Huey Lewis Was Booed Every Night on Tour With '70s Rock Band-So He Came Up With a Brilliant Trick
Huey Lewis has nothing but love for the Doobie Brothers. In a post shared to the official Huey Lewis and the News Facebook page, the singer, 76, recalled his early days as an opening act for the ‘70s rock legends-and how they supported him through some tough times.
"When we first opened for the Doobie Brothers, we got booed," Lewis was quoted as saying in the post. "Our first show, I think we had like 10 or 11 songs. As soon as a song would end, the boos would start. We learned to launch right into the next song immediately, so we didn't give the crowd a chance to boo."
"After that first show, we were despondent, "Lewis continued. "It was a tough reaction. I said, ‘Man, that's terrible.' The Doobie Brothers said, "Are you kidding? You did a lot better than (the previous opening band). They didn't even get through the whole set. I was like, ‘Okay, well, at least we got all 10 songs in.' We must have done 30 dates with them, and we were booed every single night."
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The Doobie Brothers knew Huey Lewis and his band had something special. In an interview posted on Huey Lewis' YouTube page, Doobie Brothers guitarist Patrick Simmons looked back on his band's early support of the newcomers.
"I think it was just obvious how great a band they were," he recalled. "You didn't have to be, you know, they didn't have to have any hit records for us to know that they were super talented musicians and, you know, they had great songs. That first record, I don't know if they even had a hit off that very first record, but we knew they were a great band. just you know it was there easy to see."
"But I gotta say, I don't think he was, they weren't booed every night," Simmons laughed.
Huey Lewis and the News' first major trek on the road was opening for The Doobie Brothers' One Step Closer to Home Tour in 1980.
In a 2003 interview published by Pop Culture Classics, Lewis recalled being invited by Doobie Brothers guitarist John McFee to open for the band after previously working with him.
"McFee and I were in a band called Clover before that, and they were nice enough to give us the opening slot on their tour," Lewis shared. "We were fortunate. They were so great to us. It really could have been ugly."
Lewis then revealed that he quickly figured out how to avoid getting booed off stage.
"We thought we were doing good, when we got through 10 songs without anybody booing us off the stage," he said. "The word was that The Fabulous Thunderbirds had opened their last tour and they hadn't made it through their whole set. So our objective was to actually make it through all 10 songs. We learned how to go from song to song with no dead time, because dead time was where the boos would start."
By the mid-1980s, Huey Lewis and the News became stars in their own right. Their 1983 album Sports featured several MTV-ready hits, and in 1985 their song "The Power of Love" was featured in the blockbuster movie Back to the Future.
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This story was originally published July 15, 2026 at 9:57 AM.