As Styx embark on 2020 tour, James Young looks back on 50 years of music and melodrama

As he prepares to launch another tour in Phoenix, Styx guitarist James “J.Y.” Young is feeling good about the fact that he's still out there making music for a living in a year that finds him celebrating 50 years with Styx (who were known when he joined as TW4).

"I'm knocking on wood all day long," he says, "for us to have the longevity that we've enjoyed."

And when he says "enjoyed," he doesn't mean they've actually enjoyed all 50 years.

"We've had some low points along the way where we thought it was maybe all over," he says.

"And we've had some internal squabbles that created times where we didn't work together. But ultimately it's very reinforcing, very uplifting to look back and there's people of all ages saying 'This song made a difference in my life' and 'That song saved my life' and 'You guys got me through some very difficult times.' We've had a tremendous impact on many, many people — many thousands of people."

It's the life he dreamed of as a young guitarist at Calumet High in Chicago.

"And the fact that I'm still able to do it and make a pretty darn good living at it, you know, it's a pretty phenomenal thing," he says.

How Styx came to rule the airwaves

They'd changed their name to Styx by the 1972 release of their first album, "Styx I," breaking through with a ballad called "Lady" in 1975 and following through two years later with "Come Sail Away."

And thus began the golden age of Styx as a commercial force.

In the course of four albums, the band sent a string of huge hit singles up the pop charts: "Renegade," "The Best of Times," "Too Much Time on My Hands" and their first and only No. 1, the soft-rock ballad "Babe."

The vast majority of Styx's biggest hits had been written by keyboardist Dennis DeYoung, a founding member who also sang lead on those records.

Then suddenly 'Mr. Roboto' was here

Then DeYoung shared the concept for "Kilroy Was Here" and a synth-driven single called "Mr. Roboto" that Young was sure would ruin everything. 

"He had been the most significant writer in the band," Young says.

And if "Mr. Roboto" is what he really wanted? "I felt like, 'OK, we'll take a chance on this. But it was such a hard left turn on the wheel for our audience."

Coming off the triple-platinum success of the "Paradise Theatre" album, Young recalls, "I think we sold a million of the 'Kilroy' album. 'Mr. Roboto' was a gold single, but I would say that there's a huge male demographic that liked the rock side of this band that said, 'What the hell are these guys doing?'"

Then, they took the album on the road.

"And from selling 110 sold-out arenas in 1981, in 1983, we were struggling to sell concert tickets," Young recalls.

What made things worse, he says, is that DeYoung had come up with "a very ambitious production" for the tour, which cost "a fortune to mount."

What really broke up the band

And that, Young recalls, is "what really broke up the band."

They reunited in 1990 without Tommy Shaw, the guitarist who'd written and sung two of their biggest hits, "Renegade" and "Too Much Time on My Hands," releasing an album before they parted ways again in 1991.

The next reunion was with Shaw on board in 1995. They re-recorded "Lady" for a "Greatest Hits" collection, launching a tour optimistically called Return to Paradise in 1996.

DeYoung left Styx for good in 1999 after asking his bandmates to delay their tour in support of "Brave New World," their first album in nearly a decade, for medical reasons. They went out without him.

Two years later, he sued them to try to prevent them from using the band name.

Weathering the storm with Tommy Shaw

Today, Young and Shaw are the lone remaining ties to Styx's multi-platinum heyday, with occasional appearances by founding bassist Chuck Panozzo. Panozzo's brother John, the band's founding drummer, died in 1996. Guitarist John "J.C." Curulewski was replaced when he quit on the eve of a tour in late in 1975 and died in 1988.

"Tommy and I have weathered the storm," Young says. "We believed in what we do and believed that we could find a new audience for who we are without Dennis DeYoung. Which we have. And the band I'm in now is the band I always wanted to be in."

A large part of Styx's enduring appeal, Young says, is that they "touched a large part of the Baby Boom with that music, and we're still the soundtrack for their glorious misspent youth."

A new generation discovering Styx

But they've also been noticing more and more young people filling those seats at their concerts. Young recalls meeting the daughter of "a radio guy" backstage last summer. She was wearing a Styx shirt and holding old Styx vinyl.

"I said 'Geez, a young lady like you, I figured you'd be into Katy Perry or Taylor Swift,'" he recalls. "She goes, 'I effin' hate them.' And she didn't soften it the way I just did. So we're still reaching out to people under 20, which is astounding to me. But there's always a teenager that's gonna be rejecting the mainstream of their generation, looking for value in other places. And fortunately, they're finding it in Styx."

Young credits social media and streaming with those younger fans discovering Styx.

"If I wanted to listen to Ragtime music in the '60s or '70s, there were very few outlets on the radio even and certainly not on television," he says. "With social media, everything is immediately accessible now to everyone on the planet in a sense."

The recording of 'The Mission'

Fans sharing links to streaming music that no one paid to hear is also a completely different business model than the one that led to triple-platinum sales for several Styx releases. That's why Young was resistant when Shaw first suggested recording "The Mission," a 2017 release that became their first album of original material in 14 years.

"I was very lukewarm on the idea of trying to make new music," Young recalls. "I just felt like, how are we possibly hoping to break even? And after the time and energy and the love we're gonna put into it. But fortunately my colleague Tommy Shaw just ignored all of that."

Shaw started work on the album with an outside writer, Will Evankovich, eventually inviting Styx's current keyboard player Lawrence Gowan into the creative process.

Young likes to say they have home run hitters in every position these days.

And when the opportunity arose to make new music, "the hired guns wanted to make their mark as members of the band," Young says. "And I said 'OK, well, I'd better jump into the pool with the rest of the guys. They're swimming around and getting this thing done.'"

Not only did they end up breaking even on this album, it was well-received by critics, something Styx was definitely not accustomed to in their commercial prime.

"We've never seen more glowing reviews," Young says, with a laugh.

Coming to terms with 'Roboto' (for the fans)

It was after "The Mission" that Styx allowed an old, estranged acquaintance on their stage. The band added "Mr. Roboto" to their setlist, having asked their merch guy and lighting director what songs the fans had been requesting.

"They're both in the line of fire when people leave the show," Young says. "So we sat down and said, 'What song gets most requested?' 'Are they requesting "Babe?"' 'Nobody requests "Babe."' 'Are they requesting "The Best of Times?"' 'Nobody's requesting "The Best of Times." And we said, 'Well, is anyone requesting anything?'"

Turns out, the answer was "Mr. Roboto."

This required Young making his peace with the song, which he has.

Enough to play it.

"Obviously, that song killed the band in 1983," he says. "But it has spawned the next generation of fans. That's how a number of people became aware of the band and then they went back and bought the other records and learned to love the other music as a result of that."

'I'm not mad at Dennis DeYoung anymore'

In the meantime, his feelings have mellowed toward the man who wrote the song.

"I'm not mad at Dennis DeYoung anymore," he says.

"And that single is part of our lineage."

In working it up, he says, they did their best to "see if we can toughen it up and make it a little more rocked-up."

And 95% of the time, he says, "it's just a thunderous ovation when we play it."

As to whether he enjoys it any better now, Young says, "You can't deny that it was very popular with a lot of people. But we had such profound momentum going. And a lot of fans come up to me and say, 'I really liked you guys until "Mr. Roboto.'" So we did lose part of our audience. But it's very much water under the bridge now, decades later. And particularly at my age, life is a little too short."

Talk of a 'highly unlikely' reunion

Given the relative shortness of life and the fact that he says he's not mad at DeYoung anymore, could Young seeing himself patching things up with the singer of "Mr. Roboto" enough to maybe work together?

It's a simple question followed by a lengthy, awkward silence.

"Highly unlikely," he finally says. 

"The man sued us in federal court over the use of the name. We settled out of court. So we control the name and he can use it in limited ways, which are very strictly outlined."

He knows a lot of fans would love to see them work things out. And in a recent interview with Forbes, DeYoung said he thinks they should do another tour.

"But Dennis hates being away from home," Young says. "I don't need to be next to unhappiness. We have a joyful thing now and I have no economic incentive to do it. It would be throwing the Joker back into the deck to bring him in. And I'm not interested in that."

'You have to forgive your captors'

He likens the situation to a movie he recently saw called "Unbroken," produced and directed by Angelina Jolie. It's the tale of an Olympic athlete who's captured by the Japanese after his bomber crash-lands in the ocean during WWII. 

"He came back from the Second World War and was just a bitter man about everything," Young says. "And his wife took him to Billy Graham and Billy Graham said, 'You have to forgive your captors. That will set you free.'"

The more he thought about it, Young says, he began to see the parallels between that story and his life in Styx.

 "A lot of times great works of art come from tortured souls or tortured situations," he says. "And being in Styx was a tortured situation. It really was. A lot of us were very unhappy. In all the success we had, there was no joy. And now there's nothing but joy. From what I've read, a lot of these great works of literature were made by tortured souls. And Dennis is kind of a tortured genius."

It's been 20 years since they last worked together.

In that time, Young says, "I've proven what I wanted to prove, which is that we could succeed without him. ... We did great things together. But the tortured moments it required to get to those times? I don't look forward to going back there."

What if they're inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame together?

"He deserves to be there," Young says, without hesitation. "I just don't want to be on a tour bus with him."

Styx

When: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10, and Saturday, Jan. 11.

Where: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N. 32nd St., Phoenix.

Admission: $40-$105.

Details: 602-267-1600, celebritytheatre.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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