Styx guitarist James Young is one member of the classic rock group who hasn’t given up on the idea that his band could one day return to the top of the charts and enjoy seven-digit album sales again.
It’s a climb Styx completed in spectacular fashion two decades ago, when the Chicago-based group reeled off four straight albums, “The Grand Illusion” (1977), “Pieces of Eight” (1978), “Cornerstone” (1979) and “Paradise Theater” (1981) that were all multi-platinum smashes.
“What I think about Styx right now is we are climbing our way back up to the top of the recording industry Mount Everest for the second time,” Young said in a recent phone interview. “And if we never get to the top, more than ever I am enjoying the process of the climb. Because when we got to the top in 1981, I don’t know that there was great happiness within the framework of the band. Everybody felt great pressure to not goof up. …”
Perhaps Young can allow himself to envision a return to arena rock glory for Styx – something that seems like a long shot for most acts of Styx’s vintage – because his band has gotten a slight tease of that sort of success.
In fall 2004, the band’s cover of the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” reached No. 2 on the classic rock radio chart. It was easily the most successful single Styx had released in two decades.
But even Young has accepted the fact that the band was unable to parlay that hit single into another blockbuster success – despite a very conscious attempt to do so.
Once “I Am the Walrus” took off at radio, the band’s label, Universal Music, wanted to capitalize on the sudden chart success, but Styx didn’t have enough new material ready to record a studio CD.
“So the suggestion was to just do some great songs from before Styx actually got our first recording contract, to do songs that had influenced us and secondly songs that we really thought we could do justice to as a band now,” Young said. “So that’s where ‘The Big Bang Theory’ came from.”
That CD was released in May 2005, and in addition to “I Am the Walrus,” it featured Styx’s versions of another dozen songs.
“We didn’t go back and try to redo the hits of the era,” Young said. “We went back and did songs that we thought were unique and different.”
“Big Bang Theory” made a decent initial splash, reaching 47 on Billboard’s album chart. But the first single from the CD, “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” never caught on and “Big Bang Theory’s” sales quickly stalled out.
Despite not getting the desired results from “Big Bang Theory” – or for that matter, the band’s 2003 studio CD of original material, “Cyclorama” – Young said both CDs have been good for Styx’s career.
If nothing else, the CDs have helped to establish the band’s significantly revamped lineup. These days Young is the only remaining original band member. Guitarist-singer Tommy Shaw, who joined Styx in 1974 and was on board during the band’s chart-topping run, shares band-leading duties with Young.
Keyboardist-singer Lawrence Gowan replaced long-time frontman Dennis DeYoung in 1999, and the other band members are drummer Todd Sucherman and bassist Ricky Phillips.
Together this new lineup has moved away from the mushy balladry that was DeYoung’s specialty and have sought to reassert the harder-edged guitar rock sound that should be familiar to fans of such ’70s-era hits as “Renegade” and “Blue Collar Man.”
“Our goal is really to restore the rock credibility of this band from earlier incarnations, and I think this album (“Big Bang Theory”) has gone a long way toward doing that,” Young said.
Young also thinks “Big Bang Theory,” coupled with other factors, such as the use of Styx songs in movies and televisions shows, has introduced a young generation of fans to Styx.
“We have a third generation of Styx fans that are coming out (to concerts),” he said. “So we’re really feeling incredibly renewed by these young faces and young bodies singing these lyrics back to us that we wrote long before they were born, and celebrating there in the Styx T-shirts that they just bought. It’s an amazing sort of reaffirmation that we did good work that still has meaning to people in their formative years.”
Styx performs Wednesday in Woodinville.
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