Dennis DeYoung was watching the solar hit the waves within the sea off Hawaii when the angels appeared. It was April 1977, and his band, Styx, have been on the island to play the Crater competition, aka Hawaii’s Woodstock.
It was a welcome stop-off on a protracted and grinding journey. Styx have been six albums deep into their profession, however they’d managed only a single Prime 10 hit a number of years earlier, with DeYoung’s proto-power ballad Girl.
“We must always have been forward of a plethora of bands – Queen, Kansas, we got here earlier than all of them,” says the bubbling DeYoung, who was Styx’s keyboard participant and co-vocalist from their inception in 1972. “However we have been at all times opening for folks – Aerosmith, Kiss, ZZ Prime. At all times the bridesmaids.”
But right here they have been in Hawaii, absorbing the solar. For a bunch of fellows who had grown up on the south aspect of Chicago, this was a dream. Seeing boats bobbing on the glinting water, an thought started to kind in DeYoung’s thoughts.
“I began excited about crusing vessels, one thing that may take you away to the place through which you finally wish to be,” he says. “Whether or not it’s a ship on which you’re the captain, or a gathering of angels showing above your head, sweeping you into the heavens.”
That second of celestial inspiration could be the spark for the track that revived Styx’s fortunes: Come Sail Away. Virtually 50 years after it turned a US hit, this grandstanding pomp-rock basic occupies an analogous place in American tradition to Don’t Cease Believin’, a shot of pure, euphoric emotion that has appeared in exhibits starting from ER to South Park. And it stays the best energy ballad ever written about alien abduction.
DeYoung began working up the thought he’d had in Hawaii as quickly as he obtained again to Chicago. “Everyone thinks songwriting is magic – you pluck it out of the air,” he says. “No, it’s: ‘That’s good, depart it in. That’s unhealthy, let’s not put it there.’”
Because the band labored on it in Chicago’s SIR studio, the track advanced from DeYoung’s authentic thought into one thing even grander and extra dramatic. It begins along with his delicate piano notes, earlier than a storm of guitars and drums erupt.
“That’s Styx pretending to be The Who,” says DeYoung. “I stated to [drummer] John Panazzo: ‘Play like Keith Moon.’” The completed observe was a six-minute mini-epic that revelled in its personal grandeur, from DeYoung’s fantastically theatrical vocals (has any singer ever rolled their ‘l’s fairly like that?) to its euphoric crescendo.
However what actually kicked it to a different degree was the lyrics. ‘We lived fortunately for ever, so the story goes/However in some way we missed out on the pot of gold,’ DeYoung sings, capturing the craving he’d felt in Hawaii. Nevertheless it’s his declaration that ‘a gathering of angels seems above my head’ that offers Come Sail Away its golden glow – a line reportedly impressed by The E book Of Ezekiel within the Bible. DeYoung laughs out loud on the suggestion.
“I wouldn’t know Ezekiel from the pizza supply man,” he cackles. “I used to be raised a Catholic, however religious? No. ‘A gathering of angels seems above my head’? I’ll inform you what that’s. That’s the thought of being taken away by a better energy. Something to get me out of standing behind the stage watching Gene Simmons.”
However there’s one final twist – these angels aren’t angels, however aliens, arriving on a UFO to choose up DeYoung and take him away with them. ‘We climbed aboard their starship and headed for the skies,’ sings DeYoung, welcoming this extra-terrestrial arrival. Within the yr of Star Wars and Shut Encounters Of The Third Sort, it made excellent sense.
“The aliens have been JY’s [guitarist/ co-vocalist James ‘JY’ Young] thought,” says DeYoung. “He goes: ‘What in the event that they have been aliens?’ He favored all that stuff. Me, I don’t, however I wished to make JY blissful. However they’re not aliens. I stated ‘starship’. I used to be considering Captain Kirk. To me that was what it was about: getting on a starship and going all the way in which to the highest. I wished to be a star on a ship.”
Come Sail Away, the primary single from Styx’s seventh album The Grand Phantasm, was launched in August 1977. Audiences latched onto its grandeur instantly, and, after some preliminary resistance, so did radio. Come Sail Away gave Styx their second US Prime 10 hit, 4 years after the primary. They’d reached the pot of gold.
“We stopped being the bridesmaid and have become the bride,” says DeYoung. “We broke away and by no means seemed again, till [guitarist] Tommy Shaw give up in 1984.”
Shaw’s departure on the again of the earlier yr’s contentious Kilroy Was Right here album marked the top of the band’s preliminary run, however Come Sail Away was already a rock radio staple. Then in 1998 DeYoung obtained a request from the makers of South Park to make use of the track within the present.
“I stated: ‘If these guys are gonna do a Barbra Streisand on Styx, it’s a no,’” says DeYoung, referring to South Park’s notoriously merciless send-up of the musical diva. “However [co-creator Matt Stone] known as me up and stated: ‘No, no, we’re followers of Styx.’ I stated: ‘Okay, do no matter you need, make ’em giggle.’ Finest choice I ever made.”
Come Sail Away appeared in two South Park episodes – most famously 1998’s Chef Assist, which featured an affectionately hilarious model of the track with Eric Cartman on vocals and a cool cameo from soul legend Isaac Hayes, who performed Chef. Since then it has appeared in a great deal of TV exhibits and movies, starting from Freaks And Geeks and ER to The Virgin Suicides and Brooklyn 9-9.
“I’m watching Freaks And Geeks, and this promenade scene comes on and Come Sail Away is enjoying. I began to tear up,” DeYoung says. Then after pausing a beat: “Yeah, I used to be considering of the cash I used to be gonna make.”
DeYoung was squeezed out of Styx in 1999, when well being points prevented him from touring (the band continued with alternative singer Lawrence Cooke). However he stays pleased with what he achieved with the band, and with Come Sail Away specifically.
“It’s quintessential Styx,” he says. “All we wished was to stamp out Queen and Aerosmith, however we touched a era of individuals in a approach that I by no means actually understood till years later.”
