SEE Magazine
Issue #375: February 08, 2001
Copyright © 2001. All Rights Reserved

Music Preview BY SCOTT LINGLEY Styx with Sas Jordon Sunday, Feb. 11 at the Shaw Conference Centre You think Mr. Roboto, the inane 1983 Styx song, is an annoying experience? For James Young, guitarist and vocalist for the ’70s hitmeisters, it was a living nightmare and almost the end of the road for a band that continues to endure almost 20 years on. "I think the Kilroy was Here album – Mr. Roboto – that whole thing really broke up the band in my judgment," Young says." None of us really wanted to do it, except for (vocalist) Dennis (DeYoung). It should have been a solo project for him, but he never would have had the capital to mount the kind of production he wanted and he used the band as a vehicle to make that happen and to catapult himself in a new direction. That’s what ruined everything. We didn’t work together for another seven years after that and we learned to hate each other. Familiarity bred a lot of contempt." So Young split off to pursue some interests in film and artist management, Tommy Shaw slogged it out solo, then joined forces with Ted Nugent to form Damn Yankees, and DeYoung applied his distinctive keening nasality to solo projects and musical theatre. They patched up their differences in 1996 for a successful reunion tour, which Young, Shaw and Chuck Panozzo saw as an opportunity to revivify the fortunes of a band that dominated rock radio for a good stretch of the ’70s and early ’80s with songs like Come Sail Away, Renegade, Too Much Time on My Hands and the gajillion-selling slushball, Babe. Unfortunately, DeYoung did not feel the same way. Despite the reunion tour and a new album with the surviving original lineup (drummer John Panozzo died in 1996), there has been subsequent unpleasantness. "At the current moment, Dennis DeYoung is suing Tommy and myself and Chuck Panozzo in federal court in Chicago and there’s an ongoing lawsuit regarding this, the nature of it being use of the name Styx," says Young "But in America, as in Canada, the majority rules – we’ve got three votes, he’s got one – and this is what we want to do. And it’s not like we haven’t given him every chance in the world to do the right thing. But all those years of inactivity, they were all because of him, because he’s doing something else or he doesn’t want to leave the house and what’s really required for us is to get out there and actively tour. And Dennis, he’s not really happy when he’s away from his house, from his own home studio, and he wants to write for the musical theatre. He just doesn’t want us out being Styx without him…" But be Styx without him they will be, with the help of Canadian pop icon Lawrence Gowan, who has taken DeYoung’s seat at the keys and whose breakthrough hit Criminal Mind has been added to the Styx repertoire. Young seems satisfied with the substitution. "Most everyone who’s come to see the band has said the band is better than it’s ever been. Lawrence is a more skilled keyboard player than Dennis, he’s as charismatic a performer in a different way than Dennis, Tommy and I are still here being ourselves . . . What we have is an incredible lineup of performers with a number of the original guys." But, hey, the past is past and while Styx spends a goodly amount of their time on stage pleasing fans with renditions of their time-tested classics, Young and company have their sights fixed on a brighter future. "In a creative sense, I think our job is to go out and scent-mark the planet as we continue to build critical mass for what is hopefully going to be our Santana moment." Young doesn’t foresee a collaboration with Everlast or that matchbox twenty guy any time soon, but Styx wouldn’t mind a few Grammies and . . . "Going from selling half a million records to selling 10-million records. I mean really, a rekindling of a career as a recording act. Because we continue to sell many, many, many greatest hits records, but our new releases in recent history are selling more in the quarter-million range . . . We have to come up with the right thing that is true enough to who we are and what we do and what we are known for, but resonates enough with young people that we get our Santana moment. It may never come, but the process of trying to get there has been an incredible joy for me."

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |