Former yogurt salesman Huey Lewis and the band he fronts, the News, are doing their best to make sure that the heart of rock 'n' is still beating. Sports, the News' third album, sold 6,000,000 copies, and The Power of Love, their song from the Steven Spielberg presentation Back to the Future, hit one number one soon after it was released. David and Victoria Sheff met with Lewis in his smallish London hotel room. They told us, "He's the only rock star who plays golf and occasionally punctuates a sentence with 'For fuck's sake.'"

Q 1

PLAYBOY: Since Sports was released two and a half years ago, it's been on the charts for well over 100 weeks. We keep hearing from people in the record business that it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Huey Lewis: That really is the secret. It had nothing to do with the record or the fact that we're a good band or the videos. It's just that I'm a nice guy.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Don't nice guys finish last?

Huey Lewis: I'm not that nice a guy. It really has been amazing. Heart and Soul, The Heart of Rock and Roll, I Want a New Drug and If This Is It all went to number six and stopped. Six happens to be my lucky number. The album was number one for six, seven days, until Bruce Springsteen knocked us off, and, boy, were we glad when he did--all that pressure. Much rather be number two or three, back where we belong. The record has refused to die, which is fine, though it's made it hard to make another record. Most groups put out a record a year. It's been three and a half years since we made Sports. It's a bit frustrating, but that's not the kind of thing you bitch about.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: Sports is a good album, but more than 100 weeks on the charts? To what do you attribute its massive success?

Huey Lewis: I think it's my golden voice. And the fact that I'm a nice guy. Next question?

Seriously, we are very fortunate, OK? There's a certain belief that if you are a serious musician, you have a chip on your shoulder. You don't have to. We don't take ourselves very seriously, but we do take the music seriously, and the two things are not mutually exclusive. And we also hit a nerve somehow. It wasn't a calculated thing, but because we were a real band from a real neighborhood--no gimmicks, just us--people could relate to us. We insisted on producing the records ourselves and having control: We conceived the videos ourselves, for the most part; we did the album cover ourselves, because we wanted literally as well as figuratively to stay out of Hollywood. I'm generalizing now--rather largely, but what the hell? Hollywood is out of touch with Cleveland, Tulsa, Memphis and everywhere else but Hollywood. People there don't have a clue. If somebody had told them, "We've got this little black man with his hair in a pompadour; he's going to wear purple lingerie and he's going to be huge," they would have said, "What, are you crazy ?" If they'd said, "We've got these six guys, see; they really don't look like much--just boy-next-door types--and they are going to be the next big thing," nobody would have bought that, either. We look like the boys next door. I'm talking about imagewise. We're not.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Want to tell us about I Want a New Drug?

Huey Lewis: A lot of people could relate to that song--for some strange reason. [Laughs] There is a tradition of songs with similar themes--You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me or I've Got You Under My Skin or "I get no kick from cocaine...I get a kick out of you." But it was new to this audience. I Want a New Drug is not about drugs. It's a Sixties song. And that's what we're proudest of, being children of the Sixties. It was a lot of fun to write. You could write a hundred million verses for it, but three is all that the law would allow.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: What was your reaction the first time you heard Ray Parker, Jr.'s, remarkably similar song from Ghostbusters?

Huey Lewis: I was fairly well shocked. The suit is over, thankfully, and one of the conditions of the settlement is that I can't talk about it. And, no, I didn't see the movie. I had to boycott it on principle. I understand it was great, though.