American Psycho (55 page)

The rest of the album whizzes by flawlessly—side two opens with their most searing statement yet: “Walking on a Thin Line,” and no one, not even Bruce Springsteen, has written as devastatingly about the plight of the Vietnam vet in modern society. This song, though written by outsiders, shows a social awareness that was new to the band and proved to anyone who ever doubted it that the band, apart from its blues background, had a heart. And again in “Finally Found a Home” the band proclaims its newfound sophistication with this paean to growing up. And though at the same time it’s about shedding their rebel image, it’s also about how they “found themselves” in the passion and energy of rock ’n’ roll. In fact the song works on so many levels it’s almost too complex for the album to carry, though it never loses its beat and it still has Sean Hopper’s ringing keyboards, which make it danceable. “If This Is It” is the album’s one ballad, but it’s not downbeat. It’s a plea for a lover to tell another lover if they want to carry on with the relationship, and the way Huey sings it (arguably the most superb vocal on the album), it becomes instilled with hope. Again, this song—as with the rest of the album—isn’t about chasing or longing after girls, it’s about dealing with relationships. “Crack Me Up” is the album’s only hint at a throwback to the band’s New Wave days and it’s minor but amusing, though its anti-drinking, antidrug, pro-growing-up statement isn’t.

And as a lovely ending to an altogether remarkable album, the band does a version of “Honky Tonk Blues” (another song written by someone not in the band, named Hank Williams), and even though it’s a very different type of song, you can feel its presence throughout the rest of the album. For all its professional sheen, the album has the integrity of honky-tonk blues. (Aside: During this period Huey also recorded two songs for the movie
Back to the Future
, which both went Number One, “The Power of Love” and “Back in Time,” delightful extras, not footnotes, in what has been shaping up into a legendary career.) What to say to
Sports
dissenters in the long run? Nine million people can’t be wrong.

Fore!
(Chrysalis; 1986) is essentially a continuation of the
Sports
album but with an even more professional sheen. This is the record where the guys don’t need to prove they’ve grown up and that they’ve accepted rock ’n’ roll, because in the three-year transition between
Sports
and
Fore!
they already
had.
(In fact three of them are wearing suits on the cover of the record.) It opens with a blaze of fire, “Jacob’s Ladder,” which is essentially a song about struggle and overcoming compromise, a fitting reminder of what Huey and the News represents, and with the exception of “Hip to Be Square” it’s the best song on the album (though it wasn’t written by anyone in the band). This is followed by the sweetly good-natured “Stuck with You,” a lightweight paean to relationships and marriage. In fact most of the love songs on the album are about sustained relationships, unlike the early albums, where the concerns were about either lusting after girls and not getting them or getting burned in the process. On
Fore!
the songs are about guys who are in control (who have the girls) and now have to deal with them. This new dimension in the News gives the record an added oomph and they seem more content and satisfied, less urgent, and this makes for their most pleasingly crafted record to date. But also for every “Doing It All for My Baby” (a delightful ode about monogamy and satisfaction) there’s a barn-burning blues scorcher number like “Whole Lotta Lovin’,” and side one (or, on the CD, song number five) ends with the masterpiece “Hip to Be Square” (which, ironically, is accompanied by the band’s only bad video), the key song on
Fore!
, which is a rollicking ode to conformity that’s so catchy most people probably don’t even listen to the lines, but with Chris Hayes blasting guitar and the terrific keyboard playing—who cares? And it’s not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends—it’s also a personal statement about the band itself, though of what I’m not quite sure.

If the second part of
Fore!
doesn’t have the intensity of the first, there are some real gems that are actually quite complicated. “I Know What I Like” is a song that Huey would never have sung six years back—a blunt declaration of independence—while the carefully placed “I Never Walk Alone,” which follows, actually complements the song and explains it in broader terms (it also has a great organ solo and except for “Hip
to Be Square” has Huey’s strongest vocals). “Forest for the Trees” is an upbeat antisuicide tract, and though its title might seem like a cliché, Huey and the band have a way of energizing clichés and making them originals wholly their own. The nifty a cappella “Naturally” evokes an innocent time while showcasing the band’s vocal harmonies (if you didn’t know better you’d think it was the Beach Boys coming out of your CD player), and even if it’s essentially a throwaway, a trifle of sorts, the album ends on a majestic note with “Simple as That,” a blue-collar ballad that sounds not a note of resignation but one of hope, and its complex message (it wasn’t written by anyone in the band) of survival leads the way to their next album,
Small World
, where they take on global issues.
Fore!
might not be the masterpiece
Sports
is (what could be?), but in its own way it’s just as satisfying and the mellower, gentler Huey of ’86 is just as happening.

Small World
(Chrysalis; 1988) is the most ambitious, artistically satisfying record yet produced by Huey Lewis and the News. The Angry Young Man has definitely been replaced by a smoothly professional musician and even though Huey has only really mastered one instrument (the harmonica), its majestic Dylanesque sounds give
Small World
a grandeur few artists have reached. It’s an obvious transition and their first album that tries to make thematic sense—in fact Huey takes on one of the biggest subjects of all: the importance of global communication. It’s no wonder four out of the album’s ten songs have the word “world” in their titles and that for the first time there’s not only one but
three
instrumentals.

The CD gets off to a rousing start with the Lewis/Hayes-penned “Small World (Part One),” which, along with its message of harmony, has a blistering solo by Hayes at its center. In “Old Antone’s” one can catch the zydeco influences that the band has picked up on touring around the country, and it gives it a Cajun flavor that is utterly unique. Bruce Hornsby plays the accordion wonderfully and the lyrics give you a sense of a true Bayou spirit. Again, on the hit single “Perfect World,” the Tower of Power horns are used to extraordinary effect. It’s also the best cut on the album (written by Alex Call, who isn’t in the band) and it ties up all the album’s themes—about accepting the
imperfections of this world but still learning to “
keep on dreamin’ of livin’ in a perfect world.
” Though the song is fast-paced pop it’s still moving in terms of its intentions and the band plays splendidly on it. Oddly this is followed by two instrumentals: the eerie African-influenced reggae dance track “Bobo Tempo” and the second part of “Small World.” But just because these tunes are wordless doesn’t mean the global message of communication is lost, and they don’t seem like filler or padding because of the implications of their thematic reprise; the band gets to show off its improvisational skills as well.

Side two opens smashingly with “Walking with the Kid,” the first Huey song to acknowledge the responsibilities of fatherhood. His voice sounds mature and even though we, as listeners, don’t find out until the last line that “the kid” (who we assume is a buddy) is actually his son, the maturity in Huey’s voice tips us off and it’s hard to believe that the man who once sang “Heart and Soul” and “Some of My Lies Are True” is singing
this.
The album’s big ballad, “World to Me,” is a dreamy pearl of a song, and though it’s about sticking together in a relationship, it also makes allusions to China and Alaska and Tennessee, carrying on the album’s “Small World” theme—and the band sounds really good on it. “Better Be True” is also a bit of a ballad, but it’s not a dreamy pearl and its lyrics aren’t really about sticking together in a relationship nor does it make allusions to China or Alaska and the band sounds really good on it.

“Give Me the Keys (And I’ll Drive You Crazy)” is a good-times blues rocker about (what else?) driving around, incorporating the album’s theme in a much more playful way than previous songs on the album did, and though lyrically it might seem impoverished, it’s still a sign that the new “serious” Lewis—that Huey the artist—hasn’t totally lost his frisky sense of humor. The album ends with “Slammin’,” which has no words and it’s just a lot of horns that quite frankly, if you turn it up really loud, can give you a fucking big headache and maybe even make you feel a little sick, though it might sound different on an album or on a cassette though I wouldn’t know anything about that. Anyway it set off something wicked in me that lasted for days. And you cannot dance to it very well.

It took something like a hundred people to put
Small World
together (counting all the extra musicians, drum technicians, accountants, lawyers—who are all thanked), but this actually adds to the CD’s theme of community and it doesn’t clutter the record—it makes it a more joyous experience. With this CD and the four previous ones behind it, Huey Lewis and the News prove that if this really
is
a small world, then these guys are the
best
American band of the 1980s on this or any other continent—and it has with it Huey Lewis, a vocalist, musician and writer who just can’t be topped.

I’m in Courtney’s bed. Luis is in Atlanta. Courtney shivers, presses against me, relaxes. I roll off her onto my back, landing on something hard and covered with fur. I reach under myself to find a stuffed black cat with blue jewels for eyes that I think I spotted at F.A.O. Schwarz when I was doing some early Christmas shopping. I’m at a loss as to what to say, so I stammer, “Tiffany lamps … are making a comeback.” I can barely see her face in the darkness but hear the sigh, painful and low, the sound of a prescription bottle snapping open, her body shifting in the bed. I drop the cat on the floor, get up, take a shower. On
The Patty Winters Show
this morning the topic was Beautiful Teenage Lesbians, which I found so erotic I had to stay home, miss a meeting, jerk off twice. Aimless, I spent an inordinate amount of the day at Sotheby’s, bored and confused. Last night, dinner with Jeanette at Deck Chairs, she seemed tired and ordered little. We split a pizza that cost ninety dollars. After toweling my hair dry I put on a Ralph Lauren robe and walk back into the bedroom, start to dress. Courtney is smoking a cigarette, watching
Late Night with David Letterman
, the sound turned down low.

“Will you call me before Thanksgiving?” she asks.

“Maybe.” I button up the front of my shirt, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

“What are you doing?” she asks, speaking slowly.

My response is predictably cool. “Dinner at the River Café. Afterwards Au Bar, maybe.”

“That’s nice,” she murmurs.

“You and … Luis?” I ask.

“We were supposed to have dinner at Tad and Maura’s,” she sighs. “But I don’t think we’re going to anymore.”

“Why not?” I slip on my vest, black cashmere from Polo, thinking: I am really interested.

“Oh you know how Luis is about the Japanese,” she starts, her eyes already glazed over.

When she fails to continue I ask, annoyed, “You’re making sense. Go on.”

“Luis refused to play Trivial Pursuit at Tad and Maura’s last Sunday because they have an Akita.” She takes a drag off her cigarette.

“So, like …” I pause. “What happened?”

“We played at my place.”

“I never knew you smoked,” I say.

She smiles sadly but in a dumb way. “You never noticed.”

“Okay, I admit I’m embarrassed, but just a little.” I move over to the Marlian mirror that hangs above a Sottsass teakwood desk to make sure the knot in my Armani paisley tie isn’t crooked.

“Listen, Patrick,” she says, with effort. “Can we talk?”

“You look marvelous.” I sigh, turning my head, offering an airkiss. “There’s nothing to say. You’re going to marry Luis. Next week, no less.”

“Isn’t that special?” she asks sarcastically, but not in a frustrated way.

“Read my lips,” I say, turning back to the mirror. “You look marvelous.”

“Patrick?”

“Yes, Courtney?”

“If I don’t see you before Thanksgiving …” She stops, confused. “Have a nice one?”

I look at her for a moment before replying, tonelessly, “You too.”

She picks up the stuffed black cat, strokes its head. I step out
the door into the hallway, heading down it toward the kitchen.

“Patrick?” she calls softly from her bedroom.

I stop but don’t turn around. “Yes?”

“Nothing.”