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If you're in rock 'n' roll, you're not supposed to admit to liking theatre stuff, but I'm a big theatregoer.

Essentially I'm a melody person in a rhythm age, and that's what Broadway is really about, the songs.

Styx was always a theatrical band. In fact, we played City Center in 1983 with a rock opera, 'Kilroy Was Here.'

I think the music business is as crass and as unrewarding as it has ever been.

All I ever thought about was music and being a musician.

Over the years, I thought many times about how my life would have changed if I had been drafted and Styx never had happened. Even if I hadn't been wounded or emotionally scarred, it would have changed my whole timetable.

My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.

If you say 'Domo arigato' to people, they're apt to go, 'Mr. Roboto.'

I lived at the greatest time in the history of mankind to be a musician.

I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet.

To be successful in your life, you have to be convinced in your own mind that you have the ability to accomplish your goals.

I never wanted to be a solo artist.

I like being on a team and that's what a band is like. It's us against them, strength in numbers, and sharing the success and failure.

After being replaced in Styx, everyone around me encouraged me to try and stop them legally. I just couldn't. It would have been like suing myself and I held out hope they'd ask me back. They toured under the STYX name for a year and a half before I initiated legal action. I didn't sue for money or use of the name. I simply wanted back in the band.

We were together; we were a group; we were a team; we wanted people to love Styx.

I formulated the theme behind 'The Grand Illusion' album after observing how American culture creates illusions through advertising and entertainment to convince us that our lives our lacking, in order to sell products.

Really, the amount of work I do on a project, I will torture myself.

I've tried to figure out ways to be less pleased other than the search for perfection. Talk about a thing that'll make you have a miserable life. On that quest, on that journey, down that path, there's a lot of feelings of, 'Why am I doing all this?'

I made 'Desert Moon' and when I made those solo albums, I was trying not to be Styx, because I thought, 'That belongs to us.' So, I made different kinds of solo albums that were not dipping my hand back into the magic Styx jar and pulling out all the tricks - because bands, they have tricks, don't they? That's what makes them different.

I could forgive anybody.

I don't wanna be a solo artist. I wanna be in Styx.

Nobody can beat those songs on 'Abbey Road.'

If you want your rock stars that are completely 100 percent serious about themselves and you want them to pretend like they're 25, I'm probably not the guy for that. But if you want to come and say, 'Hey, you know that guy right there, he's just being himself. I kind of like him for that,' you know, then that's me.

Radio stations provided a service. They weeded out the stuff that no one should ever have to even think about. Now, they made mistakes and they made mistakes with me even but, by and large, they provided a service. They were an editor.

If there's a goal, you can't stop me. I'll put my head down. I'll have tunnel vision and I'll go until I get it.

Yeah, if anyone tries to tell you 60 is the new 40... don't believe them.

Heck, I feel guilty getting my senior discounts.

Look, nobody is a bigger fan of Tommy Shaw than me. The day I met him in 1975 I knew he was going to be a great guitar player, performer and songwriter. I was his biggest fan, and I'm Styx's number one fan.

When the Beatles broke up, I thought to myself, 'Dude, seriously?'

The Beatles are here, and if you could see me my hand is on the ceiling. Styx is here, and my hand is in the basement.

I gave my life for Styx and I'm really very proud of it and I didn't want to perform that music and screw it up.

It's always best when everyone in the group is on the same page.

There is one thing in this world that I'm better that than anyone else and that is being me.

We came along at a time when people were really focused on music. We were part of the second generation of bands after all of those great 60's bands when rock was still in its' infancy.

I was lucky by birth.

When I'm onstage the joy is to try to be the best I can be, I'm there because I want it to be perfect.

It's a good job when you get to have fans come up to you and thank you for writing your songs.

The fact is, for the first 10 years I toured as a solo artist, I wasn't playing any of the songs I didn't write or sing.

Originally, AXS TV came to me last year and asked me if I'd be interested in doing an acoustic 'Live from the Grammy Museum' performance. But I was bound and determined to do an electric show with this great band to dispel any notion that I wasn't a 'rock guy' in Styx.

I really believed it was important to explain to our young audience that expectations based on people who are trying to sell them things are unattainable.

When I'm not on the road I'm in the studio every day.

I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

How lucky am I? I'll go to Naperville and people will come up to me and thank me for coming to Naperville. That's how much music means to people.

Music is magic.

Nobody can figure out why it does what it does to human beings. But there is no other art form greater than music.

Anyone in showbiz rock 'n' roll who says they're so tired of playing their hit songs, I want to smack them. I think it's an act. Because, look, you work your tail off to get people to validate you.

I always say, when I play the first few notes and people scream... if you're tired of that, you should try retail. What else are you looking for?

Every artist wants to feel like they're still valid in a contemporary way. But you can't be so arrogant not to think that people who have thrown down their hard-earned money don't want to see and hear the things they want.

People go to musicals because they want to hear some really good songs.

It's great when it all comes together in a great musical like 'Sweeney Todd,' when Stephen Sondheim writes songs from heaven, the book is good and the staging is good. But it's very rare when that happens.

Many musicals you can take and throw in the garbage can because no one took the time to write a song you can care about.

If you are going to take me a to a musical, you'd better give me three songs that I'm gonna like. Nobody goes to the opera for the recitative. They go for the aria.

I'm very proud of it. 'Hunchback' contains some of my favorite music I've ever written in my life.

If you try to do a genuine rock musical, rock people will think you're flaccid and Broadway audiences will think you're too loud.

There are no electric guitars. 'Hunchback' has arias; it's operatic.

I don't see how 'Hunchback' could ever appeal to children. It's a very adult story that deals with repressed sexuality.

I want to see the '70s guys, if they're gonna do something, stay valid in the '90s. Then they belong. If they're trapped in the '70s, then it's nostalgia. You're not getting me in those platform shoes again.

When we started, there were no other distractions like the Internet and video games, so music was central to young people's lives.

Music was everything. But what the digital revolution has done, with streaming services and downloads, is take the value out of music. When things lose value they lose their meaning.

Touring is real demanding. You swing between sadness and euphoria. But for us to cry about it isn't fair.

Is there anything in life more exhilarating than having 15,000 people absolutely ecstatic to be seeing your human form?

I had worked so hard on three projects 1997 that it knocked the gas out of me. It was a mystery to the medical profession, but you can test positive for Epstein-Barr and not have it. When you get a post-viral syndrome, for some people it causes chronic fatigue or hearing loss. For me it became light sensitivity.

When I play the first few notes of a song and people start screaming, I think: 'That's why I did this. That's why I wrote this song. That's a good job.' And it is a job.

There are all kinds of pretensions about art, but I'm just a guy who sings for his supper.

I still see myself as the kid who plays accordion and tries to keep people happy for 45 minutes. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I just believed in 1979 that prog rock was finished. I just saw the handwriting on the wall. And I believed that if we continued in that direction, our career would be finished. So I kind of led the band to making 'Cornerstone,' which is an album from my point of view which was not trying to be necessarily softer, but more natural.

This is no condemnation of Chuck Berry, who I greatly admire. But Chuck Berry's music will not translate as well to orchestration because of its very three-chord rock 'n' roll nature. It is the music of the artists that are more pretentious, pompous or closer to the kind of big dramatic stylings that orchestras are good with.

What people fail to realize is that any album we did, really, 90 percent of it reflected the songs people brought in. If someone had brought in two great rock songs for 'Cornerstone'... they would have been on that record.

When I went out and started making solo records, I was determined not to, I guess, put my name on an album that sounded like Styx. I wanted to carve my own niche, so quite frankly I went in a different direction.

I can do anything onstage. Here's the misconception: You could record an album called 'The Best of Styx.' And all you would have to do is pay the individual songwriters a mechanical royalty.

Every artist thinks his most recent work is his best. If you didn't feel like that, you wouldn't do anything.

A unique style comes from not being able to do things in a conventional manner. If David Byrne could have sung like Paul McCartney, he would have.

As an artist you always want to challenge yourself, but as you get older you want to bring the audience with you while expanding creatively.

Sometimes your limitations become your strengths. It forces you to create your own niche.

My voice doesn't sound like anyone else's. I wanted to sound like my favorite singers when I was young because when you're young you don't put much value on uniqueness. But later I realized I had something special to offer.

If you have talent and you work really hard, it increases your odds but it doesn't ensure anything. But every now and then, the universe must tilt in your direction.

I wasn't a guy who grew up wanting to be in 'Funny Girl,' if you know what I mean. I wanted to be in the Beatles.

101 Dalmatians' espouses virtues good to revisit: In times of crisis, families must pull together through love and commitment to overcome obstacles.

People always ask me: How are you? I say I'm the envy of millions. I've been a lucky guy.

I am what I am. Whatever it was that made me what I am, I thought I should stay around and be that.

My views are simple. If you're gonna make a commitment, particularly marriage, stick to it. If you can't compromise, you've got no chance.

Americans are really good at throwing their hands up and walking away from things.

If you think marriage is gonna be easy, don't do it because when there are children involved, you screw up the rest of society.

I think a lot of bands would rather put mediocre rock tracks on their album to try to maintain some sort of testosterone badge of courage.

Back in 2000, I had come to a crossroads in my life, unsure about what career path I should pursue. Shepherd, bouncer, philosopher king, ventriloquist or perhaps man on the flying trapeze. Fortunately, I was guided back onto the path of the magical world of music.

I wear sunglasses almost all the time except when I'm on stage.

I've lived a charmed life.

Technology has made music ultimately more democratic.

I don't understand the joy of sitting in my house with nothing to do.

I'm proud of the body of work I was part of and I want people to enjoy it as long as they choose to.

People always want to romanticize relationships within bands. Most of these relationships are based on music first.

When it came time to do 'One Hundred Years' I had been encouraged to really make a Styx album without the guys. I gave myself permission to do that. I set out to get people who sang with me who could make those harmonies.

I was ill in '98. By the end of '99 I was recording and recovering.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

I never imagined that I would have a successful solo career, let alone one in musical theater.

If you pretend to be somebody that you're not when you write songs - and I did that on some of the early Styx albums - nobody cares about what you have to say.

I love Styx as much as I could love anything in my life. I started playing in the band when I was 14 years old. You become so involved in something when you start in it that young; you're doing it purely out of love of what you're doing and a belief in it.

It took me a while to realize that the only way to really communicate with people is to give them your point of view.

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