Styx recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of its Equinox album, with the next milestone coming up in 2017 when the band’s breakthrough long play The Grand Illusion completes its fourth decade of existence. Founding guitarist James “JY” Young, however, is more about looking forward to enjoying the band’s golden anniversary in 2022 (they signed their first label contract in 1972).
You’re just getting back from being on break after touring Canada, right? Yeah. We did 116 shows in 2014. I think it’s going to turn into 111 in calendar year 2015, and we’re off for a few weeks. We don’t just do it and take the rest of the year off. I think we had 17 days in there. We played the Sunday before Thanksgiving in Calgary. Tonight it’s a standalone theater in a smaller city in Southern Illinois—Effingham, Ill.
Are you still a hometown band to Illinois audiences? Is there a special energy when you play there?
Certainly in Chicago, radio treats us like a hometown band. I still live there. Anywhere in the state of Illinois … the state of Illinois claims us and a number of other bands: Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, Chicago, of course. The list goes on from there. If you go more modern, Disturbed and Smashing Pumpkins or what have you. The whole Midwest kind of embraces us as one of their bands. We were the soundtrack to many people’s glorious misspent youths up here.
All over, really. At what point you were able to look back and realize Styx had reached a different kind of status in pop culture?
… I think the moment was in 1996. We got back together for our reunion tour, and our manager to this day is the same guy we chose at that point, a fellow named Charlie Brusco. He just said, “There’s millions of people who grew up with your music, and you guys have been out of the limelight. Let’s get the glory days lineup out there.” We averaged 15,000 people a night with a proper opening act. He chose Kansas for us, and we always got along with those guys, and we sold 15,000 tickets a night, 70 shows across America. Our music has touched millions and millions of people. And it’s just, like it is for most artists, you have a moment in time when … I mean, radio plays music that is generally targeted at younger people. Older people have moved on from classic rock to all kinds of things over the space of the last 25, 30 years.
It seems like Styx is reaching an apex in this phase of the band’s history.
There’s something about going to see The Rolling Stones, going to see Paul McCartney or going to see The Who. Then the next generation of people like ourselves or Kiss and Aerosmith, what have you. Journey, Boston—they don’t make bands like that anymore for whatever reason, but I think young people come on and somehow our music speaks to them. It was written while they were young, and so it’s a different style (of music) than maybe radio’s feeding them, but they’re finding value in it and they’re particularly finding value in our live performances of it. So knock on (makes knocking sound) what appears to be a wooden desk in this hotel room. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, and, yes, you are correct—2015 is one of the pivotal years in the new millennium, and we’ve seen steady growth since 1999. So things are good in the world of Styx.
It seems like you’ve had a great year that kicked off in Las Vegas with a date at The Pearl, saw the release of Live at the Orleans Arena in July, and you’re back at the Pearl Jan. 16. And then other things like (original Styx bassist and founding member) Chuck Panozzo choosing Vegas as the place to pick up his bass again after being ill. Is this all coincidental or does the band have increasingly strong ties to Vegas?
I think we have lots of friends in Vegas, and Vegas seems to be a place that seems to be fine with Styx. We’re tied to a lot of places, but Vegas is certainly in the top 10. We come back to do a lot of private events, and some musician friends and crew friends even have settled in Vegas. They don’t want to travel so much, so they can get involved in some stationary things, covering all the different shows. So we have lots of friends in Vegas and lots of fans in Vegas. We like coming to lovely Las Vegas, and, particularly, we live in Chicago in the winter so it’s not a bad place to come in January.
Why did you choose to record the live album at The Orleans last year?
I think when our manager saw how well the show was going earlier in the season, which started back in May for us, with the production value and ourselves and Foreigner, and Don Felder of the Eagles as our opening act, it was an incredible three-act show—a night of classic rock classics. I mean, Felder was doing “Hotel California,” which he is the co-author of, along with many other classics, and then there’s Foreigner and then there’s Styx. Our production value, we felt, had achieved a new high, and we just felt like we wanted to tape it. We looked at our schedule, and as it was laid out, The Orleans was the most hospitable place where we could actually get the video gear in there. It’s a new building so we knew we had enough power to do what we needed to do. They have other events there of this nature, so it just made sense. And Friday night in Vegas? It’s gonna be good.
Don Felder appears on that album, and you toured with him and Foreigner this summer. I saw video of him sitting in during your sets, and Tommy playing on “Hotel California.” What led to the current close collaboration?
We’d done a couple of charity shows with Don Felder. His manager is our manager, Charlie Brusco, who seems to know what to do with classic rock acts. Nobody else seems to know what to do with them. Charlie’s really good at figuring out what we’re supposed to do, and Don just took a liking to him and had enough of Los Angeles. We had done some charity shows, like I said, and seemed to get along famously. He really hadn’t come out and done a proper tour. He’d done a few one-off shows with the bands he’s had here and there, some private shows for people, but he hadn’t done a tour and he just thought with the friendly vibes that exist between our band and him, and the mutual admiration society for the work each band has accomplished, it just seemed that if we were going to go out on tour, this would be the one to do it. Our production people were overseeing that he would get treated properly and get the direction he needed to sort of humble himself slightly and play an opening slot.
Don Felder to me is like a long-lost brother. We have lots of similar personality traits, and he’s not known as the band’s … he can sing, although he’s not the lead singer. I have sung some lead vocals on songs that some people really like, but mostly I’m the guitar player. I relate to Don, that I’m not as prolific a songwriter as other people I’ve been in bands with. Unlike Don, I’ve been there from the beginning with Styx and am a part owner of the name. Nonetheless, I love that guy and I think the feeling is shared. There’s just a mutual admiration and friendship that goes on. We have a heck of a good time, and we’re talking about adding him to a few shows in 2016. Not at the Pearl, but somewhere later on in the year.
What kind of set should Vegas audiences expect? The epic 20-song set?
I think at The Pearl we typically do play a long set, so my guess is people that come to see “Renegade” and “Come Sail Away,” they will hear those, and they’re going to hear a lot of other things they expect to hear; and they’ll hear some different things than the last time we were here because we do keep track of the songs that we perform. Our production manager’s really good about that, so we’ll at least mix it up and perform three or four, or five or six selections in the show that we didn’t have in last year’s show.
The material sounds fresh in footage from recent performances. The energy you’re putting into the shows probably has a lot to do with why this material still sounds good. Do you feel validated about choosing the right direction for the band? (Founding member Dennis DeYoung wanted Styx to move in an increasingly theatrical and conceptual direction while Young and guitarist Shaw preferred rock-oriented songs, a dispute that led to Styx’s breakup after 1983’s Kilroy Was Here.)
What we’re doing now is where always my heart has been. Every band is a democracy to a point, but I was not the dominant songwriter nor the guy that sang the hit songs. When Dennis was in the band it really skewed toward what he thought he was strongest at in live concerts, and I’ve always been the guy that was happy playing Deep Purple or AC/DC. We’ve created an incredible body of work that Dennis can play on his own and that we can go out and play without him. He skews toward ballads and his quirky other things, and we skew towards the bombast. There’s still a whole lot of soul and there’s quiet moments that the audience will expect from us. We’re able to maintain the dynamics but it sort of leans toward the more powerful side of our body of work as opposed to the softer side.
Lawrence Gowan’s showmanship adds a lot to the band. He really seems to be in sync with the way you guys approach the music, and I don’t know where you found that revolving keyboard stand contraption he uses, but it works.
He previously had it in his solo incarnation in Canada and it stayed with him. It’s kind of a magical device. A number of people have asked about the specifications for it, and he’s not giving away trade secrets.
Do you know how much it weighs onstage?
It takes more than two people to deal with it. It’s actually on wheels. Lock it down into position, wheel it off.
A lot of people may not know you’re the first voice heard on the first track on the first album.
“Best Thing” was our first chart single, and that was a collaboration between myself and Dennis. He sings the soft part in the beginning of the song and I sing the …
It’s “Movement for the Common Man.” Yeah, you have the first vocal in it.
Yeah, I’ve been there from the beginning, and I’m the Cal Ripken of Styx, yes I am.
I thought it was pretty cool that you’re the first voice on the first track of the first album.
Yeah, I never thought about it that way, but since you’ve said it now, I’m going to start saying it.
You should start saying it! Last week you observed the 40th anniversary of Equinox, the album with “Lorelei” and “Suite Madame Blue.” You can definitely feel what lies ahead later that decade through those songs. Do occasions like this make you reflective or is all business as usual?
The past is all there. I haven’t lost sight of it. We’ve done some incredibly strong work during our heyday, and Equinox was kind of the first one where we stepped our game up further, and the sound of our records got more refined and polished. We had just changed record labels to A&M, and in “Lorelei” you can hear influences by The Who and Yes in there. “Madame Blue” starts off with a 12-string. “America” is really powerful, with those chorusing vocals and big guitars and drums behind it. Equinox was the step forward we needed to take after our first four albums, and that kind of set the stage for the million-sellers that came afterward—Grand Illusion, Pieces of Eight, Cornerstone and Paradise Theater. Equinox is a wonderful album, and I think it holds up still.
Honestly, the thing I’m focused on is our 50th anniversary. We signed our original recording contract Feb. 22, 1972, so 50 years from that is 2/22/22. If we make it that far, which is only seven years from now, six years from now, that’s really what I’m focused on.
The band recently donated $25,000 to victims of the November terrorist attacks in Paris through Rock to the Rescue. Styx helped form that after 9/11, right?
Yeah, 9/11 was just something where Tommy just had a sense that … you know, as powerless as Americans feel in the wake of all that, we feel like we have to do something. Can we do something, or what could we do? Our manager said, “Why don’t you call up Kevin Cronin from REO Speedwagon and see if he’d go along with us and then I’ll build critical mass.” … In terms of the Paris concert, the world is a very different place. I don’t have the answers; nobody has the answers. I think it was an appropriate response on our part. We’re very saddened by this, and we hope it’s an isolated incident.
I became knowledgeable about Chuck Panozzo’s story while doing research for this interview. Both you and Def Leppard stood by bandmates who experienced trauma or tragedy at some point in their career. I know there were other issues with other bandmates when there was contention, but when it came to standing by somebody that really needed support, both bands were there.
You know, we love those Def Leppard guys and Rick Allen is just a fantastic human being and he’s been inspirational to me in so many ways. And Chuck, it was just our nature that we did whatever we could for Chuck, and I think without the band, I’m not sure he’d be alive today. Going back to the time you mentioned, it was actually Sept. 11 that Tommy Shaw’s birthday, two years before … this was 1999 at the Elvis Presley Theater and I forget which hotel. When I saw that crowd rise to their feet when he took the stage, he looked … basically like a walking cadaver at that time. Horrible. And they gave him a standing ovation and it went on for a long period of time, and I said, “This band is going to save him.” Particularly the stigma of AIDS and everything that went along with it, it’s something that’s gonna be a depressing factor in someone’s life. But if they have something like the band there and people are cheering you on and celebrating you, that’s the kind of reinforcement people need to beat this serious illness. That’s precisely what Chuck’s been able to do.
Has he been able to play with you lately?
I’m sure he’ll be onstage with us in Vegas when we get there. He’s out about 40 percent of the time. He’s had a bout of prostate cancer in 2004. It came back on him and he needed more serious treatment, which kind of knocked him down pretty heavily last year. He’s come back. He’s not quite his former self but he’s good enough to get out there and do three songs about 40 percent of the time.
The Pearl at Palms, 8 p.m. Jan. 16, starting at $43 plus tax and fee. 702.944.3200
