After Hugh Lewis learned that inner ear syndrome, known as Meniere’s disease, had left him with significant hearing loss and unable to play or listen to music, he faced the difficult task of telling his friends and peers.
Louis, whose wry lyrics and rumbling vocals inspired Reagan-era pop hits. “I need a new drug” And “If this is so,” Tico Torres, longtime Bon Jovi drummer, turned to people he knew on golf trips. But their conversation proved to be an unexpected source of the experimental philosophy on which Lewis built his career.
In a breakfast interview last month, Lewis gave an impassioned, one-man re-enactment of that fateful conversation with Torres.
“He goes, ‘Hey, Huey, how you doing?'” Lewis recalled. “I say, ‘Tiko, this is not good.’ And I start to explain. I said, ‘I’ve lost my hearing and I can’t hear pitch.’
“I’m telling him the whole story and he’s going like this” – here, Lewis lowered his head, turned his bushy eyebrows over his glasses, and shook his head in disappointment. “When I’m done, he goes, ‘Whaddaya gonna do?'” says Slivis, imitating Torres’ New Jersey accent.
“So that’s my mantra,” Lewis continued. “What are you going to do? Really, that’s a very good question. I don’t know. Still working on it.”
Lewis had already stopped his performing career He went public with his diagnosis In 2020. But his relationship with his art has changed fundamentally, he continues to work on new Broadway musicals, “The Heart of Rock and Roll” Built around many of the songs he made famous with Huey Lewis and the News.
The musical, which opens April 22 at the James Earl Jones Theatre, will spin Lewis’s tunes. “Hip To Be Square” “Working for a living” And the title track is a fictional story about a couple (played by Cory Cott and Mackenzie Kurtz) torn between pop-star ambitions and corporate opportunities in the 1980s.
It’s a project more than a decade in the making, begun before Lewis learned of the illness that extended his life and gave music an unexpected urgency.
As Lewis, 73, explains, “Zen Buddhists say you need three things: something to love, something to hope for, and something to do.”
“I’ve got a lot to love,” he continued. “So this is my promise and what I have to do. It prevents my hearing from reflecting.
Leavis is a gregarious, passionate storyteller who easily regales the listener with tales of his picaresque career as his formative days. Clover, a Bay Area band Arriving in London in time to see their country-rock sound destroyed by the punk movement; Or the hours he drove to set with Robert Altman when he played Lewis in the 1993 filmmaker’s ensemble comedy-drama. “Short Cuts.”
Recalling some of Altman’s advice, Lewis said, “He told me, ‘Learn the script. Read it every day. Find your character to the point where you know what he had for breakfast. And then don’t listen to anybody.’
Lewis’ fellow musicians describe him as dedicated and reliable, which comes across in Bao Nguyen’s documentary. “Greatest Night in Pop” About the making of a 1985 All-Star charity song “We are the world.”
In response to email questions, Lionel Richie Lewis recalled coming onto the project at the last minute, taking over the part written for Prince.
Even so, Ritchie said, “I remember him jumping up and down with confidence and patience.”
“The Hui we saw in the documentary all those years ago is the same Hui we see today,” Ritchie added. “Fast forward to the night of the documentary premiere – he was still a nervous wreck that night while watching the screening! His humor, his compassion and his welcoming spirit are some of the things that haven’t changed since the day I met him.
In person, Lewis can hear well enough to hold face-to-face conversations. He sometimes uses a discreet, disc-shaped listening device that transmits wirelessly to a hearing aid in his ear.
But when he’s in group settings, Lewis said he can feel like he’s “in a cocoon.”
“I’m sitting like this,” he said, pretending to smile and nod without saying anything in particular. “Can’t hear a thing.”
Lewis is candid in talking about the despair he felt after learning he would never be able to perform music again. Although he has suffered from hearing loss in his right ear since the 1980s, he said the hearing in his left ear suddenly and significantly deteriorated before a show in Dallas in January 2018.
“I was mainly a half-full man,” Lewis said, but what followed was “the most miserable six months of my life.”
“I contemplated my own death,” he said. “I lay in bed. I tried acupuncture, cranial massage, chiropractors, all organic diets. No matter what doctor he talked to or what treatment he tried, they all gave the same results,” Lewis said: “Nothing.”
During that period, Lewis talked to his grown children — his son, Austin, and his daughter, Kelly — that finally gave him the confidence to move on. “He said, ‘Come on, Dad. Get out of bed, Dad,'” he explained.
When Lewis felt able to resume work on “The Heart of Rock and Roll” — several years into its development — he was ready to return to it.
The origins of the production date back to 2009, when producer Tyler Mitchell approached Lewis about turning his musical into a stage show.
Mitchell, who once picked up the musician’s groceries as teenagers when they both lived in Ross, California, said several of the songs already had a narrative thread.
“His songs resonate with so many people because they tackle so many relatable topics: following your dreams versus playing it safe, love and relationships, friendship, blue-collar work,” Mitchell explained. He said that in his idealized version of the show, Lewis’s songs would not just provide the score but “a huge part of the actual storytelling.”
But Lewis, who did two stints as Billy Flynn in the Broadway revival of “Chicago,” was approached with similar offers and wary.
When it comes to the jukebox musical genre — he and his creative partners prefer the term “catalog musicals” — a show isn’t guaranteed to be a hit just because it uses popular songs.
As Lewis put it, “What if the Beach Boys didn’t succeed and wow? I’m just saying. But we’re ‘Mamma Mia!’ The book is really great.
Lewis wanted a show to tell a compelling story, and he asked screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams (“Juror No. 2”) found it in his pitch.
Abrams began building a music book by writing down the lyrics to the group’s various songs, hanging them on his wall and studying them in obsessive detail.
“I stand back like I’m looking at a painting,” he said. “And the words come out. ‘Loins’ and ‘heart,’ and ‘soul’ and ‘power’ and ‘love.’ From there, I started formulating what this subject should be.
Lewis didn’t particularly mind that the show didn’t tell an autobiographical story, explaining that many of his best-known songs were only loosely based on his life.
“You know, the muse comes when she comes,” he said. “It’s usually from something personal. And when you start writing a song, you exaggerate. You embellish.”
Readings and workshops followed, but just weeks before it was announced that the show would have its premiere at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, Lewis suffered a sudden loss of hearing in Dallas.
The show’s collaborators soon learned of this from Lewis.
“It’s very painful to see this happen to such a great person who loved music and loved performing so much,” Mitchell said. “It was really hard to get that part of his life from him.”
But Mitchell said he had never thought about stopping or canceling music projects. “Huey would never allow that,” he said. “Hugh won’t give up.”
At the Old Globe, Lewis was there to contribute — and step back when he felt he wasn’t needed, said musical director Gordon Greenberg, who directed the 2016 Broadway production of “Holiday Inn.”
“He was in rehearsal every day, with us at 9 a.m., laughing and giving suggestions,” Greenberg said, “and he said, ‘Here I am watching — but I’m going to give you a chance. Go.'”
Lewis, who attended several performances of “The Heart of Rock and Roll” at the Old Globe, said with a smile, “I wanted to redirect things to change. ‘Oh, no, he’s doing it all wrong.
He said, “I can’t get objective about it and what I’ll do with this show forever. But I love it and I love where we’re going.
Reviewing the Old Globe production for the Los Angeles Times, Written by Charles McNulty Adding that one’s enjoyment of the musical depends on “how nostalgic you are about Hugh Lewis and the News”, his own “secret survey of theater audiences suggests that this kind of material must have a pleasantly calming effect.”
Lewis has contributed a new song, “Be Somebody,” for the Broadway production, for which he shares credit with his bandmate Johnny Kolla and the show’s musical director, Brian Yousifer.
“I sang parts on my iPhone and sent them to Johnny, and Johnny demoed everything and tweaked it,” Lewis explained in a phone interview, adding that it was a new process for him.
“I can sing to myself, but I can’t sing to Because I can’t hear the pitch. We changed the lyrics two days ago. You have to pick your battles. “
Lewis is considering cochlear implant surgery and is scheduled to have a consultation this spring. In his everyday life, he said, he’s gained a greater appreciation for pastimes like reading and fishing, but nothing quite replicates the joy of simply listening to a jazz album while he cooks at home.
“I don’t miss doing five shows a week,” he said. “I don’t miss the journey. But I miss the show once in a while. And I miss the circus that was our show. But ok – remove the singing. Take the show away. I can’t even enjoy music.
And yet, Lewis said, “The Heart of Rock and Roll” has given him a new appreciation for his own music because the show presents it in new ways and makes narrative connections across his body of work.
“There’s a personality to the songs that I only recognized when I performed them at the show,” Lewis said. “I realized, wow, there’s a thread running through all of this. This is not my story but there is an all-pervading sensation.
Seeing his decades-old music reflected in him, Lewis realized that it was not just working but living and thriving in the production.
“To see songs take on this other life, it’s like watching your kids grow up and get jobs,” he said.