James Young
If there has ever been a band that is difficult to place a label upon or box into a genre, it’s STYX.
The Chicago spawned rockers are just as well known for their hard rocking singles as they are the lush ballads, that propelled them to superstardom in the 1970s and 1980s.
That monumental success placed them into a category previously unachieved by any other artist, as they became the first artists to have four consecutive triple platinum albums.
But, it hasn’t always been a charmed life.
The past forty years have seen STYX on a roller coaster of highs and lows, including inter-band conflict, multiple personnel changes and the unfortunate death of John Panozzo, their original drummer.
All the while, there has been a constant force guiding and moving the ship through the oft tumultuous waters. That constant is guitarist and vocalist James “J.Y.” Young.
And now, as the lone remaining original member, J.Y. continues to lead STYX around the world to the delight of the group’s original loyal followers, as well as a new generation of STYX fans.
Currently on the road with fellow classic rock stalwarts, Foreigner and Don Felder [The Eagles], STYX is traversing America on one of the year’s most celebrated package tours, simply and aptly titled, The Soundtrack of Summer.
J.Y. took time to sit down with Guitar International in an exclusive interview to discuss the band’s current tour, musical rivalries and, of course, all things STYX; past, present and future.
******
Craig Hunter Ross: The music of STYX can be somewhat difficult to define. You get lumped in with hard rock, soft rock balladeers, even progressive rock. How would you personally classify the music of STYX?
J.Y.: Oh, I think I leave that for others to do. We’re stylistically capable of doing an incredibly wide range of things.
I don’t like to compare us to The Beatles, but there have always been three different writers in the band, which is similar to what they did; from the orchestral type of things, to say Paul McCartney singing “Long Tall Sally”, or something like that. STYX is really capable of pretty much the same.
I can say personally, my favorite era of the band is the first four A&M albums. At that time, we were a really guitar driven, bad ass rocking kind of band, but still had the classical overtones.
Craig: Speaking of that era, say 1975 through 1979, you all [STYX] kind of “battled it out” with REO Speedwagon. In fact, it was REO you knocked out of the number one album slot with your release of Paradise Theater. Was that a friendly rivalry and has that kind of come full circle to the present? You all have done several package tours with them and had great success in the last few years…
J.Y.: REO had existed before Kevin Cronin was in the band and, you know they were on the scene in Illinois back in the sixties, whereas STYX didn’t get a recording contract until 1972. I had heard some REO recordings, but I don’t know if they had a record deal at the time.
I always felt they [REO] were ahead of us to start with, but then we sort of drove around them on “the racetrack”, then they passed us and we were both constantly battling for number one in 1981.
To be honest, I don’t think the rivalry was really all that friendly at the time, but I didn’t know those guys at the time. It’s easy to feel strongly about something like that, especially when you don’t really know the people.
You can compare STYX, REO, or even someone like Foreigner, who are currently touring with us, to say Ali, Frazier and Foreman. Every one of those guys was heavyweight champion of the world at one point. While they seemed to be bitter rivals on the surface, they kind of had to make it into that to help sell tickets.
But, twenty years later, when they were all a little bit past their prime, they share that special relationship that they all held that belt at one time and knew what it was like to view the world from that vantage point.
That’s something we share with those bands, it’s a very cordial and friendly rivalry; still. But it was less cordial and less friendly then.
Lawrence Gowan and James Young of STYX
Craig: Does that shared experience with those bands make package tours like this a little bit more fun? Is there a lot of swapping of road stories and war stories if you will, or does each camp tend to stick to their own areas?
J.Y.: Well, we actually have some common threads. Take Ricky Phillips, our bass player. While he was not our original bass player obviously, [having been with The Babies and Bad English] he was a fixture in the L.A. music scene.
So was Dave Amato of REO. He is one of Ricky’s dearest friends. Ricky pretty much helped set up Kelly Hanson with Foreigner. So it’s like he’s populating all these bands, and now is a member of our band! Ricky is a real common thread. There’s been a natural sharing that’s gone on as a result of these friendships.
Kevin Cronin [REO] and I both grew up in Chicago, maybe three or four miles away from each other, if that; but never really knew each other.
Our front of house guy, Gary Loizzo, was the lead singer of a band called American Breed; and actually sang lead on their number one song “Bend me, Shape me” back in the late sixties. He’d known Kevin from times spent in the studio; I don’t think I had ever actually spoken to Kevin until we met in 1983 when we were, at that time, both managed by Irving Azoff.
That didn’t last long for us, but they are still under that umbrella. In fact, I think REO was Irving’s first band.
Craig: You were the first band in history to have four consecutive triple platinum albums…
J.Y.: That’s right…
Craig: But, right before that time period of super strata success, did you ever feel as though maybe the window was closing and maybe had some doubt creep in, as to whether this would indeed be a career you would be able to stay in?
J.Y.: There was a lot of time early in our career, before we were with A&M Records that we felt that “This is going nowhere” and though we had a little bit of success in terms of airplay with “Lady”, it was really in three small pockets [Rapid City, SD; Provo, UT and Little Rock, Arkansas] which we took advantage of and toured through those areas, but we really weren’t known outside the Midwest.
But, the fact that we continued to make records and kept performing in that five state area [centered around Chicago] kept people interested. That’s what helped us a lot.
WLS out of Chicago would get requests for “Lady”, even though it wasn’t on their playlist; and we had people that wanted to see this Chicago area band succeed.
When we walked in with our fourth album though, they said they weren’t going to play anything off the record, but the song “Lady”. They felt it was a hit and that the record company hadn’t gotten it behind properly, so they were going to play it every night at 8 pm, until it became a hit. That meant we were getting 50,000 watts of power all the way to Florida on that song from that one station! That’s when the record company finally got behind it and it basically became a number one hit in every market.
It didn’t peak all at the same time, so it didn’t become a national number one single, but we got a gold album out of the deal! After that, there was nothing problematic.
Equinox came out and things were moving. Now, that’s also when John “J.C.” Curulewski left, but Tommy Shaw came right in and kicked things into another gear. We felt A&M was a wonderful place to be and it proved that we were right.
Craig: These days, your set list is a virtual greatest hits all the way through, it’s pretty much non-stop…
J.Y.: Well, I wouldn’t say we’re playing a greatest hits set. There are some things that were never really released as singles that we do; but when you sell three million copies four times in a row, sure the bulk of the music is going to be from those recordings.
We’re doing “Light up”, which we hadn’t really done in abut thirty years. I can’t say that’s a hit, but people really respond to it.
Same thing for “Rockin’ the Paradise”, I don’t know if that was really a single, but being from Paradise Theater, that was heard by millions on multiple tours.
Craig: Do you ever find yourselves in any sort of musical rut? It’s certainly never evident when you are on stage. You all have such a joy in performing that shines through and you really look to be having fun and appreciative to be on that stage; which I think conveys to the fans…
J.Y.: Musical ruts? No, not really. I think Tommy [Shaw] is the one who has really narrowed the focus of his life to being a musician and a performer. He’s gone off and done a bluegrass album, he’s done the covers with Jack Blades; and well STYX did one too after the success with ‘I am the Walrus”, which we didn’t expect.
We had been invited to do Clapton’s Crossroads; Tim Rosner who is our tour production coordinator, he’s my neighbor, asked if we wanted to go to Crossroads and play. This was right after we had gone back to the old Chess Studios to try to reconnect with our Chicago roots a bit. It’s actually a museum now.
We’ve always been one of its biggest supporters. The result of that was us trying to decide what we would do at Crossroads that would resonate with Clapton, but wouldn’t necessarily be a blues thing per se, since that’s not really our specialty. We needed to figure how to differentiate ourselves at the event.
I had heard Lawrence [Gowan] noodling on the keyboard and singing “I am the Walrus” a few years before that, so I figured Clapton used to hang out with The Beatles and they never really did it live, so we bashed out our own version after a few days and then we got a huge response at the show.
People were talking about it long after and we had a bunch of fun playing it. Ironically, thirty years after “Lady”, a program director in Chicago hears us play it and tells us to give him a copy of it so he can put it on the air. We had just done an album of full new music and couldn’t get arrested for it.
Classic rock radio was telling us that when their audience hears something unfamiliar that they change the channel; that they will head over to sports or news.
Men over a certain age, that’s their target audience. But “Walrus” could find its way on there because it’s a known song by a known classic artist. We never intended to record it; we really had just been looking to put our own stamp on our performance at one of Clapton’s wonderful fundraising events.
But, creating new music and such, I never feel we get into a rut. We can go home and listen to or play whatever we want. People are coming to hear these songs and we have several people depending on the band to be performing for their livelihood.
We will add things now and again, like “Superstars”, which we just picked up playing about four years ago, because now we have the vocal capabilities to do it, live with four vocal parts. The business is so different now. You get one and a half million friends or fans on Facebook and you have a built-in mass audience. We’re not threatening to do any new music, but you never know.
We’re getting a lot of new younger fans thanks to the Internet, so you never know. While the Internet has really killed the conventional record business, it does offer instant accessibility to your fans. Someone sees you live or on television, they can immediately then go to YouTube and see tons more, or go download music right then, instead of waiting around.
James “j.Y.” Young
Craig: Do you see the business and its state of “instantaneous” as being a positive since there is now far less effort required for a fan to obtain music?
J.Y.: Well, it’s never been that easy to breakthrough and these days everyone is walking around with their face buried in a device doing whatever it is they’re doing! People cross the street and not pay attention, they are in their own world and you have to figure out a way to get in there, their world.
We have great word of mouth regarding how good this band is live. I look to my left and there’s Tommy Shaw, who Robbie Steinhart of Kansas once asked if he was born with a guitar in his hand. God bless our original drummer, John Panozzo, he was a force of nature; and we replaced him with Tod Sucherman, who is always in the top five rankings of Modern Drummer magazine. He’s got fusion level chops in a rock band and is an incredible time keeper.
Ricky Phillips is great bass player and Lawrence Gowan is an incredibly talented guy who has a such a broad musical palette for us to utilize, he’s perfect for us. I feel that this is the best that this band has ever been, particularly live. It’s like a new engine in a race car and I just love getting out there and taking a drive! It’s unadulterated joy out there on that stage for us.
I have friends that bring their younger kids to shows and they love the music and really get out there and start proselytizing and tweet and text, or whatever the hell it is they do. Those things get to dozens of people and can spread like wildfire.
Craig: This current tour, The Soundtrack of Summer, with Foreigner and Don Felder, for many it’s going to be so much more musically. It’s really the soundtrack of their lives. Do you ever sit back and really try to comprehend how many lives have been affected by your music?
J.Y.: You know, we have a promo guy that works for us. He grew up on our music and told us that we were the “soundtrack to his glorious misspent youth”.
I said that’s what this tour should have really been called! So much has happened to people with our music as a backdrop for it. I am astounded when I hear people know our music; places like East Asia and Malaysia and all over the globe. While we may not have been to all of these places, our music has.
Ricky Phillips, James Young and Tommy Shaw of STYX
Craig: That’s got to be amazing for you, when you try to take it all in on stage. Over the years that there are literally millions of faces you have seen and the times when many who don’t speak your native language sing your songs with you in your native tongue. Does it ever get surreal on stage?
J.Y.: Yes, some of the big outdoor shows, like one in Quebec, we’re really popular there.
There’s a week long festival and the people spend like the equivalent of fifty bucks and there’s thirty to forty thousand fans there each night. The night we were there we were told it was upwards of fifty five thousand; the music in front of a crowd that large and they don’t speak English, it’s still just crazy good!
Craig: You all play about 100-120 dates a year…
J.Y.: Yeah, with more in the summer, what with festivals and fairs and such. There are a lot more opportunities then. Summer is when we like to put together a solid three-act show, but we’ll do other shows on our own throughout the year.
Craig: You’ve discussed how much you enjoy the playing live aspect, but do you enjoy the touring as a whole? Do you enjoy visiting all the different cities or do you take more of a day at the office mindset?
J.Y.: It’s the people that are the key element. I’ve been to three continents and so many places with this band. But since 9/11, with all the security concerns, air travel is a major league aggravation. It’s not the glamorous thing it once was; for me, at six foot two inches tall, to be on these little weasel jets, as we call them. There’s really no comfort or glamour.
But, people have to drive to work in rush hour everyday back and forth; it’s not glamorous for them either.
The time on stage, that’s the magic of the day that erases all the aggravation that preceded it. It lifts everyone’s spirits, including ours. It’s a joyful thing for us to bring joy to other people. There are days though, yes, when the road can be weary.
Craig: Do you and Tommy have any sort of agreement or understanding, that should either one of you decide to call it a day, that it would be the end of STYX?
J.Y.: There’s no such agreement. I told Tommy that if I have a problem, I want him to continue and he turned around and said the same thing. Tommy has had success as a solo artist; I did not have nearly the same success.
But with my solo act, I put together a great band and did some great shows. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some incarnation of STYX going on ten years from now, maybe even twenty!
