“Now that’s rock & roll right there,” I overheard a young man tell his friend as they exited the concert. No, this is not 1977, but the band that once held the world in the palm of it’s hand throughout most of the seventies and early eighties has just played to another sold out venue.
Styx has been pounding the pavement of stages all around the world since the very early seventies and seemingly has pleased everyone they have ever played for; including all in attendance here at the Hard Rock. This band has weathered personnel changes, infighting, slumps, sabbaticals and music trends, and have landed safely on their feet in the 2000’s. I don’t think you could kill Styx if you tried. That’s because their fans are loyal and that loyalty is something that a band has to earn through years of putting out great music, both on record and in front of a live audience. And Styx has one heck of a reputation. Their brand of energetic all-for-the-fans rock is still pumping blood into the mainstream music world. As their current tour t-shirt proclaims boldly, “classic rock my ass”.
“We’re going to do a few songs we haven’t done in a long time,” Tommy Shaw announced happily after they whizzed through a few old favorites to begin the show. Looking as young as ever and full of energy, he was ready to rock all night with songs from the Styx repertoire both familiar and ones heard rarely on the lighted stage. “I don’t think we’ve played that song here before,” he said after keyboardist Lawrence Gowan sang lead on “Castle Walls” from the The Grand Illusion album, which made up the majority of the set list.
A definite highlight was “Man In The Wilderness”, a song that Tommy wrote about his brother who had had a tour of duty in Vietnam and came home a changed man. Revealing that his brother was deeply affected by what had happened there, “He paid a heavy price for that but he was proud to do that”. The personal emotion of the song was not lost on the crowd standing before them.
Styx could probably do this in their sleep. Having seen them already earlier in the year, there was some familiarity about the show, but this really wasn’t a greatest hits package as before. Playing songs like “Man In The Wilderness”, “Castle Walls” and “Queen Of Spades”, added to the oeuvre of Styx live. And how many times can one sit through “Renegade” without it becoming stale? Well, a lot, because the song never seems to lose it’s spirit and vivre. Same goes for “Blue Collar Man”, which caused such an uproarious commotion when the first notes vibrated through the speakers that it was like Zeus’ thunder pounding down from above.
The crowd was absolutely in love with Styx. How often does a band that has been around this long still appear as fresh and vivacious as Styx. Tommy Shaw is definitely underrated as a guitarist and vocalist, while “The Warrior” James Young, with a wide smile and mischief in his eyes as he pranced around the stage like a proud peacock while singing his trademark “Miss America”, still makes his fretting look impossibly easy, and drummer Todd Sucherman just doesn’t stop. Bassist Ricky Phillips is here-there-and-everywhere, trading licks with the guys like he has been in the band since the beginning. And Lawrence Gowan, with a whimsical patch of red in his hair and a fun giddy-up in his voice, has the task of making the crowd forget (if just for an hour or two) that Dennis DeYoung ever existed by taking on songs the latter made incredibly famous. With a Scottish-Canadian accent, he chanted out “Mississippi” and led the locals in a short, zippy rendition of “Mississippi Queen” before doing his sing-a-long choruses of “War Pigs”, “Another Brick In The Wall” and “Fat Bottomed Girls”, leading up to “Come Sail Away”.
It would be easier to find fault with a band like Styx if they weren’t so good at what they do. The songs still sound as energetic as ever, the crowd still sings said songs as loudly as ever, and they still throw out tons of logo’d merchandise. And most importantly of all, they still seem to be having as much fun as ever.
Photograph by Leslie Michele Derrough
