Dennis DeYoung talks about Styx without Tommy Shaw and Edge of The Century in May 1991
The history and lineup of Styx was fuzzy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nestor Aparicio has had many chats and encounters with all of the remaining members of the band over the years.
Dennis DeYoung discussed his career, including the hiatus of his band in 1983 due to Tommy Shaw’s pursuit of a solo career. DeYoung reflected on the band’s success, the contributions of various members, and the challenges of maintaining a balance between music and personal life. He mentioned the addition of Glenn to the band and the collaborative process of songwriting. DeYoung also touched on the band’s evolution, the impact of censorship on their music, and the importance of love songs in their repertoire. He expressed gratitude for his continued success and the importance of writing great songs over genre distinctions.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
tour preparation, band hiatus, solo career, band reunions, songwriting collaboration, fan reception, band dynamics, music industry, songwriting process, band history, album success, band members, concert planning, music inspiration, song influence
SPEAKERS
Dennis DeYoung, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:00
Hello, Nestor, yes, this
Dennis DeYoung 00:01
is Dennis DeYoung, how you doing? How are you
Nestor Aparicio 00:04
okay? Glad to have you call me. Let me get my story started here. How is the tour shaping up? Are you guys in last name? Aparicio, yeah, yeah.
Dennis DeYoung 00:15
Like little Louis,
Nestor Aparicio 00:16
my cousin. I was going to talk baseball with you at the end of this thing. Yeah, actually, I made it out to Comiskey last year before they ripped it down. Just made a special trip out. So
Dennis DeYoung 00:26
he’s your cousin.
Nestor Aparicio 00:27
He’s my cousin. Yeah, absolutely,
Dennis DeYoung 00:29
he was my hero, really, please.
Nestor Aparicio 00:31
I knew you were a big ball fan and I he’s my hero.
Dennis DeYoung 00:36
Boy. I mean, he was like, you know, I wanted to beat lethal Louie. Well, that’s, I
Nestor Aparicio 00:40
get that in Baltimore a lot, because what happened was, it’s a kind of a long story, but he’s when he came to Baltimore in 64 when he got traded, probably broke your heart. But when he came here, he brought two cousins with him, and one of the cousins is my dad. No kidding, yeah. And everybody went back to Venezuela. I’m the only one left back in Baltimore. Actually. My dad lives back in Maracaibo, and Louie lives back there, and my dad’s brother died, but I have a couple other cousins. My dad’s brother’s kids live in Atlanta, so we’re the only aparicios in
Dennis DeYoung 01:11
the States. I know when the girl said it that she couldn’t even pronounce the name, and I said, she says and she spelled it, I said, That’s Aparicio Well,
Nestor Aparicio 01:21
I’m flattered that you know something about me and my family, because I’ve been your biggest fan since I was like nine years old. So
Dennis DeYoung 01:29
you, you write the Freelancer the paper, you understand? No,
Nestor Aparicio 01:32
I’m a staff writer. I cover ice hockey for the sports section. Oh, do you and I, yeah, and I get out and cover some NBA and stuff like that. But I also do music year round. So yeah, I get to call him in. And whenever there’s a show like last night, cheap trick was in town, another Chicago band, and I got out and saw him last night. So I get around and make my rounds. But now hockey is over because our team sucks, sort of like your team sucks, and it frees me up. All of a sudden, poor Blackhawks loose to the North Stars.
Dennis DeYoung 02:02
They may go all the way. You never can tell. Oh, that’s true.
Nestor Aparicio 02:06
As far as the tour goes, we can talk ball at the end. I’ve got more questions for you. But as far as tour shapes up, you guys in pre production or what are you doing studio,
Dennis DeYoung 02:16
two more weeks of rehearsal, and we just, you know we’re we’re two weeks away, so we better know something, right? So late not to know nothing, right? That’s right.
Nestor Aparicio 02:26
Why? Now? I mean, why could go in with with sticks again? What all happened? Because I know you guys went on hiatus in 83 and broke my heart so Well, Tommy
Dennis DeYoung 02:36
quit the band 83 he wanted to pursue a solo career, right? And that’s what really, you know, feel that I at that moment in time that I, you know, that I wanted the responsibility on my shoulders to, you know, keep the thing going one more time, because that, you know, I It’s pretty much been that way. You know, John celesky left in 75 Nestor, we got Shaw, and, you know, we had an awful lot of success. And we’ve been together long time. I, you know, we just seemed like it was time for us not to be with each other for a while. And what happened was I had a little success in my solo crew with my first release, and I got to make some solo records, and I enjoyed it very much. But along on 88 Tommy called me up and said that he wanted to come back to the band, and that’s the start of the whole thing. I had one more record to do for MCA, and I said, Well, I’m done with the record. We’ll sit down. Let’s put it back together. It took me a lot longer than I expected would to finish that project, and in the interim, Tommy was really very nervous about wanting to work because he didn’t really have a job, and he had gotten gotten this offer from Nugent and Jack Blaze, and he called me and said, Well, what should I do? And I said, Well, do what you got to do, because I’m doing this. And when that’s over with, then we’ll do the six thing. And so he took the he took the thing. But what did happen was the other four guys sat down for the first time in six years in the same room and talked about putting it back together again and and the feeling between the four of us was so good that when Tommy backed out, we decided we go forward. What
Nestor Aparicio 04:07
was your relationship over the six years with the other guys in the band, and what in the world were they doing? Because, I mean, I knew desert moon and I knew girls with guns, and after that, your album sort of fell out of sight. And Tommy certainly fell out of sight. You know, what happens to John and Chuck and JY? I mean,
Dennis DeYoung 04:22
well, JY did make a couple independent solo albums, and John and Chuck retired from the music business, really? Yeah, that’s, that’s
Nestor Aparicio 04:31
really interesting. I mean, is it, what were they doing with their lives? We retire, we have to do something at the garden. You have to, you know,
Dennis DeYoung 04:38
you have to become something. They just, I think they had fun, really imagine that? Yeah, yeah. We tried for a really long time. We went from album to tour for almost 10 solid years, and the money is
Nestor Aparicio 04:49
good enough just to retire and live off it kind of well,
Dennis DeYoung 04:56
you know, money, to me, it’s not about money. It’s about having. Something to do. I couldn’t just not do anything. So, you know, they seem to enjoy,
Nestor Aparicio 05:09
you know, just interesting that they they fell out. And I never read anywhere that. No, they were tired. Well, I talked to Tommy last summer, right before Jamie Akins came in, and this is when he was still nervous about that project. I mean, you know, who would have known that project was going to fly as it did. I mean, you know, what did you know about that thing? Because,
Dennis DeYoung 05:30
until I heard it really, I mean, I the last conversation I had with Tommy was that he just said that he was going to do it. And I said, God speed, you know, well, he,
Nestor Aparicio 05:39
he told me that you know, it all happened right in the same time that you wanted to get it back together. And he said was like almost the same day.
Dennis DeYoung 05:48
It was within weeks he had to make a commitment one way or another. And he’d been working with those guys for months, putting this project together, right? He
Nestor Aparicio 05:56
couldn’t just back out. I heard Rick Emmett was going to replace him if he backed out from triumph. I just found that out. I read musician about three months ago, and I haven’t talked to Rick Emmett a few years, when I found out that he had also been invited to join that pet band. But this is kind of space. So what could have happened to sticks had you stayed together? Do you ever look back and think about that? You mean, never, if you just would have gone on after Kilroy and made, you know, Kilroy part two, or made edge of the century right then, or whatever.
Dennis DeYoung 06:26
We couldn’t made edge of the century right then, because, you know, a lot of that has to do with blends. You know what I mean on this record, sure. And so I, you know, we would have made another record. I don’t know. It’s a hard, it’s very difficult question to answer, what would have happened? I think the emotional state of of
Nestor Aparicio 06:44
the band was, was not good after Kilroy. So I think, you know, we would have needed to take some time off anyway. Does it kind of make you sad the time he’s gone, or was it the thing where he never fit in? Because, I mean, in the real sense of the band, because he wasn’t the Chicago guy, he was the Alabama guy and he was recruited, he wasn’t the kid who grew up with the rest of everybody felt
Dennis DeYoung 07:04
that way ever about Tommy. I think maybe sometimes Tommy felt that way, you know, and but I never felt that way, you know. I was, you know, I felt that his contribution was, was very important. And I never felt that way, ever. So, you know, it’s Chicago band, because that’s what was founded in four of the five members are from there. But really, we made great records together. Being in a band is like any relationship that has its ups and downs, and despite whatever happened along the road from point A to point B. The music is a testament to what we, you know, to what to the time we spent together and and I’m very proud of that.
Nestor Aparicio 07:51
Does it make you sad that he didn’t come back, or when you were writing songs? Did you turn to your left and see someone different and say, Whoa,
Dennis DeYoung 07:59
I think Glenn has has been a really positive addition to this in that he brings a whole new perspective. You know, it really excites me to write with him. I can Glen and I are going to write wonderful songs together in the future. We wrote two really good songs on this record together with almost no time. And I think that’s one thing that Glenn and I will have, that perhaps Tommy and I didn’t have as much, which was the ability to really
Nestor Aparicio 08:30
collaborate. So there’s, there was collaboration.
Dennis DeYoung 08:33
But Tommy
08:37
and I had a pretty long discussion too, and he kind of said that there were your songs. And then there were his songs, you know, and, yeah, never show the Twain. Feel it is as clear cut as that. Because if you take a song like, Come sail away, or,
Dennis DeYoung 08:49
let’s say, Renegade, those two songs, big songs, both of those songs felt the influence of each other in ways that they wouldn’t have been the same without either of us being in that same room. Because renegade originally was an acoustic song with three part harmony. Wasn’t a rock song, but I turned into a rock song. I said, Tommy, this has got to rock. I mean, this can be like this. And conversely, Tommy was, you know, his influence and come say away is in there. So you see what I’m saying as writers, we wrote separately, mostly. But the in, you know, the fact that we were in the same room, you know, I think, benefited both of us.
Nestor Aparicio 09:30
So how did Glenn wind up getting involved in this thing? And when you had four guys, do you just have to find the fifth? You just recruit him? Or
Dennis DeYoung 09:36
JY worked with Jan Hammer on one of his projects. Glenn was in the band with the odd hammer. That’s how it happened. Glenn heard that we were looking for somebody, and we hadn’t put the word out. He sent us the first tape. We heard the tape, and we hired the first guy.
Nestor Aparicio 09:51
So there was, there was no rehearsal, the rehearsals or what we try out. You know, we
Dennis DeYoung 09:56
heard the demo tape of all the songwriting.
09:58
See, I was. I
Dennis DeYoung 10:01
Nestor. I was looking for a songwriter that would balance what I do musically to me, right? Because it becomes a dentist, young show, if you don’t, right, yeah, and that’s not what sticks is that, you know, sticks is really, I mean, to me, sticks was a collaboration of writers and singers. And so I was looking for that other person that would, you know, balance, what I do,
10:23
right?
Dennis DeYoung 10:24
What about life now?
Nestor Aparicio 10:25
Do you do Tommy songs live? Gonna do a couple Clinton’s gonna sing them? Yes. Okay, like, what are you gonna do you feel obligated to do blue collar? Man,
Dennis DeYoung 10:35
we’re gonna do right now. We’re doing renegade a blue collar and too much
Nestor Aparicio 10:41
not fooling yourself. No, that’s it. That’s fooling
Dennis DeYoung 10:45
yourself is really, you know, the thing we didn’t want to, we don’t want to. It was a very difficult thing. You know, a lot of these sticks fans are going to want to hear those songs and crystal ball and, yep, those, those acoustic kind of things like that. That’s something that I thought we I thought Glenn was really very suited. What do you hear? Glenn? Did these songs? Close your eyes, you will know the difference, right? It’s amazing. Really is so, you know, we’re trying to be is as, I guess, sensitive as possible to all important thing are the six hands, right? And the music is bigger than the individuals. I believe that.
Nestor Aparicio 11:32
Are you still friends with Tommy?
Dennis DeYoung 11:33
I’ve not talked to Tommy and since this whole thing started. And look, Tommy and I worked together for many years, we were working companions. We were not best of friends. We were friends, but, you know, we weren’t hanging out friends. He had his life and I had mine. I’m sure you heard this story from many rock and roll bands, sure. I mean people,
Nestor Aparicio 11:53
once you spend seven months on the road with somebody you want to get away from, you know, well, how
Dennis DeYoung 11:57
about seven years, right? Right? And really it’s people want to romanticize the relationships and dance. And really they’re, you know, they’re based on, most of these relationships are based on music. First, he
Nestor Aparicio 12:17
might not have anything else in common. Man,
Dennis DeYoung 12:18
Tommy didn’t care anything about sports. You know, our similarities were about music, not about other things. And your real friends, you want to sit and rap sports with them, or, you know, the main theater, what you know, what I mean, right? Your friends based on other things, sure, and we were, we were friends, but not, not in the sense that you know who your best friends are, right, right? And you know the people you work with, and
Nestor Aparicio 12:43
I guess the only thing you guys had in common was talking music in certain ways, pretty much, right? Well, I mean, what kind of reception you expected from the fans here after eight years? I mean, I still remember you, and I’ll go and see you, but you know, when I got edge of the century. It took me two or three months to listen to it, you know, because I just thought, well, I got a lot of other things going on now. You know, there’s, there’s been hundreds of bands that come along since you guys, you know, walked out of my off my turntable, so to speak.
Dennis DeYoung 13:15
I don’t know Nestor. I mean, I never know. Make the right, you know, I make the records that I like. I’m the world’s biggest dicks fan, right? I make the records that I like, and I hope somebody else likes them, and I do the shows that will appeal to me, and I hope somebody comes and likes them. And beyond that, I couldn’t predict anything, you know, I know when I write a good song, but you know, you know, the distance between writing a great song and having become a hit record is from here to Mars, because there are so many obstacles between those two things that have nothing to do with music and everything to do with business.
Nestor Aparicio 13:58
Right now, you
Dennis DeYoung 14:00
have no control over that.
Nestor Aparicio 14:02
You have, you have a hit song.
Dennis DeYoung 14:03
So what is that? What does that say? Is that surprising? Right off the bat that no, because listen, if the show me, the way is in the hit song, if it’s played on the radio, then I better get out of the music business. I believe it is. And when I wrote it, I said, if it’s played on the radio, despite the fact that it doesn’t really have anything to do with current trend. You know, if people don’t, people don’t hear this and love this time for me to quit. But seriously, you know what I mean? Because what I’m trying to tell you is I really believed in it when I wrote it and I loved it, and if my if my judgment as a musician, is that far off, then maybe what I’m doing isn’t valid anymore.
Nestor Aparicio 14:49
Did you have feelings about that before, when you wrote things like desert? Yes. Have you had songs you thought was sure fire, hits and just didn’t happen
Dennis DeYoung 14:57
and didn’t happen? Yeah? Ah,
Nestor Aparicio 15:01
so they might disappoint you.
Dennis DeYoung 15:04
In my solo career, I had a couple that were sure fire hits that didn’t happen. But that’s that has to do with, once again, everything else, other than music, right? Lady was a sure fire hit that didn’t happen the first time. So I’ve been through that, and I know it’s Equinox originally sold 300,000 copies, catalog sales, 1.7 million. So you see what I mean, takes people time. Well, it’s not. It isn’t it isn’t about Nestor. It’s not about people who buy records. It’s about everything between them, the consumer is the last rung on the food chain in the music business.
15:42
Understand what I’m so I realize, I mean, I realize you’re saying no anything. I’ve been in all these promotion departments. And then all the big weeks get together, decide what to do, and then the radio people have to make up their so the consumer is, it’s not about the people. It’s about everything between them. Always has been. So you feel lucky when you get, Oh, you got, I’m
Dennis DeYoung 16:02
Susan. You know how thankful Nestor I had. I wrote a hit song in 1972 called lady. I just wrote one in 1991 I got to be the luckiest guy in the face of the earth just to have this job still
Nestor Aparicio 16:15
to make a living doing it.
Dennis DeYoung 16:17
Yeah, what’s not even about that. It’s about I know plenty of
Nestor Aparicio 16:20
people who try to make a living making music, and you know, they’re very good and they can’t do it
Dennis DeYoung 16:24
very difficult. I got this job. I’ve had it for 20 years. What a lucky guy.
Nestor Aparicio 16:30
So looking back on desert moon, what happened your solo career? Were you happy doing these so records or very
Dennis DeYoung 16:37
I’m happy making music. I was never unhappy really making music with sticks. Sticks broke up because Tommy was unhappy,
Nestor Aparicio 16:45
right? And then John and Chuck retire. So what’s left you and JY, right?
Dennis DeYoung 16:48
Well, they retired because I refused to come back to the band immediately, because a desert Moon was a hit for me. Right off the bat, you didn’t even tour on that, did you? No, I didn’t do anything. I never do it. Nestor, I did very little to help myself and my solo crew. I’ve been on the road for 10 years and I’d not had it right? What makes you
Nestor Aparicio 17:08
want to come back now? Are you excited you got your back packed? Yeah, you looking forward
Dennis DeYoung 17:12
to they’re not packed yet, but I better get those underwear in there, because you need those on the road. Oh, please, Mike, yeah, I’m always excited to play, always disappointed that I have to travel to people’s houses to do it. Well, hell, you haven’t been on a stage in what, seven or eight years I played in Chicago, right? I know you put a whiskey park one time or something. I actually played in my second summer album, which no one ever heard. Was called back of the world was we had the biggest Vietnam veterans parade in the history of America.
Nestor Aparicio 17:41
I talked to your publicist, and she said that she always go play a live show in Chicago. I’m like, Damn, I should get out there.
Dennis DeYoung 17:47
I actually played on my last fellow of times. Played three live shows in Chicago. Who would you recruit to play with your bands? Well, the guy, a lot of the guys are on the record local guys, guys in Chicago, you know, guys that are really more of those guys who were really good, who nobody ever notices.
Nestor Aparicio 18:07
You look back and think you really screw up by not doing a lot to solo career. Like you said,
Dennis DeYoung 18:13
I could have helped myself immeasurably by going out on the road and playing, because I’m pretty good at that. I’ve done it my whole life. But, you know, I had, you got a wife, have a wife, children. I had a, you know, and I just about had it, you know, in terms of leaving them, right? I’m the guy wrote, babe, I’m leaving, you know, for a reason. You know, there are other look, life is to me, life is about balance. It’s about understanding what’s important. And I love music, but I have a family, and you know, it’s important to have balance in your life, right?
Nestor Aparicio 18:53
So let’s talk about edge of the century here, as far as getting outside writers that come from anywhere to get some outside writers, or anything like that. Outside
Dennis DeYoung 19:04
writers only one song that’s coming out, right? What happened? Well, here’s what happened, some girl, a girl named Karen, Karen O’Connor, who writes for good word now she didn’t at the time, met me, came to me at a party and told me that she knows I’m a big Beatles fan. And she says, what, what Paul McCartney is to you, you are to me. And I said, get help. But she had this tape from this local guy, once again, a Chicago guy, writer named Rolf COVID. And she said, listen to it. And because she was so nice, I listened. And I rarely do that. And I heard not dead yet, and I said, Man, I’m going to sing this song because I love, I love this song, and that’s all there is to it. Did
Nestor Aparicio 19:47
you do it the same way that was on the demo? Pretty much, I changed the tempo.
Dennis DeYoung 19:50
It was a little slower, actually, on the demo, changed the arrangement a little bit. It’s, you know, it got specified.
Nestor Aparicio 20:01
That’s a beautiful word to use that word. I think I used to use that word
Dennis DeYoung 20:07
stick to fight a little bit and well, that’s what we’re doing to Glenn right now. We stick to find him, right? He got stickified on Love at first sight. And all in a day’s work,
Nestor Aparicio 20:20
there is some pressure within the band to conform to the
Dennis DeYoung 20:23
well, no, that just means, you know, a band is the personality that the five strangers make. You know what I mean? Sure,
Nestor Aparicio 20:32
it’s just funny all thinking together. This is not a concept album, so to speak, but there are conceptual things to say about the edge of the century, and you know how we might be doing bad things, or we need a little bit of help, or something like that. Well,
Dennis DeYoung 20:47
look after Kilroy. I’m about conceptualized out right? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 20:51
let’s go back and talk about this. What do you think of these the past six catalogs now looking at an album like, was it a mistake at that point in time to do that retrospectively. Here we were talking, it didn’t, I mean, some of the arenas and so, I mean, after paradise, you guys were just the hugest. And it seemed like Kilroy just took you down a little a little bit as far as the fans were concerned. I mean, you still do Mr. Robot on the set.
Dennis DeYoung 21:19
No, you know, that’s probably the greatest misunderstood record we’ve ever made. You know, of course, it was. It was all about censorship.
Nestor Aparicio 21:29
I know everything about it, yeah? I mean, I saw you three times before all
Dennis DeYoung 21:33
this stuff started, right? And I had, I was putting rock musicians in prison. Well, it all stemmed from the snow blind thing, yeah, this artist is kind of a joke, and it kind of got carried a little too far with the snow blind thing.
Nestor Aparicio 21:46
These people weren’t joking, but I thought it was kind of funny, you know, spin it backwards and all that stuff. Oh, yeah, well, Paul was dead and all that, you know, we
Dennis DeYoung 21:53
were on this hit list about, you know, here’s an anti drug song, right? And they’re putting us on a hit list for, you know, I mean, sure, it was a joke to us, but the idea of censorship, I mean, I really felt this coming mood of censorship toward music and our culture. And that’s what Kilroy was about four years before the PMRC. And
Nestor Aparicio 22:14
now we have, you know, I give jail, I get three or four albums a week. It says, you know, warning, explicit lyrics, you
Dennis DeYoung 22:20
know, do that to that album. We put a warning, we put a stick. We stick with that album. Kilroy was thicker as a joke, right from the majority of musical morality. So Kilroy was the only problem with Kilroy. I think the concept was great. The show was spectacular. The idea was credible. The songs weren’t as good as some of the songs on prior six albums. It’s about songs. Nestor and, well, I
Nestor Aparicio 22:56
thought it had good songs. I
Dennis DeYoung 22:57
mean, Dolan, it
Nestor Aparicio 22:58
was a great song. I thought, had we been here before?
Dennis DeYoung 23:00
What have we been here before? Yeah, well, Tommy stopped that one from being released as a single. I like that song. The third single, that’s, if that would have been released as a single, Nestor Kilroy would have been viewed in a different light. But it was stopped. Tommy didn’t want it, because Tommy wanted to be Ted Nugent, right? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 23:20
we, you know, that’s, that’s the thing I was gonna talk about. Tommy had always said his ideas were different. He was more of a rock and roller and you were more of a sap, so to speak. Did you? Did you view it as that way? I mean, did? I mean, I don’t think Come Sail Away is a sap song in any way. Or, you know, obviously you’ve written things that aren’t ballet, but he felt that he felt that he had to be the rock and roll, contributed to the band. And he, you know, he said to me last year, look at the hits. You know, the big hits, you know, the renegades and stuff like that. Those are the songs that people remember from the band. And I got to scratching my head, and I thought, no, no, no, I think people remember the babes and people remember the ladies. And I think it depends if you’re a guy or a girl. The guys might remember the rock and roll. The girls remember the ballads.
Dennis DeYoung 24:03
If I said, Remember one song from six if you gave that questionnaire out to 1000 strangers, what do you think number one would be? Come sell away? Okay, yeah, I’ll bet they would be number two. But Come Sail Away has both elements. You know, it starts as a ballad, and then to the rock song. Look, there’s a whole, there’s a whole testosterone overload thing that goes through most rock and roll, okay, popular music. It’s in the rock press, and it’s in many of the people who perform it. There has always been a low priority, but I love songs. Okay, even that’s the only thing
Nestor Aparicio 24:42
that’s keeping a lot of these metal bands alive today are those power ballads. I mean, there’s, well, listen, you
Dennis DeYoung 24:47
want me to explain this? Sure explain it to you most Tommy Shaw perceived himself as the Rock and Roll guy, but I think the fans saw him as the boy next door. I. You know what I’m saying? Sure he wasn’t Sammy Hagar, Ted Nugent, as far as I could see.
Nestor Aparicio 25:07
Well, he was Tommy Shawn, I guess the baby face, he
Dennis DeYoung 25:10
wanted to see himself as that, that rock and roll guy. You know what I mean, right? And, and I think it’s, I
Nestor Aparicio 25:16
think everybody in your bed, so Jay, why is the Rock and Roll guy, that guy.
Dennis DeYoung 25:21
But to me, it’s not, it’s not about either thing. It’s about writing great songs. Nestor, I can write you a rock album. Give me three weeks, I’ll write it, and it’ll be just as credible as 90% of the garbage that that people release. Okay? It’s not about. To me, it’s not about, is this a rock song or is this a mid tempo or about? It’s about, is it good or is it bad?
Nestor Aparicio 25:48
What are the words say,
Dennis DeYoung 25:49
No, is it good or bad? It’s not about. You know, if I could write a great rock song, I’d write one. If I could write a great ballad, I’d write one if I have to write a mediocre rock song just to prove my virility. I think that’s, you know what I mean, right? When I say the testosterone thing, I mean that there’s overcompensation for something. I think if people listen, if people can’t, can’t get in touch with the side of them. To me, you know, people always talk about the social, social conscious songs and blah, blah, blah, blah, most important, it’s nonsense. The most important songs are the love songs. You want to know, why? Sure? Because if you can get love between two people, right? If you if we can just get that better, we can get relationships better, love between human beings better. The social commentary is left necessary. Most of the problems in our culture come from the deprivation of feeling needed, feeling supported, feeling loved, feeling appreciated. I believe that
Nestor Aparicio 26:59
do you think deeply like this when you’re sitting down the right with us all my show me the way,
Dennis DeYoung 27:04
show me the way. It’s not about that, but it is in a way,
Nestor Aparicio 27:09
you know, it’s, I think it has to do with confusion and needing help and needing everybody, needs somebody, that kind of thing. It’s, you know, it’s
Dennis DeYoung 27:18
the search for external guidance is what show me the way is about in any form, in any form, it takes on a certain spirituality. And show me the way, because there are, there are definitely, definitely some, there are references in the song that sounds spiritual, but I’m not a religious guy, but I think in modern culture, with the amount of information from CNN, in the newspapers, there’s a million magazines, there’s a million radio programs, what do you do with all that information? Nestor, how
Nestor Aparicio 27:58
do you process it? What
Dennis DeYoung 28:00
would you do with it? It’s so much of it is meaningless. Who needs 50 cables of 50 channels of cable? It’s all garbage anyway, right? I mean, the quality is, is, you know, because it’s like anything else you know when baseball went from eight teams to 16, or you know what I’m saying to you, waters it out and that you.
