Huey Lewis: ‘I got picked up hitchhiking in America by an ex-convict'

Times

2 days ago

The lead singer of Huey Lewis and the News retired from performing in 2018 having suffered hearing loss for years. His band hit the big time with their third album, Sports, in 1983, which sold over 30 million copies. Their 1984 album Fore! spent 52 weeks in the UK charts and The Power of Love single featured in the Michael J Fox hit film Back to the Future. Lewis, 74, lives on a ranch in Montana.
Aged 17 I spent a year bumming around broke in Europe, often sleeping by the side of the road, but it helped me to find my future. I stowed away on a plane to London after somebody that picked me up hitchhiking across America told me how to do it. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, and I sat on a TWA bench at New York's Idlewild [now John F Kennedy] Airport for three days. Then I befriended a pre-computers counter attendant who got me on a flight to London. The trick involved a silver pen for writing my flight and seat number on a special ticket … and generally making myself invisible.
Hitchhiking from Spain to Portugal, I lost my passport after a ride with a slightly hammered Dutch guy in his 1930 Chevrolet, which ended up in a river. I had to go back to the embassy in Seville for another. But the fee was $20 and I had to busk to raise it, playing with a harmonica. Some students liked my act, heard I needed money and threw a concert for me: my first, and very nerve-wracking. I not only got the $20 but a bell went off in my head: this is what I want to do.
I love British people, even though in the Seventies I toured in the band Clover with Thin Lizzy and got booed off every stage around the UK. When we became big in America, in 1983, I told my manager I wanted to go to Europe. The record companies gasped because we'd sold zero records there until then. But we went, playing at tiny clubs and London's Marquee Club, and we ended up with gold records in most of Europe.
Childhood holidays in Marin County, California, were always camping, fishing or sailing with my brother and parents. Or we'd pack up our little car and go abalone-diving on the California coast. My dad and I went fly-fishing a lot and had close calls sailing, once getting stranded in San Francisco Bay and having to wait four hours for the tide to come back in.
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Nowadays I never travel without my hearing aids. I have a cochlear implant in my left side that enables me to hear because I'm mostly deaf. My hearing's so bad I can't perform any more or hear music when I sing. So you might as well fish! Fishing's wonderful for hearing-impaired people because fish don't talk.
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I live on a river in Montana where we fish all the time, and I have my own drift boat and raft. I've had Nick Faldo in my boat, Jimmy Kimmel, Kevin Costner, Michael Keaton … my fishing pals. Every year I go down to Espiritu Santo Bay in Mexico with a group to fish for permit, bonefish and baby tarpon. I go steelhead (trout) river fishing in British Columbia, my biggest a 38-inch, 25-pound on a dry fly; and I've caught a 120-pound tarpon in Florida.
My travel style is a mix of camping and five-star hotels. If you want to put it all together, I love Poronui, in Taharua Valley in New Zealand, which is a world-class fly fishing lodge meets luxury hotel. I also fish for trout in Scotland and, as a golfer (handicap 7) have played 16 times in the annual pro-am Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in St Andrews and Carnoustie.
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Some holidays have been pretty seat of your pants, like trout fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where you'd be in a tiny seaplane taking off from, and landing in, rivers. Seeing bears, moose and cranes was great; you just hoped the pilots knew what they were doing. I was nearly mugged in Morocco once, until the thieves realised I had nothing for them to take. Another time I got picked up hitchhiking in America by an ex-convict who siphoned gas at night all the way from southern California to Denver, Colorado. I had $200 on me but wasn't telling him.The Heart of Rock and Roll, a musical featuring Huey Lewis and The News's music, finished its Broadway run last year and is expected to reach the UK in 2026
In our weekly My Hols interview, famous faces – from the worlds of film, sport, music, politics, and more – share their travel stories from childhood to the present day. Read more My Hols interviews here.