Dennis DeYoung Styx songs carry more backstory than most rock fans realise, and in a conversation first published in Classic Rock Presents AOR, the vocalist and keyboard player pulled back the curtain on ten of them, from a debut ballad that radio didn’t know how to categorise to a million-selling synth track he never once thought was a single.
From covers band to chart contenders
Styx signed to Styx‘s original label Wooden Nickel Records and released their self-titled debut in 1972 to little fanfare. DeYoung is candid about where the band stood at that point. ‘We were really a covers band,’ he says. ‘We spent most of our time getting hired and playing gigs by covering other people’s music.’
The song that changed things was Lady, a power ballad DeYoung wrote entirely by himself, the first time he’d attempted that. It reached No.6 in the US Top 40 in March 1975, but not before a producer had kept it off the first album and replaced it with four outside compositions, one of which was by George Clinton. ‘Styx and Parliament/Funkadelic, yeah, they go together,’ DeYoung says, laughing. The song’s structure, starting soft and building into a full rock finish, confused radio programmers at the time. ‘They said they didn’t know how to categorise it,’ he recalls. The Queen comparisons that would follow struck him as particularly odd. ‘That was written before I ever heard a Queen record.’
Lorelei (1975) had an even longer gestation. DeYoung and guitarist James ‘JY’ Young first wrote it in 1970, originally under the title Live Our Lives Together. It sat unfinished for five years before DeYoung revisited the structure and wrote new lyrics, drawing on the Rolling Stones’ Let’s Spend the Night Together for inspiration. The subject was cohabitation, which Young himself was navigating with his girlfriend at the time. DeYoung needed a three-syllable name starting with ‘L’ for the hook. ‘I came up with Lorelei, which is a made-up name,’ he says. ‘I’ve met many since who have told me their mothers named them that, and of course I apologise to them.’
Dennis DeYoung Styx songs and the American condition
Suite Madame Blue (1975) was DeYoung’s first song about America, written against the backdrop of Bicentennial merchandising, the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate and the 1974 oil embargo. ‘I used a metaphor of a once-beautiful lady who had refused to acknowledge that she’d grown old,’ he explains. He admits the metaphor was a kind of cover: ‘I guess because I was afraid of saying it literally.’
The same patriotic thread runs through The Grand Illusion (1977), the title track of the album that finally broke Styx to a mass audience. DeYoung frames it as a warning to his own audience against buying into the myths that advertising, media and rock stars peddle. He quotes his own lyric to make the point: ‘Don’t be fooled by the radio, the TV or the magazines, they show you photographs of how your life should be, but they’re just someone else’s fantasies.’ He acknowledges there’s a certain irony in a rock star delivering that message from a large-production stage with a big PA, and he’s fine with it. ‘I’m proud of those lyrics,’ he says, ‘and I can look back and say that wasn’t the stupidest thing I ever said.’
Come Sail Away, also from 1977 and the band’s career-defining hit, came out of a very different frustration. Before that record, Styx had spent years supporting Kiss, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and Bob Seger without ever crossing into headline status. ‘Come Sail Away to me is a reflection on my life to that point,’ DeYoung says. ‘It’s a song about a yearning to sail away to a better place.’
Babe (1979) was never supposed to be a Styx record at all. DeYoung wrote it as a birthday present for his wife, recording a quick demo at Pumpkin Studios with John and Chuck Panozzo on bass, using a Fender Rhodes he’d never played before because the grand piano was out of tune. The guitar players weren’t around. He sang all the background harmonies himself. When family members wept during the playback, plans changed. ‘We went back in to try to re-record it, but we couldn’t recapture what was on there,’ he says. The version that became a hit is that original demo, with Tommy Shaw’s guitar solo added afterwards.
Mr Roboto and the hit nobody saw coming
DeYoung reserves his most detailed account for Mr Roboto (1983), the Dennis DeYoung Styx songs entry that still divides opinion. It began with a brand new Roland synthesiser, specifically its arpeggiator, and was conceived purely as a transitional piece connecting a film segment to Styx’s live set on the Kilroy Was Here tour. ‘It was never written as a single. Never,’ he says flatly. His wife disagreed. ‘She said, “That is a hit record, Dennis.” I said, “You’re nuts.”‘ She was right. The song sold a million copies, wormed its way into popular culture, and DeYoung remains wryly proud of it. ‘I’m expecting a cheque any day now from the Japanese people for making Americans aware of how to say “thank you” in Japanese.’
The interview was originally published by Classic Rock via Louder Sound, and was conducted by Ken Sharp in 2014, as DeYoung was preparing to release Dennis DeYoung And The Music Of Styx: Live In Los Angeles.
