LEWIS: HE’S NOT IN THE ARMY NOW

In a span of a little more than one year in 1965-66, three groups released seven consecutive Top 10 singles. One of them was the Beatles, one was the Rolling Stones, and the other was Gary Lewis & the Playboys.

The Beatles and Stones, of course, went on to have a few more hits, but that was about it for Lewis, the eldest son of comedian Jerry Lewis. It wasn’t artistic burnout or changing public taste that brought Lewis’ hit string to an abrupt end. It was something much more concrete.

“Uncle Sam,” Lewis, 38, recalled ruefully during an interview this week. Like Elvis before him, Lewis was drafted, and although he says he tried to get an exemption, it wasn’t in the cards.

“The Army said if I stayed out there’d be a hell of a ruckus,” said Lewis, who plays his first L.A. show since the ‘60s on the “Happy Together” nostalgia package tonight at the Beverly Theatre. “They said that because of all the press, they had to take me.”

So Lewis became one of the few rock ‘n’ rollers to go to Vietnam, even if he did spend his entire two months there in a holding unit at the Saigon airport before serving the rest of his two-year hitch in South Korea. Lewis says he was bitter, “but I learned to adapt. I had to put it in the background because there was no time to think about it.”

The success that the Army brought to an end had started in January, 1965, with “This Diamond Ring,” a song (co-written by Al Kooper) that had been turned down by Bobby Vee. Lewis had started playing drums at age 5--his father engaged Buddy Rich to teach him the fundamentals--but it wasn’t until the Beatles came along that he turned his attention completely to music.

Lewis formed the Playboys in ‘63, and the group started out playing fraternity parties. Producer Snuff Garrett spotted the band during a Disneyland engagement and signed them to Liberty Records, which released all their Garrett-produced, Leon Russell-arranged hits--including two Lewis compositions, “Everybody Loves a Clown” and “She’s Just My Style.”

After leaving the Army, Lewis toured until 1971. “All of a sudden,” he recalled, “the market changed radically. There was no market for Gary Lewis & the Playboys. Rather than do a style of music I didn’t feel comfortable with, I thought I would not do anything.”

Instead of performing, Lewis opened Gary’s, a music store in Studio City where he gave guitar and drum lessons. After selling the store in the late ‘70s, Lewis moved to Tulsa, where he formed a band called Medicine and developed a drug habit.

“I was using pills--’downs.’ I don’t know what happened. I just came out if it,” Lewis said. “I did have to go into the hospital for three weeks, but that was it.

“It was a terrible period, I admit it. I went to the doctor with a pain in my side one day, and he said, ‘Your eyes are yellow, you’d better go into the hospital right now.’ ”

None of Lewis’ attempts to establish himself with new material--which he describes as “kind of like something you’d hear from Edgar Winter”--worked.

“My mind wasn’t where it should have been,” Lewis admitted. “And people wouldn’t accept the new material. If Gary Lewis was up on stage the people wanted to hear the hits they remembered.”

So while he hopes for a record deal and continues to solicit new songs in search of a hit, Lewis is happy to be working hard on the successful “Happy Together” tour, whose current edition (also featuring the Turtles, the Buckinghams and the Grass Roots) started in April and continues through November.

“For one thing,” noted Lewis, who lives with his second wife in the countryside between Cleveland and Akron, “the press is unbelievable. My name is in the paper, getting back in circulation--that’s one thing that has to happen.”

And does it pay the bills?

“Well, I mean, it’s a lot better than that,” Lewis answered with a trace of indignation. “Thankfully, the bills are paid. This tour is going to buy my house.”