[2012 Interview] - Grand Illusions & Breakfasts in America

[StyxGuy]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-rag ... 78043.html

"We call ourselves “The Alpha Dog Tag Team.” He is doing phenomenally well."

Ah... so after the two ditched Alpha Dennis, they split the role

Also... that now fills me in as to what Alpha Dog 2T, Inc is. It's JY and Tommy's company!

[Boomchild]

MR: There are so many songs in the Styx catalog would you mind going into a little story about a handful of them, starting with, let’s say, “Grand Illusion”?

JY: That was the phenomenal title track to the Dennis DeYoung concept album that we did. The music sounds like you would expect a song by that title to sound, and we open pretty much every show with it. It’s a great song.

Now this tells you a lot now doesn't it?

[masque]

yes it does.....it tells me what JY has ALWAYS claimed......that DDY was a phenomenal vocalist, keyboardist and writer and that for the first 10 years DDY was crucial to the overall success of styx.

but more than one thing can be true. all of that may be true but he also didn't enjoy working with the guy after a certain point and was lucky enough to get himself into a position to be able to sustain a career without having to work with the guy. JY is one of the lucky few to ever be able to do that with their career.

[Boomchild]

yes it does.....it tells me what JY has ALWAYS claimed......that DDY was a phenomenal vocalist, keyboardist and writer and that for the first 10 years DDY was crucial to the overall success of styx.

but more than one thing can be true. all of that may be true but he also didn't enjoy working with the guy after a certain point and was lucky enough to get himself into a position to be able to sustain a career without having to work with the guy. JY is one of the lucky few to ever be able to do that with their career.

I was focusing more on the statement about using that song to open their shows. As far as using the term lucky, that;s an odd way to put it. So he lucky was able to kick a person out and then still use stuff that was the fruits of that person's labor. And let's also look at reality. It's more like TS gave him the ability to do that. If TS was not involved JY would be out of work, musically speaking.

[masque]

and that's exactly why I say JY was lucky.

you could say it's ruthless to kick the main guy out of your business.......fair enough.

but we all agree, regardless of how much we like or dont like JY, he didn't have what it took to carry styx on without both DDY and TS.......so the fact that TS agreed with JY or JY was able to convince TS to go along with him so that he could sustain his career was fortunate at the very least. Lucky is just a lazy term I chose to use.

[StyxGuy]

and that's exactly why I say JY was lucky.

you could say it's ruthless to kick the main guy out of your business.......fair enough.

but we all agree, regardless of how much we like or dont like JY, he didn't have what it took to carry styx on without both DDY and TS.......so the fact that TS agreed with JY or JY was able to convince TS to go along with him so that he could sustain his career was fortunate at the very least. Lucky is just a lazy term I chose to use.

I think as far as we know... Tommy didn't need convincing in 1999 to tour without Dennis. Remember it was all supposedly just the tour that he was booted from before the lawsuit happened, and JY claims he was willing to let Dennis sit at home and continue to be in the studio while they used someone else on tour.

We know when BNW came out, Dennis had been recording at home, while Tommy and JY were in the studio. I'm sure Dennis asking any of them to hold off 6 months to tour was just an absolute "no". They felt that with the album release, a tour needs to happen within a few months. They had tons of requests to tour, so instead of having a possible missed opportunity, it was get out and on the road ASAP

The reality is that BNW could have dropped and Styx could have done a tour in 2000 with Dennis and nobody would have cared. I really do like BNW, but let's face it... generic Styx fans probably don't give a damn about new albums.

[Boomchild]

I think as far as we know... Tommy didn't need convincing in 1999 to tour without Dennis. Remember it was all supposedly just the tour that he was booted from before the lawsuit happened, and JY claims he was willing to let Dennis sit at home and continue to be in the studio while they used someone else on tour.

We know when BNW came out, Dennis had been recording at home, while Tommy and JY were in the studio. I'm sure Dennis asking any of them to hold off 6 months to tour was just an absolute "no". They felt that with the album release, a tour needs to happen within a few months. They had tons of requests to tour, so instead of having a possible missed opportunity, it was get out and on the road ASAP

The reality is that BNW could have dropped and Styx could have done a tour in 2000 with Dennis and nobody would have cared. I really do like BNW, but let's face it... generic Styx fans probably don't give a damn about new albums.

I think it would be fair to say that DDY was not going to agree with any plan form them to go on tour without him. Temporary or otherwise. Remember in DDY's mind Styx were "these guys". As far as TS and JY they wanted wanted to not miss the momentum they perceived was occurring at the time. Remember their perspective was that DDY did not want to tour. Which if you go by his touring activity post his firing, that doesn't appear to be the case. What I see is that TS\JY seem to paint DDY as a uncompromising person. Which by the looks of things it seems to me it was more so them.