On a good day it takes 45 minutes to get to Madison Square Garden. Today it takes an hour and a half… an hour and a half of agonizing crawling through the traffic for the Lincoln Tunnel - where's the Port Authority when you need it? How much are these guys getting paid anyway? Help! I need to get to Madison Square Garden! I need to see Huey! Huey! Huuuueeeey!
Huey Lewis, pop music's Renaissance man, he's terrific. Already with several platinum albums plus contributions to USA for Africa, Huey and his band the News have reserved themselves a place in the Rock and Roll History Book.
The son of an avant-garde Polish immigrant artist mother and a jazz drummer slash radiologist from Boston, Huey has had a ten-year career as a successful rock star. But before this string of success that began circa 1980 with the signing of him and the News to a record contract, Huey had spent over a decade struggling as a serious musician. He while away his time mostly playing harmonica for a California-based band Clover.
Clover was no ordinary country-rock band; Clover was good! They were also broke. For the first half of the '70s they played zillions of club dates in California. Then they received an invitation to move to England and make two LPs, which they did. So was this they key to Clover's success? No. Clover had no success.
Could it have been because they were homesick for California? Could it have been because, even though he tried, Huey couldn't really sing? Could it have been because they were a bunch of long hair hippies in a country that had just been swallowed up by the punk movement? Could it have been because they never got used to driving on the wrong side of the road?
The end result was that Clover broke up soon after, leaving Huey to decide what to do next. He went back to California and organized a bunch of musicians to play at a club overlooking San Quentin penitentiary, Uncle Charlie's. This group of about thirteen musicians plus anyone else who showed up eventually became the six-man News line-up: Mario Cipollina on bass, Bill Gibson on percussion and vocals, Chris Hayes on lead guitar and vocals, Sean Hopper on keyboards and vocals, Johnny Colla on guitar, saxophone, and vocals, and Huey on harmonica and lead vocals. Uncle Charlie's was eventually sold and became a comedy club.
Huey was now a full-fledged lead vocalist, but he still didn't sing well. Their eponymous 1980 album was a perfect example of what not to do to make a successful record. Assuming Huey even gave a good vocal performance, one wouldn't know by listening to the record. And no one did listen to the record: it was a commercial bomb. But for the second LP, Picture This, Huey could sing. And he could sing on the next LP Sports. And he could sing on all his next records, on other artists' records, the national anthem at sporting events, at live concerts, in the shower, and anywhere else he might find himself.
On October 19, 1990 he found himself at Madison Square Garden as part fo the all-star line up at the Benson and Hedges Blues '90 Tribute to John Lee Hooker. Hooker has a terrific legacy in the blues. It was he who electrified the rural emotion of that southern music and brought it to the more mainstream north. No one at the Garden that October night was going to put down his contribution to popular music, but who wouldn't notice that it might not be ironic that for years he lived, created, and played with none of the rewards we associate with modern music conglomerates like New Kids on the Block, and with only limited commercial success, and for maybe the first time in his life he was able to play for 20,000 teeming fans.
Screaming and teeming fans, that is. Raunchy hefty beer-guzzling real men there to see Johnny Winter's comprehensive tattoo collection. Spaced out left-over-hippie rightist or leftist not-quite-yuppie pot smokers who knew that something really deep was going down tonight. Pre- and post-pubescent adolescents ready to scream at the mere mention of their beloved idols without whom life would have no meaning. And did I mention the John Lee Hooker fans?
In the beginning there was darkness. Then the MC welcomed us to the Benson and Hedges Blues '90 Tribute to John Lee Hooker. He then announced the guy's name who came out and played a song by himself. Not bad, but not Huey. Then another guy came out and played. Not bad, but not Huey. Then a band came out. Mick Fleetwood on drums, some other guy on keyboards, a bass player, a bunch of guitarists, and some other people. Various soloists came on and off the stage, among them the renowned harpist James Cotton. Not bad, but not Huey.
Then the MC announced, "And now welcome to the stage, the Rocking Huey Lewis!" Yay! Huey! Swoon! Scream! Make a scene! Who cares if anyone else around you thinks you're a tacky teenybopper who is completely ignorant of all the quality music there is tonight! This is Huey! And Huey is all so super-marvelous and perfect and oh-so-cute! But can he sing the blues?
Blue-eyed blues. A novel palindrome, but is it an oxymoron? It must be at least 90% of the performers are non-black. How can these guys sing the blues? How can they even know what the blues are? How can the blues ring true for them?
I wish the guy next to me would put out his joint. The incense is getting to me, getting in my hair, getting in my eyes, getting in my brain. I'll close my eyes then and just listen. Listen to the blues. I've never heard the blues before. I've never known such emotions. Some of the songs are so sad, but some of the songs rock the house. But most of the songs are old. Nobody sings about the crime in the New York streets, nobody sings about the joy of getting a high-paying job and entering yuppie heaven. So how can anybody, black or white, sing the blues?
Clean cut rockers, veteran bluesmen, country long-hairs, anybody who loved good music. They were all up there, putting on the blues like it was a tailor-made suit. The incense gets in my eyes, but I don't need to see.
But I need to see Huey. Huey! He's up there now, strutting, grabbing the microphone to keep it from floating away. He's singing. Oh gosh - isn't he amazing! He can do everything! He's perfect! There's the guy with the Power of Love beating in his Heart of Rock and Roll! Sing some more Huey!
But wait! That can't be Huey! The face is familiar, the voice is the same, but this can't be him! He's singing like James Brown! He's phrasing the lyrics differently. He's just... he's just... he's just... different! This can't be the same Huey who sings those candy-covered commercial pop songs that cynics love to hate! that critics think is his entire capacity! He's not Huey! He's too good to be Huey! What have they done with Huey?
Maybe they left him behind in California with the News. The News should be here. They can play everything. But most of all, they are part of Huey and he is part of them. And they're perfect too. Just the thought of them makes hormones dance and pulse rates rise. Oh well. Maybe they kept them in California to keep the pre- and post-pubescent adolescents from screaming too much and ruining the rest of the concert. Heaven knows that these people have no appreciation for good music.
But Huey does. That's why he's here. Maybe playing this style of music isn't his meal ticket. But, man, it's good music. When he's done singing, after he's informed us that, "Since I've flown all the way out from California they're going to let me do two songs," he grabs his harp and joins the band. Bo Diddley comes out next. Huey appears calm but he must have already met Bo backstage because otherwise Huey would be so excited he'd probably bounce off the stage - but not if Huey knows Bo. When Huey backs John Lee Hooker next, it's the same deal.
But then Huey is done for the night. Oh sure, the rest of the concert was good. Bonnie Raitt's duet with Hooker was terrific, Willie Dixon's "I Just Wanna Make Love to You" hit the roof, and Ry Cooder's guitar graced our presence, but sitting and waiting in vain for Huey to come back as the concert droned on to its fourth hour was really hard on those dancing hormones.
The night was educational, if nothing else. It birthed greater a greater knowledge and understanding for different types of music. It broke color barriers. It reminded me to bring a gas mask to the next concert I go to. But it was disappointing somehow. Something was missing. The stage almost seemed too empty somehow. Sure, it would be crowded with musicians at times, but still there didn't seem to be enough. Maybe they should have invited the News after all.
It only takes 45 minutes to drive home.
In high school my English class did a unit on Tom Wolfe. I wrote this as an exercise in mimicking the general style of Mr. Wolfe. I apparently never titled the document - the title I've used here comes from Huey Lewis himself; I had sent him a copy, and he wrote back praising me for this "Wolfian Masterpiece." Which was quite generous of him, especially considering the various insults that got incorporated as part of the style!
c. 1990, 2001 Cathy Gellis
cathyg@csua.berkeley.edu
www.csua.berkeley.edu/~cathyg