To celebrate what an interesting week it's been here in the studio concerning music I thought I'd pull an old piece out of the vault celebrating one of my first musical heroes, Huey Lewis!I first got turned onto Huey Lewis around the Sports album when he really hit it big with songs like Heart of Rock and Roll, If This is It, and I Want a New Drug. In the years before the internet (sometime around the Paleozoic Period) finding out about new bands and new music wasn't as easy as it is today. We had to rely on radio, MTV videos (back when they played them...remember that), and word of mouth.
So, somehow, in that vast wasteland of not knowing what the hell was going on, Huey Lewis became my first favorite band. I found the two older albums he had done before Sports and somehow learned that he was in an earlier band called Clover. How I learned these things I can't remember. When everything is as close as the push of a button these days it's hard to remember how we learned about anything back then.
But, during his fourth album, Fore, I somehow learned he was playing a show in Maine. Excited I got tickets to the show, borrowed my parents car, and took my first girlfriend to my first concert ever. Being an outdoor concert, of course, it rained. And I got totally drenched. At one point a bunch of us huddled under a tarp as the music played. I stepped out from underneath the tarp for a second to get a better look and all of the collected water from the tarp came pouring down upon my head.
It was the best time ever.
So, during my second year of art school, when assigned to do a caricature of a rock star I, of course, chose Huey Lewis.
I think this was another of those earlier attempts to master the airbrush. It was on this piece that I learned that the airbrush paints we were given were opaque and and not translucent. It's why the skin color on Huey covers up all the ink line work. But, that's what art school is about. Making mistakes and learning from them.
So, thank you, Huey. You were a good first band to love!
5 comments:
Wasn't he the guy who sang "Power of Love" from Back to the Future ? (: o
That he was, Manu! And he was even actually in the movie. He was the guy with the bullhorn in the gym telling Marty McFly, "Sorry, but you're just too darn loud!"
I remember you doing this piece!! I did an awful Bruce Springsteen.
Rob, do you remember if there was a size requirement on these? Because the original I have of this is HUGE! Like 20"x30" huge...and when are you going to dig that Springsteen piece out?
ST-
It must have been part of the assignment to do it huge because mine was absurdly oversized, too.
A lot of my Kubert stuff has gone to the giant recycling pile in the sky, but I'll see if I can find that one.
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