Even when the Rolling Stones have the occasional new album, it’s bought by diehard fans and doesn’t reach anyone new. And it won’t ever. And no radio station will play it. Take our new record Soulsville, right? This should fit right in there with roots Americana, or whatever you want to call it. But they can’t play us on that station because we’re Huey Lewis and the News. We belong on that ’80s station. They’re not really listening to the music, they’re programming the image. It’s really a shame. And frightfully unartistic. Shamefully uncreative and unartistic. So what can you do? All we have to do is get them to all buy our new CD. And that sounds easy, but it’s not. It’s very hard, that’s the hardest part. We play venues like the wineries in Sonoma, they charge like crazy for those tickets—those tickets are very expensive. People come and they park, and they buy food and a glass of wine and then they watch us play—it’s a very expensive evening for them. But they don’t buy the CD! It’s only $15 or whatever. The CD’s cheaper than the parking... but they don’t buy it. Audio’s just not enough entertainment. You’ve always been a band that’s sort of out of its time—forever linked to the 1980s, but having very little in common musically with your contemporaries. I think we’ve been anachronistic, always. I absolutely agree.
And yet “The Power of Love” is so 1985... Well, those songs were rhythm-and-blues based, really, but cut with sometimes a LinnDrum [one of the first drum machines to use digital samples] and sequenced to give it that little modern edge. That was our thing, that was our little production idea—sort of the old and the new at once. What’s a song that exemplifies that? Well, “Bad Is Bad” is a little different—a very old school bluesy tune with a hightech drum machine. Those records were assembled piece by piece, in many cases the drums are sequenced, the bass is sequenced. Nowadays we just play live and capture it. Was Soulsville essentially live then? We cut it with a live horn section at Ardent Studios down there in Memphis. They gave us studio B and we put the horn section in studio B and the other five cats in A, with a video feed from A to B so the horn players could see Billy our drummer and we just cut everything live. Then we’d go in and listen and if anybody had a fix, I’d let them do a fix, but no do-overs. Or we’d go back and cut it again. And we never cut anything more than three times. We cut 20 tracks in five days. When the Pacific Sun first interviewed you back in 1980, you’d just formed the News—and your debut album had just been released. And you had talked
about cutting that album in just one or two takes. And that it was a mistake, right? That’s what I said, probably.
The reason for that is that recording a record is a technological experiment, so you can’t just rush things. So we learned how to produce records, basically, by the time of Sports. And Sports we actually assembled piece by piece. But when we went on the road we threw the machines to the wastebasket and played live. And then we kept improving as a band. Now, we’re good enough where we can actually record live. And maybe there’s a flaw or two, but it’s easy to embrace because there’s only a flaw or two.
Well, you were promoting the album, so you made it sound like it was just what you wanted. You compared it to how the British cut albums. You said they were “more inspiration and Americans are more perspiration.” Well, that’s good, that’s good [laughs]. What happened was a very good lesson. Our first record we wanted it to have a You’ve remarked “live” sound, so we that the band’s forreckoned if we ran mation just prior to into the studio and the rise of MTV made cut it and did evHuey Lewis and the erything quickly, in The band is no stranger to News one of the few such San Francisco venues as bands of the ‘80s that not a lot of takes, the Fillmore. and played everything fast wasn’t beholden to then it would sound live. But of course it a clearly defined imdidn’t; it sounded kind of small and fast, our age. Yet, MTV audiences couldn’t get first album. enough of you. We originally did our first two videos, Well, no one could accuse Sports of which were “Some of My Lies Are True” sounding small. and “Don’t Ever Tell Me That You Love 16 >
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