by MCM » Mon Jan 07, 2008 11:45 am
"The problem wasn't Babe. The problem was that Babe opened the door to all the other stuff."
I agree, the problem was that, yes, Babe was the beggining of the end, but while much/some of that end can be placed on Dennis's shoulders, the "other members" are not innocent in that they let it happen. At some point, having been together for how many years, "they" should have stood up to him after that and said "Not another song about your wife, (who I'm sure is a lovely lady as they've been together forever) or whatever sappiness you are singing about today". Someone should have stood up to him and said "This robot concept stuff is crap and it's going to ruin us!!" Not that everything on that album was bad, but a lot of it was. I think however that it may have been a better record had it been a looser concept. The concept album was not new to them, but up until that point it hadn't been under such tight constraint. I understand the whole thing about Dennis wanting to take his music in a different direction, but he shouldn't have been allowed to do that within the framework of Styx and the other members should have stood up for what they belived in. (And I'm the bigger fan of TS than I ever was of DDY, but you've got to try and look at things objectively, especially when discussing a video clip from 1996)
Bottom line on the whole thing is that while it's popular and easy to blame DDY for the break up/divorce/etc he wasn't the only one to blame. As for the aformentioned video clip, I think that when TS is speaking on the topic of the past, the band, etc... he's going to say what he's feeling at that moment in time as I think that he kind of lives in the moment. Yes, the story changes as the years go by and sometimes it regresses, but I think that he's saying in that moment what he's feeling at that moment, with a little dose of PR thrown in.
(All my opinion of course.)
