The Tragedy Of Huey Lewis

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For a few years in the 1980s, Huey Lewis &  the News were the kings of the music hill.   The group's poppy, crisp rock and Lewis'  distinctive voice helped the band score a   string of beloved hits. Here's a look  at the real-life story of Huey Lewis. Huey Lewis was born in 1950 in New York City as  Hugh Anthony Gregg III. When he was 4 years old,   however, his jazz-drumming radiologist father and  commercial artist mother moved to San Francisco's   Marin County. The area was a center for the  bohemian arts movement, and it was closer to   nature than the Big Apple. Lewis was a very  smart kid with an early interest in music,   so the club-filled area fueled his interests.  Unfortunately, the blissful family life didn't   last for long, because the musician's  parents divorced when he was still young. In a 2001 interview with journalist Jill Kramer,   Lewis said that the divorce happened when he  was 11 or 12, and hinted that the split wasn't   entirely amiable. However, in a 2019 post on the  Huey Lewis & The News' official Facebook page,   the singer notes that the cloud of  divorce had an unexpected silver lining. His mother started renting out a  room in their home, and the tenant   just happened to be a folk musician called  Billy Roberts, whose instruments of choice   were the guitar and the harmonica.  As Lewis noted in the Facebook post: "[Billy Roberts] had a zillion harmonicas,   and he gave me a bunch of his old ones.  That's how I first got into them." Huey Lewis was a clever kid, so it's no surprise  that he was bound for a pretty decent school.   However, in an interview with journalist Jill  Kramer, the artist revealed that things took   a dark turn when his dad wanted to send him to  prep school, and his mother emphatically didn't.   They weren't together anymore at that point,  and things were already pretty contentious.   Lewis' mother even took his father to court  over the issue of their son's education. In the end, the case was resolved when the judge  asked Lewis what he personally thought about it.   He ended up choosing to go away to prep school,  but he found the experience markedly different   from the brochures. In reminiscing about his  prep school experience, Lewis had this to say: "My dad had given me the catalog that had a   picture of this gorgeous quad with  ivy-covered buildings and big trees   and a guy crossing the quad with a gal – Buffy  and Biff – and she was tremendous-looking." Unfortunately, the pretty lady in the  catalog turned out to be a marketing trick,   and the young man ended up spending four  years in a school full of other "Biffs." In 1968, Huey Lewis took a year off before  college and spent it traveling the world.   While this was no doubt a  cool experience as a whole,   it also led to some serious trouble  for the soon-to-be music star. Lewis was a long-haired young man,  which was significantly worse in   dictator Francisco Franco's Spain  than it might have been at, say,   Woodstock. As a result, his hitchhiking  endeavors were less than successful,   and it wasn't uncommon for him to wait as long as  12 hours between rides. This gave him a chance to   improve his musical skills, though. In remembering  his time in Spain, Lewis told an interviewer, "The only people who would pick  me up were German tourists.   So I'd play harmonica by the side  of the road until my lips bled." Another Spain-themed pickle happened when  Lewis was coming back from Morocco and lost   his passport. It was Friday, and he had no  money at all, save for what it would take him   to get a new passport when the American  Embassy opened on Monday. Fortunately,   those punishing harmonica exercises during the  lonely hours by the road ended up saving him. He bumped into a bunch of art students in Seville,   and they were so impressed by his harmonica skills  that they hooked him up with a guitar player.   They ended up playing a pretty  big concert — Lewis' first ever. No one can deny that Huey Lewis & The News  were massive in the 1980s. However, Lewis   and his merry men could have been even bigger  — financially, at least. In the early 1980s,   Coca-Cola approached them to  appear in their commercials,   which would have been a huge deal. After all,  Michael Jackson had just shown the world what   celebrity endorsements could be, courtesy of  his record-breaking $5 million deal with Pepsi. Lewis decided to pass on the opportunity,  and while he had his reasons,   he was still calling the decision  idiotic in 2016, telling CNBC, "We had just started selling out concerts, making  more money than we'd ever made. And I thought   why would I do this for money? I'm an  artist. I'm an artist, and an idiot." In 1987, Huey Lewis suddenly lost all hearing  in his right ear. This was a major problem,   because he was at the absolute  height of his career at the time,   and hearing is generally considered a  pretty important skill for a musician.   In describing the moment he knew he was  losing his hearing, Lewis told an interviewer, "I felt like I had been in a  swimming pool and my ear was full.   I couldn't shake it out or pop my ears." Lewis was eventually diagnosed  with Meniere's disease,   which the National Institute on Deafness  and Other Communication Disorders   defines as an inner ear disorder that can cause  all sorts of problems, including vertigo and   tinnitus. No medical professional could fix  the issue, and one simply told Lewis to,   quote, "get used to it." Eventually, it  became clear that this was his only option. Lewis soon discovered that amazing musicians like  Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys also operated with   a similar type of ear condition. As such, Lewis  adjusted and was able to carry on his business   as usual. Sadly, though, this wouldn't  be his last struggle with hearing issues. The film version of Bret Easton Ellis' American  Psycho came out in 2000, and like the book,   it wasn't shy of showing Patrick Bateman's  love for Huey Lewis & The News. However,   as M Live tells us, Lewis actually ended up  boycotting the movie. This didn't have anything   to do with the scene where an unhinged Bateman,  played by Christian Bale, delivers a speech about   Lewis' music before dispatching a professional  rival, played by Jared Leto, with an ax. "You like Huey Lewis and the News?" In fact, Lewis was familiar with American  Psycho before the film and has told   Rolling Stone that he's quite  happy to be associated with it.   The boycott came after he decided to pull "Hip To Be Square" from the movie's soundtrack album   for reasons unrelated to the film  itself. However, the people behind   the movie claimed that he removed it because  he was so disgusted by the film's violence.   Understandably, the singer didn't much care for  being set up as someone who was easily offended. As it happens, Bret Easton Ellis  has expressed regret that he linked   Huey Lewis and the News to his work in the  first place. In 2014, Ellis told Billboard: "They weren't a favorite band — I  was much more a Bruce Springsteen   person than a Huey Lewis person —  but I didn't think they deserved   it. I liked them more than the implied  criticism of them that's in the text." "Who you gonna call" to thank for  the iconic Ghostbusters theme?   It's a good question. Buckle up,  because it's about to get complicated. "Ghostbusters! What do you want?!" As Mental Floss and the Ledger Note tell us, the  opportunity to write the Ghostbusters theme song   came to Ray Parker Jr. after Lindsey Buckingham  and Huey Lewis had both declined the honor.   Parker certainly succeeded, but before  long, Lewis' lawyers came knocking. Per Billboard, the reason was  the alleged similarity between   Parker's smash hit and Huey Lewis  & The News' "I Want A New Drug,"   which had come out just a few months before.  The case was eventually settled out of court.   In 2001, Lewis decided to weigh in on the ruling  on a VH1 Behind the Music episode, saying, "It was kind of symbolic of an  industry that wants something -–   they wanted our wave, and they wanted to buy it." However, in the same Behind the Music  episode, Lewis also made it pretty clear   what he thought about the  settlement money, saying,   "In the end, I suppose they were right. Suppose it  was for sale, because, basically, they bought it." This prompted Parker to sue Lewis for  breaching an alleged confidentiality   clause from the 1984 lawsuit. Unfortunately,  we may never find out how that lawsuit ended,   because everyone involved has stayed  silent on the issue since then. Rock stardom and domestic bliss seem to  always be in direct opposition to each other.   According to the Los Angeles Times, it seems  that even the relatively wholesome Huey Lewis   is no exception. He separated from his wife  after they had two children. In an interview   with the golf magazine Kingdom, Lewis notes that  the pair got married in 1983 in Hawaii, but their   union ended up lasting only six years. However, he  does maintain that they're, quote, "still pals." In 2001, Lewis reflected on the specifics  of the relationship in an interview with   Jill Kramer. He said he met his wife, Sidney, in  the late 1970s, when she was the secretary for   Bob Brown, Lewis' future manager. The musician  also admitted that Huey Lewis & The News' peak   success years were quite difficult  for his then-wife, telling Kramer, "I was gone a lot then. And I worried  about it. It was mainly hard on my wife,   because she had to take care of everything." In early 2018, Huey Lewis had to once again  deal with hearing loss — and this time,   things were even more difficult. As Rolling  Stone tells us, Lewis was in Dallas to play a   concert with his band when his hearing suddenly  went haywire. Lewis told the music outlet: "I heard this huge noise. It sounded like  warfare was going on in the other room. I yelled,   'What is that?' They said, 'It's  just Pat [Green], the opening act.'" Green hadn't suddenly switched  to experimental heavy metal.   Lewis simply couldn't make any sense of what he  heard. Everything was just a horrible racket,   and when it was time to perform, he couldn't  hear his own voice, let alone find a pitch. After some rapid cancellation of upcoming shows,  Lewis started once again seeking medical help   for his condition. This proved futile. But as  a minor comfort, the musician discovered that   his condition came and went, depending on  the day. Some days, he can keep up with a   phone conversation with hearing aids on. Other  days, he won't even know if the phone rings. Tragically, the condition heavily impacts  Lewis' ability to listen to music.   On a bad day, he can't find a pitch, and  the bass crumbles into a nasty static. "When music is played it just  sounds like noise to me." While he could theoretically  still perform on a good day,   the periodical nature of the hearing  loss makes touring borderline impossible. Huey Lewis was in a dark place when he was  struggling with his second hearing loss in 2018.   The condition left him with hearing  that was coming and going, and music   sounded like distortion in his ears.  This essentially destroyed his ability   to reliably perform — and it happened at a  time when he and the News were working on   a new album of original material for  the first time since 2001's Plan B. As such, Lewis found the experience so profoundly  harrowing that he even considered ending his life.   Lewis told Rolling Stone, "There was literally a roaring  tinnitus in my head. There was   nothing I could do. I'd just lay  in bed and contemplate my demise." Fortunately, the singer has learned to live with  the situation, and he's even devised a scale of   one to ten to help others understand how well he's  doing on a particular day. He regularly looks into   treatments that might help restore his hearing to  a state that would allow him to play live again.   However, he's also accepted the  idea that this might never happen. If you or anyone you know  is having suicidal thoughts,   please call the National Suicide Prevention  Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.
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Channel: Grunge
Views: 959,156
Rating: 4.8140054 out of 5
Keywords: grunge, huey lewis, huey lewis and the news, rock and roll, musicians, music, rock bands
Id: lAFP3Y8kqdo
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Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)
Published: Fri Mar 12 2021
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