Gary James' Interview With Bill Gibson Of
Huey Lewis
And The News



Bill Gibson played drums for one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and early 1990s, Huey Lewis And The News. Just consider, Huey Lewis And The News have sold over thirty million records. Their 1983 "Sports" album sold ten million copies in the U.S. alone. All five of their albums released between 1982 and 1991 reached the Top 30 on the Billboard 200 album chart and have been certified either Gold, Platinum, or Multi-Platinum. They enjoyed nineteen Top Ten singles on Billboard's Hot 100, Adult Contemporary and Mainstream Rock charts. Their song, "Power Of Love" was featured in the 1985 film Back To The Future and went all the way to number one on Billboard. The song was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Songs at the 58th Academy Awards. "Power Of Love" and "The Heart Of Rock And Roll" were both nominated for Grammy Awards for Record Of The Year. Huey Lewis And The News are the recipients of thirty Californian Awards. They received the award for Best International Group at the 1986 Brit Awards. Their song, "Power Of Love" and "I Want A New Drug" were both certified Gold in the U.S. "The Heart Of Rock And Roll" won the Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Long Form in 1986. And if all that isn't impressive enough, Bill Gibson is one hell of a drummer.

We spoke with Bill Gibson about his life before Huey Lewis And The News, his life during the group's Hey-day, what he's doing now, and what the future might be for Huey Lewis And The News.

Q - Bill, what are you doing musically these days?

A - When COVID hit, obviously it sidelined everyone and I started taking lessons. I found a gentleman, Henrique De Almeida, who was the Drum Director at the Berklee College Of Music for about ten years. He ran a summer camp and I signed up for it and I've been with him ever since. I've been taking lessons for the last five years. It's been wonderful. I've always wanted to do it. I'm a self-taught player and I'd never taken the time to learn all the technique and math behind it all 'cause drumming is really all math. It's subdivisions. I'm just learning things I didn't take the time to learn before and I'm very pleased I did.

Q - That makes you a better drummer then, right?

A - By far.

Q - Has Henrique taught other famous drummers?

A - Well, he's taught all kinds of people. He's working with David Garibaldi from Tower Of Power right now for instance. He's taught thousands of students. I also play with a local group, The Sons Of Champlin. It's Bill Champlin obviously, who was the singer in Chicago for about thirty years. He and I went to high school in the same town and knew each other forever. We play a few gigs locally and that's what I'm doing musically. We do about six to eight gigs a year, which is perfect for me. (laughs) I don't have to travel.

Q - Any recording?

A - No recording yet.

Q - You told writer Joe Donatelli back in 2010 that you had no idea why Huey Lewis And The News were so successful. As I listen to what passes for music today, I'm not hearing melodies. I'm not hearing lyrics. I'm not even hearing someone who can even sing, and I'm not really impressed by the production. All I'm hearing is the same phrase repeated over and over again.

A - Agreed.

Q - And when I listen to Huey Lewis And The News I'm reminded of just how much we've lost in music.

A - Oh, yeah. I agree. I absolutely agree a thousand percent. I say it all the time. I think I would probably answer that question differently these days. I know why we were successful. We had great chemistry. We had good musicianship. We had a vision and we knew what we wanted. For us to do what we did, you kick the bird out of the nest. You record a record. You kick it out of the nest and see if it flies on its own. That was evident pretty early on with us that it was going to work.

Q - And the support system was there with the record label and radio.

A - Yeah. Radio was king. There were no cell phones. No internet. Everything was MTV and radio basically.

Q - Your mother and father were your biggest supporters. How fortunate you were Bill!

A - No kidding. Believe me, I know that all too well. It was in the '60s, my dad, who was a frustrated drummer, an architect by trade, but he loved the drums and he bought me a drum set in 1965. At that time, parents weren't keen on their kids playing Rock music back at that time. So, I was very lucky.

Q - After The Beatles hit there was a band in every neighborhood.

A - Absolutely. So many kids had groups in high school it was incredible.

Q - Did your father ever play in a band?

A - No. He never played in a band, but he sure loved to play and one of his best buddies was this gentleman name of Roy Butler, who played locally around the Sacramento area and he played in Big Bands and my dad would would kind of follow him around. They'd go to see Buddy Rich play. My dad took me to see (Count) Basie, (Duke) Ellington, with all the great drummers, Rufus Jones and Sonny Payne. He took me to see Buddy Rich several times. So, I was exposed to it from a very early age.

Q - He also took you to see The Beatles twice and The Dave Clark Five. Where did you see The Beatles and where did you see The Dave Clark Five?

A - I saw The Beatles at the Cow Palace once and I saw their final show at Candlestick Park in '66. The Dave Clark Five was at the Cow Palace as well, which was the big venue in San Francisco.

Q - When you saw The Beatles, was their music drowned out by the girls screaming?

A - The first time around it was indoors and you couldn't hear a thing. I mean, every once in awhile you could hear some kind of cacophony from far away because there was no big arena P.A. system. You really couldn't hear anything. The screaming was so loud it was crazy. At Candlestick you could hear them more because it was outside and the P.A. was bigger I remember. Not much better, but it was bigger. It seemed like the screams would kind of dissipate into the air and you could hear the band at Candlestick.

Q - How about The Dave Clark Five?

A - Kind of the same thing. I thought they were great. They had a ton of great songs. They had quite a few hits I remember, But Dave Clark was just a very average, kind of straight forward drummer who was more known for his good looks. I wouldn't call it any kind of advanced drumming at all. It was all very, very simple. Just one, two, three, four with his hands and feet. My dad was watching him and he elbows me and says, "Bill, see what he's doing?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "You can do that. He's a carpenter. He's just hammering nails up there." (laughs) I'll never forget that, when he said that, and he was right. But it worked.

Q - Now, when it came to naming the band, was everyone in agreement that it should be Huey Lewis And The News? Why not just The News?

A - Well, Huey was always our front guy and we wanted to be Huey Lewis And The American Express. That's how we were gonna go, but this is right before our first album was released, we got a Cease And Desist from American Express and we didn't figure we were going to take them on. So, literally the night before we were to release the album our manager came up with The News. Huey Lewis And The News. We always say, "Why Huey Lewis And The News? The Rolling Stones was taken." (laughs) Everybody thought that works. It kind of rolls off the tongue. Huey was always going to be the the front guy though.

Q - Everybody in The News could sing, yet Huey had the lead vocals on all the hit records. Could you or any of the other guys have taken the lead on some of those hit songs?

A - Johnny Colla could definitely sing lead on anything. I probably could on certain things. But what was Huey gonna do when one of us took a lead on a song? He'd stand there with his hands in his pocket. We never conceived that anyone else would sing lead other than him, not that other guys couldn't.

Q - I recall reading that Huey said to all the guys in the group, "Enjoy the run 'cause it's not gonna last forever." Do you remember him saying anything like that?

A - I sure do. I remember the night. We were out on tour with .38 Special. We were opening up for them. We were at some arena somewhere and it was just great. "Sports" was just taking off. It was '83. We were kicking ass. We were doing really, really well for an opening act and we were having so much fun. I remember the night he said that. It was down South somewhere.

Q - Did it register with everybody? Anybody who gets successful thinks it's going to go on forever.

A - That's true. Absolutely I think it registered for everyone. Another thing I remember, and I can't remember if it was Huey or our manager, "Be kind to everyone because you meet the same people on the way down that you did on the way up."

Q - And Colonel Parker said something to the effect of, "You don't have to be nice to people if you don't plan on going down."

A - (laughs) Right. That's a round about way of saying the same thing.

Q - Huey is supposed to get an operation for his inner ear problem. If it's successful could Huey Lewis And The News be back in business, or is that just speculating?

A - That's absolute speculation. He's having a cochlear implant done coming up in April (2025). I think it's more for quality of life for him than trying to get back to performing. Fingers crossed. I don't know if he could hear pitch and sing again. That would be amazing. That would be a miracle. The ultimate good is just so he can get some semblance of hearing back because he's really 90% deaf right now.

Q - What would have caused that? Is that because of his exposure to the loud music onstage?

A - No. This is Meniere's disease. He's had it for a long time. The ear specialists don't really know anything about it. They guess. So, there's really no one treatment you can do to fix it. It happens overnight like it happened to Huey. He lost his left ear about twenty-five years ago (2000) and so he was working just on his right ear. Then the right ear went in 2018 overnight. He woke up one day, and I'll never forget it. We were in Dallas and we had a show and he woke up and we had a meeting in his room, a band meeting just to go over some things, and he was sitting there and he was looking at us. At one point he said, "I can't hear a word you guys are saying." I went, "Really?" And so it comes time for the gig and now we're doing sound check and he remembers walking into the room while the band was up there playing and he said it sounded like a jet engine to him. It was just a roar. He couldn't hear pitch and when the show started he was so far off key that John Pierce, my bass player, and I look at each other thinking, "Oh, no. Something is wrong. The monitors are wrong or he really can't hear," and that was the whole deal. He couldn't hear pitch. And that was it.

Q - I'm surprised you went onstage that night.

A - Me too.

Q - The show should have been canceled.

A - I know.

Q - In 2025, with all the technology that is out there, a problem like Huey's could be fixed.

A - Yeah. It's a mystery to the ear specialists. Some things are.

Q - We can only hope that in the future things like this won't be such a mystery.

A - Exactly.

Official Website: www.HueyLewisAndTheNews.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.

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