'
So our image was in the way. The rock stations wouldn't play our rock stuff because it was
already '91 and we couldn't be less cool. It was over for us no matter what we did."
In the 2000 satirical slasher American Psycho, Christian Bale's psychopathic investment banker
Patrick Bateman happens to be a huge fan of Huey Lewis and the News. One of the film's
most memorable scenes involves the serial killer waxing lyrical about the band's career
- and specifically "Hip to Be Square" - before killing another banker, played by Jared Leto.
"He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter,
cynical sense of humor."
Believe it or not, the band gave permission for the song to be included
in the film — but it was a different story when it came to the soundtrack.
Koch Records ended up recalling around 100,000 copies of the American Psycho tie-in album
in order to destroy them. That's because the band never gave the label permission to
put the song on the record. At the time, Koch Records president Bob Frank said:
"As a result of the violent nature of the film,
Huey Lewis's management decided not to give the soundtrack clearance."
In 2018, Huey Lewis was diagnosed with an inner-ear disorder known as Meniere's disease.
He opened up about his diagnosis to USA Today, explaining:
"My hearing fluctuates episodically. Usually it's only bad for a week. But, I mean,
really bad, where I'm almost deaf. And then it gets like it is now,
which is just sort of bad. But I can't seem to stabilize."
While the disease can be debilitating at times, Lewis had no intention of calling it quits in
the music business. His band were working on a new album, and Lewis was also planning
a musical that he hoped would hit Broadway. A year later, however, Lewis explained that
he nearly took his own life after getting the diagnosis. He told Whitefish Review:
"In the first two months of this, I was suicidal. I can honestly
share that with you. I thought, sh--, I'm just going to commit suicide.
I actually contemplated my demise. [...] I mean, would I have? I don't know."
Despite these challenges, Huey Lewis and the News managed to complete their album-in-progress:
Weather, the band's latest LP, was released in February 2020.
Here's to many more.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.