Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Huey Lewis

Transcript

Huey Lewis · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin Back to the Future turns thirty five this year,
0:15
Speaker 1: and for many people, Power of Love by Huey Lewis
0:17
Speaker 1: in the News is forever tied to Marty McFly hitching
0:21
Speaker 1: a ride on the back of cars with his skateboard
0:23
Speaker 1: waving at a jazzercize class. It's the quintessential eighties movie montage.
0:29
Speaker 1: But the string of top ten hits in his perfectly
0:31
Speaker 1: feathered bouffont, Huey Lewis catapulted into Michael j. Fox level fame.
0:36
Speaker 1: But Hue is far from a prefab pop star. In
0:39
Speaker 1: this interview, he talks to Bruce had Them about his
0:41
Speaker 1: career that spans nearly fifty years. He shares details of
0:44
Speaker 1: his tragic family history, his bohemian upbringing that includes late
0:48
Speaker 1: night parties with Alan Ginsburg, and how he bonded with
0:51
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson during the recording of We Are the World.
0:54
Speaker 1: Hue has tons of great stories and we wanted to
0:57
Speaker 1: spend time mining them before we get into talking about
0:59
Speaker 1: his music, including his classic eighties record Sports. This is
1:07
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
1:16
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Headlam and Huey Lewis. They start off talking
1:19
Speaker 1: about Hugh's recent health scare that's left him severely hearing impaired.
1:24
Speaker 1: How are you feeling today? I'm okay, I'm I'm actually
1:28
Speaker 1: pretty good. I'm a five today, which is almost as
1:31
Speaker 1: good as I get. But I was like two yesterday. Okay,
1:35
Speaker 1: And we should back up. You've got maars disease. It
1:39
Speaker 1: affects your hearing, your balance. Yeah, yeah, man, years is
1:43
Speaker 1: you know it? First of all, it's just it's a
1:46
Speaker 1: syndrome based on symptoms, so it's called a disease, but
1:49
Speaker 1: it's not really a disease. And frankly they don't know.
1:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I've been House Here Institute, Stanford Here Institute,
1:57
Speaker 1: Mayo Clinic, UCSF, UCLA, talk with doctor Stephen Rausch at
2:02
Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School, and Mass General Ironeer and nobody knows anything.
2:08
Speaker 1: Luxford told me. The real diagnosis for what you have, Hughey,
2:12
Speaker 1: is we don't know. So. But having said that, it
2:17
Speaker 1: fluctuates and it can get better and then it can
2:21
Speaker 1: get worse. The trouble. When it's bad, I can't hardly
2:24
Speaker 1: hear anything. When it's good, I'm with hearing aids. I'm
2:30
Speaker 1: pretty good, and I might even be able to sing,
2:34
Speaker 1: but I don't know that yet because I haven't been
2:37
Speaker 1: good long enough to try. So that's it I need.
2:40
Speaker 1: I need to stabilize. I need to get better and
2:43
Speaker 1: stabilize and then figure out a way to sing. Okay,
2:46
Speaker 1: but you do have a new album out, which we're
2:48
Speaker 1: going to talk about soon. But I want to back
2:51
Speaker 1: up first, okay and ask you a question everybody wants
2:56
Speaker 1: to know, which is did you really get a perfect
2:59
Speaker 1: score on your math SAT? Yes? I did did, and
3:04
Speaker 1: and I and I got a perfect score on my
3:06
Speaker 1: level two SAT as well. Okay, Now, were you this
3:10
Speaker 1: kid who studied all the time? No, I know, I
3:12
Speaker 1: don't know. I had a math aptitude that I cared
3:15
Speaker 1: nothing for because I you know, I took a break
3:18
Speaker 1: between high school and college, took harmonic and pitchecked around Europe,
3:22
Speaker 1: went back to Cornell, and you know, went to engineering school.
3:26
Speaker 1: I went to walked into the classroom and took a
3:28
Speaker 1: look around and said, this is not where I want
3:32
Speaker 1: to be. And you know, I wanted to be a poet.
3:35
Speaker 1: I wanted to be Bob Dylan, not a Boeing engineer
3:38
Speaker 1: or drunk a ge. Now your father was he was
3:41
Speaker 1: a doctor, right, what kind of doctor was he? He
3:43
Speaker 1: was a radiologist radiologist, but he was also a jazz drummer,
3:47
Speaker 1: jazz drummer and piano player. Where was he? Where did
3:49
Speaker 1: he perform? In San Francisco? He would just have jam
3:52
Speaker 1: sessions on the weekends with he and he played with
3:55
Speaker 1: a guy called Ralph Sutton, great Stride piano player. I
3:59
Speaker 1: was a neighbor and my I played drums with him
4:01
Speaker 1: and uh and we had people over the house all
4:04
Speaker 1: the time. We had Eddie Figure Role played bass um,
4:08
Speaker 1: my dad would play drums, Ralph play piano. We had
4:10
Speaker 1: Ben Webster in my living room at one point. Really well,
4:15
Speaker 1: when whenever these musicians would play San Francisco, sometimes Ralph
4:20
Speaker 1: would invite him out and then on a Sunday, my
4:23
Speaker 1: mom would make a big bunch of spaghetti and they
4:25
Speaker 1: have a bunch of red wine and they'd have a
4:27
Speaker 1: jam session. This happened when you were around. It was
4:30
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, was like nine or ten years old.
4:32
Speaker 1: They'd run the Marine outdoor Art, Art and Gardens Center
4:35
Speaker 1: in Mill Valley and they would have a jam and
4:39
Speaker 1: all the families and invite people. It was just like
4:42
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon and these cats are jam and they
4:45
Speaker 1: have fun and that was you know, a light went
4:48
Speaker 1: off when I saw that. I said, that looks like fun. Wow.
4:52
Speaker 1: And your mother is a fascinating story too. She escaped
4:56
Speaker 1: Europe during the war. My mother was born in Wood,
5:00
Speaker 1: Poland and in nineteen thirty nine. She's born in nineteen
5:03
Speaker 1: twenty four. In nineteen thirty nine, when the Nazis invaded Warsaw,
5:11
Speaker 1: word came down that the Nazis were coming, and my grandparents,
5:15
Speaker 1: although they were Catholic, thought well, I think we'll be okay.
5:19
Speaker 1: They thought maybe would just kind of blow over, but
5:21
Speaker 1: then apparently it wasn't going to. So they sent the
5:25
Speaker 1: kids out with their furs and all the you know,
5:28
Speaker 1: the jewels and the gold coins sewed into the lining
5:31
Speaker 1: of the furs, and my mom hitchhiked, basically got lifts
5:36
Speaker 1: from fans people, and all the way to Portugal and
5:40
Speaker 1: then Brazil with her. She was fifteen and her brother
5:44
Speaker 1: was ten, and they moved to Brazil. They had a
5:47
Speaker 1: relative there who put them up in a youth hostile
5:50
Speaker 1: arranged for them to stay in a youth hostile and
5:52
Speaker 1: my mother lived there for almost five years, at which
5:57
Speaker 1: time finally her parents, my grandparents got out of Poland
6:01
Speaker 1: because my grandmother had a thyroid condition that some Swedish
6:07
Speaker 1: surgeon was the only guy on the planet who knew
6:10
Speaker 1: about this, and the Germans were very interested in the procedure,
6:13
Speaker 1: so they allowed her a visa to leave to go
6:16
Speaker 1: to Sweden to have this procedure done. And they just
6:19
Speaker 1: kept going and went to America. They stated, they moved
6:24
Speaker 1: to Mathuin, Massachusetts, which was the textile capital of America,
6:29
Speaker 1: because my grandfather was a dichemist. He had a textile
6:34
Speaker 1: mill in Poland and he knew all about it, and
6:36
Speaker 1: they were kind of a wealthy, very cultured family and
6:40
Speaker 1: so on. Now in America, he was struggling tough to
6:44
Speaker 1: get a job with all the all the returning gis.
6:47
Speaker 1: He wasn't making any money. So he and my mother,
6:50
Speaker 1: he and my grandmother committed suicide together, and it was
6:54
Speaker 1: a huge blow to my mom. My mom, who was
6:57
Speaker 1: a commercial artist and was in New York City designing
7:02
Speaker 1: album covers and Walt Whitman's little primers and all this
7:06
Speaker 1: doing wonderful commercial work and you know, well dressed and
7:10
Speaker 1: neat and prim That's when she flipped out because America
7:15
Speaker 1: had been the had been the voice of freedom and
7:20
Speaker 1: everything for her because when she was traveling through Europe,
7:23
Speaker 1: whenever there was jazz, she was safe because there were
7:26
Speaker 1: gis gis and jazz met ah safety. So she was
7:30
Speaker 1: a music lover, so it was musical over two. So
7:32
Speaker 1: she marries my dad, who was playing jazz in New York,
7:34
Speaker 1: and they marry and then she reunited with her parents,
7:38
Speaker 1: and then her parents commit suicide, so she kind of drowsed.
7:42
Speaker 1: My uncle later explained to me that's when she turned
7:45
Speaker 1: off to the idea of America is a great place
7:49
Speaker 1: and became a kind of a bohemian, and my dad
7:53
Speaker 1: moved to California. My whole family moved to California nineteen
7:56
Speaker 1: fifty three or fifty four, and then she started hanging
8:02
Speaker 1: out with the beat Nicks in the early sixties and
8:05
Speaker 1: my parents split up. They got divorced in sixty two
8:08
Speaker 1: sixty one, I guess, so she was connected with what
8:11
Speaker 1: was going on in San Francisco with the Beats. Okay,
8:15
Speaker 1: did you know those guys when you were growing up. Well, yeah,
8:17
Speaker 1: then my mom and my parents split up. My mother
8:20
Speaker 1: would hang at the No Name Bar, which is in Sasolito.
8:23
Speaker 1: It was the Tides bookstore in the No Name Bar,
8:25
Speaker 1: which were the two kind of beat nick enclaves, and
8:29
Speaker 1: the No Name Bar had jazz musicians and all that,
8:32
Speaker 1: and my mom would bring the bar home. You know,
8:34
Speaker 1: occasionally I'd wake up at three o'clock in the morning
8:37
Speaker 1: in the place I would be jammed with people and
8:40
Speaker 1: hippies and finger down Ginsburg in the corner and all
8:43
Speaker 1: kinds of poets and musicians and stuff. And then she
8:48
Speaker 1: married Blue Welch. She did well, they didn't actually get married,
8:52
Speaker 1: but they, yeah, the sixties version of getting married and did.
8:56
Speaker 1: He was a well known beat poet. He was friends
8:59
Speaker 1: with Furlingetti. He was I think a character in one
9:03
Speaker 1: of Jack Carrollax's character in one of Carrollas books. He
9:06
Speaker 1: went to read with Philip Whalen and Gary Snyder, and
9:11
Speaker 1: you know, a knew Kirby Doyle and Ferlingetti and all
9:13
Speaker 1: those people, and that was that was their world, you know,
9:17
Speaker 1: that was my mom's world for for a long time,
9:21
Speaker 1: did you know. And he was he was an amazing
9:25
Speaker 1: guy because he was a he was a great orator.
9:30
Speaker 1: I mean he could he you know, he was a
9:33
Speaker 1: William Carlos Williams devote the beats where W. C. Williams
9:37
Speaker 1: was a big influence for them. And that was street talk, right,
9:41
Speaker 1: that was poetry as speech speak, as as as people speak,
9:47
Speaker 1: and and that poetry should be spoken and not necessarily read,
9:51
Speaker 1: but spoken. And Lou was a great reader. He was
9:55
Speaker 1: a great teacher and a and a good poet. But
9:58
Speaker 1: he was an amazing reader. And in those days, there
10:03
Speaker 1: were poets on all the bills, you know, in the
10:05
Speaker 1: early sixties. I mean, I mean not only Neil Cassidy
10:08
Speaker 1: with the Dead and this, but poets typically would have
10:11
Speaker 1: a you know, in between bands, you'd have a poet.
10:14
Speaker 1: And Lou was a star. He was a really big star.
10:17
Speaker 1: But then he committed suicide as well. Well, that must
10:20
Speaker 1: that must have been a terrible shock to your mother. Then, yeah,
10:24
Speaker 1: but my mother, you know, my mom had had escaped
10:27
Speaker 1: Poland and right, and and then I mean I could
10:30
Speaker 1: tell you my mother's story in Brazil and all the
10:33
Speaker 1: stuff she experienced. It's just an unbelievable story my mother.
10:37
Speaker 1: I mean also, you know, her brother got captured by
10:41
Speaker 1: the Nazis and then released when they realized he was
10:44
Speaker 1: Catholic barely, and she had all kinds of she's got
10:48
Speaker 1: all kinds of stories. So for what she's experienced, she's
10:52
Speaker 1: never been sentimental or any of that. And she after
10:55
Speaker 1: her after her parents had committed suicide. It must have
10:58
Speaker 1: been to win the big thing for her. Really, she
11:02
Speaker 1: thought Louis had just disappeared. He engineered his own disappearance.
11:06
Speaker 1: What lou did really is he wrote a poem called
11:09
Speaker 1: the song Mountamil by his sings. In it, he describes
11:14
Speaker 1: his demise. He wanted to be recycled by vultures. What
11:18
Speaker 1: he did is he went in Nevada to Gary Snyder's
11:23
Speaker 1: camp and they were gonna There was a bohemian camp
11:26
Speaker 1: there and lou was gonna build a place there. But
11:29
Speaker 1: he was a vicious alcoholic. He was just and he
11:33
Speaker 1: could barely get up in the morning, and I was shaped.
11:36
Speaker 1: I would talk to him, said, Louis, you can do this.
11:38
Speaker 1: You gotta go. You got And I was probably one
11:41
Speaker 1: of the last people to talk to him. But when
11:43
Speaker 1: he ended up to Gary Snyder's, my mom had left.
11:46
Speaker 1: She'd gone to South America to leave him. She says,
11:48
Speaker 1: you don't need me, you're a drunk. I'm gone. My
11:51
Speaker 1: mom had gone to South America to travel and he
11:53
Speaker 1: went to Gary Snyder's and he was just totally depressed,
11:57
Speaker 1: and so he took his favorite revolver and went out
12:02
Speaker 1: for somewhere and then oh, shoot, Lou else was missing.
12:07
Speaker 1: And then the next day they said, oh, somebody saw him.
12:10
Speaker 1: It's okay. They called off the search. And that was Gary, who,
12:13
Speaker 1: having read the poem, understood that Lou what Lou was doing,
12:18
Speaker 1: and didn't want anybody to, you know, bother him or
12:21
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. So that's what And my mother
12:23
Speaker 1: would never really come to grips with it. She never
12:25
Speaker 1: really came to grips with the fact that he committed suicide.
12:28
Speaker 1: She thought he disappeared. Well, there was always that mystery, right,
12:33
Speaker 1: that did he disappear? But you're in your mind just
12:36
Speaker 1: like Jimmy Hoffa, Yeah, he was gone. You went through
12:39
Speaker 1: something very difficult. Your parents actually made you decide where
12:43
Speaker 1: you wanted to live, didn't they when they split? Is
12:45
Speaker 1: that true? No? No, I had custody. My mother had custody, okay,
12:49
Speaker 1: and I was only twelve. My mother customer. My father
12:52
Speaker 1: had visiting rights, visiting privileges, and he convinced me. He
12:56
Speaker 1: talked to me like he says, look, there's this school,
12:59
Speaker 1: you know, and you're a smart kid, and if you
13:02
Speaker 1: want to get on in life, you got to compete
13:04
Speaker 1: with the best. And he says, and I think there's
13:08
Speaker 1: an opportunity for you to go to prep school. I
13:11
Speaker 1: think it'd be a great thing for you to do.
13:13
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, says, but you're gonna have to want
13:15
Speaker 1: to do it because your mother's got custody. And if
13:18
Speaker 1: you want me to do this, I'll petition the court.
13:21
Speaker 1: But it's going to be a big pisson match, you know.
13:23
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I think it's probably a good idea.
13:26
Speaker 1: So then we went to court. My mother my mother
13:29
Speaker 1: was over here and my dad was over There was
13:31
Speaker 1: a horrible day and she's there screaming at one another,
13:34
Speaker 1: and the judge fortunately said let's go back in my chambers.
13:38
Speaker 1: So we go back into the judge's chambers and I
13:41
Speaker 1: was I was twelve, And he said, um, what do
13:46
Speaker 1: you know about this place? I said, well, you know,
13:48
Speaker 1: I a little bit of Do you want to go there?
13:50
Speaker 1: I said, I think I think I do. He says,
13:52
Speaker 1: how many people in a classroom? And I said eight
13:55
Speaker 1: to fifteen. I just read the brochure. I had just
13:58
Speaker 1: read the brochure, I said eight fifteen. He goes, how
14:00
Speaker 1: many in the student budd He said six hundred. He said, okay,
14:04
Speaker 1: that's enough. He went back and he said the kids
14:07
Speaker 1: can go to prep school. In July of sixty three,
14:10
Speaker 1: I turned thirteen. In August, I went away to prep
14:14
Speaker 1: school for four years, coat and tie, all boys, and
14:18
Speaker 1: neither one of my parents ever attended. They never visited
14:21
Speaker 1: you there, never now, So I really was gone by
14:25
Speaker 1: at that age. Nothing. My parents didn't love me, mind you,
14:29
Speaker 1: you know, it was just a different generation. My dad
14:32
Speaker 1: was a hardass. He was just you know, I never
14:34
Speaker 1: ever told him I loved him, even though I loved
14:36
Speaker 1: him and he loved me. And towards late in life,
14:40
Speaker 1: because you know, with my kids we say he love you, dad,
14:42
Speaker 1: I mean we tell each other we love each other,
14:44
Speaker 1: like six times a day, you know. My dad, so
14:48
Speaker 1: later on in life, and he was I bet he
14:50
Speaker 1: was in his eighties, and I finally said I I said, Pops.
14:55
Speaker 1: I called him pops, Pops. I love you, Pops. And
14:58
Speaker 1: I heard him on the other end go oh. I
15:00
Speaker 1: was also like I'm sorry, which I hadn't said that.
15:04
Speaker 1: He was thinking I only had a few more years
15:06
Speaker 1: to go. I don't the year that I would have
15:08
Speaker 1: got there. Uh did you like prep School? I hated
15:13
Speaker 1: it at first? I just you know, when I first
15:16
Speaker 1: went away, I cried myself to sleep. I was homesick,
15:20
Speaker 1: like crazy. It was horrible and it was all you
15:22
Speaker 1: do to keep my head above water. But after four years, uh,
15:27
Speaker 1: you know, I after four years did I a lot?
15:30
Speaker 1: Did I like it? You know? Yeah? Kind of you.
15:33
Speaker 1: I'm really glad I went there. Let's put it that
15:35
Speaker 1: you were a baseball player, right, a baseball player? You
15:38
Speaker 1: what did you? What position do you play? Pitched and
15:40
Speaker 1: played shorts up? Okay, what are you going to play
15:43
Speaker 1: at Cornell? Was that part of the was? The box
15:46
Speaker 1: was checked when I went to Cornell? But I had
15:48
Speaker 1: been to Europe for a year, yeah, and been to
15:51
Speaker 1: North Africa. I went to Marrakesh for like a day
15:56
Speaker 1: and got so stone I couldn't leave for three months.
15:58
Speaker 1: Playing harmonica in this where you know? Were there players
16:02
Speaker 1: you were listening to back then? Were you listening to
16:04
Speaker 1: harmonica music? Yeah? Well yeah I was. I was. I
16:07
Speaker 1: was a blue snop. I was listening to you know,
16:10
Speaker 1: Walter and Sonny Boy, Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson, right,
16:13
Speaker 1: and and then then then big Walter and uh and
16:17
Speaker 1: James Cotton, I mean James Cotton. You know, Cotton was
16:20
Speaker 1: probably our biggest influence. Walter Cotton, Sonny Boy, that guy. Yeah,
16:27
Speaker 1: were you singing by singing a little? But I never
16:30
Speaker 1: sang that I went to Europe. When I went to Europe,
16:33
Speaker 1: I had and my busking, I sang, that's that was
16:36
Speaker 1: part of my stick. And how did the how did
16:38
Speaker 1: the busking go real good? Really? I mean, well, yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: I mean in Morocco, I'm in Marrakesh, and I'm you know,
16:45
Speaker 1: I would play on the square. I mean the snake
16:49
Speaker 1: charmer was over here, and the you know, the the
16:52
Speaker 1: bicyclist acrobat who would ride around doing handstands on the
16:56
Speaker 1: bicycle was over here. And the two hash dealers who
17:00
Speaker 1: did their their spiel, the two growers, they had a
17:04
Speaker 1: whole big stick they did and they smoked these big
17:08
Speaker 1: hookahs and and there were there was a it was
17:10
Speaker 1: an entertaining thing. All this happened in the square. And
17:13
Speaker 1: I would busk on the square and I'd make like
17:16
Speaker 1: three dirhams. And the youth hostfelt was where I stayed.
17:20
Speaker 1: We called it Mukta's Home for Wayward Boys and Girls.
17:24
Speaker 1: We got one costs one dirham and all I could
17:26
Speaker 1: eat was a half a dirham, so I was I
17:29
Speaker 1: was a Derham and a half to the good. I said, yeah,
17:34
Speaker 1: the day I can't affordly, we'll be back with Huey
17:39
Speaker 1: Lewis and Bruce had them after a quick break, we're
17:45
Speaker 1: back with more from Huey Lewis. How did you first
17:49
Speaker 1: get connected with Clover? That's a good question. So now
17:52
Speaker 1: now I'm at Cornell and I'm playing harmonica in bands,
17:56
Speaker 1: and I finally decided I want to be a musician
17:58
Speaker 1: at Cornell. The African American Student Society and the STS
18:04
Speaker 1: took over Willard Straight Hall the on Parents weekend, all
18:08
Speaker 1: the African Marian kids took kicked all the parents out
18:12
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and took over the
18:15
Speaker 1: place with guns. And this was on the cover of
18:17
Speaker 1: Newsweek magazine, and so the whole campus shut down and big.
18:22
Speaker 1: So you could take past fail for that that semester,
18:26
Speaker 1: because we're two weeks old. Immediately I took past fail
18:28
Speaker 1: on everything, and I didn't, you know, another semester didn't
18:33
Speaker 1: have to work right, So but eventually it started to
18:36
Speaker 1: catch up with me. Yeah. I called my dad and said, look,
18:39
Speaker 1: I'm dropping out. I want to be a musician. And
18:41
Speaker 1: he said, well, fine, you either know what you're doing
18:44
Speaker 1: or you don't. Your dad is a radiologist, says take
18:47
Speaker 1: a year leave of absence. I can't imagine a lot
18:50
Speaker 1: of radiologists having that conversation with their sons these my
18:53
Speaker 1: dad is, my dad is a bohemian. I mean, you know,
18:58
Speaker 1: both parents are far out, you know. But so now
19:03
Speaker 1: I go back to I want to go back to California,
19:06
Speaker 1: because this is sixty nine. I finally say, Dad, I'm
19:10
Speaker 1: dropping out. He says, no prompt and I go back
19:13
Speaker 1: to California and I joined a some of my high
19:16
Speaker 1: school grade school friends a bluegrass band called Herford Heartstringers.
19:21
Speaker 1: They were like ten of us and we would busk
19:25
Speaker 1: at Fisherman's Wharf. That's where we really made some money.
19:28
Speaker 1: We had a ten piece bluegrass band, four of whom
19:32
Speaker 1: were in the band Clover, and so they recruited me
19:35
Speaker 1: for Clover. I played harmonica and they recruited me for Clover,
19:40
Speaker 1: and I joined Clover in about seventy two. I guess okay,
19:43
Speaker 1: and by that point Clover had made a cup, they'd
19:46
Speaker 1: made a couple of Albus. They made two albums in
19:47
Speaker 1: the sixties YEP with which were very well regarded in
19:51
Speaker 1: England for some reason. For some reason, they were very
19:53
Speaker 1: well because they were Andrew Lauder, who was who was
19:59
Speaker 1: at time a and R at Liberty Records inherited those
20:04
Speaker 1: records from Fantasy and the record was set was distributed
20:10
Speaker 1: by Liberty in England and it only sold about nine copies.
20:14
Speaker 1: It was an amazing record because the cover was the
20:18
Speaker 1: Clover four Clover guys including John McPhee with hair down
20:22
Speaker 1: to his waist, wearing coveralls like hippie coveralls, hair down
20:27
Speaker 1: to his waist, standing in front of seven foot high
20:30
Speaker 1: marijuana plants. And this is when Willie Nelson had a
20:33
Speaker 1: coat and die on you know, I mean, this is
20:36
Speaker 1: this is early days, you know, early country rock days.
20:40
Speaker 1: Well in London that was They just that blew their minds.
20:44
Speaker 1: And Andrew Lauder passed the album along to his bands,
20:48
Speaker 1: Brindsley Schwartz, Chili Willie and the Red Hot Peppers and
20:52
Speaker 1: those pub rock bands, and they really took to Clover
20:57
Speaker 1: and in fact, Brinsley Schwartz wrote a song and said
21:00
Speaker 1: going to saddle up and ride away to the hills
21:02
Speaker 1: where Clover play. So we we now were in Clover
21:07
Speaker 1: and we're playing clubs everywhere, and we don't know, you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: we don't know any of this, and now we go.
21:15
Speaker 1: We hear from it was a John Stewart who was
21:20
Speaker 1: from one of the old Kingston trio's, had a ROADI
21:24
Speaker 1: named Mark Ford and his drummer. John Stewart's drummer was
21:28
Speaker 1: Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello's drummer. Pete Thomas and Mark
21:33
Speaker 1: and U. Mark Ford, the ROADI lived in Mill Valley
21:36
Speaker 1: and we knew him real well. So on a break,
21:40
Speaker 1: Pete Thomas came with Mark Ford because he had mentioned
21:43
Speaker 1: to Mark Ford, have you ever heard of a band
21:45
Speaker 1: called Clover? And Mark says, yeah, they live in my hometown.
21:48
Speaker 1: So now we go. This English guy comes to our
21:51
Speaker 1: rehearsal Pete Thomas. He says, man, you guys have a
21:54
Speaker 1: big following in England. We said we do, We didn't
21:57
Speaker 1: know anything about it. So he told everybody in Britain
22:01
Speaker 1: that we were still alive and well. And then next
22:04
Speaker 1: thing we know, we're playing the Palomino in La and
22:07
Speaker 1: these four guys walk in flexually, six guys in little
22:11
Speaker 1: gray suits and short air and it was Doctor feel
22:15
Speaker 1: Good and Jake Riveria and Nick low was. Nick low
22:19
Speaker 1: was Wilco's guitar roadie, and they found out that Clover
22:23
Speaker 1: was playing. Oh my gosh, they show up to our
22:25
Speaker 1: show and that's we meet, and Jake and Dave Robinson
22:30
Speaker 1: hatched the plan to bring Clover to England to be
22:34
Speaker 1: produced by Nick Lowe and to take the country by storm.
22:38
Speaker 1: But the day we landed Punk Rocket, So this is
22:41
Speaker 1: like seventy six exactly simultaneously. In our first few months,
22:46
Speaker 1: our managers were Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson and within
22:51
Speaker 1: signing us and bringing us to London. In the first
22:53
Speaker 1: few months, they signed Graham Parker, Elvis Costello, created Stiff Records,
23:00
Speaker 1: Are Signed Reckless, Eric the damned all that stuff, and
23:04
Speaker 1: so Nick, they too pulled Nick off Clover and let
23:07
Speaker 1: him produce all that other stuff. And for Clover, they
23:11
Speaker 1: they hooked us up with Mutt Langer uh To. The
23:15
Speaker 1: theory was with us, we had long hair and all
23:17
Speaker 1: this stuff. Let's make these guys a rock and roll
23:21
Speaker 1: American rock and roll record and compete and aimed them
23:26
Speaker 1: for America because because it ain't gonna work here in Britain. Right,
23:30
Speaker 1: did you tour at all in England? Oh? Yeah, we
23:32
Speaker 1: toured with Linda Lewis. First we toured with Graham Parker,
23:35
Speaker 1: and then we toured with Thin Lizzie. How was Graham
23:38
Speaker 1: Parker's one of my favorites? How was it touring with
23:40
Speaker 1: Graham Parkers? Horrible? We got can't they hated us, we
23:43
Speaker 1: got we got ship thrown on us in every gig.
23:46
Speaker 1: Graham was a lovely guy. Yeah, but there was a horrible,
23:49
Speaker 1: horrible tour. And then we went on tour with Lizzie
23:52
Speaker 1: and the same thing. I mean, our road manager was
23:55
Speaker 1: a guy called Frank Martinette. Frank real great guy. So
23:58
Speaker 1: he said, Frank, you're gonna have to introduce because we're
24:01
Speaker 1: building support Finn Lizzie plus support. Right. I mean, this
24:07
Speaker 1: is like you might have just walk the plank, you
24:10
Speaker 1: know what I mean? I mean, this is the this
24:13
Speaker 1: is the rock and roll version of walking the plank.
24:15
Speaker 1: So curtain's down, we're barely getting it together. Now, curtain
24:22
Speaker 1: goes up as the audience just going Lizzie right, and
24:27
Speaker 1: then Frank comes out and goes hi, everybody, and they go.
24:31
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, Finn, Lizzie will be right out, and
24:35
Speaker 1: they go, but first here's clover and they go boom,
24:43
Speaker 1: and then stuff starts flying and and uh, I mean,
24:47
Speaker 1: it was a horrible first night. It was all we
24:49
Speaker 1: could do to get through most of the songs. But
24:52
Speaker 1: as soon as it ended and I walked offstage, waiting
24:55
Speaker 1: in the wings was Philip Linnip and Philip said, may
24:58
Speaker 1: I have a word? Yeah, he says, come, come, come
25:02
Speaker 1: to my dressing room. We get in the dressing room
25:04
Speaker 1: and he started to critique our set and helped me.
25:08
Speaker 1: It really became my mentor, helped me with everything on
25:11
Speaker 1: the set list and what songs we should play and
25:14
Speaker 1: what I should do. And eventually, you know, I stayed
25:17
Speaker 1: with him once in a while. He dressed me out
25:19
Speaker 1: of his closet. He played on all his solo records,
25:23
Speaker 1: and he really taught me more than not musically necessary,
25:27
Speaker 1: but everything else. How to run a rock band? What
25:30
Speaker 1: did he what did he tell you about that stage stuff?
25:32
Speaker 1: How to run how it wasn't It wasn't how he
25:34
Speaker 1: told me. It's how he conducted himself, how how he
25:38
Speaker 1: ran his crew, and his band. It was fascinating and
25:42
Speaker 1: how he treated the fans. He was Philip was an
25:45
Speaker 1: amazing guy. And he's the one that kind of gave
25:47
Speaker 1: me confidence that I could sing more and do more
25:50
Speaker 1: my own thing a little bit. And then so while
25:53
Speaker 1: you're there, I think it is at that time some
25:55
Speaker 1: of Clover backs up that and his first on my
25:59
Speaker 1: and is true his first record? And then you play
26:02
Speaker 1: is it was it that trip where you played for
26:05
Speaker 1: on Nickelo and Dave Edmonds? Right? That was that was
26:08
Speaker 1: a little later those two there. Yeah, Clover the rhythm
26:12
Speaker 1: section plays backed up Elvis for My Amis Troupe and
26:17
Speaker 1: Nick produced it. And then so we made two records
26:20
Speaker 1: and they didn't happen. We came really close, but didn't
26:24
Speaker 1: happen until the band breaks up. When John McPhee and
26:28
Speaker 1: drummer Kevin Wells have written a song and they want
26:31
Speaker 1: to go their own solo route. They mcpee eventually joins
26:34
Speaker 1: the Dubies. So we split up and I go back
26:37
Speaker 1: to Marin County and I just start a little jam session.
26:40
Speaker 1: They asked me to run a jam session every Monday night,
26:44
Speaker 1: and we just did a Monday night live fun, just
26:48
Speaker 1: a jam where we had comedians and and just goofy stuff,
26:54
Speaker 1: and I had a house band that I selected, which
26:57
Speaker 1: was four of them was new member you know, going
27:02
Speaker 1: soon to be news guys, and I started singing all
27:05
Speaker 1: the songs and I am seed the deal, and then
27:07
Speaker 1: I sang the songs and the thing got to be
27:10
Speaker 1: very popular. We got offered a free studio time, so
27:14
Speaker 1: we went into the studio with our Monday night live
27:17
Speaker 1: band and we cut a disco version of Exodus that
27:20
Speaker 1: we were playing them from ex Exi Disco. We called it, Yeah,
27:24
Speaker 1: it's really funny. But I was mindful that I wasn't
27:27
Speaker 1: going to try to make anything happen. I was going
27:30
Speaker 1: to do things for the heck of it like the
27:31
Speaker 1: punks did. So when I got the free studio time,
27:34
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, We're gonna cut exa diisco
27:37
Speaker 1: because it was just fun. And so now at this
27:39
Speaker 1: point you've been in the music business for some time, though,
27:42
Speaker 1: did you for you were you just goofing off or
27:46
Speaker 1: did you think in your back and mind, no, this
27:48
Speaker 1: is going to be one day I'm going to be
27:50
Speaker 1: big and one day it's going to be Not Yet
27:51
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking I'm thinking to myself. The lesson here
27:55
Speaker 1: is don't worry about record deals or records or in
28:00
Speaker 1: just have fun, play music and do this thing. Do
28:04
Speaker 1: not worry about your stupid career anymore. So that's what
28:07
Speaker 1: we did. We cut Exo Disco. I mean, how stupid
28:10
Speaker 1: is using two days of studio time to cut a
28:13
Speaker 1: disco version of Exodus. It's ridiculous. So now I got
28:17
Speaker 1: this tape and like days later, Nick Low calls me
28:21
Speaker 1: and says, we want you to come over and I
28:24
Speaker 1: want you to play on one song of mine and
28:26
Speaker 1: Edmonds wants and we rock By wants to cut bad
28:29
Speaker 1: as Bad and Edmonds wants to sing it. I said great, Sure,
28:33
Speaker 1: so he says, well can we fly over? Yeah, So
28:36
Speaker 1: I fly over to London. I land, go straight to
28:39
Speaker 1: the studio, cut the Nicolos song, cut Bad is Bad.
28:43
Speaker 1: Then we the record company comes down, their record company
28:46
Speaker 1: and listens to the tracks. Everything's fine, there's there's a
28:50
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a lull. I say, you guys
28:52
Speaker 1: want to hear something funny? He's sure, So I play
28:55
Speaker 1: Exo Disco for him right. Well, the record company loves it.
28:59
Speaker 1: They go, wow, that could be a hit. I said,
29:03
Speaker 1: well great, Yeah, he said, come see us, we'll make
29:06
Speaker 1: a singles deal. I said, great tomorrow, okay, Sure they leave.
29:11
Speaker 1: So I go to Jake. I said, Jake, what do
29:13
Speaker 1: I do? He says, no problem. He says, get eleven
29:16
Speaker 1: points and three thousand pounds, which in those days was
29:20
Speaker 1: really good. It was almost six grand. So I get
29:22
Speaker 1: three thousand pounds, he says, and they might want you
29:25
Speaker 1: to do some other work, like saying on it or
29:27
Speaker 1: you know, put some if they want to do anything,
29:29
Speaker 1: say fine, but you pay for the studio time and
29:33
Speaker 1: don't leave without the three thousand pounds. I said, okay.
29:36
Speaker 1: So the next day I went to the record label.
29:38
Speaker 1: Sure enough, made a singles deal for Exo Disco. Come,
29:43
Speaker 1: I got a second three. I got a check for
29:44
Speaker 1: three thou. I go back to California. I call my
29:47
Speaker 1: Monday Night Live compadres. I go, hey, boys, we got
29:51
Speaker 1: a little action. You know, I got a singles deal here.
29:55
Speaker 1: So they say great, but they wanted me to sing
29:57
Speaker 1: on it a little more right. They want a little
29:59
Speaker 1: more voke. Because I hadn't didn't do a lot of vocals,
30:03
Speaker 1: mainly an instrumental. I said, no problem, I'll sing it
30:05
Speaker 1: at all problem. So we go back to the studio
30:08
Speaker 1: and I go, hey, I need to sing a little
30:10
Speaker 1: more on that I got, so we need some studio time.
30:13
Speaker 1: Come to find out they've erased part of the master
30:17
Speaker 1: that the multi track. So I screamed bloody murder. I said,
30:21
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? I just made a singles deal.
30:23
Speaker 1: For this deal, they want me to sing. They I
30:25
Speaker 1: gotta recut it now. They said, well, no problem, We'll
30:29
Speaker 1: give you as much time as you need. I said,
30:30
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need a week. They said, no problem, you
30:32
Speaker 1: got it. I said, okay, wow. So then what I
30:35
Speaker 1: did is I took the master track, put it onto
30:38
Speaker 1: two of the tent of the twenty four track multi,
30:42
Speaker 1: sang on a third track, mixed it down to another
30:46
Speaker 1: two track, done with it took two hours, three hours,
30:50
Speaker 1: I lost a generation of tape, and it sounded you
30:53
Speaker 1: could tell actually wasn't very good. But I knew it
30:56
Speaker 1: didn't mean anything. And with the rest of the week,
30:59
Speaker 1: I cut three other songs with my band, the original
31:02
Speaker 1: songs that got us our record contract and our manager.
31:06
Speaker 1: You're saying, to hell with it paid off? Okay? See
31:09
Speaker 1: that was That was the zen Thriddle. For me was
31:13
Speaker 1: quit trying to make it and you will. We'll be
31:16
Speaker 1: right back with Huey Lewis after a short break. We're
31:23
Speaker 1: back with the rest of Bruce's interview with Huey Lewis
31:27
Speaker 1: for your second album, Though You Did, which you made
31:31
Speaker 1: with mud Lang. Yeah, you've called that the Deal with
31:35
Speaker 1: the Devil? What did you mean? They kind of coaxed
31:38
Speaker 1: that out of me, To be honest, That's why we
31:40
Speaker 1: insisted on producing our own record on Picture of This
31:43
Speaker 1: because I wanted to make those decisions, the commercial decisions, ourselves,
31:48
Speaker 1: because we knew we're gonna have to live with them forever.
31:50
Speaker 1: And so that's how we started producing ourselves. But you
31:54
Speaker 1: knew at that point, Look, we're going to be a
31:57
Speaker 1: pop band now, We're not going to be a jam band.
31:59
Speaker 1: We're not going to be well, there were no jam
32:02
Speaker 1: bands zero. It's nineteen eighty there's nothing but hit singles,
32:07
Speaker 1: and we, as you correctly surmise, we're more like a
32:10
Speaker 1: jam band than we were. So the hardest thing for
32:13
Speaker 1: us was to get a hit single, and that's what
32:16
Speaker 1: we So we wanted to produce ourselves because we wanted
32:19
Speaker 1: to make those decisions ourselves. But we starting with do
32:23
Speaker 1: You Believe in Love? And then later with Sports, because
32:26
Speaker 1: do You Believe in Love was our only hit on
32:28
Speaker 1: that record, and it sold two hundred fifty thousand copies,
32:31
Speaker 1: which is kind of break even for those times. But
32:34
Speaker 1: on Sports, which we produced ourselves, we literally aimed every
32:38
Speaker 1: track right at radio because we knew we needed a
32:41
Speaker 1: hit single to exist. We didn't know we're gonna have
32:44
Speaker 1: five of them, but we knew we needed one. And
32:47
Speaker 1: that's that's why Sports it sounds like it does a
32:52
Speaker 1: record of its time, a collection of singles. And we
32:56
Speaker 1: always confident you could deliver a single, though, that we
32:58
Speaker 1: could get a single, could deliver a single. No, that's
33:01
Speaker 1: that was I was not confident at all that we
33:03
Speaker 1: could do single. That's why I got the Mutt Langer song.
33:06
Speaker 1: That's why I cut Heart and Soul on Sports because
33:10
Speaker 1: they sounded like hits to me, and and that became
33:14
Speaker 1: your first hit, right Heart and Soul. Hart and Soul
33:16
Speaker 1: was our first single off of Sports, and that did
33:19
Speaker 1: did that do the Was that the best the highest
33:22
Speaker 1: ranking single on that Yeah? I don't know. He got
33:24
Speaker 1: to top ten. I think it got six. We didn't
33:28
Speaker 1: have the first number one we had was Power Love.
33:30
Speaker 1: I think all those sports singles none of them got
33:34
Speaker 1: to number one, but the album went to a number one,
33:36
Speaker 1: right because you had If This Is It, Heart of
33:40
Speaker 1: rock and Roll, New Drug, New Drug, Heart and Soul, Yeah,
33:45
Speaker 1: and If This Is It and Walking on a Thin
33:48
Speaker 1: Line was single. Okay, Now I do have one bone
33:51
Speaker 1: to pick with you about Heart of Rock and Roll
33:54
Speaker 1: because I grew up in Canada and the version we
33:57
Speaker 1: heard when you were listing the cities at in you
34:01
Speaker 1: say Toronto, Montreal, and everybody was so happy. And then
34:07
Speaker 1: I moved to the States twenty years ago. I hear
34:09
Speaker 1: the song and the radio that's not on the version
34:12
Speaker 1: down here, and they're funny. And I'll tell you another
34:14
Speaker 1: I'll tell you another funny anecdote to that same thing.
34:17
Speaker 1: How that happened. When the song looks like it's gonna
34:20
Speaker 1: be a single, I'm gonna be a hit. They got
34:22
Speaker 1: me back in the studio to sing every song every
34:25
Speaker 1: city in the world, basically, I mean they wanted me
34:27
Speaker 1: to do. So. If I'm in Sweden, I'm hearing Stockholm,
34:30
Speaker 1: and so now I'm in Canada, we're doing Canada in Toronto. Yeah,
34:34
Speaker 1: you know, but and nic goes Halifax, and I'd never
34:38
Speaker 1: been to Halifax, right, and I went time out. I
34:42
Speaker 1: can't say Halifax, Okay, why, I said, because the harder
34:47
Speaker 1: rock and roll can't be in Halifax. I said, I
34:50
Speaker 1: just can't. So I drew the line at Halifax. And
34:53
Speaker 1: what's funny about that is that now the next year
34:56
Speaker 1: we do we opened our tour in Canada and we
34:58
Speaker 1: started we started New and Land, uh and and and
35:03
Speaker 1: and now we traveled to Halifax, and I go see Halifax,
35:06
Speaker 1: and we go out, we have a night off. We
35:08
Speaker 1: go to this little pub and there's this great rhythm
35:11
Speaker 1: and blues band there at Halifax. And Halifax is the
35:15
Speaker 1: most soulful, little funky town I've ever been to. And
35:18
Speaker 1: I could put it could Halifax is a lot funkier
35:22
Speaker 1: than half of the cities I've mentioned in this song.
35:25
Speaker 1: It was funny. So when you when you hit it
35:29
Speaker 1: big here in your early thirties by this point, yeah,
35:32
Speaker 1: you've been doing this a long time. I think you're married,
35:36
Speaker 1: you may have one of one of your kids, that's try.
35:38
Speaker 1: What was it like to be suddenly one of the
35:41
Speaker 1: biggest stars in the world, Well, you know it was
35:45
Speaker 1: it wasn't overwhelming because I'd been doing it so long
35:48
Speaker 1: and I'd seen so much, right, I mean, I'd seen Philip,
35:51
Speaker 1: and I'd seen all this stuff, and so I understood,
35:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I understood that. And I even sat the
35:57
Speaker 1: boys down at a certain point when we were opening
36:01
Speaker 1: for thirty eight Special and and and our record was
36:04
Speaker 1: taken off and we were just killing it, and it
36:07
Speaker 1: was so much fun because we'd show up at the gig.
36:09
Speaker 1: All we do is support, you know, we play what
36:13
Speaker 1: an hour maybe in front of thirty eight Special. We
36:16
Speaker 1: show up at seven, eat a big crew meal, and
36:19
Speaker 1: then go on stage at seven thirty or eight, and
36:22
Speaker 1: we're done at nine, see you, you know. And I
36:25
Speaker 1: remember and we were tearing the crowd up because our
36:27
Speaker 1: record was what was going and we do as many
36:30
Speaker 1: encores as we wanted, and I remember sitting everybody down.
36:33
Speaker 1: We're in a nice little disguy. I said, boys, enjoy
36:35
Speaker 1: this because it's you know, Unfortunately, we're gonna be headlining
36:39
Speaker 1: our own shows pretty soon. We'll have to bring our
36:41
Speaker 1: own lights and our own sound, and the critics are
36:44
Speaker 1: going to be after us, and we're gonna have to cut.
36:46
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to sound checks is going to be
36:48
Speaker 1: at eleven in the morning and we're gonna bubble. And
36:50
Speaker 1: I said, this right here, this is as good as
36:53
Speaker 1: it gets. Riding on the bubble right now, feeling this momentum,
36:57
Speaker 1: riding this rocket ship to the top, and enjoy this
37:00
Speaker 1: because it only happens once in your whole life. And
37:03
Speaker 1: we did. We, I can honestly say, because we weren't
37:06
Speaker 1: spring chickens. We knew what was going on, and we
37:10
Speaker 1: took it with a measure of salt and had fun.
37:15
Speaker 1: Were you still enjoying it when you when you were
37:17
Speaker 1: the top, when you were the airliners? I didn't like
37:19
Speaker 1: the profile so much. You know, airports, malls, shopping malls,
37:24
Speaker 1: they were really hard because I get I was bombarded
37:27
Speaker 1: with stuff and and I you know, I'm used to it,
37:31
Speaker 1: and I got good, good at it. You talk them down,
37:33
Speaker 1: he says, wait, wait, Look, you have to talk to
37:36
Speaker 1: your crowd. You know, the more you try and be
37:39
Speaker 1: a recluse, the worst they get. So you got to
37:41
Speaker 1: go right after them and say, look, I can't sign
37:44
Speaker 1: all your autographs. There's a hundred of you. You got it,
37:48
Speaker 1: so just please, but thanks very much. But there was
37:53
Speaker 1: a lot of explaining, and a lot of moving out
37:56
Speaker 1: of places, and worried about going over there because of
37:58
Speaker 1: all those people. And and now I don't have to
38:01
Speaker 1: worry about that. But I mean, you would strange things.
38:04
Speaker 1: You were You were on the USA for Africa, but
38:08
Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to sing, and then you did sing? Right,
38:10
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Well, you know, we got invited
38:14
Speaker 1: to do that, do it. We do the chorus and
38:16
Speaker 1: now we're done, and they take breaks and we're in
38:20
Speaker 1: I'm in the lounge, um, you know, telling jokes and whatnot.
38:24
Speaker 1: We're just having fun. Thinking it's over and I get it.
38:27
Speaker 1: And a guy comes to assisted because he says, hey,
38:29
Speaker 1: Quincy wants to see it. Really, So I go out,
38:32
Speaker 1: say Quincy, hey. He says, hey, Hue, we're smelly smelling.
38:36
Speaker 1: Get over here. That they called Michael smelly because he
38:39
Speaker 1: was so clean. And Michael Jackson comes. Jackson was called
38:42
Speaker 1: smelling smelly, right, And so Quincy says, sing him your line,
38:46
Speaker 1: and Michael sings the line and he says, singing, Hue,
38:51
Speaker 1: I sang the line. He says, you got it. It
38:53
Speaker 1: was Prince's line, but Prince didn't show up. Prince boycotted
38:57
Speaker 1: the Prince's line. I got Prince's line, yeah, because you're
39:00
Speaker 1: early in the song. No, no, no, I'm on the bridge.
39:04
Speaker 1: I just believe there's Oh wow, that's right. That was
39:07
Speaker 1: gonna be Prince. Yeah. Did Michael sing it well when
39:10
Speaker 1: he sang it to you? Oh yeah. And Michael was
39:12
Speaker 1: right there for the whole recording session, Okay, him than me.
39:17
Speaker 1: I had the line right after Michael. So so we
39:20
Speaker 1: when we cut, we stood there while we cut, and
39:24
Speaker 1: you know, there were a bunch of bad takes and
39:27
Speaker 1: guys screwed up and everything. So I got to interact
39:29
Speaker 1: with Michael and he was amazing. I mean, first of all,
39:32
Speaker 1: he knew he didn't miss a trick, you know, in
39:35
Speaker 1: the terms of the recording. And to look at him,
39:37
Speaker 1: you think he was just kind of He had the
39:40
Speaker 1: big dark glasses, the aviator shades on, and tons of makeup.
39:43
Speaker 1: You know, he's just full pancake makeup. There were baby
39:47
Speaker 1: moons on his glasses. He had so much makeup on,
39:49
Speaker 1: you know, so you think, oh, this guy, he's out
39:51
Speaker 1: of it. Well he was not out of it. He
39:53
Speaker 1: knew exactly what was going on because I remember when
39:56
Speaker 1: we did the round the first pass to sing lead,
40:02
Speaker 1: we had like five microphones and they were fifteen singers,
40:05
Speaker 1: so we all three to each mic. One guy would
40:08
Speaker 1: would lean in, sing his part and get back, the
40:11
Speaker 1: middle guy would lead in sing back, and the last
40:13
Speaker 1: guy kind of like that. So when we start, it
40:17
Speaker 1: starts with here comes when we eat a certain call,
40:21
Speaker 1: when the world must come together as one. Then Steve,
40:24
Speaker 1: they have happy people dying. Oh wait, wait wait, stop
40:27
Speaker 1: stops up and so he stops everything, and then we
40:30
Speaker 1: go back and start again, and he intentionally messes it up.
40:33
Speaker 1: You know, he's cute. He's just messing around, you know,
40:36
Speaker 1: Stevie's just messing around. And so now they go back
40:39
Speaker 1: and they started again, and now they get maybe down
40:41
Speaker 1: to al Jaro, and he messes up. And now they
40:44
Speaker 1: started again, and they get down to somebody else before
40:47
Speaker 1: they stop and they go back. And now Humberto Gadaka,
40:50
Speaker 1: the engineer, comes out to tweets the microphones, and I go, hey, Humberto,
40:55
Speaker 1: what I said, Hey, could you just let it play
40:58
Speaker 1: all the way through so we can at least to
41:00
Speaker 1: have a whack in our line. I mean, Stevie Wonder
41:02
Speaker 1: has had four takes already, and I got none. He's
41:05
Speaker 1: Stevie wonder, you know. And and he goes back he said,
41:10
Speaker 1: oh sure, no problem, goes back in, and Michael says me,
41:13
Speaker 1: good idea, good idea. I said, thanks. And now we
41:16
Speaker 1: do a pass and it's not very good, and he
41:19
Speaker 1: lets it all go. You can test him, all right,
41:21
Speaker 1: Quince said, let's do another one. We do another pass,
41:24
Speaker 1: and we actually nail it. I don't know if it
41:25
Speaker 1: was the second one, our third one, but we do
41:27
Speaker 1: this one pass that's real good all the way around boom.
41:31
Speaker 1: And then I look and I see him say to
41:35
Speaker 1: a sequency through the glass to indicate the Combertica, save
41:39
Speaker 1: that one. And then he says, all right, let's do it.
41:41
Speaker 1: Let's just do another one. And right then Michael grabs
41:44
Speaker 1: my arm and says, are they going to save that
41:46
Speaker 1: last one? I said, yeah, they're saving the last one.
41:48
Speaker 1: He's just good. I said, yeah. He says, because that
41:50
Speaker 1: was it, wasn't it? I said, yep, that was it? Okay,
41:53
Speaker 1: and that was it anymore? Yeah? Oh wow? Uh. And
41:58
Speaker 1: then you you did Power of Love, you did for
42:01
Speaker 1: the for the movie. Yeah, and that was your first
42:03
Speaker 1: number one, first number one, and you I think we
42:06
Speaker 1: should mention you've written other than hart and Soul. You
42:08
Speaker 1: write all the songs as well or co write the songs. Yeah, yeah,
42:12
Speaker 1: and you wrote the Power of Love. Yeah, power Love.
42:15
Speaker 1: Power of Love is you know we Steven Spielberg and
42:19
Speaker 1: Bob Zamechas and Bob Gail and Neil Canton, who produced,
42:24
Speaker 1: directed and wrote the film, asked to take a meeting
42:28
Speaker 1: with usaid Ambulin Entertainment. Ambulin was brand new. Zamecha said,
42:33
Speaker 1: you know, we've just written this film called Back to
42:36
Speaker 1: the Future, and our our lead character, Martin Wickfly, his
42:40
Speaker 1: favorite band would be Huey Lewis and the news. How
42:43
Speaker 1: would you like to write a song for the film?
42:45
Speaker 1: I said, flattered, but I don't know how to write
42:47
Speaker 1: for film necessarily. And I don't mean to be offend you,
42:52
Speaker 1: but I don't fancy writing a song called back to
42:54
Speaker 1: the Future. And they said, oh, no problem, you can
42:58
Speaker 1: call it whatever you want to call it. We just
42:59
Speaker 1: won't one of yours. I said, great, I'll send you
43:01
Speaker 1: the next thing. We were right, and that was it. Yeah,
43:05
Speaker 1: that's the way I remember it. Zamechas remembers us sending
43:07
Speaker 1: down a demo of Power of Love and him saying
43:11
Speaker 1: to me that him told me that it wasn't up
43:14
Speaker 1: enough up quote unquote, And so the verses in a
43:18
Speaker 1: minor key, right, so, and I can't remember what version
43:22
Speaker 1: we had. I know we had two bridges. But and
43:25
Speaker 1: then according to Zamechas, we made some changes. And I
43:30
Speaker 1: suppose that could be what Johnny when Johnny's participation, which
43:34
Speaker 1: are those major stabs at the beginning, bom bom bom
43:39
Speaker 1: bom bomp. I think we might have Johnny kla our
43:44
Speaker 1: sax vote, guitar player and co writer. I think maybe
43:48
Speaker 1: he added those to Chris. But then Chris and I
43:51
Speaker 1: had written the song, and that's what Johnny did. I
43:53
Speaker 1: think he added that part and then we sent it
43:56
Speaker 1: down and then Bob Zamechas wrote, so it started with
43:58
Speaker 1: that verse which has the kind of funkier Yeah. Oh,
44:04
Speaker 1: I say they wanted a little happier sound off the
44:08
Speaker 1: top though, And then you had one of the great
44:10
Speaker 1: cameos in Hollywood history, was certainly one of the great
44:14
Speaker 1: seven second cameos. Was a line written for you? Or
44:17
Speaker 1: did you say? Did you say it is written? Or
44:19
Speaker 1: I pad it it was written? You're too loud and
44:23
Speaker 1: I put your too darn loud. Yeah, sorry, is it? Sorry? Boys?
44:26
Speaker 1: You're just sorry? Boys, You're just too darn loud. Oh
44:29
Speaker 1: it's fabulous. You've done some acting. But yeah, I love it,
44:32
Speaker 1: I dig it, I enjoy it. I'm not afraid to
44:36
Speaker 1: say that I have fesban aspirations. Okay, but you you
44:39
Speaker 1: only do that. You've done hot in Cleveland, You've done
44:42
Speaker 1: some TV. Uh. People must have been throwing movie scripts
44:46
Speaker 1: at you all the time. But but there's stuff where
44:50
Speaker 1: I'm Huey Lewis or I'm a rock star or yeah,
44:53
Speaker 1: I don't want to do I you know, that's not
44:56
Speaker 1: you know, Sports was we reduced ourselves and we literally
45:02
Speaker 1: went after we needed a hit single. Yeah, and so
45:06
Speaker 1: that was the last thing and we and we really
45:09
Speaker 1: just tore our hair out over hit singles and you know,
45:12
Speaker 1: and we were we were mean to each other over
45:15
Speaker 1: that because it wasn't good enough and the horn chart
45:17
Speaker 1: and stuff. I mean, I was, I was pretty pretty mean,
45:20
Speaker 1: you know, pretty ambitious and pretty mean. And I vowed
45:24
Speaker 1: when the Sports hit like crazy, I said, you know what,
45:27
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do anything for commercial reasons anymore.
45:31
Speaker 1: I'm gonna if it doesn't have a creative component to it,
45:34
Speaker 1: I'm not in and so you know, I've just pretty
45:37
Speaker 1: much kind of stuck by that right well for not
45:41
Speaker 1: the next AIB but the obum after that, you stand
45:43
Speaker 1: gets playing a couple of Yeah, that's another great story.
45:46
Speaker 1: But the way that worked is my dad was a jazzer,
45:49
Speaker 1: as I told you, and he tells me. I'm talking
45:53
Speaker 1: to my dad and he goes, hey, man, Zoot Sims
45:55
Speaker 1: died and they're doing a benefit for Zuit. I said, really,
45:58
Speaker 1: and he says, man, that'll be that'll be something. Man.
46:01
Speaker 1: They got Jimmy Jones trio and gets and all these people.
46:04
Speaker 1: I said, well whatever, So secretly I got tickets for
46:07
Speaker 1: my old man, for my dad and I to go
46:09
Speaker 1: see this this thing. So then I told him we
46:12
Speaker 1: got tickets. He said, oh, that's great. Great, So we
46:15
Speaker 1: go and and he doesn't know anything about my career
46:18
Speaker 1: because my dad's a jazzer and his advice to me
46:22
Speaker 1: always was, you know, I'd say, I'm making I'm working
46:25
Speaker 1: on a new record. Dad. You go great. He says,
46:27
Speaker 1: are you playing harmonica? I said, yeah, I'm playing a
46:30
Speaker 1: little bit. He says, hey, man, I mean you need
46:32
Speaker 1: to play harmonica. I said what I'm telling you, He says,
46:36
Speaker 1: play harmonica. Here's let me tell you something. Just keep
46:39
Speaker 1: practicing that harmonica because they can't take that away from you.
46:42
Speaker 1: He says this Huey Lewis shit here today, gone tomorrow.
46:47
Speaker 1: And that was my dad's advice to me. Did he
46:50
Speaker 1: ever come and see you? Much later? I pull him
46:53
Speaker 1: to Worcester Centrum. We sold out three nights of the centrum.
46:56
Speaker 1: I flew him back to Boston see his mother, who
46:59
Speaker 1: he hadn't talked to him forty years. You know. He
47:03
Speaker 1: was a hard ass Irish think Eugene O'Neill. Okay, okay,
47:07
Speaker 1: So now my dad I get tickets to this jazz
47:10
Speaker 1: benefit for zue Tims and we go to the place.
47:14
Speaker 1: We were there early and and they go, oh my gosh,
47:17
Speaker 1: there's Hughie you know. Oh yes, sir mister Lewis. And
47:20
Speaker 1: my dad can't believe how well I'm treated. And they
47:23
Speaker 1: march us down to the two aisle seats. Small club anyway,
47:26
Speaker 1: but two aisle seats in like the third row, perfect
47:29
Speaker 1: best seats in the house. And sitting right there's Phil Ellwood,
47:32
Speaker 1: the music critic. And my dad knows everything about jazz
47:36
Speaker 1: I mean, he plays jazz, but he knows everything. He's
47:39
Speaker 1: a music college. He can name everybody in Jimmy lunsford'span,
47:42
Speaker 1: he can name everybody in Chick Webb's orchestra. He knows everything,
47:46
Speaker 1: you know. And so he sees and he reads Phil
47:48
Speaker 1: Elwood all the time. And Phil Ellwood says, oh my god, Hughey, Lewis,
47:52
Speaker 1: how are you doing? Man? A big fan, says Ellwood.
47:55
Speaker 1: And my old man sees Ellwood recognizing his son, and
47:59
Speaker 1: can't even believe it. I said, this is my dad. He's,
48:01
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're Phil Ellwood. Yeah. But so I
48:03
Speaker 1: sit my old man down and Ellwood next to Elwood
48:07
Speaker 1: and they just start talking about jazz and stuff and
48:10
Speaker 1: all these guys and blah blah blah, all the stuff.
48:12
Speaker 1: I mean, while I'm sitting there, when we're kind of
48:14
Speaker 1: waiting for things, I feel a tap on my shoulder
48:16
Speaker 1: like this, and I turn around and it's gets and
48:19
Speaker 1: he's got his horn on and he's he's standing over
48:23
Speaker 1: me with his horn. He goes, you're Yue Lewis right?
48:26
Speaker 1: I said, yesis yeah, my girlfriend wants to eat your shorts.
48:33
Speaker 1: I oh, I'm sorry. He says, hey, and I look like,
48:37
Speaker 1: oh my god, it stand Yess. He says, hey, hey,
48:40
Speaker 1: why don't you let me play on some of your ship.
48:42
Speaker 1: He says, you know I can play that crap too.
48:44
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I'm sure you can. Yeah, yeah, whatever.
48:50
Speaker 1: He's here. He gets a card out, and he gave
48:53
Speaker 1: me a card and said, stand gets. He goes have sacks,
48:55
Speaker 1: will travel and handed me the card and I put
48:58
Speaker 1: in my pocket. My old man's beside himself, and on
49:01
Speaker 1: the ride home, my old man says, if you don't
49:04
Speaker 1: take him up on that offer, I will never ever
49:08
Speaker 1: forgive you. He says, he has cancer and he's not
49:10
Speaker 1: going to be around that long. And you need you need.
49:13
Speaker 1: My dad was a radiologist and knew all this oncology
49:16
Speaker 1: stuff that in those days, and he knew about gets
49:18
Speaker 1: this condition and all this. So that's so that we
49:23
Speaker 1: spent six months looking for a tune that would work
49:27
Speaker 1: for Stand and then Chris came up with that little
49:29
Speaker 1: riff and I wrote small World just four gets as
49:34
Speaker 1: a as a vehicle. Now you did you guys kept touring,
49:39
Speaker 1: you kept making new albums, but you didn't before this album.
49:42
Speaker 1: You didn't do a new album for about twenty years, right,
49:44
Speaker 1: I think two thousand was your last. You're not an
49:47
Speaker 1: album of original material, right. We've done a couple of
49:50
Speaker 1: things since then, but they were due to Soulsville. We
49:52
Speaker 1: did an R and B. Stacks really a Memphis tribute
49:56
Speaker 1: right now? Were you a big Stacks fan? I was, okay,
49:59
Speaker 1: because what's great about that record? You do respect yourself?
50:03
Speaker 1: And I think a couple of Salomon Brook songs, but
50:06
Speaker 1: most of them are songs most people don't know. That's right, Like,
50:10
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of great Johnny Taylor songs free,
50:15
Speaker 1: just the one I'm looking for, right right? Good for you,
50:17
Speaker 1: that's see. The theory was because people have done original
50:23
Speaker 1: versions of old songs like Mustang Sally or or you know,
50:29
Speaker 1: man Knocking on Wood or soul Man or something. And
50:32
Speaker 1: I so it was either do a completely original version
50:35
Speaker 1: of soul Man or those of a really recognizable song,
50:41
Speaker 1: or find songs that weren't so recognizable that people didn't
50:44
Speaker 1: know anything about and do faithful versions of those. And
50:48
Speaker 1: I thought that would be more fun. Yeah, So tell
50:50
Speaker 1: me a little your new album U seven songs, and
50:55
Speaker 1: that's because you ran, because that's how many Kanye had
50:58
Speaker 1: No No that's the reason. No. Um, you know, some
51:03
Speaker 1: of it, like like your single her Love is Killing Me,
51:06
Speaker 1: that sounds very much like an eighties everybody says that.
51:09
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't hear it. You know what,
51:12
Speaker 1: the comment I get more than anything else is that
51:14
Speaker 1: it's just vintage Huey Lewis and the News. It sounds
51:18
Speaker 1: like Huey Lewis and the News right away, you know,
51:20
Speaker 1: it's a Huey Lewis and the News record. I mean,
51:23
Speaker 1: all with all the songs, I go, really, what does
51:26
Speaker 1: Huey Lewis and the News sound like? I mean, we're
51:28
Speaker 1: all over the map. I don't. I don't well, I
51:30
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I think the single does. It's got
51:32
Speaker 1: that kind of crunchy eighties guitar. But some of the
51:35
Speaker 1: other ones like uh, when We're young and while we're young,
51:40
Speaker 1: young and remind me why I still love you, it's
51:43
Speaker 1: got they're more. They're kind of back to your seventies
51:48
Speaker 1: funk days a little more. It's got that kind of
51:50
Speaker 1: country thing. Was it nice to kind of feel like
51:54
Speaker 1: doesn't have to it doesn't have to sound like power
51:57
Speaker 1: of love. We can do what we want. Yeah, I mean,
52:00
Speaker 1: you know, The truth is, I just follow the song.
52:04
Speaker 1: I mean, the song is the hardest part the whole deal.
52:08
Speaker 1: You got to have. A song needs to be about something.
52:11
Speaker 1: You have to have a perspective, and at my ripe
52:14
Speaker 1: old age, I mean, you know, it's hard to find
52:17
Speaker 1: an original perspective. You're writing a rock and roll song,
52:20
Speaker 1: so it's really it's kind of like a haiku. I mean,
52:23
Speaker 1: you really are trying to reinvent the wheel here with
52:25
Speaker 1: a pop song, and you don't want to cover past stuff.
52:29
Speaker 1: And I've already written all bunch of stuff. So what
52:31
Speaker 1: am I going to do with this? Riple can't sing
52:33
Speaker 1: about cars and girls anymore? What am I gonna do?
52:36
Speaker 1: You know a second, you do sing about cars and girls?
52:39
Speaker 1: I do? Yeah, pretty girls everywhere? All right, Pretty well,
52:41
Speaker 1: that's Eugene Church singing about girls. Okay, fantastic. It is great.
52:46
Speaker 1: So what what happens now You've got this album out.
52:50
Speaker 1: You're dealing with these health issues we talked about, what's
52:53
Speaker 1: what's the prognosis for that? Well, it's not the end
52:56
Speaker 1: of the world, you know, I mean, did it ever
52:58
Speaker 1: seem like the end of the world? It did in
53:00
Speaker 1: the first for the first couple of months. I was
53:03
Speaker 1: so depressed, you know, and then I don't know why,
53:07
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, shame on me for that, I suppose,
53:11
Speaker 1: but I was. I was just horribly depressed, thinking I
53:14
Speaker 1: was never gonna sing again. You know. I don't miss
53:18
Speaker 1: doing five shows a week, you know, but I missed
53:21
Speaker 1: doing a show every now and again. And I miss
53:23
Speaker 1: I missed the camaraderie. I miss I missed the circus
53:27
Speaker 1: that was rock and roll touring the twenty five of us.
53:31
Speaker 1: You know, it was a fun thing. It's a great
53:33
Speaker 1: it's a great way to it's a great way to live.
53:36
Speaker 1: It's you get to kind of live like a teenager,
53:38
Speaker 1: you know, It's it's a lot of fun. Okay, Well,
53:42
Speaker 1: I hope you get to live that way again. Thank
53:43
Speaker 1: you so much. This has been so wonderful. Thank you.
53:50
Speaker 1: Thanks the Huey Lewis for sharing his story. We certainly
53:53
Speaker 1: hope he's back on stage soon. Hughey's new album Whether
53:56
Speaker 1: is out now. You can hear it along with the
53:59
Speaker 1: rest of our favorite be cuts by checking out the
54:01
Speaker 1: playlists we made for this episode at Broken record podcast
54:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Also, if you sure to check out our
54:06
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, where we can find all our past episodes
54:09
Speaker 1: and some great bonus material as well. You can subscribe
54:12
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record podcast. Broken Record
54:16
Speaker 1: is produced with help from Jason Gambrel, Mia LaBelle Leah Rose,
54:20
Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by
54:23
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. Thanks for listening. I'm justin Richmond.