Huey Lewis Takes Us on His Hearing Loss Journey

The one and only Huey Lewis joins Dr. Dave to share his path to being a rock star, how Menière’s disease cut his singing career short, and why he recommends hearing aids to anyone with hearing loss.

Link to full transcript

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

This is Starkey Soundbites. I'm your host, Dave Fabry, Starkey's Chief Innovation Officer. Our guest today is musical legend Huey Lewis. In recent years, uh Huey's musical career has been disrupted by his hearing loss and severe tinnitus resulting from uh Meniere's disease, and we'll talk a little bit about that. He joins us today to discuss his hearing loss journey. And uh also, uh, you know, I have to say, Huey, you really provide inspiration for a lot of people uh as to how they can be optimistic despite uh uh the uh the uh obstacles that are uh provided by hearing imbalance challenges. And your voice is one of my favorite of all time, and I have to say, you know, we first had the opportunity to meet in 2001. You won't remember this, uh, but I was uh the president of the American Academy of Audiology at that time, and you came down to San Diego and spoke at our um uh annual convention about uh some of the early uh uh challenges you had with hearing loss. At that time, you had had uh some difficulties with hearing in one ear, uh that then has uh progressed to both years since then. But uh thank you for joining us today, and and I really appreciate your taking the time to talk a little bit about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, good to be with you, man. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, and you're you're uh you're looking good. And uh uh like I said, it's uh a pleasure to uh hear your voice in song again.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

And and uh I can sing to sing myself, but I can't hear music uh to sing to it. I can't find pitch because music, as you know, is much more difficult to listen to than speech. Speech occurs in a narrow frequency, usually music, even one note, occurs in all frequencies with harmonics and overtones and everything. So it just comes at me from too many frequencies and it just confuses my hearing. And I can't find pitch. It's very simple.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

And I would imagine you have perfect pitch, right? Before all of the distortion got held.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

No, my relative pitch. Good relative pitch. Okay, but not perfect. Perfect pitch is somebody who can just sing an A note.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Relative pitch is if you sing an A note, I can sing you a D note.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Okay. But uh once you once you get the note on the piano or on a guitar string or or or some other areas, then uh you can reference it, but not yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

So I can sing to myself in tune. I can sing in tune by myself. But if you play a guitar chord for me, I can't hear it. It sounds like cacophony for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

It goes Yeah, and in particular with all of the distortion that's been added over the years, but the distortion, the resonance or whatever. You guys call it resonance, I call it distortion. Um, so you grew up, uh you were born in New York City, and you kind of divided your youth between the East Coast and the West Coast, right? Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

I uh uh I was born in New York City, but I but I moved to California in when I was five years old because the sandboxes weren't very good. No. But yeah, my family moved to California. So I was raised in in Marin County, Northern California. But at 13 years old old, I went away to a prep school in New Jersey for four years. So I was educated there for four years, and then I went to Cornell for five minutes over a two-year period and mostly played music. Uh, and then came back to San Francisco to uh join a band.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

When did you first get the music bug? Where was it? Uh how old were you when you started performing and playing?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, when I started performing uh later, uh I mean my dad was a musician and his adopt, my dad was a doctor, but his hobby was music, and he played piano and and drums. He was an excellent drummer. And um, you know, and so I had guitar lessons as a kid and a little bit, and but um my mother, my parents got divorced, and my mother uh rented out a room to a boarder named Billy Roberts, who was uh who was a folk singer, he wrote Hey Joe. And he had he played harmonica with one of those braces, you know. He had a zillion harmonicas, and he gave me a bunch of his old harmonicas. So I started playing harmonica, and then um uh I played for a couple a little bit, you know, sort of fooled around. And then I I graduated from high school a year young. I graduated 16 years old, and uh, because I'd skipped second grade, and my father I was accepted to Cornell and was uh planning to go. My my father insisted that I take a year off and bum around Europe uh before I left college. I got myself to Europe and hitchhiked all throughout North Africa and Europe and Scandinavia all the time playing harmonica. When I came back to to up to uh the States, I went, I I I had taken a year leave absence, so I went back to Cornell um and just pretty much joined bands. You know, pretty played played music at Cornell and then dropped out and went to California.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Well, you mentioned that your uh your dad was a drummer, and uh I'm also a percussionist. And uh one of the things that's been interesting to come out of the literature in the last five years or so is that musical training um at any point in your life turns out that it helps you when you're using hearing aids. Um just the the preparation from actually playing an instrument, understanding tonality, understanding the rhythm, uh it helps you with your speech understanding in noise. And interestingly, some of the work that I um sort of proudly point to is that uh Nina Krauss, a researcher in our field, maintains that drummers have the highest IQs of all musicians. Really? Yeah. Uh you know, it's just some of the work I guess I like to say I have great temporal processing, but lousy spectral processing. You don't want to hear me sing, but I can uh the rhythm apparently helps with tonality for speech and for speech understanding and noise. And so uh But so much for the So much for that bad joke, which is you know what they call people that hang out hang around musicians, drummers. Yes. There's a whole host of them. But I do also I wanted to point out that um one of my prized possessions, and they you know this is an audio podcast, but you gave this to me in 2001 uh when you came, and I keep it proudly on my shelf. And I think you're not given, you know, for all of the accolades you've received, you've uh uh got Grammy a Grammy Award and Academy Award nominations, um, but your harmonica playing really isn't given the do, I think, uh given that I've heard you play many times harmonica and uh and you rock it, man. That does give you a little bit of the uh the temporal processing, because the harmonica really is an extension of a percussion instrument and you know, with the with the the the the temporal part of it, but uh as well uh you can take it much further with your musical acumen.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, you're sweet to say that. And uh, you know, I I I used to be a serious harmonica player, and then when I joined the when I started my own band and sang all my own songs, and now I had a great band, a bunch of my pals, and so many good musicians in my band. You know, you only get like one solo per song, and I I could I have to give it to the guitar player or the horn players. So I I I I I I as we went on in my career, I played less and less harmonica, but I uh I still love the harmonica. And um, you know, I it's just some some people uh a little harmonica in my band goes a long way.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Hey, yeah I understand, but uh but I enjoy the harmonica.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Maybe again, going back to that percussion background, but uh the other thing the other thing about harmonica, there is no more expressive instrument than the harmonic than a diatonic harmonica. You know, one could argue a saxophone and even and and maybe a pedal steel, because you can bend and so on. But because of the nature of a diatonic harmonica, the fact that you can bend the notes and and get such uh uh expressive tone out of it. And and the other thing, of course, is the sound comes from your cavity, your body cavity.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

So that nobody sounds the same. Yeah, and you mentioned the horn. I mean, one of the things with Huey Lewis in the news as well is I think um people forget how you had a full horn section. And and uh I think uh you've mentioned in previous interviews that you guys were inspired by Tower of Power. Uh uh Still a Young Man was one of my favorite uh tunes by theirs. But but I think you know you guys had an excellent uh horn and and sax section in addition to the vocals and the traditional rock and roll music uh members, too.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, I mean I've always I've always loved soul music. And uh, you know, we I pretty much grew up on that. We were we were me and my band were slightly younger than the the sort of psychedelic generation, if you will. So we had to find something that was our own. And and that that that turned out to be soul music. We there was as a uh in Oakland, there's a soul music station called KDIA, which is the one and only sister station for WDIA in Memphis. So in some cases, soul music records by say the Rance Allen group or somebody like that only got added to two stations in America. And that was that would be WDA and KDIA. So we and those are the those are the KDIA, we were just faithful KDIA listeners. You know, we were doing in in our little college bands and stuff, we were playing James Brown songs with pedal steel guitar and stuff, you know. So that was uh that was always a part of what we do. And and then when we had some success, we um we we hired the Tower Power Horns to play on a record, and then we took them on the road with us for two years and fell in love with the horn section. And then when we made another record uh uh of original material, we we we we Johnny played all the saxes, we hired a trumpet player, Marvin Marvin McFadden, to play trumpet, and and and we and we hired uh Johnny Beamont to play baritone. And so then we put our own little horn section together and we toured with them for years.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Oh man, I can just imagine what the music scene was like when you were uh in the Bay Area at that time and then touring and uh with fellow uh Bay Area members, Tower Power, and then how you combined that and then toured. And and like I said, I've had the pleasure to hear you perform solo and with Huey Lewis in the news uh over the years, and and you brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. And uh including in ramping up to that in 2001 when you came to uh then the the American Academy of Audiology conference and you talked a little bit about the fact that even in 2001, um you had some challenges with regards to hearing and balance. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

I I lost, you know, uh suddenly I lost the hearing in my right ear, probably '83, I'm guessing, something like that. 80, it's probably 1983. And um, and then I had a uh a uh vertigo episode shortly thereafter. And uh uh then you know, I went to see my ENT guy and he said, get used to it. Uh uh, which was what what? He said, Yeah, this happens. We don't know what it is, but it just happens sometimes. But you only need one ear. I said, What? I'm a musician, I you know about he says, Hey, Jimi Hendrix had one ear, Brian Wilson had one ear. He said, I've got one ear, and I'm in a barbershop quartet. I said, Really? So yeah. So I I existed on my right ear, on my left ear, rather, my right ear went out in '83. So for you know, 30 years almost. And then suddenly, January 27th, night 2018, before a gig, my left ear went out. And uh I it was just a horrible. I tried to play the show, I couldn't hear anything, it was awful. I went immediately to House Ear Institute. I had steroid shots in my ear. I had a long, long, um uh long uh 28-day program of pretendzone, and they tried steroids, that didn't work. Um, they sent me to an immunologist who had me in all kinds of different Canadian drugs, and that didn't work. Then I got a second opinion from Stanford Ear, and he said meniers. And then I went to Mayo Clinic and he said meniers. He said, It isn't autoimmune. I know it isn't. I said, Why? He says, Because autoimmune, both ears go at the same time. And people who have autoimmune also exhibit other characteristics of autoimmune my glupus, and you don't have anything. You have classic meniers. I said, Great. Now that I know what I got, what do I do about it? He says, We don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah. You know, especially related to trying to address issues related to autoimmune hearing loss and manures, which, as you mentioned, are often uh misdiagnosed or confused because there's no genetic test that could sort of isolate exactly what it is that's causing it. And then the further thing, like you just said, okay, now I know what I've got. Now what do I do? And short of, you know, we just came out of uh Protect Your Hearing Month a a while ago, and um one of the issues I guess are questions that I had for you, after you lost the hearing in your right ear initially, were you uh really careful about uh what exposure uh when you were performing that the left ear was getting?

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Or not so much? Probably not as not as much as I should have been, but um I you know I'm I I'm not I'm not sure I've always had, you know, when I was a kid, I had earaches a lot. Every every flu season I would get earaches. And my dad, who is a radiologist by you know, by profession, I remember telling me because I played baseball, he said, You got a great arm, but you got lousy Eustachian tubes. Because I would get earaches every every and so that probably scarred the Eustachian tubes a little bit. Plus, agreed, loud music isn't great for you know 40 years, and I'm no spring chicken. So maybe that's those three things are what meniers, but you know, they really don't. Uh, you know, um, Dr. Stephen Roush, who's probably the godfather of all these guys, uh, in a way, he's he had he has 300 meniers patients a year. And the day I talked to him, he had six uh in his office that day. And he says, I can cure meniers um 90% of the time. I said, really? He says, Yeah. Uh I said, what is it? He says, Well, three things. One is regular schedule. You stay, you get up at the same roughly the same time, eat at the same time, do everything kind of the same time, regular schedule. Two is overall good health. I want good cholesterol numbers and and uh uh you know that kind of stuff, uh blood pressure, et cetera, which I have, and exercise, which I do. And number three is low salt, not no salt, but low salt, and I want the salt distributed evenly over the day. And I said, and he says, and this is uh and that will cure meneras. He says the the the vertigo, he says, the hearing loss we know nothing about. Yeah, and I said, So this is what you got? Harvard Medical School? This is this is what you got, low salt, regular exercise in a regular schedule?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah, and and I can see where you could even try to do the the second and third one, but uh regular schedule when you're flying all over the place, and we've talked a little bit about the fact in the past that you've noticed that when you disrupt your regular schedule by jet lag or air travel or whatever, that you've noticed that it has some impact on your hearing in particular now.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Interestingly, I just got back from Europe and where needless to say, my schedule was interrupted, I was jet lagged and so on, and I had these mild uh vertigo bouts, not full-blown vertigo uh attacks where I get nauseous and have to lay down, but just dizziness. And I probably had five of those. And and but interestingly, my hearing got got it gets incrementally better when I get when I have vertigo attacks. Go figure. And so and that and now I'm back in in in back home in Montana, and I'm I haven't had any vertigo, but my hearing is is maintained a little bit better than terrible. You know, I judge it one to ten, it's four right now.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

It's a four, okay. So it's it's not great, but it's not as bad as it was when you were on your European adventure. And that's I think one of the most challenging issues with from an audiologist's perspective in working with patients who have Meniere's disease where there is a strong hearing component, is that it fluctuates. And there are good days and bad days and days in between. And really trying to uh program devices. And uh let's let's segue that a little bit into when was it the first time that you started wearing a hearing aid or hearing aids? Well, uh, I was contacted by Starkey.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Trying to think of it was either 2018 or 2019. And um uh and then I that I was fitted with my first hearing aids. And um, you know it was a little bit of an adjustment period, but you gotta you gotta realize that I was in this I was in the place where I couldn't hear. So now suddenly I can hear. So it yeah, it takes adjustment, it sounds different, but I I depend on my hearing aids. Without my hearing aids, I'm virtually deaf.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah, I mean you just have to adapt. You mentioned in January of 2018 when you, I think we were in Dallas uh for an event, and that's when you first noticed that that left ear really dropped out.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

And um and then that was that was I was you know, I was like cut, I mean, I was bedridden for I mean, I was so depressed. I thought I couldn't sing, and I thought, oh my God, you know, this is the end of the world. And I I I literally I was so depressed. I stayed in bed for months almost. My kids finally, you know, got me, got me going again. But at a certain point, what are you gonna do? You know, you gotta you gotta move on.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah, you gotta get up and get out. But I'm I'm glad that you're doing well um with amplification now, despite this fluctuation of hearing loss uh that you have.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

And uh and the only thing I miss, honestly, is music. I miss and and not only do I miss playing and singing music, but I can't even enjoy music. You know, when I when I'm home and I'm cooking, I always have great music going. And I uh, you know, I I mean I'm I'm I'm first of all a fan of music, but uh so that that part is is gone for me. But um, you know, I have to remind myself there's a lot of people out there who are a lot worse off than I am.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

So yeah, and I wouldn't be so quick to say it's gone. We're gonna continue to work on those areas, and it won't sound like it did with normal hearing, but one of the challenges, as you said, with music is it's a lot more sophisticated and a lot harder. Uh the nuance of it is a lot more than with speech. I mean, with speech, it's a goal to understand the speech either in quiet or noisy environments. With with music, you have so much more of the frequency range, as you mentioned, and also the dynamics of sound. Uh and then in your case, because of the menures, you have additional distortion that is added. And really, there's not a lot that can be done to reduce or eliminate that distortion, except keeping the level lower in uh amplitude so that you don't overload the ear, uh, as is frequently the case with menures. So we're not going to give up on that, though. No, level is the devil, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

And and and Dr. Stephen Rausch, um, when I told him my whole story, and uh he said to me, he said, uh, well, I suspect because your right ear is actually, we call you, even though you don't have much hearing in your right ear, we call it serviceable because you still have some in your right ear. He says, I suspect that your left ear will find a level like your right ear that's crappy, but it'll be a level. And he says, and with hearing aids, you'll be able to exist and and do almost almost everything you could do before. The only trouble is you're a musician. So the only thing you're really gonna lose is music. Yeah. And right, that's exactly what's happened to me. He told me that three years ago, and that's exactly what's happened.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Well, and in my clinical career, uh, musicians have been some of the most rewarding, but also some of the more challenging patients because they know what they want to hear, and yet uh with damage that occurs in this the sensory damage that occurs with Meniere's disease, um, we can't get that clarity uh that you remember uh from your passion. And uh and my understanding is that since January of 2018, you haven't performed again uh left, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:33

I I I got I my when I when my my originally my left ear was fluctuating quite dramatically from uh six to two. And when I was a six, I could I actually assembled my rhythm section to do see if we could play a quiet, sort of unplugged with brushes. And in fact, I could hear pitch, and we did we had a nice little rehearsal, and I thought, oh, maybe that there's some hope. But like a week later, my left ear crashed again, and now it's uh you know, it hasn't been that good since. So I don't know. I I you know, I'm not giving up, obviously. And and uh, but but the the challenge is not only can you perform or can you play some, but is it fun? You know, I mean, if it's if it's gonna be a struggle, well, you know, what's why bother? I mean, you know, uh the wonderful thing about music is that when you're playing and singing music and you're in the pocket, it begins to play and sing itself for you. You it's it's a wave that you ride, and it's the most wonderful, exhilarating feeling in the whole world. But if you're struggling to hear, and so it's it's just not the same thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

It's almost as if you're in it, you're you're playing in another language. Like when you go to a place where you don't know the language, you're having to struggle with that that layer in between what it feels like when you're in the groove.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

And and I do the same thing sometimes, just hearing when my hearing's really bad. You know, you just you're struggling to hear what. People to understand what people are saying. And it's work. It's not fun. You know, you just because it's the comprehension that's hard. I can hear somebody talking, but if it's Shaquille O'Neal, all I hear is such a low voice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, I can imagine with some of those reverberant voices like Shaquille O'Neal's that you mentioned, uh makes it especially difficult to pick up and uh and pick up that resonance. So when you were fitted in like 2018-2019, you were fitted for both ears. And do you wear your hearing aids uh in both ears all the time, or are there times when you wear just one or the other? No, I wear them both all the time.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

I mean, yeah, I mean I I take them out to go to take a shower. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

I mean, I have I have to have them in both of them all the time. Excellent. And and we know that not only for speech understanding, but also for the ability to locate sounds, that spatial awareness that we refer to. If you just wore one, you would be able to tell that a sound was present, but not locate where it was. And so that's really the benefit. As long as it's serviceable, as you mentioned, uh on both sides, and we can provide amplification, you're gonna be able to tell the source of the sound as well as be able to detect it better if you're wearing two. So uh that's great that you always wear the two.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Well, honestly, the first thing I would the first thing I recommend to anybody with hearing loss is hearing aids, Starky hearing aids. Um because and they take a bit of getting used to because it's they sound you you stuff's gonna sound a little different, but but you but you can get used to it, and when you do, it's uh you can't live without them because you can it's it's way easier to hear things and um you know they just make life a lot better.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Well, thank you for saying that. And uh, and like I said, we're not gonna give up on uh on assisting you with music as well. Um and and and it is often the case that people still have stigma associated with hearing loss and using hearing aids. And did you find when you began in 2018-2019 to wear hearing aids that um, you know, you noticed that people observing you were wearing them, or did it did you care? I mean, I think, you know, our parents, uh my parents were more stigmatized by hearing loss and hearing aids. I just want to hear. And so it doesn't matter to me if someone knows that I've got a device on, and now the ones that connect to smartphones, um, sort of uh it's really the performance and the benefit that I'm going after, not whether someone sees that I'm wearing hearing aids.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Well, that that's old school. Everybody used to worry about how they look. Nowadays, if you don't have two earbuds in your ear, you're not cool. I mean, look at all the kids today, they're all running around with earbuds. If you don't have something in your ear, you're not cool. I've never ever worried about any first of all, and people don't notice, oddly enough. I mean, I I don't care whether they do or not, but um, you know, I I guess if you're worried about whether people see them or not, then most people don't. And I have molds, which are should be very visible, but people don't notice.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, there was one of the advocacy advocacy groups for people with hearing loss that said, your hearing loss is more conspicuous than your hearing aids. And and and I think the way that you mentioned it, you know, everyone's got stuff in their ears now, and we're trying to make hearing aids cool uh by enabling them to be directly connected to smartphones so that you can stream podcasts like this, uh, phone calls, audio, audio books, et cetera, um, and anytime you want. And that connectivity is a large part of the way that we've been on a journey to move hearing aids from single purpose into multi-purpose, multi-function ones. And I'm glad to hear that you're finding the benefits of that and using them. And really, as well, for me, it's a dream come true to have people say, I don't care if people see that I'm wearing hearing aids as long as I'm getting the benefits from them.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

I I that's exactly the way I feel, but I I I've never I never cared anyway. Uh but um yeah, uh I uh the the benefits are what we're after for sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

And and that's the thing I wanted to say was I know that you're a huge uh sports fan. Uh you had an album with Huey Lewis in the news called Sports. Uh and I know you're a baseball fan, you're a Big Giants fan, you're a 49er fan. I won't hold that against you being a Packer fan. Um, but one of the ways I think that you've really been able to appreciate some of the benefits, but also probably continue to have some suggestions is using an accessory that enables uh the direct stream to come from the TV to your instruments. Talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

Well, that you know, that that's uh needed. The table mic plugs into a digital audio splitter that comes out of the TV, and then the table mic broadcasts to my hearing aids. And it and it's really the only way I I can hear sports. Sports, you know, they the sound they want it to sound exciting, so they have the lot of crowd noise, and and the crowd noise is just to me, so I can't hear what they're saying with so you know I gotta have the hearing aids.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Yeah, and one of the things the table mic we talked about is a Bluetooth accessory that enables you back, and and I don't know that you've had the opportunity, you have people to your home, I know, for dinners, but have you had the opportunity to use the table mic in a restaurant? Because we're still coming out of COVID, and and I don't know how often you find yourself in those challenging listening environments where there's background noise and using that wireless accessory.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

I'll tell you what the table mic works great for is just to plug it into uh um say a computer or a on your when I was on T when I'm on uh on the airplane, I take my table mic and plug it into the the TV screen and then it broadcasts directly to my hearing aids. And that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Excellent. Well, you know, and again, uh you you point to we have the technology, and I like to say that the table mic, like other Bluetooth accessories, really democratizes the the use of these accessories when hearing aids alone are not enough. And the signal-to-noise benefits for speech are considerable, but as you say, the user experience has to be straightforward. And for that connection to the screen on an airplane or uh on a computer to be able to do a conference call like this and a podcast like this really enables when hearing aids alone are not enough, but we need to continue to work, especially with those individuals who really struggle in background noise, like you do with the menires, to be able to take that benefit and get the use, the the ease of use. And so we'll we'll take that feedback and uh and continue to work on optimizing the user experience. So um, so you've been uh a fan of the who's your favorite 49er? I know you were you were you're pretty good buds with uh Joe Montana from from the old days.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, I'm still good friends with Joe, but uh you know I I knew him pretty much a lot of them, and then we we kind of came up together, and uh but like cart was a really great friend of mine who passed away here a couple years ago, was a was one of a special guy, just a great guy. And um, but yeah, and uh I still stay in touch with Joe and Ronnie Lott, and you know, and Eddie DeBardo has been such a great owner. He he still assembles the teams every now and again, and we all still get together and reminisce. And you know, Eddie's Eddie's been great to everybody, and it's it's still like a family, the the 49ers. And um, you know, those it was it was great times, great times.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yep, and uh and and I know uh you've uh sang the national anthem numerous times at some of the sporting events too, and some of those still give me chills when I go and I look for the YouTube video. We've done we've done a lot of anthems, lots of anthems. So um one thing that I uh you know lately there's been uh a focus on um movies and TV shows that focus on uh and address really a person's journey with hearing loss. Have you seen uh the sound of metal movie that talks about the the musician who suddenly loses his hearing? Have you seen that one? I have not.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

I I have seen have you seen uh uh Moonlight Sonata, um uh what is it, of in deafness, um a movement in deafness?

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yep. It's a nice one too. Sure have. And and even a quiet place kind of has a hearing theme to it, if you will, a device that sort of doesn't exist but sort of bridges between hearing aids and cochlear implants. But for me, it it's interesting because my whole career I've focused on sort of saying, gosh, I wish we'd raise awareness for the importance of hearing as a health condition that connects all of us together. And it's certainly at Starkey, that's our central mission that our founder, Bill Austin, really started. And you've had the opportunity to engage with him many times on this. But uh it's nice in a way to see hearing uh uh enter the vernacular of the discussion now uh in society and and the importance of it. Probably even during COVID, we've uh realized uh the importance of hearing to connect to people, whether it's on a on a podcast like this or face-to-face, and depriving that social interaction really led to a lot of loneliness and isolation for a lot of people. And I'm glad we're coming out of it now. That's that's certainly true. I mean, you don't have to tell me about the importance of hearing. No. So um of your heroes, uh, and uh you mentioned your dad and the importance that he had. You mentioned some of the sporting uh uh colleagues and friends that you've had over the over your life. Who's been most influential? To me, who's been most influential?

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Well, um wow. Uh the uh the I'm uh the several people, right? But one of them is Philip Linnet, the the lead singer and founder of the band called Tin Lizzie. Yeah. We opened for them in England. He's so much about music, uh, about the the running of a band, about being a band leader. That's what he taught me. Not so much the music, but how to how to how to manage a band and how to treat, you know, how to deal with the press and how to deal with the crew and how to deal with promoters and how to keep and all this stuff. He I just learned so much and fans and all that. Uh Philip was an amazing rock star. He was like, he was just an amazing guy and a great performer, and he was a mentor for me. And uh probably had the largest influence on me career-wise, of anybody.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, and they didn't their their music was not half bad either. I I did enjoy Thin Lizzie as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

The boys are back in the boys are back in.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Absolutely. That's the one I was thinking of. Um now it's interesting you say because you know, people will say, Well, that that guy's a rock star. And uh for me, having been around because I'm a drummer, I hang around with musicians. Um, the the notion of someone being a rock star isn't giving maybe sometimes it might be giving an amazing performance, but it's really uh when you look at all of the gigs that you've done, uh, and then you go out and some poor schlub like me has saved a few bucks to come to one of your concerts and to make it feel like when you're performing the power of love or any of your other hits, the very first time uh that I'm hearing it is probably the thousandth or ten thousandth time that you've performed it. That to me is a rock star, someone that can bring that energy, and you always have in in the concerts that I've heard you.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Well, yeah, I mean, uh, you know, it it England, it's it Britain is interesting because in Britain they really do treat their pop stars as a proper profession. You know, here in here in America, it's kind of like a uh, I don't know, it's it's not a not a not a not a realistic profession, but in Britain, it really is. And and the reason is because they have a monarchy in Britain. And what what is a monarch, you know, what is king and queen but rock stars? I mean, and and so they understand the the role of a rock star in a world of to take to escape, get to alleviate people's problems, to make them feel better about themselves, and so on. And so it it's it's it's quite an honorable profession in Britain, and um, and I think not not so much here. So uh I learned all that Philip with Philip in England when I lived in England for two years.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

You know, well thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Um and it's interesting to note that Britain uh really only produces something like 11% of the world's market in terms of music, but when you look at super bands, what they're all over 60, 70 percent of them are British. Yeah, they're all you know, the Who, the all of that.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

Oh, and that little band called the Beatles, too. And so uh uh yeah, I I guess I've heard of them. Uh that they might have a future too. But no, you're right. When you think of rock and roll history, a lot of uh you migrate, and in every era, uh the Brits have been influential, whether it was in punk or whether it was in rock and roll.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Because it's not just about it's not just about music, it's about identifying with somebody. And what they are is they're rock stars, they're and they understand that. And it's it's it's it's quite a quite a uh noble profession in Britain. Yeah, and I think about the link to the monarchy, which is really, as you said, a rock star.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

So uh thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

What is you know Prince Philip but a rock star? No doubt. He doesn't even need a guitar.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Nope, and uh and he's got the wardrobe already, so yeah. And they do that, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

They do pomp and circumstance, Britain. Absolutely, it's all performance, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

I got it. Um, okay, so we're drawn to an end of our time, and uh, we're also coming to the end of 2021. Um, what sorts of things we've been, you know, in in the COVID-19 pandemic, but there's uh I know that you continue to um uh make mu uh be involved. You've been involved in uh I saw uh blacklist, you were uh uh uh a couple months ago. What other projects that you have coming up and what sorts of uh things are you reflecting on as this year comes to a close?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

Uh well we have uh we have a musical called A Heart of Rock and Roll that we're very proud of that's we put up in San Diego last year and sold it out and got great reviews and everything. So we're trying to bring it to Broadway, which is uh you know tough because it's there's only so many theaters and so on. But we're in line and and we've we've uh we've um uh thrown in, partnered up with a uh couple uh producer, Hunter Arnold and Tom Kurdahi, who produce a lot of the stuff on Broadway. So and they're pretty bullish on the thing. So we're hoping to get it to Broadway maybe 2023. I have another uh uh uh a TV show that I'm developing with Aaron Kaplan that's um in its infant stages yet, but but uh but we're we're hopeful for that. And um and back to the future, the musical is up in London. Uh and they're using they're you know uh using it playing a couple of our songs, featuring in fact where the last song and the and the and the encore and all that. So that's that's what we got going so far.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Wow. Well, yeah. Uh what are you doing in your spare time? I mean, that's that's amazing. I got other stuff going on. I'm writing a little bit too. So you are. You've been promising a novel for a while, but said you were just too busy. It seems like you're still busy now, but uh I'm still busy.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

It's it writing is amazing work, it takes so long and you gotta rewrite, and geez, it's brutal. I never realized it was so hard until I tried.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Yeah, I can understand that.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

But I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying it.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Is there a favorite, uh uh a favorite concert or performance uh during your career that stands out from all of the others?

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Uh you know, there's lots of them. We had some nice shows. We played Paris, we played the the the Coliseum in Paris, and Springsteen and Bob Geldoff came by the show and sat in. That was a big night. Uh, we've done uh, you know, we played three nights at Wembley in London. That was great. You know, so there's a there's a several of them, lots of them. Yeah, that's a good memory.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

Was We Are the World as memorable of an experience as it turned out to be? I mean, from my end, looking at the array of performers on that video, uh, it had to be remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

No question. It was amazing. I mean, imagine you you don't normally in in one's lifetime, you don't get to meet that those people, you know, for a second, let alone spend a whole evening with them and work with them, you know. And and there's a bond that's developed there, you know, that that's to this day is there. I mean, that if you were there like when we were those of us who were there, like you know, Kenny Loggins and me and Bruce and and uh uh you know, just everybody. I mean, there's a bond that we have because we were all there at that that evening. It was an amazing evening.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yeah, I can only imagine. And uh, well, uh I I can't tell you how much I appreciate your uh talking to us today about uh your musical career, your remarkable musical career, uh, your hearing loss and the use of hearing aids, and thanks for your kind words about how Starkey Hearing Aids have been benefiting you. We'll continue to work on that. I want to just, you know, I talked to you about, you know, I first met you in 2001 uh when you came to San Diego and spoke at our convention, gave me a harmonica. Uh in August, August 27th of 2001, you were at the Minnesota State Fair and were kind enough to give me tickets. Uh it was one of my first dates with my wife at that time. And uh and we came back uh stage and you you uh invited us to the after party, but it was a Monday night, uh, which for me was a school night, so I had to drive back down to Rochester at that time, and I was still working at Mayo Clinic. Um so I guess maybe, you know, my wife still married me given that I passed up the opportunity to go to an after party for a Huey Lewis concert. Uh and then maybe it was hip to be square a little bit in that respect that I had to get back home and go back to work that night. But thanks for setting me on a trajectory where I I convinced this woman to marry me, but uh but it was in no small part due to that first or early date in our dating experience. Well, that's good. I'll take I'll take complete credit for that. You can have it. Well with that, Huey, I think um, you know, uh you've been very generous with your time, and uh and I can't tell you how uh appreciative I have um of that. And uh uh I wish you all of the success. I look forward to seeing you again soon, and we'll work on tweaking those devices for the good and bad days and working on to continue to refine our accessories so that you can enjoy sports. And I'm I'm not uh ruling out the possibility we're gonna get some some improved sound quality for music uh in the future, even with the mener's disease. I would love that. I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. And to our listeners, thanks for listening to this episode of Sound Bites. Uh, if you enjoyed this conversation, uh please rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform. You can hit subscribe and be sure you don't miss every episode. If you have any suggestions for the future, uh please hit us with that too, because as they say, we're all ears. So thanks for listening, and we'll hear you next time.