In 1971, Lewis joined the Bay Area band
Clover. Around this time he took the stage name "Hughie Louis", the spelling of which he would tinker with for some years after. Other members of the band (at various points) included
John McFee and Alex Call. Lewis played harmonica and sang lead vocals on a few tunes. In 1976, after playing in the Bay Area with limited success, Clover went to Los Angeles. They had their big break in a club there when their act was caught by
Nick Lowe, who convinced Clover to travel to Great Britain with him. However, Clover arrived in Britain just as their folk-rock sound, known as
pub rock in Britain, was being replaced by
punk rock. The two Clover albums produced by
Robert John "Mutt" Lange for
Phonogram were not successful. By this point the spelling of Cregg's stage name had changed to "Huey Louis"; it is under this spelling that he is billed on both of Clover's albums for Phonogram, although for songwriting credits he is billed as "H. Cregg". The band accompanied
Elvis Costello on his debut album,
My Aim is True, minus Lewis and Alex Call, the singers. As Lewis told
Rolling Stone years later, "there isn’t any harmonica. I tell people, 'All the harmonica that isn’t on the Elvis Costello record was played by me.'" In 1978, the band returned to California, McFee joined the
Doobie Brothers, and Clover disbanded. McFee and Lewis, credited as Huey Harp, both appear as guest musicians on the George Hatcher Band's 1977 sophomore album, ''Talkin' Turkey'', produced by
Tom Allom. Under the name "Bluesy Huey Lewis", Lewis played harmonica on
Thin Lizzy's 1978 landmark album
Live and Dangerous. That same year, he was playing at Uncle Charlie's, a club in
Corte Madera, California, doing the "Monday Night Live" spot along with future members of the News. At this point, he had adopted the "Huey Lewis" spelling, and the band was billed as Huey Lewis and the American Express. After recording the song "Exodisco" (a disco version of the theme from the film
Exodus) simply as American Express, Lewis landed a singles contract from Phonogram, and Bob Brown became his manager. The band played a few gigs (including an opening for
Van Morrison), before adding new guitarist
Chris Hayes to the line-up. On Brown's advice, they changed their name again to Huey Lewis and The News. After a failed
self-titled debut in 1980, the band finally broke through to
Top 40 success with the gold album
Picture This (1982). It rose to No. 13 on the albums chart thanks to the Mutt Lange-penned "
Do You Believe in Love" (No. 7), the band's first hit. It became a No. 1 hit in 1984 and had multi-platinum success in 1985. Four singles from the album reached the top-10 of the
Billboard Hot 100: "
Heart and Soul" reached No. 8, while "
I Want a New Drug", "
The Heart of Rock & Roll", and "
If This Is It" all reached No. 6. Lewis knew
Nick Lowe and
Dave Edmunds from having played harmonica on their 1979 albums (
Labour of Lust and
Repeat When Necessary) and produced Lowe's 1985 version of "
I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)". He later produced several songs (including one where he sang backup and played harmonica) on
Bruce Hornsby & The Range's debut album,
The Way It Is. Hornsby thanked him by writing the song "
Jacob's Ladder", a No. 1 single from the News' next album
Fore! His song "
The Power of Love" was a No. 1 U.S. hit and was featured in the 1985 film
Back to the Future, for which they also recorded the song, "
Back in Time". Lewis has a cameo appearance in the film as a faculty member who rejects Marty McFly's band's audition for the school's "Battle of the Bands" contest. As an inside joke, the piece the band plays is an instrumental heavy metal version of "The Power of Love". (Lewis plays the audition committee leader, who, after glancing at the other, equally unimpressed fellow faculty members, picks up the megaphone and says, "Hold it, fellas ... I'm afraid you're just too darn loud. Next, please".) A poster for the album
Sports is hanging on Marty's wall when he awakes at the end of the movie. "The Power of Love" was nominated for an Academy Award. Following the success of "The Power of Love" and
Back to the Future, Huey Lewis and the News released their fourth studio album,
Fore! in 1986.
Fore! followed the success of
Sports and reached No. 1 on the
Billboard 200. The album spawned the No. 1 singles, "
Stuck with You" and "Jacob's Ladder" as well as the
mainstream rock hit "
Hip to Be Square". In all, the album had five top-10 singles on the
Billboard Hot 100 and was certified triple platinum. Lewis and his bandmates performed on
USA for Africa's 1985 fund-raising single "
We Are the World". The remainder of the 1980s and early 1990s were mostly spent touring and recording fourteen top-20 Billboard Hot 100 hits and releasing two more hit albums:
Small World (1988), which reached number 11 on the charts, and
Hard at Play (1991) which peaked at number 27. Lewis had a planned solo album titled
Back in Blue that was canceled in the mid-1990s due to living arrangement issues on the part of Lewis. One of the songs from that cancelled project, "100 Years From Now", was later used for the compilation album
Time Flies... The Best Of. During a show at the
California State Fair on August 21, 2007, Lewis was named
Sacramento's Musician of the Year by the fair's general manager and presented with a gold statue of the California state bear. Lewis recorded a duet version of "
Workin' for a Livin'" with
Garth Brooks, which was included on Brooks's three-disc set
The Ultimate Hits, in late 2007. On July 4, 2008, the eve of his 58th birthday, Huey Lewis and the News were the opening act for the annual
A Capitol Fourth celebration on the west lawn of the
U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. More than a half million people attended and was broadcast live on
PBS. The band performed "The Heart of Rock & Roll",
"The Power of Love" and "
Workin' for a Livin'". On May 29, 2011, Lewis played the annual
Summer Camp Music Festival in
Chillicothe, Illinois, along with Umphrey's McGee. They were billed as Huey Lewis and The Rumors. Together they played covers as well as songs from both their respective catalogs. On April 2, 2013, Lewis appeared on the ABC television series
Dancing with the Stars, where he performed "The Heart of Rock & Roll" in celebration of the 30th anniversary release of
Sports and a concert tour with the News. On April 13, 2018, Lewis announced that he had been diagnosed with
Ménière's disease, and that he "couldn't hear well enough to sing". As a result, the remaining shows scheduled for the 2018 tour were cancelled. He remarked in 2025 that his hearing loss had worsened to the point of total deafness and that a cochlear implant had restored enough hearing for him to hear speech, but that he would likely never be able to hear or perform music again. In November 2023, it was announced that the musical
The Heart of Rock and Roll featuring the band's music would debut on Broadway in March 2024. Lewis has been involved in the development of the show since 2018. In February 2025, Lewis was the inaugural inductee of the People’s Music Hall of Fame. ==Acting career==