But the heart of rock & roll is still beating in the 69-year-old singer-songwriter.
Given the circumstances, Huey Lewis has a remarkably upbeat attitude.
There’s no rhyme or reason to it."
Unsurprisingly, with the onset of the disease, the Bay Area native was despondent.
It’s a destructive condition for anyone.
For a musician to be unable to hear or perform for uncertain stretches of time or perhaps ever again?
That’s a special circle of hell.
“The first two months were just horrible,” he remembers.
“Loud tinnitus, couldn’t hear anything.
I thought, ‘I might as well kill myself; I can’t do anything.’
It was just tormenting.”
The unpredictability has made booking gigs impossible.
So maybe that’s some of it."
“Me write a song for Willie Nelson?
I didn’t think another thing of it.
And I woke up three weeks later with a whole song in my head.”
Then I listened to it again and I realized, it’s my life story!"
He also has been cheered by the response to his diagnosis.
“The empathy from our fans has been amazing.
In spite of all this, I’m a very lucky guy.”
