Happy Leap Day, February 29, 2016! Leap Day is decidedly quirky. Rock and roll and its practitioners are as well. So, you’d think there would be a bunch of funky, cool things in history to talk about on this cosmic extra day. Not so much.
My personal favorite would be the release of Steely Dan’s come back album, Two Against Nature, in 2000. But, I feel like we’ve been force feeding the Dan to 11W, what with Generalissimo J’s celebration of Donald Fagen’s birthday, and mine for Walter Becker’s.
There was also the demise from a massive heart attack of erstwhile jockey and Monkee lead singer Davy Jones in 2012. Sure, a Monkee riding a horse is quirky enough, but the death thing . . . Pass.
In lieu of tales of death or resurrection, let’s look at the emergence of Huey Lewis and the News as overnight sensations after years of bar band toil. The band came together in the SF area in 1979, and for the next 4 years played bars and clubs like the 2 a.m. Club in Mill Valley, CA, pictured on the cover of Sports. They put out albums in 1980 and 1982, and had a couple of modest hit singles.
Remember the recent TIMH about Bob Seger’s Against the Wind? One of the central points of that article was that in order to be successful in rock music in the 80s a band needed a hit record, with hit singles to generate radio airplay and sales. Bob Seger wasn’t the first artist to figure that out, and Huey Lewis wasn’t the last. Sports is the result of the group’s conscious effort to produce hits. Even the album title seems like a bow to American consumerism. It might just as well have been called Sex.
Purists may sneer at the base motivation behind Sports, but the music is rock solid and honorable. R&B and rock sounds, with great guitar hooks and horn riffs, are the background for Lewis’ vocals and witty, sing-along lyrics. Released in September, 1983, the album climbed the charts slowly because the band would not play arena gigs to promote it until an on-going dispute with the record company was resolved. That done, Sports became the Billboard No. 1 on June 30, 1984. It spawned 4 Top 10 singles and a 5th at #18 and was certified Platinum on Leap Day, 1984. Sports was the second best selling album of 1984, behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and ahead of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. and Prince’s Purple Rain. Pretty good company. The album has now been certified 7X Platinum in US sales alone, and has reportedly sold 10 million units worldwide.
Tracklist:
- The Heart Of Rock And Roll (Billboard Hot 100 #6)
- Heart And Soul (Billboard #8)
- Bad Is Bad
- I Want A New Drug (Billboard #6)
- Walking On A Thin Line (Billboard #18)
- Finally Found A Home
- If This Is It (Billboard #6)
- You Crack Me Up
- Honky Tonk Blues
It’s true. The heart of rock and roll is in Cleveland. Huey told Andy Greene, Rolling Stone writer and Cleveland native, in an interview published May 17, 2013:
“We had heard that Cleveland was this great rock & roll town. I thought, 'Cleveland? How can Cleveland be anything? What can they have in Cleveland that we don't have in San Francisco?' Then we played a gig in Cleveland, I think at the Agora, around 1980. It was a great gig, and the crowd was amazing. We're driving the next day, and I'm looking at the gray skyline. I sort of absent-mindedly say, 'You know guys, the heart of rock & roll really is in Cleveland.' Then I went, 'Oh my gosh, that's a great idea for a song.'
The other guys said, 'The heart of rock & roll is in Cleveland?' So then I rewrote it as 'The heart of rock & roll is still beating.' But that was the original idea."
“I Want a New Drug” has been the source of legal wrangling between Lewis and Ray Parker, Jr. and the producers of Ghostbusters. Allegedly, the movie folks asked Parker to write a song with the movie title in it, and played “I Want a New Drug” as an example of the kind of song they wanted. Apparently, he basically just lifted the bass and guitar riff. Lewis sued for infringement, asking for $5 million. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount and a confidentiality agreement. Then Lewis, during VH1’s Behind the Music series in 2001, said: “The offensive part was not so much that Ray Parker, Jr. had ripped this song off, it was kind of symbolic of an industry that wants something—they wanted our wave, and they wanted to buy it. ... [I]t's not for sale. ... In the end, I suppose they were right. I suppose it was for sale, because, basically, they bought it." Parker sued Lewis for breach of the confidentiality agreement. That case appears to have been settled, too, and no one is talking about it anymore.
Enjoy your extra day of existence. Hope listening to some music helps!
