By Jeb Wright
Transcribed by Eric Sandberg

Dennis DeYoung is one of the most honest and outspoken people I know…inside and outside of the music business. If you ask the question then you will likely get an answer…you may, or may not, like the answer…but you will get one.

He is often funny…something most rock stars are not.

DDY, as I call him, is not a rock star. He is a musician. He does not just craft music, he crafts his career. He uses his brain, as well as his mouth, and his hands to create the grand illusion of a rock show. He brings it to the masses and he gives the people exactly what they want.

In the interview that follows Dennis opens up about a new album he is working on with a co-writer…no, not Tommy Shaw. Don’t get too excited! It is Jim Peterik of Survivor fame. We talk in-depth with DeYoung on the who, what, where, when and why of the upcoming album.

We often digress into other areas of the music business and life as we know it.

In addition, since DeYoung is touring and performing the classic Styx album, The Grand Illusion, in its entirety, we discuss the making of that album. The insights Dennis reveals are very interesting.  

This is a great interview with a genius of music, a family man and the guy who wrote so many great songs for that band called ‘Styx.’

Read on to learn more about the man behind the music.

Jeb: So you've got a little break from touring right now...

DD: For a couple of weeks I'm in the studio.

Jeb: That was going to be my first question. You're turning into a mind reader.

DD: I know.

Jeb: So you are creating some new music?

DD: Oh my God, yeah! Either that or we've been spending money for no purpose. Absolutely. We have about fourteen tracks down. Jim (Jim Peterik, Survivor, Ides of March) and I wrote nine of the tracks together which, essentially, were ideas that we brought to each other and finished collectively lyrically, musically and arrangements.

Some of these tracks will absolutely be included on the record and I have another six or seven songs written and demoed, one of which I just recorded today. So the album will be a mixture of collaborations with Jim and songs I've written on my own.

Jeb: How long have you known Jim? Probably a while, I'm guessing.

DD: I met Jim, maybe thirty years ago when he tried to pick my pocket on Clark Street in Chicago [laughter]. I turned around real quick but he didn't have purple hair back then so I didn't recognize him.

Jeb: How did this musical collaboration come about?

DD: He lives three blocks from me. He's on Frontiers Records. Serifino [Perugino], the president of Frontiers, offered me deal about a year and a half ago but I just wasn't motivated to go into the studio and have my voice heard because of the soul crushing changes in the music business.

There is no radio for it to be heard. They're happy to play things you did thirty and forty years ago and, thankfully, those songs are still meaningful to people. As far as new stuff, there's no destination for classic rock fans where someone has gone through the myriad crap on the internet and says, "This is good, this is worthy, if you're listening”.

If you think the internet is a middle man for an older demographic audience that might be interested in what I'm doing, you're sadly mistaken. There is no middle man. People have lives, they have grandchildren, and they have things to do. They don't have the time or inclination to sort through the absolute cacophony that now exists.

Jeb: It has occurred to me at times that, if I wasn't doing this website, I I wouldn't know about new stuff. I know about it because the record companies send me stuff.

DD: It's awful! If the industry hasn't figured this out, they will, because fewer and fewer people are interested in becoming musicians, especially rock bands and that's a shame. I've been saying for ten years that rock is dead. It is dead if there is no format for it. It's dead.

People will write in and say, "You don't know...screw you, you stupid old..." I'm sorry. People don't know what it was like when rock was alive. You need a forum to reach the audience. You can't go door-to-door. Who are you? Avon? The Fuller Brush Music Man? No!

Without radio and, to a lesser extent, MTV It's hard to reach an audience. I've often said it should be called the Business Music, not the Music Business because it's always business first. Before you record a note, you sign a record deal with somebody, a corporation. They will decide how much you make for each record sold. If that isn't a business, I don't know what is.

And your music would never be heard without the apparatus in that machine that promotes your music. So, to wrap up the longest answer in human history, I was not inclined and I told Serifino, who is a lovely man, and a fan, "Why?" Jim continues to make records because Jim is a professional songwriter. He writes songs for other people. He's a professional songwriter. I am not. I write songs professionally, but I write them for me. Jim writes songs for anybody. Right now he's off working on the next Brian Wilson record.

If I'm not doing it I don't care. I wrote, produced, recorded and mixed those records. It's a big undertaking. I don't want to do it for the exercise of proving I know how to do it…I think I've  proven that. The only reason to do it is to communicate with an audience and that has become near impossible and that is not worth the exercise, to me.

I don't write music to breathe. I don't play concerts to validate myself. I'm past that. It's not the money, it's the opportunity...the privilege...to have people listen to your music and say, "Yea or nay" to it. That's the deal and that seems less and less feasible to me.

So, Serifino kept asking me and then he had Jim start in on me and I gave Jim the same sad speech. Jim said, "Man, you're too good to sit around not doing anything." He was my cheerleader, my motivator, so if you get this record sometime and you really hate it, you can blame Jim Peterik [laughter]. If you like it, It was all my doing.

Jeb: Now, you recently turned 71. I know because I was there for the gluten-free cake [laughter]. You've got exactly twenty years on me and, at my age, I worry about losing my creativity. How do you fire yourself up to create at your age?

(Suzanne DeYoung, in the background) He doesn't stop!

DD: As I just answered, I didn't. But Jim was very generous, nagging me, encouraging me, his belief...he sent me a couple of songs he was working on and I said, "Eh they're professional.” He's a f#ckin' professional, he knows how to write songs, he's got a history. Google him, kids!

Then he went to Italy to do some work for Serafino and he wrote me a song and sent it to me and I I said, "Aright! That's enough to get me off my lazy, fat ass!" He had struck a chord. Then he sent me another one that was a demo that had a hook you could hang your hat on. Jim asked me what I had in the vault. I had stuff on cassettes and CDs and I played them for him and he said, "Oh…this is okay…" We just dug in and started writing.

We're both from Chicago. He's from a little farther north than I am but he's got that Southside mentality and we have the same reference points, chronologically. We are perfect representations of the Baby Boom generation. The Yin/Yang was perfect. It couldn't have gone better, faster, smoother; two professionals in the same room. He could say, "Den, I don't know about that..." and I could say, "Yeah, I think you're right" and vice versa.

Good ideas didn't have names attached to them. They just had to be good ideas and soon we had eight or nine tracks. There were more good ideas but we started focusing on getting the stuff we had, recorded.

Jeb: Dare I ask, is it more your ballady stuff, your 70's stuff, 90s stuff?

DD: Yes [laughter].

Jeb: A little bit of everything.

DD: Another thing that made me resistant to this IDEA is…I don't care what anybody thinks, you, or the Pope, our President, or my next door neighbor, One Hundred Years from Now (2007) is a bitchin' record and I don't know that I could make one better. I listen to it and I think, "How did I do that?" I wouldn't change a thing about it.  It wasn't even released in this country!

That double live album that I did for Serafino [The Music Of Styx - Live With Symphony Orchestra, Frontiers Music, 2004], that got ten times as much exposure and visibility. One Hundred Years From Now got nothing and it was a hit in Canada. We didn't even release it here in this country, really.

If you're a fan of me, you know. If you're a Styx fan, wandering out there in the wilderness, they would love that record. So I had that hanging over my head. I don't want to make a record just to make one. It's too much work; it's too much soul-searching and emotional and intellectual sacrifice. Now I'm not comparing it to going to Iraq and getting shot at, but either you need to do this or you don't, because it's not mandatory work. I didn't feel I needed to do it.

You know who I am as a solo artist? Pick up Desert Moon, One Hundred Years From Now, Ten On Broadway and watch any of those videos I've made of me live; The Music Of Styx: Live In L.A. (2014) or Symphonic Rock Music Of Styx (2003). That's me, baby! Right there, across the board, that's me. I don't have to do or say anything more, there it is.

Jeb: That's interesting. It does cover it all.

DD: There are people who have to be on stage. They live and they breathe for the connection and validation of a live audience.

Jeb: I just talked last week with Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) and he was talking about this very topic. I was kidding with him that, surely, he must have some gold records on the wall and in his very regal voice he said, "No, I do not". He said, "I don't need to walk into my office and see validation that I was once a popular musician".

DD: That's how I feel. I have video. I can look at it. It's on You Tube. If I'm desperate to prove it to everybody all the time, I'm not volunteering for that job. I had that job some years ago. I had to prove that I wasn't just some bum from the neighborhood. I proved it. I'm this bum from the neighborhood [laughter]. You need that validation as a young man and once you've proved it, you don't need it, but you don't necessarily lose the fire and flame to perform.

You saw me recently, I read what you wrote about it and, as flattering as it was, I have to, in all humility, agree with you [Laughter].

Jeb: You put on a damn good show. The music was good, the band was good and your voice was good...

DD: And it's me, God damn it. When I stand on that stage, it's me.

Jeb: Is that what you're trying to tell me, that this record is you? It's not for Styx fans...

DD: No, no, no. It is absolutely for people who are true Styx fans and could like "Miss America" and "First Time". I'm not interested in going out to prove that I can regurgitate a particular sound or style. Everything begins with a song. Then you put it into the style that you think best suits the song and you move on from there.

That, I believe, was the secret to Styx's success. Styx has a wide-ranging audience. Just go to YouTube and read the comments on any song. I dare you. From '79-‘83, our records were consistently selling two to three million copies during that time and the earlier albums are probably Platinum by now. The Grand Illusion and Paradise Theater are up to about 5 million, but the point is, these albums were all different stylistically.

That's a lot of people that bought those records. The Grand Illusion and Paradise Theater are very different albums, Cornerstone as well, but they continue to sell. It was really about the songs. If you start making an album with the premise that it will sound like this, it will. That doesn't make it good. You won't be humming those songs for the rest of your life. To me: you ain't got a song, you ain't got a record. That's it.

If you like One Hundred Years from Now, you will like this record, but I took it a step further. There weren't really any ballads on that album to speak of. "There Was A Time" was maybe the closest thing to one, but I've got a couple of songs on this album that will appeal to people who like that side of me. If I go down to the studio and look at the walls...somebody liked it.

Jeb: So, with all the touring and things on your schedule, is there a deadline on this project? Will it ever be done?

DD: I have never tried to record an album and tour at the same time. Styx always took time off to make their records. All those records were done when we were not touring, so we could focus on them.

Now, I'm doing a lot of shows. I can't just play three shows on a weekend and come back and work on the album. It's finite. I can't be singing all week. So it's taken a little more time. Plus, I'm expanding the palette to hear every song idea that might be feasible. I'm not rushin' into it. I'm not going to put a deadline on myself. You've got to work within parameters otherwise it'll never get done. When I've got ten great songs, the album will be finished.

Jeb: Now, are you going to go out and do more Grand Illusion shows? Is there any chance that some of the new stuff will slip out in a live setting?

DD: Play it before it comes out? Never! No way! Why?

Jeb: Some people do.

DD: Screw 'em! [Laughter]

Some people like to be beaten when they're having sex. Explain that to me. I don't get it. I'm beaten every day of my life. Sex is when I wanna feel good! [Laughter] 'To each his own' said the lady as she kissed the cow's balls.

Jeb: There might be a song in there somewhere.

DD: You should hear some of the songs on this record.

Jeb: Well, I'm excited about the record, but I'm also excited that you have played more dates in the last couple of years than you have in a long time.

DD: I averaged about forty shows until the last couple of years. Now I've worked up to fifty-sixty-seventy. But that's not from my impetus, lately, we've just been getting a ridiculous number of offers from promoters.

The Rolling Stones can do what they want. Guys like me are subject to the whim of promoters, who are the ones that take the risk. I could be playing a forty show tour and I might get ten or twelve additional offers a year but they're not the ones I necessarily want to play for various reasons: they don't route, the money's not good, you don't think it's a particularly good use of your time.

I'm not going to play everywhere. Who cares? I wanna play where I wanna play.

Jeb: You've earned that.

DD: There's always going to be 15% of the gigs that you don't wanna go to. That's just it.

Jeb: That's life.

DD: Yes, but you go and play because there are people there that, theoretically, have an interest in seeing you. We played seventy shows last year, which is ridiculous, for me. I'm just one guy. I'm 71. I'm not traveling on a private plane. I've got a '73 Datsun.

Jeb: (sceptically) You're traveling in a '73 Datsun?

DD: They put me in the trunk.

Jeb: Let me ask you, what inspired you to do a tour performing all of The Grand Illusion?

DD: It's simple. We did it once, then people on my Facebook page were saying, "How 'bout me boss?" [Laughter] and then the promoters...now, listen to me kids, your elder is speaking. The promoter has to hire you. You don't just show up of your own accord. We don't promote our own shows.

The promoter is the one who takes the risk. "I'll pay the guy this much (to play the gig) and hope I don't lose my ass". It's the promoter who steps up and says, "Hey! We've gotta have this Grand Illusion show. We've gotta have your band. Mostly I get, "You did this business? You drew this crowd here? We thought you were dead!" Stuff like that.

It's money! Kids...It's money! It's money that makes this thing go around. In other words, the promoter doesn't wanna lose it. If you can make money, you work more. If he thinks you're going to lose money, you don't get hired.

Jeb: I get the business part of it but do you also do something like The Grand Illusion tour for nostalgia as well?

DD: No! I've always been opposed to the idea. I think it's stupid.

Jeb: Why?!

DD: Because every album, no matter how good, has a couple of songs you don't wanna play, but you gotta play 'em.

Jeb: Sure, there's a couple of clunkers.

DD: But you gotta play the album from start to finish--you're not gonna interrupt-- because you're delivering to people an experience. So, I always thought it was a bad idea. And then I did it one time because I wanted to do it for the 40th anniversary. And...the electricity!

I wanted to do it at the Arcada [theater in St. Charles, Illinois] and it was oversold in advance. I get to the building and these people are acting like something really special is happening. And it's just me. I could tell the difference. They believed they were seeing something special. It's the 'grand illusion' [Laughter].

It's true. It doesn't matter if I believe it. I'm just the stooge in this. It's the audience that matters. If they convince themselves, for whatever reason, that this is special, and they buy the tickets, then just don't go out there and disappoint 'em. And they weren't disappointed. They were knocked out.

So we put another one on in the Chicago market, which is not a great test because I'm popular here...same thing. We sold a crap load of tickets, I played a venue that, a year earlier, I could never get in. So...more tickets and it was electric, so we said, "Let's see if this works outside of Chicago" and the first three shows sold out in advance.

Just because I can write a song and sing it doesn't mean I understand, fully and completely, the workings of the mind of the fan.

Jeb: I can picture you in a top hat and tails. Give the people what they want!

DD: They want great songs, so at this juncture I was against playing an album, any album. 'Hmm, do we really need "Superstars" and "The Grand Finale"? Probably not.

Jeb: I knew those were the two! Actually I kinda like "Superstars".

DD: I like it too, but "Superstars" is like that cute girl in your 8th grade class, standing between Salma Hayak and Charlize Theron. Sure she's cute, but..."Superstars" is between "Angry Young Man" and "Come Sail Away". It's a bad place to stand. You want to hang around ugly people?

"Superstars" suffers by comparison but it is an important song for the album because it absolutely nails the concept of what we were saying. In the verses, he's talking about being in "the shadow of the 14th row cause I've had the same dreams you've had a few short years ago" It goes on to say, "Everyone's welcome, we want your dreams, the offer's simple, momentary immortality". That's the essence of The Grand Illusion. It's vital--the glue to the concept.

Jeb: This may be an unfair question but, in the liner notes for The Grand Illusion, it says "Produced by Styx". Honestly, I thought these albums were produced by DeYoung.

DD: Here's what it was. From Equinox, on, I was more or less in the captain's seat. I wasn't the producer in the acknowledged sense, but after Equinox, I got free reign largely due to the belated success of "Lady" [Styx II]. After "Lady" became a hit, I knew what people wanted, and that was Equinox. There was only one song on there that I wasn't a writer on, which was "Midnight Ride", a damn good song from J.Y. [James J.Y. Young].

There is a misconception that somehow I lorded it over the other band members. That never happened, ever. That's just bullshit. I used my charm and my personality; my leadership skills and the belief that we were going to be the biggest band in the world.

Go back and watch, Behind The Music. J.Y. says, "For the first ten years there was nobody better for this band than Dennis. He believed in us even when I didn't". That's what I was. So those albums were my vision of what Styx was.

I encouraged Tommy [Tommy Shaw] from the beginning to be the rock star I knew he was. That's all I ever did. I tried to put all the members of the band in the best possible light. You don't ever see any outtakes from Styx, do you?

Jeb: No.

DD: That's because I didn't allow it. Those assholes at Wooden Nickel/RCA...they put out a Greatest Hits album after "Lady". We only had one hit! The rest of the stuff was...well come on! I put my foot down. If you record extra material these record companies are going to do what they want with it and I didn't want that.

We would come into the studio and kick ideas back and forth until we had something to record. In all that time we only had one song rejected.

Jeb: What happened to it?

DD: J.Y. put it on his solo album. It was called, "Chain Me Down To The Grand Illusion". Look it up, you can probably hear it somewhere. Nobody said anything, but I told J.Y. "We need another song from you". J.Y. was not a prolific songwriter from Equinox, forward, but he came in one day with "Miss America". I said, "Hot damn!" But from that moment, "Chain Me Down..." just didn't get worked on.

I wanted everyone to be the best that they could be because all boats rise with the tide and, what was important to me was the word, 'Styx'.

Jeb: It seems like your leadership of the personalities who were songwriters, and the diversity of the members, was a key to the band's popularity.

DD: It's the songwriting. Get the best on the record and we held a high bar. I never brought in ten songs for an album. I brought in three, maybe four. After Tommy came in, who was a bonafide songwriter, I envisioned a 50/40 split between me and Tommy and 10% for J.Y.

J.Y. didn't bring in twenty songs. He usually only brought in one or two. I tried not to overwhelm the process by writing six or seven songs, knowing that there was only going to be seven or eight songs on an album. It makes for a bad relationship among the guys.

That's how it was structured. Subliminally, by me!

Jeb: Now, let me ask you in all fairness. Is this something you have recognized after the fact, or was it by design?

DD: Totally by design.

Jeb: Wow! You were on your game, man!

DD: Here's the thing people don't understand: The dynamic of the band--three songwriters and three singers--that equilibrium needed to be kept. Look at the history of the Eagles. If you've got Don Henley and Glenn Frey, they have to sit in the front row. Bands run into problems when that equilibrium gets destroyed.

Yes it was by design. Look at it. Count up the songs. Do you think that was arbitrary? It wasn't.

Jeb: The Grand Illusion is damn near perfect; the flow of the songs, the concept, some proggy stuff, some rock anthems, the reprise--as fans, we just go, "Wow, look at the magic that happened!"

DD: We were a pop, rock prog band. We were all those things. Tommy came in and had to learn how to be in our band. Prog guys don't really want to hear anything catchy. They have a different sensibilty. Anything that smacks of commercialism make's their skin crawl. I'm not making records for those guys. I just wanna have fans.

I like the progressive rock flourishes that you can use but I couldn't be in a strict prog rock band because we were song oriented. When Yes stopped writing songs, I didn't care anymore. How did they come back? They wrote two or three good songs. 90125. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" If you're in Tales From Topographic Oceans at the bottom of Mars, I'm not there with ya.

Jeb: Me neither.

DD: "All Good People? Let's go! [Laughter]

Songs! Prog people don't care. They wanna see you play time signatures; they wanna see virtuosity, right? They want to feel that your DNA is from white, male, Europeans. If that's what you want, I'm not going to cater to you. I've got bigger fish to fry. Don't look at me and expect me to meet your expectations.

Jeb: There are times, though, where you hit those flourishes, a mix of hard rock, with a mix of pop, with a message, and that's The Grand Illusion. It's got all of it.

DD: That's because it's songs first.

Jeb: "Castle Walls" might have been a little bit proggy...

DD: But it is still a song, first. You could play that one on an acoustic guitar and a piano and sell it.

Jeb: Were you savvy enough then to know that "The Grand Illusion" was going to be on the radio?

DD: Top 40 or rock radio?

Jeb: Rock radio.

DD: Rock radio was just coming into its own in '77 with the "Superstars" format [rock radio format pioneered by Lee Abrams which slotted an AOR station in every radio market in the US]. The FM stations were finally taking hold.

I don't know. I just thought "Come Sail Away" was the bomb and I loved "Foolin' Yourself". Those were the two that I knew for sure. "The Grand Illusion", I still don't like the record we made of it. It could have been better. It was the first thing we recorded. The Oberheim [Oberheim SEM synthesiser which provided DeYoung's signature sound] hadn't been invented yet, so we did that without benefit of the Oberheim.

Usually the first track you record in the studio is not going to be as good because you're getting acclimated to the studio and the environment and new gear is always being invented. Records are a technical thing as much as they are a creative thing.

I would have liked to have had my Obie 4 sound on "The Grand Illusion" --buh-buh-bump-bah--but it wasn't invented yet. By the time it was invented, "The Grand Illusion" was finished and mixed.

The ones that were recorded later were "Come Sail Away", "Miss America", "Foolin' Yourself" and “Castle Walls.” The ones that were recorded at the end are the ones that sound the best, sonically. "Castle Walls" is wonderful sonically. "Miss America", same thing. "Come Sail Away", my god.

Jeb: That's fascinating, although, "The Grand Illusion", that one touches me.

DD: Listen, the guitar solo on "The Grand Illusion" is probably the best guitar solo in the Styx catalog. It's unusual sounding and it fits the song perfectly.

Jeb: Is that Tommy?

DD: Yes, Tommy. J.Y. played the (sings the melodic guitar line that resolves the middle eight).

Jeb: Were the aliens in "Come Sail Away" originally in the lyrics?

DD: Never! It was J.Y. who said, "What if they were aliens?" He likes that stuff. Look at the space suits he wore on stage. He's a science fiction guy. I never had any use for it and I go and write f#ckin' "Roboto"! [Laughter]

You wanna know what the original lyric was? They weren't aliens. It was the Starship Enterprise!

Jeb: It was Captain Kirk!

DD: As the writer of the lyrics, I wanted no part of aliens!

Jeb: When you do this show, you make a point of announcing at the beginning that you're going to play the album through and you're not going to chat between the songs, and you can feel it in the audience. Call it nostalgia or something else, but it drips.

DD: That's the business I'm in. I'm in the business of nostalgia. And it's a good business. I'm not ashamed of it. I make no apologies for it. I sing for my supper, my friends [Laughter]. And I always will.

If somebody wants to attach the word 'art' to what we did, then that's their problem. I don't know what art is. I have no idea. But I know what a good tune is and, if people want to sing along, I'm happy.

Jeb: You don't consider what you do art?

DD: No. Because art isn't defineable. The definition of art is usually left to a small cadre of people who are not qualified to judge it in the first place. That would be music critics; yourself included [Laughter], book critics, art critics.

What's wrong with music critics? They've gotta listen to too much music. They're jaded. If they hear something different, they say it's good, just because they're so relieved to hear something different. That's not the same thing and never will be.

When Marcel Duchamp (French-American painter and sculptor, 1887-1968) mounted a urinal on a board ("Fountain" 1917) everyone went mental and said, "That's brilliant! That's art!” If that's art, then my ass is Picasso [Laughter].

I don't trust art. The people who say what art is...f#ck you! Those are the people who claim there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure'. Why the f#ck does pleasure have to be guilty? Who says you should feel guilty about liking something? It's the same small cadre of 'hipper than thou' people who appointed themselves to tell the rest of us what stooges we are.

Jeb: You just described most rock critics.

DD: It's not just rock, but rock is the worst. They're the most homogeneous. They, by and large, like the same things and hate the same things. That's not possible. You find me a rock critic that loves all the mainstream bands of the '70s and I guarantee you he's in a straight-jacket [Laughter].

Music that continues to be played and enjoyed by countless millions is still looked at as not valid, yet Iggy Pop is.

Jeb: I was driving with my wife and I had "The Grand Illusion" playing, and I said to the wife, "That may be my favorite Styx song".  And she said, "No sh*t, it sounds like Kansas!"

DD: Kansas is a great live band. Lemme tell you my Kansas story. We were playing a roller rink in Chicago. We closed, they opened. Before the show, Kerry (Livgren) and I were talking and he was telling me how many times they listened to The Serpent Is Rising album. And I thought, "I hate that album". So, Kansas was listening to Styx, not Vice-versa.

Jeb: I think that's fair to say...

DD: Whattaya mean, fair to say? When did they make their first record, '74? We had made three albums by then, and they were listening to them. Kerry told me that. He said, "Hey, you did "The Hallelujah Chorus", and I thought, "Weren't we assholes", and that was my idea!

Just because they became popular before we did doesn't mean they were before us. Same thing with f#cking Queen! I never heard Queen until '75. The first thing I ever heard was "Killer Queen" [from Queen's 3rd album, Sheer Heart Attack, 1974].

Jeb: I've always enjoyed this kind of music that has a certain, what would you call it, pomp?

DD: That's because you're a white guy. What is Wright, English?

Jeb: Yes.

DD: Well then you're dead! [Laughter]

The English invented this music. It's in your DNA. I'm half northern European so I I have that flowing through me as well, but I'm also half Italian so I have an operatic side to me.

Prog rock ran its course. It got bloated with technical self-importance.

Jeb: You may tell me what a nerd I am and that I'm over-thinking but, I'm looking at the back cover of the vinyl of The Grand Illusion, where you're all looking out from between the trees, and you and Tommy are the only one's sharing a space.

DD: That is coincidental, but if you want I can give you the number of people who worked with Lee Harvey Oswald [Laughter].

Jeb: It just struck me. I'm kind of a nerd that way. Just the way things have gone. It's an interesting picture in retrospect.

DD: I'd have to take a look at it myself. I thought it was the stupidest f#ckin' thing of all time, us behind those trees.

Jeb: I like the front!

DD: Oh, it's brilliant! And we had the big poster inside. It was beautiful. That was the picture. We're standing behind trees...what? Are you takin' a piss?

Jeb: I've done over 2000 interviews with musicians and I like talking to you because you don't come off as pretentious. I think you maybe get a little bit of a bad rap, and maybe you earned some of it, I don't know.

DD: As an art rock fan, you know--pretense and art rock are the same word. All art rock is pretense, to rock critics. So, as far as me being pretentious? If you go back and listen to all my interviews there is a consistency.

The Dennis DeYoung you see on the stage today, the way I talk to the audience, that's the real Dennis DeYoung. But when you're in a rock band in the '70s, that side of me could never be exposed. The humor, the sarcastic cynicism, the self-deprecation.

You are a rock star, you are a poseur. That was your job. It was like a uniform. Almost like having long hair and a beard in 1976. In some places bell-bottoms were part of the uniform. Most of the time you were busy trying to figure out how to look cool. But really none of us were. We were goofballs.  

It was a very funny band. Rock people, like yourself don't want humor in your bands. They want their bands to be serious, especially prog rock fans. They're very serious people and they view the music in a very serious way.

Here's the thing, we sold so many concert tickets from '76 through '83. We had a loyal concert-going and album-buying audience. People loved the band. Sometimes you don't get lucky in life and, with Styx, I think it was due to our manager [Derek Sutton] openly and directly antagonizing all rock critics. He went after them. We had argument after argument with him. We didn't get our first in-house PR person until 1981. He instructed the record company never to give rock critics free albums to review. There was even an article in Playboy magazine with him talking about this.

He said, "Why should we give them anything for free? They never write anything nice about us anyway." How are we going to win anybody over? You're just saying, "F#ck you!" That's where a lot of that came from.

Add that to the fact that the music we made. Rock critics never really liked prog music, even in the beginning.

Jeb: That's why they have so much trouble getting in the Hall [Rock and Roll Hall of Fame].

DD: Well, they finally put Yes in. They said, "OK, is Chris Squire dead? OK, they're in." F#ck them! That's just the Rolling Stone crowd. Jann Wenner got the funding to build this thing, and it's quite lovely, but it's not a rock and roll hall of fame. It's a music hall of fame.

Jeb: It's like you said about radio, the stuff that is considered not worthy is the stuff that is still here, but they can't get in there. I guess they're finally letting Journey in.

DD: They had to! You know what got them in? "Don't Stop Believin." If it wasn't for that they don't get in. That thing is ubiquitous. Next year Trump is going to change that to the National Anthem.

Jeb: How about a good Grand Illusion quote to finish off this interview?

DD: Deep inside we're all the same. It doesn't matter how rich, how famous. When it comes right down to it we all face the same kinds of problems in life. And we all, as everyone knows, are one day not going to be on this mortal coil. So deep inside we are all the same. Do not believe the grand illusion.  BUT BUY THE F#CKIN' CONCERT TICKET!

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