6. DENNIS DEYOUNG: CHICAGOAN AND LIFELONG WHITE SOX FAN

Dennis DeYoung has always had a feisty relationship with rock music critics, many of whom lambasted the lush orchestrations and melodies of Styx. DeYoung was a favorite target of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier, and he was out of the disco realm. But DeYoung’s love of the White Sox and his refreshing Chicago-style candor made for one of the more memorable encounters of this book.

Dennis DeYoung was born in 1947 as part of a White Sox family in the far south, working class neighborhood of Roseland. He grew up in a two flat on 101st Place, where Uncle Lee lived on the first floor.

The son of a South Side pressman, DeYoung’s code of honor frames his commentary on the White Sox, his friend Tony LaRussa, his not-so-close friend Steve Dahl, and the cultural overtones of Disco Demolition. DeYoung hasn’t traveled beyond his family home in the southern suburb of Frankfort.

And here is how South Side loyalty is shaped:

It is 1963, and DeYoung is an avid White Sox fan, particularly fond of Gary Peters, Juan Pizarro, and Pete Ward (they won ninety-four games, only to finish one game behind the New York Yankees). Styx is a year old, formed in the basement of his Roseland home. One afternoon, DeYoung and his friends make a considerable effort to get to Comiskey Park.

“I’d get the bus at 102nd and Michigan in Roseland, go up Michigan, and it hits State Street,” he whistled. “No Dan Ryan then.” (The last segment of the Ryan expressway opened in 1970.) DeYoung continued, “You get off at 35th Street, you are fine because everyone is there. But to try to beat the crowds, we would go south to 36th, 37th, hide in the bushes, wait for a bus, and go home. We’d run like hell to the factory on 61st Street where my dad worked until he got off work. Then we’d go home with him.”

Maury DeYoung was a pressman at American Printing Company at 61st and State. He worked there for forty years. “He carried a metal lunch box,” said DeYoung proudly. “It was big and noisy and smelled like giant rolls of fresh paper, some six feet high. His fingernails were permanently blue. People thought it was dirt. It wasn’t. It was ink. He would tell me not to end up like him.”

Here is how loyalty begins:

The Styx smash “Babe” was released in September 1979, two months after Disco Demolition.

DeYoung wrote the ballad for his wife Suzanne, whom he met in 1964 at a Mendel High School dance in Roseland. The dance was two weeks after DeYoung saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

“I got no axes to grind, I am what I fucking am,” he said as a sliver of sunlight cut through his living room. “If it is good polka, I like it. If it is rap and it is fun, I like it. But disco wasn’t enough for Steve Dahl. Suddenly rock ‘n’ roll was in jeopardy because of wimpy ballads. Really? I didn’t know [the Beatles’] ‘Yesterday’ was so wimpy. I was confused. Rock ‘n’ roll is everything. That’s how it got into my shit. I had written a song for my wife’s birthday that was never supposed to be a Styx song. I was trying to save money on jewelry, so I thought, ‘I’d write her a song.’ So I called the Panozzo brothers (Styx’s drummer, John, and bassist, Charles) and we did a demo. Bing, bing, done. I sing all the parts. No guitars. It was a gift to my wife. Everybody hears it and said, ‘That’s a hit record.’ I wasn’t even trying. I should do that more often.”

“Babe” became the lead single from the band’s 1979 triple-platinum album Cornerstone. It was the first and only American number one single for Styx.

And here is how loyalty sustains:

“Dahl goes from ‘It’s not only disco killing rock ‘n’ roll, it’s ballads,” DeYoung said. “And guess who is his number one culprit? He picks out ‘Babe’ and blows it up every morning. People called me. I didn’t know [Dahl]. They go, ‘Dennis, this guy is blowing up your record.’ I go, ‘What the fuck?’ I call my promotion guy and tell him if, he doesn’t like the song, that’s cool with me. But please, don’t blow the thing up. It’s a song about my wife and we live in this city. And then for forever I became Dahl’s whipping boy. He was relentlessly on me. It was never about me. It was like blowing up records in a fucking baseball stadium. It was about him.”

Dahl confirms this. “I blew up that shit,” he said.

“Babe” and disco weren’t Dahl’s only targets. Teenage Radiation guitarist and musical director Roman J. Sawczak grew up in the same Roseland neighborhood as DeYoung. Sawczak’s father Walter worked in the steel mills, his mother Anna was a clerk at the famous Gately’s People Store in Roseland, owned by Chicago Park District commissioner James T. Gatley.

Sawczak played in a south suburban cover band called Cartune that morphed into Dahl’s Teenage Radiation. “So much happened so fast,” Sawczak said. “It was the hottest ticket. The best show on radio. I’m in a Top 40 band and the next thing you know I’m at Alpine Valley opening for Foreigner with Teenage Radiation. Our band is a bunch of idiots. Some of the guys on our crew happened to take beer that wasn’t for us. So there’s a whole thing backstage. Janet [Dahl] was outside the dressing room. The limos from Foreigner pulled up. Security was crazy. I don’t know if they pushed Janet out of the way, but Steve flipped out. The next morning one of the first thing Steve does on the radio was play ‘Feel Like the First Time.’ I’m going, ‘Wow, he’s playing a Foreigner song after last night, that’s crazy.’ Then of course about twenty seconds in you hear the needle just scratching across the record back and forth. He goes into the whole story. It was classic radio.”

At times, DeYoung cringed when talking about Dahl. He asked, “How did Steve Dahl draw attention to himself? By making fun of Karen Carpenter when she died. ‘I’m going to take the high and mighty and bring them low.’ I never fought back, but it never stopped. Garry Meier knows me. We’re okay ever since he left Dahl. It was Steve and Garry’s way of making a living. I get it.

“We’re the only rock band from this city who has actually lived here the whole time.” (Jim Peterik of the Ides of March and then Survivor also never left Chicago.)

Suzanne DeYoung listened to our conversation while sitting at the white piano where DeYoung composed “Babe.” DeYoung nodded towards a crystal trophy on top of the piano. “That’s a People’s Choice Award; I won that in 1979 for Styx. Not a bad year, 1979. We had four triple platinum albums consecutively. No one had ever done that. [Cornerstone] was the third of the four and a complete departure musically. We toured, which is why I wasn’t at Disco Demolition.

“Disco Demolition was sleight of hand. It was ‘How do I draw attention to myself?’ Is there anything wrong with that in show business? I believe that’s applauded. Did Dahl really care about disco? Who cares? Did I care? No. The people that went to see Led Zeppelin in 1978 or Springsteen, or Styx—God bless them—I don’t want to put them in the same breath as these giants of musical history. These people never went to a disco? Give me a break. People go to rock concerts because they want to get high and get laid. Why did people go to discos? Same reason. But they wore satin rather than blue jeans.”

Styx’s musical style evolved in the early 1970s, not in clubs or in emerging discos, but by playing the high school circuit around Chicago. The band learned to be more expressive and did not have to succumb to demands from club owners. The first Styx hit was 1972’s “Lady,” and fans flooded WLS-AM with phone calls to play the bombastic ballad. But DeYoung said Styx took off in 1975 when A&M Records signed them and released their debut LP Equinox. The album sold 1.2 million copies.

Coincidentally, the first hit from Equinox was “Lorelei,” a name that later would be taken on by WLUP’s rock girl.

“A&M never heard one album we made until we gave it to them,” DeYoung said. “We produced all the records in Chicago at either Paragon or Pumpkin [studios]. We did what we thought was right, whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent. If you hate Styx’s music, blame me. If you liked it, give me some credit. The first record we made a lot of money for them, so they said, ‘Leave them alone.’ But that’s how they were. It was an artist’s label—Jerry [Moss] and Herb [Alpert].”

When Styx was playing suburban high schools, often times their opening act was M&R Rush, another rock band from the Roseland area. Roman J. Sawczak’s first gig in music was in 1975 as a drum tech for M&R Rush. At the time M&R Rush was a cover band that played lots of Uriah Heep. The Loop helped break their original song “Rock and Roll Chicago.” Sawczak said, “South Side you think Styx. North Side, I guess you think Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins. Completely different styles of music. South Side is pure rock ‘n’ roll.”

In 1980, Styx was voted the most popular band in America, according to a Gallup pool. DeYoung was not concerned about disco cooling the heels of Styx’s remarkable run.

“Was I threatened by disco?” asked DeYoung, who left the band in 1999. “No. If you’re going to be threatened in 1979, you should be worried about the new wave coming in from England (The Clash, The Jam), not disco. Disco is really about the club and the experience of participating. Disco—people dance. Rock ‘n’ roll began as dance music, for God’s sake. So anyone, Mr. Dahl, Mr. Meier, or whoever claims otherwise, is historically ignorant. I used to watch American Bandstand, which was my gateway into a world I didn’t know. And what did they do? Dance.”

DeYoung got up from his sofa and did a bit of a jig. He says, “Now if you can dance to Styx music, you’re a better man than I am. I wasn’t trying to make dance music. God forbid, when Rod Stewart did ‘Sexy,’ I didn’t go, ‘Oh God no, I think I might have a stroke!’ Who gives a shit? It’s a fucking piece of music, that’s all it is. All that Disco Demolition was about was self-aggrandizing. And as Dahl would tell you, it became so much more than he ever thought it would. I applaud Steve Dahl, for this reason only. It’s in ‘Gypsy.’ “Everybody’s gotta have a gimmick. And he had a gimmick.”