![]() ![]() “Chris gave me the tape, and the melody and words came straight out,” Lewis recalls. With that song, the members of the magic circle regained their charmed existence. “Three hours later,” he says, “I had ‘Stuck with You.'” But let me see what I can do.” Hayes went out, bought himself a six-pack and went into the studio. “We need a tune.” Hayes’s reaction, he recalls, was “God, Bob, I don’t know. “I think we’re gonna need some more songs, man,” Brown said. Hayes, 28, received a phone call from the band’s manager, Bob Brown, who was getting jittery. And I’d sit back and go, ‘The trouble with this is it’s a lousy song.”‘Īfter an agonizing six months of “work, work, work,” the breakthrough finally came. “We’d write them and go record them, and they’d come out terrible. ![]() “We wrote about six songs that way,” says Lewis. With his band – Cipollina, Hopper, guitarist-saxophonist Johnny Colla, guitarist Chris Hayes and drummer Bill Gibson – Lewis sweated out some new material. ![]() Though they were now seasoned performers, Huey and the band were not adept at writing hits on demand. You can’t really conjure these things up.” That was “The Heart of Rock and Roll.” Let’s see, how about this? Well I’ve already done that.’ And so on. How about if I write one about this? Well, jeez, I already wrote about that. “I’d get in a room with a pencil and paper or a guitar, and it was ‘Well, I’ve got to write a song now. “Everybody and his brother was waiting for this album,” Lewis says. When we finally stopped touring, this huge wave of reality came crashing in behind us.” The whole time we were on the road, I don’t think we knew how famous we were getting. “ Sports came out and just did a slow, steady climb during ’84 and ’85. “While we were following Sports around the world, I don’t think we were aware of what was happening,” says Cipollina. God, what are you gonna do? You must feel awful.īy the fall of 1985, after three years on the road, it was time for the band to get a grip – and time to write and record another album. As he’d shake hands or sign autographs, he knew even before they opened their mouths what was coming: Gosh, you guys. At the grocery store, he’d run into an old friend or, more often, some fans. Hey, Huey, how’s the new record coming? It became impossible for Lewis to leave the sanctuary of his nineteenth-century English-style carriage house – one of the spoils of his success – without hearing that nightmarish refrain. “We wanted to prove that Sports wasn’t an accident.” In the three years since the last album was released, its huge success had become something of a specter, and no one felt the pressure more than Huey Lewis. “So much was at stake,” says bassist Mario Cipollina. The “magic circle,” as the band members sometimes call themselves, didn’t talk much about the pressure, but everyone felt it. The sign, pinned up by keyboardist Sean Hopper in the hope of inspiring a bit of levity, did little to break the tension that plagued the sessions. The sign hanging on the recording-studio wall warned, “Album – Don’t Choke.” It was March 1986, and Huey Lewis and the News were trying to record their follow-up to Sports, their smash 1983 album, which sold 9 million copies and yielded five Top Twenty singles. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |