By Steve Penhollow and Rick Farrant
The Journal Gazette
Dennis DeYoung remembers when Chicago promoter Tim Orchard called him
to suggest he team with the nation's symphonies to sing orchestral
versions of Styx hits
"I didn't know him very well," DeYoung recalls, "so I said, 'You
know, Tim, every six months or so, you have to empty your bong-
water.' "
It is not known whether Orchard took DeYoung's advice, but DeYoung
certainly took Orchard's and revitalized his career in the process.
DeYoung will appear with members of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic and
the Fort Wayne Children's Choir on Saturday night at the Embassy
Centre.
He will perform the music of the band he fronted during the period
most people paid attention to it.
Styx forged on without DeYoung years ago, a rift that had something
to do with DeYoung's love of bombast in a Broadway vein and band-mate
Tommy Shaw's love for rock of the classic kind.
DeYoung, 56, says the reasons for the split are too complex to go
into, but the all-too-common denominator was ego.
"Everybody wants to feel the most special and the most needed all the
time and it can't always happen."
Styx brings home its bacon these days with a vocalist who sounds sort
of like DeYoung, and DeYoung channels Styx with the help of a largely
female faction of back-up singers.
"Styx always did sound like a bunch of girls anyway," DeYoung says in
a phone interview.
But Styx as he knew it doesn't exist anymore as far as DeYoung is
concerned, regardless of the pedigree, assemblage or excellence of
impersonation.
"Without me, it's not the same. Without them, it's not the same. It
can't be.
"As my late father said, 'What's to be, will be.' They're going to go
and do what they do and I'm going to go and do what I do. I wish no
ill will toward them, and I hope no ill will is wished of me."
DeYoung's string-infused Styx program is not your standard
Philharmonic Pops concert.
For one thing, DeYoung has hired the musicians, not the other way
around.
For another, DeYoung believes the show has more meat on its bones
than the typical opportunity to see someone leave behind the
Billboard charts for the opera house.
"It's not like Glen Campbell's orchestra show, where the musicians
play whole notes behind 'By the Time I Get To Phoenix.'
"The charts are really challenging for the orchestra. We really make
them play."
DeYoung may also work harder than any Pops Series staple.
Between concerts, he appears on PBS stations across the country,
touting his tour and the benefits of contributing to public
television.
He came to Fort Wayne on Dec. 11 and appeared live on WFWA-TV,
Channel 39.
An aversion to laziness is not the only thing that separates DeYoung
from other rock stars.
DeYoung is a pretty humble guy who doesn't take himself, his capacity
for poetry or his place in the pantheon very seriously.
He could almost be described as having a goofy streak, if the streak
wasn't such a flood.
When asked what dreams he has yet to fulfill, DeYoung touts his
impending entry into the field of waste management.
He thanks one of the tour's sponsors, Finesse Shampoo, for "being
helpful financially" and "getting rid of my split ends."
He invites the reporter to look at his Web site, "if that's your idea
of a night out."
Unlike many of his peers, DeYoung has been an unabashed family man
from the beginning. It was a rare tour where the whole DeYoung brood
wasn't along for the ride.
He has been married to his wife, Suzanne, for 34 years and he credits
her with attentiveness to the moorings and a certain heroic patience.
"The reason this marriage has lasted is because of my wife," he
says. "She had to take a lot of crap and a lot of guff along the way.
She prays a lot and she has a cattle prod."
"I didn't buy it soon enough," Suzanne shouts from somewhere in the
vicinity of her husband.
Suzanne and her sister are two of DeYoung's back-up singers, his
daughter Carrie Ann handles publicity and his son Matthew is his
lighting designer.
DeYoung is far more likely to blazon these assets than to accentuate
any negatives.
But he admits it bothers him sometimes that the critical reception
for Styx's music was not as enthusiastic as the commercial reception.
"If anybody says that doesn't bother them, they must be on a lot of
Paxil. It's stupid to claim you can read your name in the paper with
a bad thing next to it and be happy."
Still, he hasn't let it slow him at all.
"I don't think I've ever met anyone in this business who wasn't
trying to do the very best they could. So, like anything in life, you
succeed and you fail.
"I quote my own lyric every night: 'Winners are losers who got up and
gave it just one more try.' "
