 |
| It was a bad idea. |
The Biggest Surprise: Styx was more business than band. According to Tommy Shaw, they rarely hung out.
The Most Famous Line-Up: Dennis DeYoung (keyboards/vox), James J. Y. Young (lead guitar), Tommy Shaw (more guitar), Chuck Panozzo (bass), and John Panozzo (drums)
What You Need to Know
Between 1972 and 1974, Styx put out four albums – Styx, Styx II, The Serpent Is Rising, and Man of Miracles (full disclosure, I skipped the last two) – none of which found traction, but Styx II is the album to keep the eye on. As it happened, Styx had secret fans at WLS, a Chicago radio station with the power to make things happen, and, two years after Styx II came out, a DJ named Jeff Davis gave the album the first boost it over had by playing DeYoung’s ode to his wife/childhood sweetheart, “Lady,” at the same time every day. That singular decision revived interest in Styx (the band) and Styx II (the album), and that started them on the path to stardom. “Lady” also had the effect of convincing DeYoung that he had the magic touch. As he tellingly put it in Behind the Music:
“I always described Styx as a democracy, of which I was the president. But there was always the houses of Congress to deal with.”
The Most Famous Line-Up: Dennis DeYoung (keyboards/vox), James J. Y. Young (lead guitar), Tommy Shaw (more guitar), Chuck Panozzo (bass), and John Panozzo (drums)
What You Need to Know
Between 1972 and 1974, Styx put out four albums – Styx, Styx II, The Serpent Is Rising, and Man of Miracles (full disclosure, I skipped the last two) – none of which found traction, but Styx II is the album to keep the eye on. As it happened, Styx had secret fans at WLS, a Chicago radio station with the power to make things happen, and, two years after Styx II came out, a DJ named Jeff Davis gave the album the first boost it over had by playing DeYoung’s ode to his wife/childhood sweetheart, “Lady,” at the same time every day. That singular decision revived interest in Styx (the band) and Styx II (the album), and that started them on the path to stardom. “Lady” also had the effect of convincing DeYoung that he had the magic touch. As he tellingly put it in Behind the Music:
“I always described Styx as a democracy, of which I was the president. But there was always the houses of Congress to deal with.”
With the band on the edge of fame, their label, A&M Records, made said “Congress” bigger by pushing for a more commercial sound and/or a new guitarist. Styx’s tour manager, Jim Vose, pointed them to Tommy Shaw, a songwriter in his own right, a choice that both added new dimensions to the band’s sound and sowed the seeds of its breakup. Styx didn’t get far on Equinox (1975, “Lorelei” and “Madame Suite Blue”), but the band (and Shaw) pulled all the elements together for Grand Illusion (1977, “Come Sail Away” and “Fooling Yourself (Angry Young Man),” by DeYoung and Shaw, respectively), while it looks like DeYoung threw Shaw the B-side of 1978’s Pieces of Eight with “Renegade” and “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights).” This started a record run of four straight multiple-platinum albums that carried through, significantly, to Paradise Theater (1981) and the crazy stack of hits the (again) concept album lined up (“Too Much Time on My Hands,” “Rockin’ the Paradise” and “The Best of Times”).
Behind the scenes, the rift widened between DeYoung on one side and Shaw and Young on the other. The original issue was “Babe,” a song from 1979’s Cornerstone and another DeYoung softie that Shaw refused to accept as the single for the album. DeYoung was actually (and briefly) kicked out of the band for that one (for, like, two weeks), but they held together to make the still-heavier concept album Paradise Theater, which 1) papered over the cracks, and 2) further convinced DeYoung that concept was king. He ultimately pushed the band to make Kilroy Was Here, a rock opera that featured: robots, J. Y. Young’s anger at a back-masking lawsuit over “Snowblind” (see “Heavy Metal Poisoning”), losing money performing the show in theater venues, and the ultimate, brutal rejection of DeYoung’s artistic excesses when they attempted Kilroy Was Here in a Texas stadium (so much booing). When asked what he’d do after the tour ended, Shaw said “I’ll probably check into a hospital” (which, if you count rehab, he did). Shaw and Young finally kicked DeYoung out of Styx, and they continue to tour without him (but with REO Speedwagon, among others). DeYoung never got over the idea of Styx playing without him, but he sort of wins seeing that his influence is all over this band.
My Favorite Anecdote
Pretty much everything about Kilroy Was Here – e.g., “Young played a deranged evangelist (Dr. Everett Righteous), DeYoung was Kilroy, Shaw was Jonathan Chance ‘a young rocker who fights for Kilroy’s freedom.’” And “This future society is served by robots. Called Robotos, these automatons perform many jobs, and several serve as Kilroy's prison guards.” But there’s also the bit Shaw did in Ted Nugent with Damn Yankees, when Shaw would start playing “Babe” and Nugent would walk over to “fix the tuning” at which point they would rock out. He later apologized to DeYoung (accidentally), and also stopped doing the bit.
Why They Didn’t Make the Island
I don’t mind Styx on the music side – I don’t think it’s genius, but I thought they did the guitar/organ/synth sound with a big enough dose of rock, and they had a pretty clear "sound" - but they’ve got to be the cheesiest quadruple-platinum selling band in history. To conceptualize that from one example, I’d go with the use of the word “lads” in “Come Sail Away.” In terms of themes/content, it’s of some genre in between self-help books, the personal journal of an extremely earnest boy in his early teens, but with the odd “outlaw” song thrown in (and a little more often in the band’s earliest days). Finally, to make one thing absolutely clear, Styx rose to number 3 for one reason: they have more variety in their music than either Foreigner or Boston – tonal, sonic, tempos. Bottom line, it’d take me longer to get bored of them.
Other Featured Songs: Beyond some of the songs listed above, there’s “You Better Ask” (a pretty massive outlier) and “I’m Gonna Make You Feel It” (typical, but heavier) both from Styx II, and a taste of what they sounded like pre-Shaw, as well as the, “say, those breaks sound like ‘Pinball Wizard,’” “Earl of Roseland.” “Nothing Ever Goes as Planned” from Paradise Theater and metal-tinged “Midnight Rider” from Equinox round out the “normal” part of the sampler, which leaves the songs I added to showcase what makes Styx just…painfully dorky: “Lords of the Ring,” “Sing for the Day,” the first song on their debut album, the 13+ minute, “Movement for the Common Man.”
Most Styx Song: “The Grand Illusion,” as a solid example of how DeYoung’s cheese undercuts whatever quality they have.
Sources
No comments:
Post a Comment