Huey Lewis and the News have sold their catalog for $20 million
Huey Lewis and the News have sold the majority of their catalog (covering from their 1980 debut album through their 1994 album) to Primary Wave Music for around $20 million. This includes all of their major hits, including “The Power of Love,” “Hip To Be Square,” “If This Is It,” and “I Want a New Drug.” The group has released three other albums since 1994, but those are not included in the sale.
The group was touring frequently but they had to stop when Huey Lewis lost most of his hearing just before he was about to walk onstage to perform a show in 2018. He said, "I heard this huge noise. It sounded like warfare was going on in the other room. I yelled, ‘What is that?’ They said, ‘It’s just Pat [Green], the opening act.’ I put in my in-ear [monitors] in and couldn’t hear anything. I thought the bass amp had blown a speaker. I just heard this horrible noise, and I couldn’t find pitch or even hear myself. It was an absolute nightmare. The worst thing. Just horrible.” He saw multiple doctors before finally being correctly diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a rare inner ear disorder which also causes bouts of vertigo and has no treatment.
“I was suicidal,” he said about the days following the diagnosis. “There was literally a roaring tinnitus in my head. I just laid in bed. There was nothing I could do. I’d just lay in bed and contemplate my demise.” He said some days he hears better than others (on good days, he says his hearing is about a 6 out of 10 but on bad days it's about a 3), but it's unpredictable so he can't schedule a tour or any performances.
In 2018, a jukebox musical of the group's songs called “The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Roll” had a successful run at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. They are hoping to bring the show to Broadway in the future. There is also a documentary about the group called "If This Is It" which was directed by USC film school grad Kurt Kuenne and is being shopped around.
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