July 10, 2026, 6:21 p.m. ET
For Huey Lewis, one of the hardest parts of living with Ménière’s disease isn’t the hearing loss itself, it’s losing music.
The 76-year-old rock star says he’s now “basically deaf” and can no longer enjoy what once defined his life and career.
“I can’t hear music. Music is not part of my life anymore, which is a hard pill to swallow,” Lewis told Michael Rosenbaum on the July 7 episode of the “Inside of You” podcast.
Lewis, who revealed in 2021 that he’d been diagnosed with an inner ear condition after years of debilitating vertigo attacks, said he hasn’t been able to hear properly for more than eight years. While a cochlear implant and hearing aid help him understand speech, he said they distort musical pitch, making it nearly impossible to enjoy music.
Huey Lewis says it’s ‘impossible’ to hear pitch
The Huey Lewis and the News frontman says he can’t groove like he used to, a detail he tries to “divorce” from his mind. But it’s hard, especially when he hears about pals playing gigs.
“I got to say, ‘God, I wish, I’d like to do that, you know. It was a lot of fun,'” Lewis added. “There are pangs and I can’t enjoy music, like when I cook or I have people over for dinner, I always used to play them music and I have a great collection of old big band stuff and old New Orleans jazz and I can’t. I don’t play it at all anymore.”
“Sometimes I still play it because I know it so well. It’s weird. And I can hear the beat. … So, I know what’s going on but I can’t, can’t enjoy it,” he added.
What is Ménière’s disease?
According to Harvard Health, Menière’s disease is a condition characterized by fluid buildup in the inner ear, causing damage to some of the delicate structures in the inner ear. Common symptoms include vertigo, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, ringing, buzzing or other noises, as well as hearing loss.
Lewis said he was diagnosed in the mid-1990s after years of suffering recurrent vertigo attacks. He publicly revealed the diagnosis in 2021.
How Huey Lewis found a new passion
Lewis, in the wake of his diagnosis, has found refuge in nature.
“I fish a lot, OK. I mean, I really do. And I love the fly fish and I love Mother Nature and I get out there by myself in a stream and I’m conducting nature with my fly rod and it’s just a wonderful thing. I love to do it and hearing [is] not required,” Lewis said.
He added: “And the thing that’s nice about it is, if I had hearing, I’d still be on the road, probably 75 to 100 shows. And I don’t miss that. … I miss the camaraderie of the fellas and the circus-like thing that it is. But man, I’ve been (fishing) so many great places and had so many great experiences and met all kinds of different people that I wouldn’t have met. So, I got to kind of look in the positive.”
