Toronto Star
6-5-06
Styx founder tours with strings attached
Supergroup's former front man Dennis DeYoung performs with full orchestra
Exiled from band he founded, singer does tunes he wrote for the group
BRUCE DEMARA
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
For a man without the band he founded, Dennis DeYoung is a surprisingly upbeat guy.
After being exiled from Styx seven years ago because of an illness that left him exhausted, ultra-sensitive to light and unable to tour, DeYoung is once again singing the "music of Styx" — that is, the songs he personally wrote or co-wrote, as per the agreement hammered out following a nasty legal battle with ex-colleagues.
"I'm damned excited. Heck, I'm a middle-aged white guy with a job in the music business. What more could I want?" said DeYoung, who will bring his orchestra-backed act to the Hummingbird Centre Saturday.
Taking advantage of the firepower of accompanying musicians, DeYoung delivers a much fuller sound in his re-orchestrated tunes, with flashes of Mozart and Ravel and others incorporated into the music.
In its heyday in the 1970s and early '80s, Styx packed concert halls with its pop/rock sound, unleashing young hormones via sweaty ballads like "Babe," "Lady" and "Lorelei."
But the Chicago-based band, the first ever to have four consecutive triple-platinum albums, has also had more than its share of tragedy.
Members John Panozzo and John Curulewski both died prematurely as a result of alcoholism and Chuck Panozzo, John's twin, left the band after disclosing he was gay and living with HIV/AIDS.
Then there were artistic conflicts within the band that caused it to go on hiatus in 1984, reuniting 11 years later to cut another album and tour before a final schism that left DeYoung the odd man out.
The band still plays on the nostalgia circuit.
But DeYoung, approaching 60, exhibits no trace of regret, nor does he harbour any ill will toward former colleagues.
"Things will happen to you if you live long enough ... and some will be good and some will be bad, and we must all figure out a way, as the song says, to carry on," DeYoung said.
(That would be the Styx hit, "Come Sail Away.")
In fact, DeYoung may have been content to rest on his laurels if he had not been approached by Tim Orchard, a Styx fan, in 2000 with the idea of putting an orchestra behind him and performing at Chicago's storied Rosemont Theatre.
"I told him, `Tim, every six months or so, you have to empty your bong water' because I thought he was nuts," DeYoung recalled, noting the exorbitant cost of re-orchestrating the music and paying so many musicians.
"I was doing nothing, as the saying goes. I had been informed that I was no longer in Styx and he (Orchard) called me up. So I didn't set out to do this. But once he said he was going to support it ... of course then I was like a kid in a candy store," DeYoung said.
Two hometown shows sold out followed by a successful but limited tour. A few years later, the local head of public television in Chicago asked DeYoung to resurrect the music, out of which came a DVD, recorded in 2005. Since then, DeYoung has continued to tour, but at his own pace and in his own time.
"I play for the most part weekends and I do maybe 50 shows a year. So I don't really go on tour for four months ... do it and get it over with," he said.
DeYoung credits his wife of four decades, Suzanne, with keeping him on an even keel during the heady days of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, not to mention a punishing schedule that saw the band record 10 albums in 11 years while touring heavily.
"Of course there were drugs and alcohol. I was not a participant in that. I'm not saying I never took a drug in my life. I smoked marijuana for a short period ... and the last time I did that was in 1976. But I just never had much of a taste for either of the two things (booze and drugs)," DeYoung said.
"I guess I was too neurotic and too focused on being a success. And I had a wife and a baby girl before I had a record contract," he added.
He speaks fondly of past colleagues, calling band members "the hardest-working guys in show business, but as people, it was a constant contest to see who could be the funniest."
DeYoung also refuses to lay blame for the clashes and competing visions that in the end resulted in his departure.
"I can go to bed every night and say to myself I know I tried to do the best for us as a collective. If I failed, I'm sorry," DeYoung said.
"But I would just say, look at all those records and all those concerts and the fact that the music is still around, and I say, if I failed, I'll take this kind of failure."
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