STORMY WEATHER
They’ve sold more than 30 million albums, but incredibly Huey Lewis And The News hadn’t recorded an LP of original songs for almost 20 years. That was until Weather landed earlier this month, a rollicking musical ride through pop, blues, R&B and beyond.
However, the new collection comes tinged with sadness because the record could be their last hurrah. “I have serious hearing issues,” laments Huey to CP who was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, leaving him almost deaf. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to sing again, if ever.”
It’s testament to the power of their songs – no pun intended – that Huey Lewis And The News remain a household name for pop fans. Weather may have been a long time coming but it revives the melodious fusion of precision pop and killer grooves that made classic albums, Sports and Fore! so appealing in the 1980s.
It begs the question, when did the new material eventually get underway? “Jeez, we probably started this record 20 years ago – we’ve been doing it as we go,” concedes Huey, a little sheepishly. “Up until the collapse of my hearing, we were playing 75 shows a year in the States, travelling for 150 days and we have lives as well, of course; so there was never a lot of time. We’re not the most prolific bunch in the world either but when we had an idea we would just record it, so we were stockpiling.”
He’s not exaggerating. One track, Her Love Is Killin’ Me recently enjoyed its 20th anniversary. “Chris [Hayes] and I wrote that song – it’s almost embarrassing to say – two decades ago. But we couldn’t get it right for some reason. We recorded it, tried it live for a while, we arranged it with just a drum machine and thought that would be cool. Nah, it wasn’t cool. So we just dropped it for 10 years. Later, we tried a different tempo and that made all the difference in the world. It’s the simple ones that seem to be hardest to get right, because it’s all about the feel. Now it’s just smoking, it won’t be denied.”