Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't wanna be a solo artist. I wanna be in Styx.
Ten years ago, in 94, we thought maybe nobody would ever care about Styx again.
We were together; we were a group; we were a team; we wanted people to love Styx.
My first concert was Styx. I was in the third grade and caught a guitar pick, which I still have.
I saw Styx in sixth grade. I loved Tommy Shaw. I got sneakers like him - he wore these tan Nikes.
When I went to see Kansas and Queen and Styx, I don't even remember the music. But I know what I saw.
So, maybe you don't see blues so much in Styx's music but it is definitely part of Tommy's early music.
Styx was always a theatrical band. In fact, we played City Center in 1983 with a rock opera, 'Kilroy Was Here.'
I gave my life for Styx and I'm really very proud of it and I didn't want to perform that music and screw it up.
The Beatles are here, and if you could see me my hand is on the ceiling. Styx is here, and my hand is in the basement.
If you pretend to be somebody that you're not when you write songs - and I did that on some of the early Styx albums - nobody cares about what you have to say.
And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.
But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.
And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.
I couldn't resist painting Orpheus and Charon on the River Styx. There was something strangely intriguing about seeing Orpheus playing his lyre as he is being shuttled across the river.
I can do anything onstage. Here's the misconception: You could record an album called 'The Best of Styx.' And all you would have to do is pay the individual songwriters a mechanical royalty.
It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.
Look, nobody is a bigger fan of Tommy Shaw than me. The day I met him in 1975 I knew he was going to be a great guitar player, performer and songwriter. I was his biggest fan, and I'm Styx's number one fan.
Styx has their own style of music, and I think that's justifiable, the same way that Asia and Yes have had - Yes particularly has a unique style that seems to have transcended all styles of music for 43 years.
When I went out and started making solo records, I was determined not to, I guess, put my name on an album that sounded like Styx. I wanted to carve my own niche, so quite frankly I went in a different direction.
Over the years, I thought many times about how my life would have changed if I had been drafted and Styx never had happened. Even if I hadn't been wounded or emotionally scarred, it would have changed my whole timetable.
When it came time to do 'One Hundred Years' I had been encouraged to really make a Styx album without the guys. I gave myself permission to do that. I set out to get people who sang with me who could make those harmonies.
Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.
And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform live.
I love Styx as much as I could love anything in my life. I started playing in the band when I was 14 years old. You become so involved in something when you start in it that young; you're doing it purely out of love of what you're doing and a belief in it.
Originally, AXS TV came to me last year and asked me if I'd be interested in doing an acoustic 'Live from the Grammy Museum' performance. But I was bound and determined to do an electric show with this great band to dispel any notion that I wasn't a 'rock guy' in Styx.
In the story of Thetis and Achilles, it's clear this isn't really a safe environment. She's gone down to the River Styx - the dead are being ferried across in the background. There's something in this mythology that says that if you want invulnerability, if you want immortality, you pay a price.
I made 'Desert Moon' and when I made those solo albums, I was trying not to be Styx, because I thought, 'That belongs to us.' So, I made different kinds of solo albums that were not dipping my hand back into the magic Styx jar and pulling out all the tricks - because bands, they have tricks, don't they? That's what makes them different.
After being replaced in Styx, everyone around me encouraged me to try and stop them legally. I just couldn't. It would have been like suing myself and I held out hope they'd ask me back. They toured under the STYX name for a year and a half before I initiated legal action. I didn't sue for money or use of the name. I simply wanted back in the band.
