 Blue collar beer buddy Huey Lewis charmed his
way to the top of the charts with a bachelor party brand of rock 'n'
roll that tasted great and was less filling. Born in 1951 to a former
jazz drummer and beatnik poetry buff, Hugh Anthony Cregg III came of
age in Mill Valley, Calif., where the early hillbilly sounds of Elvis
Presley and Carl Perkins first reached his ears. By late 1968, Cregg
adopted the goof ball name Huey Louie and banded with keyboardist Sean
Hopper in a country-rock outfit called Clover. When John McFee left
Clover to join the Doobie Brothers, Huey Lewis and the gang packed it
in for California. After recording a disco version of "Theme from
Exodus" called "Exodisco," the band was offered a contract by the
British label Chrysalis, which insisted it ditch the name American
Express. And so Huey Lewis and the News was born.
A freshman failure was followed by the respectable Picture This, a
second try that contained the Top 40 hits, "Workin' for a Livin'," "Do
You Believe in Love" and "Hope You Love Me Like You Say You Do." But
the third time proved to be the real charm for Huey Lewis and the
News. The 1983 album, Sports pulverized the Top 10 charts with its
foot-stomping rock 'n' roll, pleasant a cappella harmony and whoopie
cushion humor. All told, Sports sold more than eight million copies,
won the band a Grammy and secured a spot for Lewis on the "We Are the
World" project for Ethiopian famine relief.
Huey Lewis and the News furnished a respectable follow-up with 1986's
Fore!, which sold three million copies, buts pawned five more Top 10
hits: "Stuck With You," "Hip to Be Square," "Jacob's Ladder"
(featuring Bruce Hornsby), "I Know What I Like" and "Doing It All for
My Baby."
Three years and one record label later, Huey Lewis and The News
released the platinum Hard at Play and immediately boarded a tour bus
headed for smaller venues than they had seen in years. In 1994, the
band decided to kick back and record an album of R&B covers called
Four Chords & Several Years Ago. Since that release, Lewis and the
boys have been spotted at a rodeo here and a state fair there,
determined to prove that its still hip to be square. In 2001, Lewis
and company came out with Plan B, their latest and first album of
original material since 1991's Hard At Play.
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