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James Young of Styx talks band breakup, satanism accusations
Jul 21, 2018, 8:17 AM
Styx members James Young, Tommy Shaw, and Lawrence Gowan (Matt Becker/Weatherman 90/Wikimedia)
(Matt Becker/Weatherman 90/Wikimedia)
James Young, founding member of ’70s/’80s rock band Styx told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that the group is excited to come play at the Tulalip Amphitheatre on Aug. 23.
“We played at Tulalip about two years ago and had a wonderful time there,” Young said. “We’re looking forward to coming back.”
Young said that he and the other Styx members greatly admired other iconic rock artists of their day — he listed Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, the Beatles, and Deep Purple as just a few of the group’s biggest idols.
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“Hendrix definitely was the most profound influence on me,” Young said, adding, “Nobody could do what he did.”
Dori asked Young to explain what had led to the band’s breakup in the mid-1980s. Young said it was due to a lack of “checks and balances” in the group’s leadership, as band member Dennis DeYoung “needed to be the alpha dog.”
“We all kind of saw things a little bit differently,” Young said, explaining that DeYoung wanted to go in a different musical direction from the other band members.
“Mr. Roboto was such a hard left turn on the wheel for all our die-hard male rock fans anyway that we wound up selling half as many records as we did the year before and half as many concert tickets, and we hated each other at the end of it all because none of us wanted to do it and it was not the success we predicted it would be, it was the opposite,” Young said. “So we went apart.”
Internal struggles were not the only controversies that the Styx members faced — people accused the 1981 Styx song “Snowblind” of being satanic, claiming it revealed hidden satanic messages when played backwards.
“If you play any spoken word backwards, it sounds like Satan is speaking it because it sounds like foreign gibberish … it sounds like Linda Blair has resurrected herself and is talking into your microphone,” Young laughed.
He added as a disclaimer that Blair, who starred in “The Exorcist,” dated two of the Styx band members and is a good friend.
Styx takes the stage of the Tulalip Amphitheatre at 8 p.m. on Aug. 23. For tickets, visit ticketmaster.com.
