It is not easy being the musician who takes over for a popular member of a superstar band; to come in and try to fill those shoes all while attempting to put your own personal spin on the music that millions know word for word and note for note. But this was the situation that Lawrence Gowan found himself in when he replaced Dennis DeYoung in the vastly popular Styx in 1999.
Since then, he has put his stamp on the Styx catalog, adding a bit of Scottish-Canadian wizardry to their American classics such as “Renegade”, “Crystal Ball” and “Blue Collar Man”. But what some fans may still not know is that Gowan was pretty popular on his own in Canada, nabbing awards and hit records and successful tours. He just never had the chance to see what he could do in the United States until he joined forces with Styx.
Recently, while in Canada prior to performing a show in Vancouver, Gowan called Glide to talk about his youth in Canada, his love for Styx and how a fake mustache can really pay off.
You were really, really popular before you joined Styx and now you’re really, really popular again, this time with Styx. How similar or different are those two lives?
That’s a great question. I feel like the gods of rock have smiled upon me twice and I don’t take that lightly. I put the work in and the preparation necessary for both things to happen but still that’s no guarantee anything like that will ever happen to a person. There are lots of people who prepare themselves and the opportunity never arrives. So I feel lightning struck twice for me because as a solo artist in Canada, I went as high as you could go. I had several number one records, very successful tours for years, but there was always the frustration because the way my contract was set up I just could not get them to release my records in the United States. And that’s a strange thing that happens to a number of artists and you never really know why.
But I always wanted to get across that border someway (laughs). I just never imagined it would be as a member of another band. And to be asked to join a legendary band of that status, that’s kind of an honor enough and realizing this is a chance for me to at least perform across the border in the United States. Immediately, we brought one of my songs from my solo career into Styx so in many ways it was identical to what happened in Canada for me cause suddenly it went from zero to a hundred almost overnight. So it was very similar in that regard.
The beauty of the second time around is that the band is already completely intact, obviously, and has had such a long-standing and venerated career that it just merely needed to be upheld. So I kind of just stepped into the role.
You must be having the time of your life.
Yeah, because I think anyone who is lucky enough to be able to do what they love most and make a living at it is definitely having a good life and they should appreciate it (laughs).
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Scotland, in Glasgow, and then immigrated to Canada when I was just a little kid and I grew up in Toronto; I still live in Toronto.
What was it like growing up there?
Well, it was cold (laughs)
I assume you played hockey.
I did (laughs). It’s mandatory and government enforced that every child must put skates on before they’re five years old and see whether they shoot left or right (laughs). Yeah, I was kind of the really typical Canadian kid, I guess, in that I played hockey and learned to live half the year with the harsh winter. It’s not so harsh anymore, funny enough. But that was the life I grew up in and I loved it. When music came along and the first time I heard The Beatles and saw The Beatles, I was completely awestruck by it and that became the pursuit of my life from probably the age of about seven years old. It was the thing I stayed focused on and still am.
Being that young, did you know that you wanted to be a professional musician? Or did you just want to get out there and play and have fun? When did it go from being fun to it being an actual serious pursuit?
That is a pivotal moment because when you’re a little kid you’re also dreaming you can play professional baseball or for a Canadian kid, I was definitely going to be on the Toronto Maple Leafs and I was going to score the Stanley Cup winning goal year after year. That’s the kind of ambitions you have when you’re a little kid. But when I was about eight years old, I just figured one day I would join The Beatles and it would be fantastic (laughs). When you begin to learn a little bit more about life it doesn’t exactly work that way.
By the time I was a teenager, I started to get like a tiny bit more sense in my head and I realized that there were so many tremendous musicians and I began to appreciate the depth of talent of someone like Elton John or Freddie Mercury from Queen or the guys in Yes or Genesis, those progressive rock bands. I began to realize what a depth of musicality and musicianship they possessed and that I’m going to have to dig in a lot deeper (laughs). So I went to the Royal Conservatory in Toronto and I went all the way through and studied that until I was nineteen and I got a degree in Classical Piano Performance. By that time I had enough technical ability to play what I needed to play.
The biggest road to discovery is trying to figure out if you can write material. By that time I started writing some songs and they began to get a little bit better and a little bit better, and then I started playing in clubs, playing six nights a week, fifty-one weeks of the year and that has continued on. Only now sometimes we play at the Super Bowl, we play in arenas, we play around the world (laughs)
What was the first band you were in?
My first professional band was when I was nineteen, after getting my classical piano chops certified, and I had my first band called Rhinegold and it was named after an opera by Wagner. We did these big kind of progressive rock little rock operas that we put together and we played in clubs in Eastern Canada, in the eastern provinces of Ontario and Quebec and down into Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. We played for like five years doing that and that was my first band. It was a very theatrical rock outfit, not unlike what Styx was doing at the top of the world at that time. Styx was like one of the absolute top bands in the world and we were trying to do something in the same vein.
What’s most curious and satisfying is at that time I can relate to myself being nineteen years old and seeing Styx, who were playing Madison Square Garden, had triple platinum records back to back, and really wanting to do that. When that band eventually fell apart, I thought, well, that was my shot at the music business and it didn’t work. But fortunately I was tenacious enough to try a solo career and that’s when I got a record deal and things started going a lot better in the business sense. At the same time, I had just as much fun trying and failing as I had trying and succeeding.
When did you start playing piano?
I was ten. My first instrument was the guitar and I had begged my dad to get me a guitar and he got me this acoustic guitar and I played that for a couple of years. Then my mom said, “Why don’t you try playing the piano?” and right when she said that I thought, Paul McCartney was playing “Hey Jude” on the piano, and piano is probably a pretty cool instrument to play. I’ll give that a shot. I just seemed to have a quicker affinity for the instrument so it’s been my life and guitar has remained my hobby.
Who else has influenced you as a musician?
For piano players, it would be any of the four Beatles, pick any one you choose (laughs) but there was a piano player that played with the Rolling Stones in the 60’s named Nicky Hopkins, loved his playing. And I loved Billy Preston’s playing, and he played with The Beatles as well. Then from there I really got into Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Rick Wakeman from Yes, Keith Emerson and possibly my favorite keyboard player is Tony Banks from Genesis. They’re all incredibly talented and do phenomenal things with the instrument individually but they all have a different voice. I loved what they could do. I guess I lean more towards Freddie Mercury in that he had such great vocal style that went along with his piano playing. Those are my biggest influences.
What was the first concert that you went to?
A band in Canada called the Guess Who. They had a number one in the States called “American Woman”; you probably still hear that song a lot. That was the first concert I ever went to. I was like fourteen years old and that was it. Once I saw what these guys could do with an audience and me being part of it, that just completely galvanized my desire to do that. And I’m doing that today (laughs)
Who was the first real rock star you ever met?
Actually, you know what, from that band the Guess Who. I met Burton Cummings. I was in grade 10 and I was like fifteen, and after seeing his concert, a few months later I heard that he was going to be at a club in Toronto with a comedy duo. And he was just going to get up and do a few songs but it was really a comedy show. But because he was friends with them he was going to be there. So I took my mom’s eyebrow pencil and filled in a little phony mustache (laughs), put on a turtleneck and kind of pulled it up to my ears and believe it or not, my next-door neighbor was like a big music fan and he took me down to the club where they were playing. You had to be 18 to get in, that’s what it was in Canada then. I just went in with him and bluffed my way in and didn’t have to show any ID. And over by the cigarette machine I see, “Wow, there he is. There’s Burton Cummings”. I immediately go up to him and quickly introduced myself. He was just getting his cigarettes and I said, “Burt, what’s the secret to becoming a great singer?” He kind of half turned to me and he said, “I don’t know. Sing a lot, I guess” (laughs) It’s really funny. That was our whole conversation.
Years later I wound up doing concerts in Canada with him just with two pianos. I was a single act then, just Gowan. That’s quite an amazing thing to go from the cigarette machine to playing in front of audiences together. I thought it was a fantastic thing to happen. So I guess that was my first rock musician/celebrity encounter. After that, there was a time I got to meet Elton John and finally by 1984, making my second solo record, I was in Ringo Starr’s home, in his home studio in England. He was there every day and that was incredible. So I’ve gone all the way to that (laughs)
So what does Styx have going on this year?
Well, what happens right now, we’re just getting the full itinerary together for this year. I guess this is our tenth show of the year tonight, here in Vancouver. So we’re getting the whole year together and there’ll probably be a couple of massive tours. In between, I’ll play a few solo dates in Canada. I’ve done like eight of them in the last two years. I’m just trying to resurrect that a little bit whenever we have a little break. Todd Sucherman, the drummer from Styx, comes along and does those solo shows with me. And those are my plans for this year.
The most recent thing that just happened was Styx released our brand new DVD of a concert we did in Memphis last year. It just came out like two days ago and it got to number two on Amazon in like one day. So we’re very thrilled, we’re high-fiving each other all over the place at this point (laughs). So if it weren’t for that darn Adele, we’d be number one (laughs). Give us a break, Adele (laughs)
One thing that I have noticed when covering a Styx concert is how many fans travel to see one of your shows.
It’s fantastic. Even when we play in other countries, we’ll look down and see people that have gone to great lengths and great distances to come to another Styx show. And I don’t want to sound like I’m really boasting about the band too much but believe it or not I kind of understand why they do that (laughs). When I am on stage I sometimes look across the stage and see these four other guys, and when Chuck Panozzo comes up it’s five, and I can see it’s a very entertaining band to watch and the songs just work every single night. I’m as entertained probably as much as the audience watching the show, the bits that I see. I am really happy to see that they go to such lengths but we do put on a pretty strong show and I think the years and the numbers of people that continue to come see us kind of proves that.
He is a legend in his own right, having played guitar with superstars such as David Bowie and John Lennon. Join us next week for the always entertaining Earl Slick.
