I have been doing a lot of listening to Huey Lewis and the News lately. It’s not just that they are a great band or because I’ve always loved “The Power of Love” and “If This Is It.” And it’s not because the songs of Huey Lewis and the News and my own human body have been bouncing around this world for just as long, part of the soundtrack of my entire life–car rides, retail stores, airports, movies, etc.
The reason I have been listening to Huey Lewis and the News, so much so that I’m in the top 0.05% of listeners of “Heart and Soul” according to my 2024 Spotify Wrapped, is because of my son. He is 9 months old.
Recently, since you can find everything on online, I’ve been doing this reverse-internet thing where you look up the entirety of a band’s musical oeuvre–live performances, interviews, and the like–that have been uploaded as the internet grew and grew while you were just living your normal life. Each discovery akin to an Indiana Jones class payout, though without any sort of airfare, nemesis, or boobytrap worries.
These are “you had to be there” sort of talking points if you tried to explain it to others. There are just so many different facts and connections that you had no idea of that it becomes more about translating the feeling of revelation than anything else.
Here. Let me show you:
I had no idea that the saxophonist on “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” the one that gets the mention right before his solo (“Hey Johnny!”), is also the rhythm guitarist. Or that the lead guitarist, Chris Hayes, is an amazing metal-ish rock soloist. Or that Huey Lewis himself is like super awesome good at the harmonica. Or that, and this one I should’ve known, there was a dispute over the theme song for the movie, Ghostbusters, being a ripoff of “I Want a New Drug.” (Huey Lewis and the News were going to make a theme song for Ghostbusters, but bailed. Perhaps this is why they have a song and a cameo in Back to the Future.)
Does that translate? Probably not. You’d have to be just as much geek as I am.
Anyway, my son, not yet one years old, loves “Heart and Soul.” How do I know? He doesn’t babble happily when it plays or hand flaps. It was the absence of crying, especially on long road trips, that clued my wife and I into this infatuation.
What is it about “Heart and Soul”? Is it that simple synthesizer lick? Or is it the driving bass? Or maybe the Bossa Nova drums? Or Huey himself, that deep voice shout-singing in such a way that makes it sound effortless and soothing.
When you look at the lyrics, “Heart and Soul” is a song of youth from the perspective of someone who is wise to a woman who will never be satisfied, a person that will forever be fleeting in relationships.
As far as I know, my son does not understand English, but perhaps the chasing of someone beyond his reach is in his blood as it is in all our bloods–these dream people we pine for, chasing the idea of love that’s hard, nay, impossible to get. And thereby joining the same mistakes of all young men from eons now and hence.
The origin story, or at least my hypothesis of how it started, is simple enough. When he was less than a month old, I had to learn “Heart of Rock and Roll” on the drums. So while I was feeding my son, I played it on repeat. “Heart of Rock and Roll” is the first track on the album Sports. But the thing is that you can’t finish track one without listening to track two, “Heart and Soul.” But you’d think, baby-wise, that the heartbeat sound effect in the opening and closing of “Heart of Rock and Roll” would help endear the song to my son and make it win out over “Heart and Soul.” Nope.
“Heart and Soul” has worked to calm my son down in long car rides far more than it fails. Before our last trip, a Thanksgiving Trip clocking in 4.5 hours of driving time, I thought the magic may have dwindled out. The last of the pixie dust. Huey bailed us out three times.
Nothing else quite works. Not The Police, not Primus or Moros Eros or Queens of the Stone Age or The Mars Volta. Not even Elvis Costello’s first album that features a backing band (called Clover) that Huey Lewis was in though he was not at the recording the album. But The News’s keyboardist, Sean Hopper, was there and present on at least one of the most famous songs on that album, “Alison.” And it’s Hopper’s synth keyboard lick that’s 50% of “Heart and Soul.”
What music was I into when I was little? I have no memory of it. I do remember listening to The Beatles’s album, Help, endlessly. So much so that I had a Beatles complex–meaning I did not like listening to them–well into my twenties when I finally rediscovered how great of a band they were.
Was it “Reading Rainbow” or MASH’s theme song or maybe The Flintstones’s theme song? We can all sing the songs of our youth or even remember them when we want to, but can any of us say that a song or a band commanded the calmness of our interiorities, especially at such infancy?
I owe Huey Lewis and the News more than most, I guess.
In other words, I entirely disagree with Patrick Bateman.