Credit: Julio Bedoya

Credit: Julio BedoyaThe guests have been revealed for the initial episodes of the AXS TV series The Big Interview‘s eighth season, and as usual, host Dan Rather will chat with a variety of well-known music artists.

Among the pop and rock stars appearing on the show this season are Huey Lewis, Blondie‘s Debbie Harry, ex-Eagles guitarist Don Felder, The Band‘s Robbie Robertson, Jethro Tull‘s Ian Anderson and Don McLean.

Lewis, whose recent struggles with a hearing disorder has forced him to stop performing, will appear on the season premiere, airing Wednesday, April 15, at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT.

In a preview clip, Huey reveals how advice from his father and mother led to him becoming a professional musician.

The singer explains that as he was preparing to go to college — he’d been accepted to Cornell — his dad told him, “As far as I’m concerned, your decisions are all your own…you can do anything you want to do. But there’s one more thing I want to make you do…Don’t go to college. Not yet…Take a year off and bum around Europe.”

Huey says he told his mom what his dad said, and her response was, “That’s the first good decision your old man ever made.” He also notes that he’d started playing harmonica by that time, and recalls that his mother gave him Bob Dylan‘s first record, while saying, ‘Check this out…The poets love this guy,'”

Huey says he proceeded to hitchhike across the country, then flew to Europe and bummed around, busking in such places as Rome, Paris, Marrakesh, Casablanca and Greece.

Asked by Rather what he learned from the experience, Lewis said, “I learned I [wanted] to be a musician.”

Here’s the confirmed schedule for the upcoming episodes of The Big Interview:

4/15 — Huey Lewis
4/22 — Debbie Harry
4/29 — Don Felder
5/6 — Robbie Robertson
5/13 — Ian Anderson
5/20 — Don McLean

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