If there's a goal, you can't stop me. I'll put my head down. I'll have tunnel vision and I'll go until I get it.
Dennis DeYoung
I'm very proud of it. 'Hunchback' contains some of my favorite music I've ever written in my life.
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.
I never imagined that I would have a successful solo career, let alone one in musical theater.
I really believed it was important to explain to our young audience that expectations based on people who are trying to sell them things are unattainable.
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.
My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.
If you are going to take me a to a musical, you'd better give me three songs that I'm gonna like. Nobody goes to the opera for the recitative. They go for the aria.
People always ask me: How are you? I say I'm the envy of millions. I've been a lucky guy.
I had worked so hard on three projects 1997 that it knocked the gas out of me. It was a mystery to the medical profession, but you can test positive for Epstein-Barr and not have it. When you get a post-viral syndrome, for some people it causes chronic fatigue or hearing loss. For me it became light sensitivity.
I've tried to figure out ways to be less pleased other than the search for perfection. Talk about a thing that'll make you have a miserable life. On that quest, on that journey, down that path, there's a lot of feelings of, 'Why am I doing all this?'
It's great when it all comes together in a great musical like 'Sweeney Todd,' when Stephen Sondheim writes songs from heaven, the book is good and the staging is good. But it's very rare when that happens.
Yeah, if anyone tries to tell you 60 is the new 40... don't believe them.
There are all kinds of pretensions about art, but I'm just a guy who sings for his supper.
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.
To be successful in your life, you have to be convinced in your own mind that you have the ability to accomplish your goals.
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.
If you're in rock 'n' roll, you're not supposed to admit to liking theatre stuff, but I'm a big theatregoer.
Essentially I'm a melody person in a rhythm age, and that's what Broadway is really about, the songs.
Styx was always a theatrical band. In fact, we played City Center in 1983 with a rock opera, 'Kilroy Was Here.'
I think the music business is as crass and as unrewarding as it has ever been.
All I ever thought about was music and being a musician.
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.
If you say 'Domo arigato' to people, they're apt to go, 'Mr. Roboto.'
I lived at the greatest time in the history of mankind to be a musician.
I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet.
I never wanted to be a solo artist.
I like being on a team and that's what a band is like. It's us against them, strength in numbers, and sharing the success and failure.
We were together; we were a group; we were a team; we wanted people to love Styx.
I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.
Really, the amount of work I do on a project, I will torture myself.
I could forgive anybody.
I don't wanna be a solo artist. I wanna be in Styx.
Nobody can beat those songs on 'Abbey Road.'
If you want your rock stars that are completely 100 percent serious about themselves and you want them to pretend like they're 25, I'm probably not the guy for that. But if you want to come and say, 'Hey, you know that guy right there, he's just being himself. I kind of like him for that,' you know, then that's me.
Radio stations provided a service. They weeded out the stuff that no one should ever have to even think about. Now, they made mistakes and they made mistakes with me even but, by and large, they provided a service. They were an editor.
Heck, I feel guilty getting my senior discounts.
When the Beatles broke up, I thought to myself, 'Dude, seriously?'
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.
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.
It's always best when everyone in the group is on the same page.
There is one thing in this world that I'm better that than anyone else and that is being me.
We came along at a time when people were really focused on music. We were part of the second generation of bands after all of those great 60's bands when rock was still in its' infancy.
I was lucky by birth.
When I'm onstage the joy is to try to be the best I can be, I'm there because I want it to be perfect.
It's a good job when you get to have fans come up to you and thank you for writing your songs.
The fact is, for the first 10 years I toured as a solo artist, I wasn't playing any of the songs I didn't write or sing.
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.
When I'm not on the road I'm in the studio every day.
I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.
