Chords for Dennis DeYoung on the Trouble With Styx & "Mr. Roboto"

Here's part four of our exclusive interview with former Sticks lead man, Dennis DeYoung.
I'm John Bowden from Rocky Street Music.
_ _ By the way, JT Shark asked me, he says, _ the song Mr.
Roboto, is that, what do you think
about the fact that they're doing that song?
Do you care?
After all that's gone down?
Who are you talking about, Daft Punk?
Sticks.
Who?
Tommy Fife?
That little band called Sticks?
Tommy and J.Y. _ _ _ _
I would, this is like what I, it gets back to my point about if you're going to join
something, whatever it is, you know, you're going to give your attention to it, to a belief system.
You might want to do some homework.
That's all.
Ask around.
See, how did that go? _
Same thing with the lie that they've been spreading since 1999 when I was sick and they
replaced me in the band, that this was about Mr.
Roboto.
How could it be?
That was 27 years earlier.
We had just done 96 and 97, huge reunion tours.
98, we're going to make an album.
I got really sick.
Couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, but we were recording it.
And then they wanted me to agree to a tour.
I said, give me six more months.
I figured out my eyes were damaged from the virus I had.
And I can't deal with the light the same way, which makes me fatigued.
And it took me forever to figure it out.
But listen, when I went to the doctors, when I got this thing and I said, hey, I lost my
sense of taste and smell.
You know what they said?
Hmm.
Hmm.
Interesting.
Nobody knew what it was.
I am a long hauler from whatever virus I had.
To this day, I have to wear these all the time.
Anyway, I digress.
So after they decided to replace me.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Let me, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you still have, do you still have symptoms of that?
You said you're a long hauler.
Exactly.
They're right.
If I, if I try to go a whole day without my glasses, I'll feel like I have chronic fatigue.
It never went away.
I only managed it by wearing sunglasses and you ought to see my house.
_ Everything's draped.
Everything has got that, that 3M stuff you put on your window.
It's gotta be, I have to live there.
Then I'm okay.
Yeah.
And you know what?
And that, that's okay.
No pity days for me.
Look behind me.
They couldn't tell the story.
We replaced a sick colleague because Tommy and I had to get on the road, make some money
and we want to control the band.
So they made up this, they relitigated bravado. _
Nobody, 96 or seven, we went out and had to, nobody said nothing.
The fans didn't go, why did you make that song?
No, there were like 15,000 people just filled with joy for the music that Stix had created
as it should be.
So they went on and behind the music, which led me to finally sue them and said terrible
things about me, both professionally and personally.
And I thought, what the, why would you do that?
Here's what they, here's what people don't understand.
I should say those guys didn't understand.
We were a band.
Some people had their favorites, but people liked _ the thing.
Right.
It was a band.
And when you start telling people who loved Mr.
Roboto, I just got off an interview.
A guy was, he was eight.
He said, I became a Stix fan because of that song.
And there's millions of people like that.
Okay.
If you're going to say something, don't you understand?
If you insult any of the music a band makes, there's somebody in the audience who's a fan
because of it.
So in an effort to somehow _ cast me in a bad light, they're just harming the band as a
whole because you've never, you can't find anywhere that I've ever said in my life, oh,
that's on my Tommy or JY.
I don't do that.
You want to know why?
I don't believe it.
I said, we've made the music we've made the best we could.
And we were a band.
We were a band.
And so for me saying something bad about this one, it says something bad about all of us.
So Mr.
Roboto, so it spent after spending all this time and energy and every interview
that James Young could do and running it down, they added because you know why?
Because it went to number three.
It sold a million copies.
People love the song.
It doesn't matter what your political agenda is.
And believe me this when I say this, Tommy Shaw in 1983, he quit the band on stage during
Kilroy at the in Washington, D.C. and the other three guys were so angry.
He quit Styx.
One more time.
I'm quitting Styx.
A what?
_ And then the other three guys in the band said, Dennis, let's replace him.
They were so mad.
They said, we got to replace him.
And I went like this. _ _
Are you guys aware of how this thing is working?
What makes this what allows this train to leave the station?
I just said, no, I don't want to do that.
I said, look, if he wants to make a solo album, let him.
Because I believed Styx was mostly the three of us.
And of course, the Penazzas were great.
It was a wonderful unit.
But the music is always being created by generally speaking, by two or three guys, any band you
go like The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, just go down the line.
There's always two or maybe three guys that are really making the thing happen.
So I said, no, _ _ I'm not replacing Tommy Shaw.
So the fact that now they would bring it back and put it in the first encore position, I
guess that speaks for itself, doesn't it?
How could I say anything that would add to the fact that words are meaningless, but action
is what counts?
So they put it back in.
And I know why, because I've had people tell me why.
You know, this is not that big of a business.
_ _ People want to hear the songs they love.
It's just that simple.
And once again, if you start out as a Stix fan early on and you thought Roboto or Babe
or any pick any, she cares, any song you think doesn't meet your expectations.
I say, well, the catalog, _ the complexity of Stix's music, which Babe, Boat on the River,
Mr.
Roboto, Midnight Ride, you see what I'm saying?
Renegade.
So when people say, oh, I don't like Stix, I hate Stix.
I think you don't like a lot of styles of music, apparently.
And three different singers.
It's just they're responding to a brand name that they have been, you're not cool to like that band.
And I think to myself, you're not cool either, kid.
Because I'll tell you right now, all the people that I knew who were really cool, they're
dead or in jail and you don't qualify.
We'll have more from Dennis DeYoung coming up in the [Am] next three, four days.
Make sure you comment on our video, subscribe to our channel and share our videos.
I'm John Boden from Rock History Music.
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