“A big mistake”: How Huey Lewis lost a Bob Dylan song
In the global arena, Huey Lewis is best known for his 1985 power pop number ‘The Power of Love’. Contrary to the like-titled Frankie Goes to Hollywood hit of the previous year, the song carries an explosive, choppy energy only Huey Lewis and the News could conjure and made for an iconic opening sequence in Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future.
Beyond ‘The Power of Love’, however, Huey Lewis is far from a one-hit wonder. In 1986, the band returned with two additional number-one hits that were kept in good company with a string of top-ten hits to see out the decade. There was something so unremittingly ’80s about the band’s style, yet it consolidated earlier pop genres like soul, doo-wop and R&B into a slick, danceable product.
While Lewis’ associative material doesn’t rely on poetic lyricism on the level of Bob Dylan, the two artists have an intriguing history as mutual admirers. After all, Dylan first fell in love with music through the peppy rhythms of Little Richard and the shaking knees of Elvis Presley; Woody Guthrie and Odetta would arrive later.
In 1985, the year Huey Lewis and the News launched to international stardom, Lewis met Dylan for the first time. After hearing the Brits’ seismic charity work with the Band Aid single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ in December 1984, Harry Belafonte phoned up some famous friends to follow suit. The one-off supergroup USA for Africa included Bob Dylan and Huey Lewis alongside a bumper cast of contemporary pop stars.
USA for Africa met up to record the charity single ‘We Are the World’, a corny single written by supergroup members Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. It’s safe to say that Bob Dylan stuck out like a sore thumb from the crowd of enthusiastic pop stars, and anyone who has seen the music video will remember a “What the hell am I doing here?” expression on the Nobel laureate’s face during the choral outro.
Dylan was enthusiastic about the cause but didn’t seem to think too much of the song. The one saving grace from that day, however, was that he got to meet Huey Lewis, whose old-school approach to power pop seemed to tick a few boxes. Not long after their brief contact, Dylan reached out to Lewis with a rare request.
In a recent conversation with Jimmy Kimmel, Lewis revealed that, in the late 1980s, Dylan wrote a song he deemed better suited to Lewis’ style. “He sent me a cassette and a lovely note saying he liked the last record,” Lewis recalled. In the note, the legendary songwriter asked whether Lewis might be interested in recording the song with the News.
Naturally, Lewis was elated to receive such a request from Dylan and has some deep regrets about what came next. “Not only did I not cut it, I don’t actually know where the cassette is,” Lewis revealed with gritted teeth.
Fortunately, the tape may not be lost for good. Lewis just needs to hire a fastidious filing clerk to alphabetise the avalanche of tapes he has stashed away at home. “There’s thousands of cassettes there,” Lewis admitted. “I could probably find it eventually.”
The questions on everyone’s lips are, of course, “How on Earth did Lewis misplace the tape?” and “Why didn’t he record the song straight away?” I’m afraid the singer has no answer and has been asking himself the same thing for nearly four decades. “It was a big mistake. What can I say?” Lewis admitted in lighthearted shame. He then apologised to Kimmel, concluding, “It was a mistake. Note to self: when Bob Dylan sends you a song, record it.”
Considering the size of Lewis’ cassette collection, it could be some time before we recover the long-lost Bob Dylan demo. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the pair’s memorable performance in ‘We Are the World’.
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