The Lasting Duality Of Styx: ‘Mr. Roboto’ And Two Decades Of Dissonance (2024)

The earliest trace of Chicago rock band Styx dates back to 1962, when teenage founding vocalist Dennis DeYoung started jamming in his basement with twins Chuck and John Panozzo.

By the time the band released its 1972 self-titled debut album, the trio had picked up James “JY” Young and John Curulewski on vocals and guitar, while the twins played the rhythm section: Chuck on bass and John on drums.

Over the following three years, Styx released five full-length albums and toured the country. The band had already released “Lady,” which years later became a hit song. But at this stage, the guys garnered little attention outside the Windy City.

Just before joining Styx and replacing Curulewski in 1975, vocalist/guitarist Tommy Shaw was performing in a lounge called Kegler’s Kove — located inside a Montgomery, Alabama bowling alley. Despite recording and gig experience with his last band, MS Funk, Shaw had little idea what he was in for. In 1976, the band released Crystal Ball and toured extensively with bands like Black Oak Arkansas and The Charlie Daniels Band.

Styx then released a series of four triple-platinum records: The Grand Illusion (1977), Pieces of Eight (1978), Cornerstone (1979) and Paradise Theater (1981). Next came the platinum Kilroy Was Here (1983). Songs like “Come Sail Away,” “Renegade” and “Too Much Time on My Hands” became exemplary timepieces in popular rock.

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But their hot-streak came to a screeching halt. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, various members of the band went on to create solo records. Chuck Panozzo, who still performs to this day, battled HIV/AIDS. In 1996, his brother John Panozzo died of cirrhosis, causing the band to recruit drummer Todd Sucherman. And in 1999, Styx formally replaced DeYoung with Canadian vocalist Lawrence Gowan. He hasn’t rejoined the band since.

In 2019, there are two actively touring bands playing the iconic songs of Styx. The lineup using the eponymous name features three members from the band’s golden years. And the band’s founding vocalist tours with his own crew, billing the show as “Dennis DeYoung and The Music of Styx.”

Over the last 20 years, the band’s history has been documented as a never-ending cycle of “he-said, he-said” and finger-pointing.

As the 50-year anniversary of the band’s debut album approaches, current day Styx is more comfortable than ever. The band’s 2017 record, The Mission, was met with praise from fans. And last year, after decades of ignoring their most controversial hit, “Mr. Roboto,” the band brought it back to the stage.

DeYoung, who’s been performing the song all along, is glad they’ve done so. But, after time spent in conversation with all living members from Styx’s glory years, it’s clear their perspectives continue to differ on the sci-fi-electronic Kilroy Was Here album and its notorious single’s impact on the band.

Their respective inability to acquiesce explains why fans continue to see two entities on the road. The only thing they do seem to agree on is the lasting impact Styx has made on generations of music fans.

Young and Shaw cite a variety of reasons for bringing “Mr. Roboto” — the Japanese-laced track which postulates an apprehensive futurist view of the singularity of man and technology — back to the stage. For one, they say members of their crew suggested it after overhearing fans who were disappointed the song was omitted from their set. They also mention that high-paying private performances often request it. They even say they drew inspiration from a cover by a band called The Protomen.

“The fact that it gets a huge response from the crowd means we waited a sufficient amount of time,” 69-year-old James “JY” Young says. “It's part of our history, it was just part of it I didn't want to embrace, but I'm not embarrassed by it. The response seems to be there.”

“If you're in Styx, you have to accept ‘Mr. Roboto,’” 66-year-old Tommy Shaw says. “I don't know what it means exactly, except it's a song about technology taking over, which is actually hitting the nail square on the head. When we play it now, we love seeing the surprise on people's faces, playing this song we said we would never play.”

So why did the band decide to ignore the song entirely for 20 years?

Young remembers “Mr. Roboto” and the entire Kilroy Was Here rock opera concept album as the catalyst that led to the demise of the original Styx. He describes the record as DeYoung’s dream project, but his nightmare: a concept album that wasted a large sum of money on its corresponding visual elements, including a 10-minute dystopian film starring DeYoung and Shaw that rolled as the band took the stage.

“I'm not going to say anything negative about it,” Young says. “Anyway, he made some business moves that were egocentric and ultimately profoundly idiotic that helped break up the band. But he promised great fortunes for us in this whole thing.”

Young felt the departure from straight-forward rock’n’roll to a synthy-electronic sound alienated an audience the band worked hard to develop — and dragged Styx into a category away from classic-rock contemporaries like Foreigner and Kansas. While the band’s previous record, Paradise Theater, went triple-platinum, Kilroy Was Here only reached platinum status with the RIAA, even though “Mr. Roboto” was a number one single.

“It was a risk,” Young says. “I felt I had to back Dennis because he’d led the charge to that point, but he really got carried away with. It was beyond my control. There's a bitter taste in my mouth from that whole period.”

Shaw remembers Kilroy Was Here in a similar way.

“The experience was like going through a divorce and still having to be okay with the kids,” Shaw says. “It was just a very tough experience. You want to move on from that, you don't want to revisit. You gotta let time take over that process.”

But 72-year-old Dennis DeYoung doesn’t believe their motivations for playing the song in 2019.

“To some people it's the only song that people know Styx for,” DeYoung says. “We all deal with the same promoters. There are few secrets. They weren't playing enough hits. ‘Roboto’ was at the top of that list.” [Styx denied that claim to Billboard in 2018.]

He continues: “It brought a whole new generation of fans to Styx. But the fact of the matter is the reason they're doing the song now is the same reason they replaced me in 1999: it’s money. It's to their benefit to do it. If they want to play ‘Mr. Roboto,’ good on them. I'm just sad they ran it down for no good reason and stopped people from enjoying it. I wrote that song. I love that song.”

As DeYoung tells the story, the rest of the band was excited while creating it, too. He remembers Tommy Shaw using the voice vocoder for the track’s opening mantra, “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.”

He concedes that some of their audience didn’t understand the concept, but asserts that the narrative that “Mr. Roboto” tore apart the band is a total fabrication.

As he recalls, the turmoil in the band first started when Tommy Shaw left to pursue a solo career shortly after the release of Kilroy Was Here. The group disbanded in 1984.

In the years following, DeYoung says that Young was angry at Shaw and wanted to find a new guitarist — an idea the singer refused for years. And Young insists that DeYoung was hellbent on going solo, no matter how hard he tried to put the band back together.

DeYoung put out three solo albums and worked on other projects throughout the 90s, including a stage adaption of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Shaw had a similar path: he released three solo records before he joined forces with Ted Nugent in the Damn Yankees. Young released three albums, too.

In this complicated era, Styx came and went with a revolving cast. In 1990, just before they released the gold record Edge of the Century, Shaw was replaced by guitarist Glen Burtnik. But by 1996, the full original lineup came together for a massive reunion tour.

“After the success of 1996, [Dennis] was already talking about his own project that he had to do in 1997,” Young says. “In 1999, he wasn't well enough to go out on tour. Tommy and I felt like we were going to go with him or without him. So we got somebody to replace him.”

But the singer remembers that time very differently — saying that while he was tied up with other commitments, he tried his hardest to make Styx work — and that the band left him behind once he fell ill.

DeYoung estimates he spent 16 months going to doctors trying to find the cause of his chronic exhaustion. He says his face was always red and hot, his eyes bloodshot. Ultimately, he found his symptoms were related to light sensitivity, but he never received an official diagnosis. To this day, he still suffers from the condition.

“It's a big question mark,” he says. “It's undefinable right now. I wear sunglasses almost all the time except when I'm on stage. But look, there are worse things in this world. Look at all the dead rockstars. I’ve lived a charmed life.”

DeYoung still believes his firing was a result of pettiness and impatience — that the band constructed their dismay with Kilroy Was Here and “Mr. Roboto” as a defensive narrative about the band’s creative dissolution.

He points to a 1999 Behind The Music episode as the first time he heard these grievances. However, the 2012 remastered version of the VH1 special features a clip where DeYoung says he “bemoaned” bringing the band through the experience. The documentary also painted a picture of underwhelmed concertgoers and bandmates who were unenthused about the complex theatrics of the Kilroy tour.

“They had to convince the fan base there was good reason for it,” DeYoung says. “They came up with a story and stuck to it. ‘Dennis was controlling, egomaniacal, he led us down the path that changed our music style!’ If you tell the fan base, ‘We replaced Dennis because he was sick,’ that's a bad story to tell.”

At the turn of the millennium, DeYoung unsuccessfully sued for rights to the band’s name.

“We've settled,” Young explains. “We own the name and he gets a piece of the action. Dennis and I were probably the most at odds. But they say the great works of art come from tortured souls. The result was the music: four triple-platinum records that have withstood the test of time. We tortured each other to greatness in a way, but ultimately the differences were too great for us to coexist.”

In retrospect, those differences seem trivial when compared to the harrowing realities both the Panozzo brothers faced. After years of alcohol abuse, including an intensified binge during the band’s hiatus, John Panozzo fell ill with cirrhosis.

“We knew John was in a bad way,” says Shaw, who’s been open about his own struggles with alcohol and cocaine. “We tried an intervention, but it was too late. That was the fast track to the end.”

Shaw was sad to see the severity of John Panozzo’s addiction. He described him as rudderless: uninterested in playing with any other bands, drinking at local taverns and getting kicked out of his swanky apartment building in Chicago’s Gold Coast Historic District.

“It was surreal,” Shaw says. “I didn't expect that from John, but it happened.”

John Panozzo died on July 16, 1996 at the age of 47.

“God bless John Panozzo,” Young says. “He was a bull behind the drums.”

Still mourning the loss of his brother, Chuck Panozzo was going through his own whirlwind. Years after being diagnosed with HIV, he developed AIDS in 1998.

“It was a different experience after Johnny died for me,” 71-year-old Chuck Panozzo says. “But the only way you can honor a person is not to quit.”

And Chuck Panozzo did the furthest thing from quit. He scaled back, but didn’t abandon music. He didn’t quit on himself, either.

“Tommy said to me, ‘I'm afraid I'm going to never see you alive again,’” Panozzo explains. “The problem was I waited quite a while before I started medication, but once protease inhibitors were on the market they changed a death sentence into a chronic illness.”

“We’d been on a long break,” Shaw says. “Chuck was so thin and so ill. He avoided getting treatment for AIDS because the treatment was almost worse. People were dying these horrific deaths. He didn't realize that he had gotten that bad. So he got determined.”

Panozzo fought hard against his ailments and continues to today. In 2019, he still performs with the band as often as he can, but puts his body first.

“I still take medication to keep healthy,” Panozzo says. “When I pack, the first thing I make sure I have is my meds. I can always buy another pair of socks! But I don't dwell on it. This is part of my life.”

As if the road wasn’t rocky enough, Panozzo also overcame cancer twice in the last 15 years.

“I was in remission for a decade,” Panozzo says. “Then I had inoperable prostate cancer. I went to proton therapy which is really space age medicine. I said, ‘I'm an AIDS survivor!’ Doctors just look, thinking, ‘You should be dead!’ But I survived. And I'm not dead yet.”

At this point, Panozzo is happy to be a role model for the LGBTQ community. And he still loves playing with Styx.

Shaw does too. He describes each performance as a “religious experience.”

Today, Young says their audience includes fans of all ages. In 1981, the band played 110 sold-out arenas across North America and six in Japan. And in 2019, they’re still putting butts in the seats.

“I love being on stage,” Young says. “I intend to do it for a long time to come. I think the music is going to live on beyond all our lifespans.”

“The family drama at a certain point just seemed insurmountable,” Shaw says. “But it was always the music that pulled us back in.”

These days, Styx’s setlist features songs spanning five decades. And while the band enjoys playing 2017’s The Mission, they continue to bust out tracks 1977’s The Grand Illusion — a timeless record to both the band and audience.

When DeYoung discusses the ephemeral nature of the songs he penned so many years ago, he can’t help but get choked up. Over the phone, he recites the lyrics to “The Grand Illusion” verbatim — before expressing a divided sense of gratitude and sadness.

That’s because many fans of Styx are active on social media: sharing stories of yesteryear or tearing into each other about which lineup is more authentic.

“If you look at these people yelling at each other, it's sickening to me,” DeYoung says. “I want all Styx fans to rejoice in the music. We meant something to people. It’s so meaningful that they're willing to support two entities.”

He continues: “You don't understand, I love all those guys. I have no bitterness. But, do I wish they hadn't done what they did? Yeah, because I think it's detrimental to the name of Styx. They took one of the most loyal fan bases second only maybe to Kiss — we were Kiss without the makeup — fractured and turned it into a pissing match. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined fans being angry, bitter, or vile to any of us.”

And Shaw is aware of the heated debate between their fans, too. But at this stage, after 20 years with Gowan behind the microphone, he doesn’t feel the band owes anyone an explanation.

“You can't blame people,” Shaw says. “But the one thing that we learned is stay the hell out of it and let them work it out. It's not for us to say. They believe what they believe and it's nice to be the subject of any kind of attention from fans. One thing that's been really great is the acceptance the most recent album has gotten. When you put that needle down, it speaks for itself.”

As for an original lineup reunion, Shaw and Young have no interest. Frankly, they’re tired of people suggesting it. Shaw understands that fans will never give up asking, but resolves that he’d rather be happy than greedy.

“I finally came to terms with that,” Shaw says. “You hear people say, ‘I'm too old for that s***!’ It’s that thing. I just want to be with people who love and respect me and people that I love and respect. We want to play music, have a great time and not have any drama. There's been enough of that over the years.”

But Dennis DeYoung still thinks it's worth getting the band back together and the music is more important than any of the members’ egos.

“We should do one more tour,” DeYoung says. “Get Moe, Larry, and Curly up on that stage and say one last big farewell to show gratitude to all those people who have given us so much.”

Catch Styx on the road.

Or, catch Dennis DeYoung and the Music of Styx on the road.

Follow me on Twitter at @DerekUTG.

The Lasting Duality Of Styx: ‘Mr. Roboto’ And Two Decades Of Dissonance (2024)

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