HUEY LEWIS MAKES THE NEWS

HUEY LEWIS MAKES THE NEWS

FEATURES

by

Michael Goldberg

So this is Marin: there’s not even a sign to mark the short, dead-end street where Huey Lewis lives. Things like street signs and pavement don’t seem to be a top priority in the land of hot tubs, freebasing and the Grateful Dead. So it’s up a muddy dirt road and then up a bunch of wooden stairs (past Huey’s white BMW) to reach a rustic house set into the hillside among pine trees and other natural-type stuff that I thought they only had in parks these days.

I’m braving clean air and sunny skies to hang out with Huey Lewis, who leads Huey Lewis and the News, currently a very hot rock ’n’ roll outfit with a hit single, “Do You Believe In Love,” that is doing wonders for Huey’s career (and bank account).

I’m greeted at the door by Huey’s mom, a very hip lady (she’s got her tight purple jeans stuffed into her cowboy boots and, as Huey tells me later, she was the one who turned him onto Bob Dylan when he was a kid) who is visiting her son, even as he is becoming a certified pop star and appearing on TV shows like Fridays and Solid Gold. She leads me into the dining room/ kitchen/living room, telling me about her dislike of the smoky clubs she has to spend time in to see her son sing. She takes a seat at the kitchen table and picks up her embroidery.

The Star is making a pot of coffee. He walks over, grins a “Gosh darn ain’t life wonderful” kind of grin and shakes my hand. A basketball game is playing itself out on Huey’s color TV. It seems Huey didn’t fantasize'about being a rock ’n’ roller when he was a kid; he just wanted to be a sports hero.

In the living room, Huey settles into a rattan couch with big green cushions. If only all the beautiful girls who were lined up in front of the stage at the Old Waldorf the other night, singing along with his songs and staring dreamily at him, could see Huey now: he’s wearing pink pajamas, black slippers and has a purple bathrobe with grey trim wrapped around himself. The 31-year-old Huey looks kind of like a young Clint Eastwood. That disarming smile and an “Aw shucks, ain’t nothin’ ” demeanor make it impossible to not like the guy.

So anyway, what about all these gorgeous young girls who fawn over Huey Lewis and the News? “I think it’s great,” smiles Huey. “We have some very eligible guys in the group. Chris Hayes [guitarist] is a great looking guy and Johnny Colla [the other guitarist; sometime sax player] is a great looking guy. And 1 also think I’m sort of romantic too. I think that comes across.”

"I really object to faceless rock. Rock 'n' roll is supposed to be about personality. That's what it started out being."

Huey says that it was the girls who showed up at his early gigs that first made him think that the band might have a chance. “We started out as a musicians’ band,” he says. “But we played our first gig and when we finished playing, there were five girls outside the gig waiting for us, saying “You guys were great!” And I thought Jesus, hang on, we may have something here fellas!”

Before he formed the News in 1979, Huey Lewis spent six years playing harp in Clover, an excellent but never popular Marin County band that moved to England in the mid-70’s and backed Elvis Costello on My Aim Is True. While in England Huey became friends with Dave Edmunds and Phil Lynott, playing harp on their respective records. Clover broke up when their guitarist, John McFee, decided he was tired of starving and joined the Doobie Brothers.

“That was the toughest point,” says Huey of Clover’s break-up. “Because I thought, here I am a harmonica player and what are the odds of me getting a gig as a harmonica player? I mean, I got two sessions a year. You can’t live off two sessions a year.”

So Huey decided to try leading a band. He called up every good musician he knew in Marin, including a bunch of his old friends from grade school, and convinced them to come down to a local club, Uncle Charlie’s, for a Monday night jam. “I didn’t call up any singers,” laughs Huey. “So I did all the singing.”

But what started out so casually quickly solidified into a tight, six-man band. “It was fun and I seemed to be getting away with it,” says Huey of his tentative first few months as a band leader and vocalist. “If I hadn’t gotten away with it...Let’s put it this way: I’m not the kind of guy who, if it. didn’t fly after a while...Well I wouldn’t do this and be a destitute singer the rest of my life. I wouldn’t be broke playing funky bars for the rest of my life. Other things are more important to me. Rock is not the end all and be all of everything. But since it seems to be going rather well, there’s no sense in changing. That’s quite candid, but it’s true.

By the beginning of 1980, Huey Lewis and the News had a manager, Bob Brown (successful manager of Pablo Cruise) and a record deal with Chrysalis. Two years later and they’ve got a nit too. “We’re such good friends it’s really ridiculous,” says Huey of his band, which includes Sean Hopper, keyboards; Bill Gibson, drums; Mario Cipollina, bass and Chris and Johnny on guitars. “To me, that is really the fun of it. To have you and your five mates against the world. It’s great!”

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Through the News are a potent, poppish rock unit, it’s Huey who really gives the band its appeal. He has that rare ability to stamp every song he sings with his affable personality. “I don’t mind being the good guy,” says Huey, who sings like a younger, not-so-grizzled Bob Seger. “I think it’s good that the personality comes across. I mean, I really object to faceless rock. I’m not very vehemently opposed to much, but I don’t think that’s what rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be all about. Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be about personality. That’s what it started out being.”

Picture This, the News’ second jLP, is mostly an album of love songs. One of the exceptions js the Springsteen-influenced “The Only One,” a melodramatic tale about what happened to the coolest guy in Huey’s junior high school class. “He was always the toughest kid, but never meant no harm,” Huey sirigs. “He and little Janey, together they were the king and queen.” But next verse: “Three years later at the bus stop.. .he looked smaller and real wasted, as he bummed a cigarette/And I asked him what he’d been doing/And how’s little Janey anyway/It seems he got drunk and they had a fight/They came and took him away.” Then a flashback: “1 can still see him standing there/Just like yesterday/Leaning on his ’56 and giving his secrets away/Is it any wonder/I feel a little lonely/He’s not just the only one/ He’s the one and only!”

Sipping coffee from a ceramic mug, Huey kicks his feet up onto the coffee table and takes his eyes off the basketball game. “That’s a true story about a kid we grew up with in junior high in Mill Valley. He was the coolest guy in our junior high school. And then I went away to school and four years later he was a wino. And a few years later I read he was an alcoholic and he wandered out onto the freeway and got hit by a car and died. It was a sad thing.

“He was totally the coolest guy. When we were afraid to hang out with girls cause you didn’t want to be seen with girls, even though you had a crush on one, he was there with his girlfriend arm-in-arm. He was a man at age 13. You didn’t realize you were learning from him, but he was our role model.”

“I think he came from a broken home and he had to grow up real fast. And he peaked too soon. I don’t know. The song essentially asks that question.”

Huey Lewis doesn’t spend much time contemplating the act of fate that has made him a successful rocker. He’s too busy enjoying the rock ’n’ roll life. “It certainly beats working for a living. You get to live like a teenager, essentially, when you’re not.”

Won’t that get old?

Huey laughs. “I think so, but it ain’t old now! My manger says to me, ‘You’re an entertainer.’ I said, ‘I want to rock ’n’ roll for a while first!’ ”

The phone rings. Huey answers it. “Hey man, your name will be on the guest list tonight. What? You’d rather see Gladys Knight and the Pips than Huey Lewis and the News?” He pauses for just a second. Then that grin appears. “Me too!” w