And More Interviews

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Dennis talks about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in this one.



http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17470781&BRD=2228&PAG=461&dept_id=447983&rfi=6

Dennis DeYoung brings the bombastic music of STYX to the Kirby

Admit it: When a STYX song comes on your favorite classic-rock radio station (uh, Rock 107, of course), you turn it up and scream at the top of your lungs - as long as no one else is within earshot. Even animated characters are afflicted with this love for bombastic '70s power ballads; Eric Cartman has repeatedly belted STYX's "Come Sail Away" on South Park, for instance.
Pop culture has been kindly cruel to the band's catalog: "Lady" was featured in the movie Old School and in a particularly memorable episode of The Simpsons. And "Mr. Roboto," from the 1983 STYX concept album Kilroy was Here, is seemingly ubiquitous thanks to a 1999 VW commercial.
Enter Dennis DeYoung. The goofy guy with the bizarrely curly gray hair wrote and sang all those late '70s and early '80s smashes, and even though he no longer performs with the rock remnants currently billing themselves as STYX, DeYoung is keeping the over-the-top music alive. He'll come to the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre this Saturday while, coincidentally, STYX will perform at Penn's Peak in Jim Thorpe tonight. But ec/dc was interested hearing from the man that, by his own admission, wrote so much "pretentious, pompous stuff."
Although DeYoung is touring in support of CD and DVD releases of his concerts with a "live symphony," he'll be bringing a five-piece rock band to NEPA, along with another former STYX player, Glen Burtnik. The 59-year-old singer was a few minutes late for our phone appointment because he was busy working on verse for a new song. "When you're old, you can't remember anything," he said, apologizing for the mix-up. But we can't stay mad at the man that welcomed us to the Grand Illusion, rocked the Paradise, and just generally gave us the best of times.
This song that you're working on - it's for an album of new
material planned for 2007?
Actually, it's for the Tiny Tim retrospective I'm working on.

You're quite the comedian.
Who said?

Well, I just watched clips of your appearances with Hal Sparks on Celebrity Duets. You guys should have your own vaudeville show.
And they edited that down to 10 seconds for TV. It went on for much longer than it should have.

Were you happy to be on a show like that?
I'm happy to be anywhere, if you catch my drift. At my age? I was thrilled I got asked back. The three people they asked back were Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, and me, so go ahead, find fault with that.

You were also on Canadian Idol?
And French-Canadian Idol; I'm bilingual.

I learned that you have quite a following in Montreal and the rest of Quebec?
Me? Huge. It's really the impetus behind (my appearances in) Canada. The French Canadians embraced me back in 1974 with (a song from the STYX album) Equinox, "Suite Madame Blue." A radio station up there polled listeners and the number-three song of all-time behind "Stairway to Heaven" and "Hey Jude" is "Suite Madame Blue." ... They've really embraced this latest CD and DVD of mine. Let's face it: I'm 59 years old and I just had a triple-platinum DVD and a platinum CD in Canada. Matt, look it up. When's the last time that happened?

I thought you were going to say that you had a triple bypass?
Ah, no, I'm healthy, relatively speaking.

Are you a good eater?
I do eat right. I haven't eaten red meat in a long time, but I do eat blue meat.

Are there any special things you do to take care of your voice?
I wear thong underwear two sizes too small.

So you can still hit those high notes?
Oh yeah, if you wet 'em, boy...

Do you get "younger people" at your shows, or just those that were 16 in 1979?
We don't want those kids - they're into that hip-hop stuff, piercing their bodies and putting tattoos all over the place. We don't let people under the age of 50 into our shows; they cause too much trouble. Look, I tell you this: I played some outdoor shows this summer, where there were more than 15,000 people - they weren't there especially to see me but they knew who I was - there were 12-year-olds, girls and boys, looking at me and singing along with these songs I'd written. I'd look over my shoulder and wonder, "Who are they looking at?" Because when I look in the mirror, I see me. The fact that kids look at me and accept me, it's like me standing in the front row of Guy Lombardo audience when I was 15.

Maybe they were just amazed by your hair?
It could be, or it could be that I always wear a nice suit. I don't know.

You obviously still like to perform these songs?
Of course; I play a few songs and people scream. Who doesn't like that? If you don't like that, you should have never done this in the first place.

For all the success, STYX isn't in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What are your thoughts about that?
I don't know what the qualifications are, what the criteria are. I know it's based on the philosophies of the people who write Rolling Stone magazine - Jann Wenner in particular. If you got me into a discussion about this, I would probably sound grumpy.

I know what you mean. They're sort of against bands like your band.
Queen did get in. I think you've got to die, maybe. Queen was no more loved than we were by rock critics. You can pull up the Rolling Stone (from 1975). They just crucified "Bohemian Rhapsody." You know what I thought then?

What?
"They don't know what they're talking about," and history has proven that to be true. The problem is, by and large, rock criticism back in those days was so narrowly defined as to what was critically acceptable. You can start with one thing: If you make pretty, melodic music, you've got no chance. They don't like that. ... And if you want a shoe-in, imitate Bob Dylan, or do something outrageous socially or politically. But music, to me, has always been a personal form to express music ideas first and foremost. There's a whole bunch of bands from Boston to STYX to Journey to Foreigner, and of that group, Queen was the only one in that got in.

It's whether someone or some group was influential, not how many people dance to their song at their prom.
There developed suddenly, probably in the middle to late '70s, a theory about garage bands, that somehow they embodied the spirit of rock 'n' roll. Matt, that's bullshit. The people who invented rock 'n' roll - Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Louis Jordan, LaVerne Baker, Bill Haley, Carl Perkins....

They were showmen.
They were showmen and they could play and sing, couldn't they? It wasn't about this romantic notion that we're just in a garage and we don't have to play or sing, because that's the spirit of rock 'n' roll. That's just nonsense.

Speaking of being grumpy, I've seen the STYX Behind the Music. Is there any chance of a reunion?
The two guys still in the band (Tommy Shaw and James Young), they've probably made the case as emphatic as anybody that is their decision to not have me in the band and it still remains that way. It's not really been up to me.

But as the person who wrote these songs you feel a good claim to perform them, even if it's not as STYX?
I don't claim to be STYX. Since I wrote 'em and I sang 'em and I say it's Dennis DeYoung, then I think that's OK.

Bugsy

[LtVanish]

Interesting comments on the Rock n Roll hall of fame, you can tell it bothers him.