Huey Lewis & The News - Biography
By Jeff Hunt
Writing for this site is a weird job. Don’t get me wrong – it’s all good, but jerking back and forth (Devo reference), toggling around in wildly disparate subject matter, it sometimes makes the head spin. It’s like you lunge from Stockhausen to Cheap Trick at Budokan to Organum to Blondie to Merzbow, and before I’m done here, we will have had a reasonably extensive discussion about the soundtrack to Ghostbusters. This morning, it was Einstürzende Neubauten; tonight it’s Huey Lewis & the News. Hahaha. It’s charming, the way we entertain ourselves with music. Anything goes. Oh, and there’s also Back to the Future. And they had the class and balls to blow off Live Aid and Bob Geldof. And Elvis Costello! I had totally forgotten about that angle. Did you know that the band on Elvis Costello’s first record isn’t The Attractions, it’s Clover, i.e., the nascent version of Huey Lewis and the News? True, true. So, it’s cool. This will be fun. Ladies and Gentlemen: In the spirit of “It’s Hip to Be Square,” I present the Amoeba Music website entry on Huey Lewis & the News.
Okay. Let’s see. San Francisco, 1972. Huey Lewis (vocals, harp) and Sean Harper (keys) join Clover. “Jazz/funk.” I know. Bear with me. They’re a bar band. Journeymen. They move to the UK, play pubs. Through various machinations, they get hooked up with one Declan Patrick MacManus, a.k.a., Elvis Costello, and become his backing band. (Am I the only one who thinks Declan Patrick MacManus is a totally flipping cooler name than Elvis Costello?) They also accompany him to the studio to record My Aim Is True (1977 Stiff). And it’s all sort of cloudy and opaque. Clover are described elsewhere as “country rock” with a similarity to Credence, and they were on Fantasy, Credence’s label. Well, which one is it? Jazz/funk or country/rock? I mean, I sure don’t own or have access to any Clover records, so you know, what’s the deal? They were produced by Mutt Lange, who produced AC/DC, Def Lepperd, and The Cars, so you’d think someone would know. Let’s just have fun, and assume it was countryjazzfunkrock. Hahaha. “Countryjazzfunkrock.” That was my favorite Throbbing Gristle LP.
So Clover move back to the Bay Area, and their main opponent in the formidable San Francisco Countryjazzfunkrock Scene (hey – history is written by the victors) is this band called Soundhole. Seriously. Bill Gibson is the drummer, Johnny Colla plays guitar and sax (?), and Mario Cipollina is on bass. He’s the younger brother of John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service fame. Soundhole had also sloughed through the backing-band trenches, with Van “The Man” Morrison. So, anyway, to make a long story short, Huey got all these guys together into one band, Huey Lewis & The American Express. They released a single. I am – honestly – not making this up: It was a disco version of the theme from the movie Exodus. What – to appeal to the gay Israeli demographic? Then they added Chris Hayes on guitar, got signed to Chrysalis, got sued by American Express the credit-card company, and then they were The News.
The first, self-titled record came out in 1980 and nobody cared. The second record was Picture This (1981 Chrysalis). People cared. The band and their manager self-produced, and brought in some outside tunes, as hit fodder. The ploy worked. "Do You Believe in Love" was written by legendary producer and industry insider Robert John "Mutt" Lange; it was their first hit single, a top 10 hit. A video was all over MTV. The follow-up single, "Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do,” hit the Top 40; the third single, "Workin' for a Livin'” made it to #41.
Then there was the third LP, Sports (1983 Chrysalis), and for a while, Huey Lewis and the News were just about the biggest band on the planet. It’s slick, slathered in hooks, and it went straight to #1. The only record that sold more in 1984 was Thriller. Sports went platinum seven times over. The singles blanketed MTV. "Heart and Soul": #1. "I Want a New Drug": #6. "The Heart of Rock & Roll": #6. "If This Is It": #5. "Walking on a Thin Line": #18. The producers of the movie Ghostbusters approached them, and asked them to record the theme song. The band said no. Ray Parker Jr. said yes, and the result was a brazen rip-off of “I Want a New Drug.” Huey Lewis and the News sued, and won. They toured, and were the highest-grossing act of the year. They said no to the producers of Live Aid. They were big enough to say no to just about anyone.
Hiatus. Then Fore! (1986 Chrysalis). It went to #1. "I Know What I Like": #9. "Jacob's Ladder": #1. Stuck With You": #1. "Whole Lotta Lovin'": #38. "Hip to Be Square": #1. "Doing It All for My Baby": #6. It’s not as good as Sports, but with that many hits, they did something right. “Hip to Be Square” features backing vocals by San Francisco 49ers Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott.
And then, the inevitable decline. Pure pop bands often hit the wall. Small World (1988 Chrysalis) went to #11; “Perfect World” went to #3; “Small World Pt. 1”: 19; "Give Me the Keys (And I'll Drive You Crazy)": #47. The band tried to expand their sound and get serious, and that’s just not their bag. They moved away from pop. Why? What part of “platinum seven times over” did they not understand? Stick with Sports. It’ll do you right.