| The
rock and roll icons Styx and REO Speedwagon opened this
year’s Antelope Valley Fair, the first in the new fairgrounds on
Avenue H, just west of the Antelope Valley Freeway, on Friday,
August 27. The fair itself opened at 4 p.m. with the concert
starting at 7:30 p.m. in the Grandstand.
REO opened the concert with 90
minutes of pure vintage rock and roll featuring lead singer Kevin
Cronin and founding member, Neal Doughty on keyboards, and long
–time bass player for the band, Bruce Hall. Lead Guitarist Dave
Amato and drummer Bryan Hitt will also be joining the band in
pumping out hits like "Keep Pushin’", "Roll with the Changes" and
their first number one hit, "Keep On Loving You".
Following REO onto the stage was another
band of rock legends, Styx, which performed another 90 minutes
of rock hits and some new material. According to guitarist and
singer James Young, the band’s decision to join this year’s
Robertson Palmdale Honda Concert Series was due in part to the
good time they had when they performed in Antelope Valley five
years ago, "We had a great time when we were there 5 years ago .
We were there with Lynyrd Skynyrd then and our pals REO Speedwagon
will be with us this time. It was a great night of rock and
roll."
The band that is best known for its albums
from the late 70s and 80s with hits like "Lady", "Come Sail Away",
"The Grand Illusion", "Blue Collar Man", "Renegade" and "Mr.
Roboto", have been back on the road for the past five years,
performing the old familiar hits and introducing new tunes from
its last studio release, in 2003, "Cyclorama". Known for strong
stage performances the band focuses much of their energy on
touring. "Being in a rock band is about touring," says Young.
"It’s about writing songs and it’s about making records but it’s
also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making
people feel good about themselves.
When asked why the band tours so much Young
said, "To me it is an incredible high. It’s legal and there is
this energy that somehow channels through myself and my band
mates, through the music that we’ve created, and our performance
of it that really connects with people and lifts them up. Then
they send us back another energy and their love and it just kind
of builds up into this incredible high energy love fest that is
exhilarating and endorphin raising - and I love my job - what can
I tell you?
The band disappeared from the concert scene
in 1983 when the band essentially broke up following the ill-fated
"Mr. Roboto" experiment. But according to Young the band got help
from the outside to encourage them to tour again. "Thank you Adam
Sandler. Thank you South Park. Thank you to many different things
that happened in the year 1999 that sort of all collected at once
to sort of elevate us again as pop culture icons in a way. Ten
years ago, in ’94, we thought maybe nobody would ever care about
Styx again. And then we had a manager come along and tell us –
"You known you guys have sold close to 30 million records and
there is a huge audience for you guys out there. You just have to
make it an event when you finally return to the concert stage as a
collective – with all the guys back together and make it an event.
Print the tickets and they will come."
"And he was absolutely right," said Young,
"and we’ve been going ever since. We just decided, after not
touring all that much from 83 to 96, particularly in 99 to
rededicate ourselves to the concert stage. The old jazz drummer
Art Blakey used to say, "If you are not appearing you’re
disappearing".
"We’re in an era." He continued, "Where
radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your
classic rock stations. The stations that play current music look
at us as dinosaurs – so the only way we could reach people with
our new music generally is to perform live. It is something we
have always excelled at and prided ourselves at – the excellence
of our stage performance. There are rock and roll fans all over
this continent and all over the globe, really, and we’re just set
at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die."
Young is philosophical and positive about
the down time that the band experienced. "You know sometimes
things happen and you don’t know really understand why they have
happened but its just the right time for them to happen or the
right elements were in place. That’s why I preach flexibility and
adaptability "
In addition, the band feels a responsibility
to their fans when it comes to their stage performances according
to Young, "I’m an optimist when it comes to human nature and
particularly the therapeutic nature of music and the therapeutic
nature of Styx music. People come up to us all the time and say –
you know I had this really rough patch in my life three – five -
ten years ago, and it was your song or your album that I listened
to over and over and over and it helped me through the tough time
and inspired me. And I’ll meet NFL football players that listened
to our song "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)" before they
went out on the field because it said - "Get up, get back on your
feet. You’re the one they can’t beat and you know it."
For the band their performances have
purpose, "Sometimes that mantle is hard to adjust to wearing but
we are at a stage that we are comfortable with it and we recognize
how we are perceived and how the real core individual that each
one of us has apart from the facade that the public believes that
we are. We have to stay in touch with that and we are very
well-balanced at this point in time and love what we do."
Prior to the band’s rededication to touring
the band went through some serious personnel changes. Both
founding members John Panozzo and his brother, Chuck Panozzo
became ill in the early 90s, with John passing away in 1996. As
the band geared up to set out on the road again it became apparent
that Chuck no longer was able to handle the hardships of touring
either and passed the job of bassist on to new blood. Dennis
DeYoung, left the band for good in 1999 to pursue a solo career
leaving the band in the hands of Tommy Shaw and Young. But if fans
are wondering about the newest incarnation of the band, which
includes Young, Shaw also on guitar and vocals, Ricky Phillips on
bass, Lawrence Gowan on keyboards and Todd Sucherman on drums,
Young feels confident that the fans, vintage and new will find the
band true to the original Styx and more. "Yes, indeed, in fact I
would tell you that we go out of our way to be true to the
original feeling and sort of sonic and musical pallet that we
painted with back then. The band we have now on stage is the band
I always wanted to be in. We have a great bunch of guys that are
supremely talented. Todd, our current drummer that replaced our
drummer that passed-on is maybe the most skilled drummer in rock
and roll, in my humble opinion. He definitely adds energy and
flourish and finesse to the parts that the dearly departed John
Panozzo laid down there in the first place. I think if anything
it’s more powerful and executed with more finesse than it ever was
while still remaining true to its original form. Lawrence, the
current keyboardist can play circles around the previous
keyboardist and he’s a much more athletic performer and a much
more motivated individual to get out on the road and tour."
To the skeptical vintage fans Young says,
"Well, I’d say that there’s been millions of satisfied customers
over the last five years that have seen this band. There are
people both in and out of the business that say this is the best
incarnation that has ever taken the stage. So I say, this is the
way it’s going to be and if you love Styx music you ought to at
least give this a chance because we will convert you. You will
learn to love this incarnation of Styx as much as you loved the
other one."
According to Young, yes, there are a few
changes but only for the better. "There’s a lot more guitar than
there was simply because the material is skewed more towards Tommy
and I in this context. We still play "Come Sail Away", still play
"Lady", still play "Grand Illusion" and we play snippets of things
like "Castle Walls" and "Light Up’, and we even tip our hats to
"Mr. Roboto" - be it ever so briefly. There’s just so much music
to play here that we could never play it all."
The way Young tells it, the band has
weathered the storm and come out stronger musically and in every
other way. "In my own mind we are a much happier and much more
functional family and a much more well-balanced group of
individuals both off and on the stage and in the current
incarnation. " He tells fans, "If you want to come to a great rock
concert that makes you feel good and reminds you what a great live
band Styx was and how much greater a live band it is now - come on
down.
One thing fans won’t see is a bunch of
contrived theatrics or hear computer generated click tracks behind
the band, says Young. "There are a lot of people using technology
and they are playing to a click with backing vocals already stuck
in there on some computerized thing that runs along in time to the
show. So they have these amazing vocals that are only partly the
guys on stage producing them at the time. Whereas with us, what
you hear is what’s happening right then and there on the stage."
And in twisting a phrase from the movies, he continued, "We don’t
need no stinking technology."
Styx is not done in the studio yet, like so
many other vintage bands, relying on their old recordings to fill
a set list. Young says there is a new studio album in the works as
well as some other fun and interesting projects. "Oh we’re
working, we’re working. We’re gonna release a studio album
probably a year from now. And we’ve got these recordings that we
did with Coco Taylor and Johnny Johnson, who was Chuck Berry’s
piano player. They’ll be coming itunes downloads probably sometime
in October. There’s probably an EP that’s got those on it and a
few other things that we’re doing live now that will come out the
first part of next year. Also we are promised to do at least one
cover of a Willie Dixon song on the next Styx record. And actually
there’s a chance - there are some lyrics of his that are rumored
to be in a vault somewhere – some unfinished songs that need music
put to them - that one of those might wind up a Styx and Willie
Dixon collaboration that would happen posthumously. And then again
there’s a new Styx studio album due the third or fourth quarter of
2005.
The band did venture into the studio a few
years ago to create "Cyclorama", a CD with all new material. Young
feels it was just the start of something new and good for the
band. "We think Cyclorama, our most recent studio album is a great
record. I think we had something to prove with that because a lot
had been ascribed to the previous keyboard player - that it was
all about him - so we made a great record without him and we’re
going to continue to do that. As I say we are trying to climb
Everest for the second time as a recording act."
Both bands performed a great night of rock and
roll to serious fans and an evening of fun to those not so
serious.
The fair runs through Labor Day, Monday,
Sept. 6. For a complete line-up for the rest of the concert series
and other grandstand events call the fairgrounds at 661/948-6060
or visit the website at
www.avfair.com . |
