Singer Huey Lewis fell into a deep depression after losing his hearing, revealing that he can’t even hear music anymore.
“It’s cacophony for me. It just sounds like noise,” the singer — who fronted the enormously popular ’80s band Huey Lewis and the News — tells Pvnew.
He surmises that it’s because music is harder to listen to than speech.
“It occurs in all frequencies with harmonics and other things and what happens with my particular hearing loss, is not only is it hearing loss, but it ends distortion to the bottom end,” Lewis, 73, explains.
The “Power of Love” singer’s hearing loss — caused by an inner ear disorder called Ménière’s disease — began in the right ear at the height of the group’s success when Lewis was in his late 30s.
“I was really freaked out,” Lewis tells us, adding that his ENT doctor at the time comforted him by listing other musicians with hearing issues.
“He said, ‘Jimi Hendrix had one ear, Brian Wilson had one ear, I have one ear and I’m in a barbershop quartet,'” Lewis says. “When he said, ‘You only need one,’ he was actually right. You can do pretty much anything with one ear.”
The “This is It” singer lost his hearing in his left ear by 2017.
“It was devastating at first,” he reveals. “I pretty much laid in bed for six months. I worried, I panicked.”
Lewis says that he tried different holistic treatments, chiropractors, acupuncture and changing his diet in an attempt to restore his hearing but nothing worked.
“I was in a real depression,” he confesses. “I lost 20 pounds. I pretty much stayed in bed, but I have two great kids and they wouldn’t stand for it basically, and I slowly improved.”
The Grammy winner — who now wears hearing aids — was forced to change his mindset and attitude by acknowledging that “there’s a lot of people out there much worse off than I am and it’s very important for me to realize that. My life is not as great as it used to be but it’s still better than most.”
Lewis’ depression stands in stark contrast to his happy-go-lucky public persona and cheery pop songs.
In the mid-1980s it was almost impossible to turn on MTV and not see a Huey Lewis and the News video on high rotation.
The band’s 1983 album, “Sports,” spawned multiple hit singles and became one of the best-selling pop albums of all time.
Lewis says there was no downside to the immense fame and attention.
“Let’s face it, anybody who does what I do has got to like the attention a little bit,” he says. “I mean they wouldn’t have done it to start with. So yeah, that’s kind of the object isn’t it? I mean, you’re writing a song to be popular, it’s pop music.”
Lewis, who now lives in Montana, was in New York recently to attend the opening night of the Broadway musical “Back to the Future.”
He was mobbed by audience members, happily posed for selfies and gave a sweet speech after the performance.
Lewis made a cameo in the 1985 classic as a teacher and his song “Power of Love” was featured in it. A rousing version of the song closes the new Broadway show and there’s even a sly wink to Lewis with a minor character named Uncle Huey.
His stay in New York has been two-fold as he’s also been workshopping a musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” which is inspired by his band’s songs.
“We are very excited about that,” he enthuses. “We are psyched to be on Broadway pretty soon.”
