James Young quotes:

And in an era where radio stations that are inclined to play Styx music are your classic rock stations and the stations that play current music look at us as dinosaurs - the only way we could reach people with our new music, generally, is to perform live.

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.

Ten years ago, in 94, we thought maybe nobody would ever care about Styx again.

In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation.

But 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.

Seeing our VH-1 Behind the Music shows just how dysfunctional some of the moments of the band were but this new line-up has put the fun back in dysfunction.

And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.

The Westgate Landfill is zoned for residential use. It's near a planned village. The Navy has a capping plan for the site, but it's not consistent with residential use for the site.

And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.

Being in a rock band is about touring. 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 the people feel good about themselves.

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

They're kind of baby steps. We haven't made any measurable impact on the mortality rate or survival of this disease.

So, maybe you don't see blues so much in Styx's music but it is definitely part of Tommy's early music.

You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.

There are a lot of people using technology that 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 - so we don't need no stinking technology.

We always got a strong response but I think in this day in age there is less of a marijuana fog at concerts and more of people just more naturally exuberant - it seems to me.

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.

People like to let loose at rock concerts and it gives them an excuse to do it in a way that is not destructive to others and not really destructive to the band.

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.

We just have to be ourselves.

But, there was a time when we all had a great thing going but one person just became very uncomfortable with it and he had to try to change it around to suit him more and then it suited no one else but him.

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.

So, it's a matter of that I want to take our music around the globe.

I'm into playing guitars, not into figuring out what else goes on with them.

I'll play until they have to scrape me off the stage.

The travel is a lot uglier than it once was with TSA and the deregulation of the airline services. These planes are getting smaller for my 6" 2' frame.

People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things.

We live in a litigious society, and that's the way it is. Better safe than sorry.

Originality is another criterion of aesthetic value. We may formulate an originality principle, according to which highly valuable works of art provide hitherto unavailable insights.... Notice that, although originality is a necessary condition of high aesthetic value, it is far from a sufficient condition. Many original works have little or no aesthetic value. An artwork may present a novel but uninteresting perspective, or one that is original but wrong.

Our customers want to give us more business and the key for us is to manage growing volumes properly.

I take the stage as a man in his fifties and walk off the stage like a man in his twenties.

The live concerts are still one of the two greatest joys of my life.

The studio that we mix in is still in Chicago.

I don't quite have the energy for extra curricular activities. I have to pace myself a little bit more.

I don't know, I think the crowds are even more responsive now because the audiences are skewing younger.

I'm a good collaborative writer. I can usually come in and add a couple lines to something, and add a riff or a B-section, or a bridge that will tie things together. I can do stuff like that. But to write a whole song, I don't have the patience for that, I guess.

All pain is per se and especially in excess, destructive and ultimately fatal in its nature and effects.

It's crazy how every guitarist is their own worst critic in many ways.

The Internet has killed the traditional record business, but it's given back in the way of instant access.

I guess I should be more ambitious about practicing, but when I'm out on the road, that's about all I do.