Glen Burtnik says in the foreword of the book, that it's "about an uncool, unhip, unfashionable, un-sexy multi-platinum success story". How closely would you agree with that?
It's pretty undeniable that, at least in terms of perception, Styx falls squarely into that "Guilty Pleasure" category for a lot of people. There are a number of reasons for that; some that are generational, some having to do with the across-the-board bias the elitist East Coast and West Coast critics had against album rock and arena rock bands in general, and some self-inflicted, in my opinion. Styx never tried to develop any kind of game plan to involve the national press until it was way too late. Most of the classic members also tended to be defensive with writers, and that hasn't helped them either. Contrast that against a band like the Rolling Stones, where the band and its management cultivated important media relationships from day one and built a tightly-controlled story about the group. Here's a band that's often referred to as "The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World". That's been bandied about for decades. But who said it first? The Stones' very own publicist. It was in a release, it got picked up and repeated, and ultimately it has made its way into the pop culture vernacular as part of the group's legend. That's the difference between "mystique" and "mistake".
As far as whether I agree or not, I certainly think that the way Styx presents itself visually sometimes tends to lend itself to the perception of the band as "uncool". But I have met or spoken with most of the members of Styx, and in reality they aren't any less cool than any other rock musicians I've ever met or interviewed in the course of my writing career.

As a big fan of Styx yourself, when you started to write The Grand Delusion was it aimed mainly at other Styx fans who had a good knowledge of the line-up changes, the albums, the internal wrangles etc? Or at music fans generally? Did that change as the book developed?
I don't think my intent changed all that much from start to finish. I wanted to write a book that addressed a lot of different people on a lot of different levels. Obviously I needed to write something that was very compelling for hardcore fans of the band, since they were going to be the principal target demographic for this book. It was very, very important that I come up with previously undocumented details about the members of the band, the music, the recording process, and anything else that I could, from as many perspectives as I could, to make sure that there wasn't a lot of material that was just a fluff repeat of what they had seen or heard or read before. I was lucky to be able to convince some people who had never shared their Styx experiences publicly to do so with me. Interview subjects like Bill Traut, who signed Styx to its first record deal, and Vince DePaul, the band's first manager, helped me present a fresh slant on material that might otherwise have been familiar to a lot of fans.
On the other hand, it was also important that a casual Styx fan would be able to pick the book up and read it and not feel excluded by his ignorance of certain elements of the band's history. I also wanted people who are not Styx fans particularly, but interested in the music business itself, to be able to find something of value in the band's journey through so many different phases of popular music. And lastly, I wanted this to be a book that anyone interested in reading a good book, regardless of content or genre, could pick up and read and enjoy, even if they had never heard of Styx. One of the nicest compliments that I have had was when a fan wrote to me and said, "I almost never read non-fiction, because it's usually so boring, but your book is like reading a Grisham thriller." I loved hearing that, because it meant that maybe I had succeeded, on some level, at writing a book that wasn't just for Styx nerds. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you; hey, I'm one of them!

Many of the reviews point out how balanced you've been in the way that you don't take sides, and how you give equal coverage to all of the bandmembers' points of view. As a fan yourself, you must have formed some opinions down the years, so how much of a struggle was it to stay unbiased and to hold back from putting your own opinions into the book?
I can't say that it was a struggle, per se. Here's the thing: when you write fiction, people are buying the author for the most part; you know, I like thrillers, and Greg Iles has written great stuff I have liked in that genre in the past, so when I see this new title at the store, I'm going to grab it as an impulse buy because I recognize the name, right? That's branding. and that's what sells fiction, and sometimes even mainstream non-fiction.

But for genre non-fiction like 'The Grand Delusion', the overwhelming majority of readers are buying it because of their pre-existing interest in the subject matter, not because I wrote it. They bought it because of Styx, not because of Sterling Whitaker. It isn't my job as a journalist to give my opinions; it's my job to collect as much information as I can, from as many different points of view as possible, and then try to assemble those differing points of view into a cohesive story that illuminates as many different perspectives as possible. I have my personal opinions and biases, obviously. But they are, and should be, irrelevant to what gets written. Styx fans as a collective probably really don't care about my opinion, and why should they?

How much part do you think the internet's speed of turning opinions into rumours into gossip into 'facts' has played in the dysfuncionality of the band? Were they just as dysfunctional back in the 80s but it wasn't
exacerbated by the internet back then?
Great question! I think the Internet has helped Styx in some ways, and damaged it in others. For a band of that era, that's still out there working a hundred dates a year but might no longer be on the radar of the mainstream media, the Internet can be a really useful tool to get the word out about upcoming concert dates, new recordings, interviews and so on.
On the downside, the immediacy of the Internet can be unfortunate for a performer who reads a negative posting and responds to it too quickly, and without regard for the fact that his posting will remain online in perpetuity.
Because there have been some really major changes to the Styx lineup, there have been and continue to be some very critical fan posts about the current lineup vs. the classic lineup, and there have been times when some band members have reacted too hastily to that and wound up posting things in anger that are pretty embarrassing in retrospect. I can understand how frustrating it must be to ride a bus for twelve hours to play a show in some town you wouldn't want to visit otherwise, in challenging conditions that would not have been your choice if you were in a position to choose, only to read some review online that focuses on all negatives, much of it predicated on the absence of a person who has been gone for close to a decade. I'm sure that's really aggravating; how could it not be? But taking that frustration out online is a huge mistake that ultimately only makes you look silly.
I certainly don't think Styx was less dysfunctional in the 80s, but the Internet has provided a forum for some of the more obsessive fans, and the performers themselves in some instances, to re-visit the nuances of that dysfunction and tear them apart on a daily basis, which tends to keep old debates alive well past the point where they have any continuing relevance.

While you were doing your research and hearing more sides of the Styx story, what things did you learn that made you more sympathetic (or less sympathetic!) to any of the protagonists?
I don't think I'm really any more or less sympathetic to anybody now than I was before. You have to have empathy for people in order to be a good writer, so I'd like to think I went into the research with the feeling that I wanted to hear all the best stories from the best sources that I could, whether the experiences they shared were positive or negative.

A huge part of conducting a good interview is in the research and knowing what to ask, but an equally large part of it is serving as a little bit of an armchair psychologist, just sitting back and letting them talk, letting them reveal themselves through conversation. In hearing the same stories from so many different perspectives, it's not unusual - in fact, it's normal - to find that no matter how far apart people are, everybody's side makes perfect sense if you put yourself in their position. So that's what I tried to do with the book, is get out of my own way and try to let the characters tell the story as much as possible, and I came away from it - and I hope most fans will, too - thinking that these are all good people who are simply doing their best with the strengths and the weaknesses that they have. I'm pretty sympathetic to all of them.

It's said that you should never meet your heroes.... so... how was it when you did? And is it a privilege or a burden getting to know so much of the inside stuff about people you may have once looked up to.
By the time I met them, they were no longer my heroes, if that makes sense. I definitely looked up to the members of Styx as a kid, and probably like most other young fans, I may have ascribed qualities to them in my own mind when I had no way of knowing whether they actually possessed them or not. But that was a long time ago, and by the time I came into contact with any of the Styx guys I had already been working in the business for a while, so I already realized at that point that they weren't going to actually be heroes. You know, the music industry is fundamentally geared toward the exploitation of damaged personalities, and the honest truth is that most musicians and performers are damaged goods to one degree or another, and it's that personality damage that consequently creates the unusual ego needs that drive performers to seek attention in a way that's not particularly healthy. So there really are very few people in the business that are heroic by any reasonable definition. After all, what's so heroic about playing guitar in some rock band? It is, by its very nature, kind of a self-serving and egocentric career choice.
Having said all that, I should add that I like all of the Styx members that I have ever met or spoken to very much. Despite their problems with one another over the years, my experiences with them one-on-one have been entirely positive. Tommy Shaw is a really nice guy, very friendly, and likes to put you at ease. He's the first band member I ever met. Dennis DeYoung is very smart, articulate and extremely funny. My only contact with him was a single phone conversation, quite a few years ago, but he was great.

I did a radio show with Lawrence Gowan and James Young a while back, which was the first time I had ever spoken to either one of them, and that went well. Lawrence is an absolute blast and couldn't have been nicer. JY lived up to his reputation for being the most reserved member of Styx, but I don't mean that as criticism, just observation. I know some people find him a bit superior, but that wasn't my take on him. He's just a little bit less effusively friendly than some of the others, but I think that's just his natural caution around outsiders. He was perfectly nice to me.
My only contact with Chuck has been through email; he emailed me to thank me for a positive review I wrote of his book online, and I think we've emailed one or two other times, all very friendly. Glen Burtnik was one of my favorite interviews for the book, and he wrote the Foreword, all without ever having met me face-to-face. It was all by email, which was funny. But last year I went to Atlanta to a solo show of his, and finally met him.

Glen was very friendly and I've always enjoyed interviewing him. His interviews alone would have made a good book, because he's so funny and so savagely insightful.
And then there's Todd Sucherman. We're the same age, and we both started out as fans, and I always find that interesting. Todd's interview was great, and just the way he tells certain stories . . . it's hard to translate tone of voice into a print interview, but Todd just cracks me up. The last time I interviewed Todd we wound up staying on the phone for probably another hour talking about things entirely unrelated to Styx, including him reading over the phone from the works of one of his favorite comedians. Todd's just a lot of fun.
I've never met Ricky, and I never got to meet either John Curulewski or John Panozzo. I don't want to say it was a privilege to meet the Styx guys, because that implies that they occupy some sort of hallowed position and they're doing me some kind of favor by deigning to speak with me, which is not the case. It certainly wasn't a burden, either. I guess I would say it's my job, and when you're lucky enough to have good subjects, then it can be a pleasure. That's how it has been with Styx for the most part, albeit with a few small bumps in the road.

What feedback have you had from Styx fans about the book? And what have been the bandmembers' reactions?
The fan reaction to 'The Grand Delusion' has been overwhelmingly positive. I think the reviews on Amazon average out to 4½ out of 5 stars, and those are written by ordinary people who've read the book, so that's really gratifying. When you're writing a book you are essentially working in a vacuum for years at a time, with no way of knowing whether your intent is actually making it to paper. So it's enormously satisfying when I read the very nice comments from fans, especially since so many of them have focused in on some of the elements that I really wanted to convey. People mostly seem to feel that this book is very balanced and well-researched, and also well-paced, and those were probably the most important things to me, so it's very nice to feel that maybe I succeeded in putting them across. In the entire process, I have had just three negative emails from Styx fans.
The band members who have read the book seem to have liked it well enough. Todd was not too thrilled at first with a few things some people said about the current lineup in the book, but I think ultimately he understands that I can't tell other people what they can and can't say; I can only report it. So we're cool. Glen got to read parts of it in progress, and he liked it well enough that he volunteered to write the Foreword. Last I knew, Chuck had not read it, and when we did that radio show together, JY mentioned that he had “looked at it, but read maybe a couple of pages”. It's my understanding that JY is a little wary of what might be in there, and I honestly don't know if he will wind up choosing to ever read it or not. On that same show, after Gowan and I had talked off-the-air, the host gave him his copy, and he was perusing it a little bit while commercials were going and made some nice comments. I would think that he's read it by now, and after that he became my MySpace friend, so he must not be too pissed off about it. Ricky, I don't know about, and I don't know if Tommy has read it, either. I've had no comment from either one, pro or con. And Dennis, I don't know if he's actually read the book himself, but people right around him have read it, and basically their response is something along the lines of, “Well, the expected people said the expected things, and so it goes”. I doubt it will go on to become his favorite book ever written, but I don't get the sense that his camp is furious about it, either. At least, not at me!

What is your opinion of the way Styx treat their fans? Do they value them?
I would certainly think that they value the fans; after all, the fans are the key to the success those guys have had, so they have to keep them in mind. It's kind of a loaded situation with the Styx fan base because since Dennis was fired it's been fractured, and that creates a little bit of a quandary for the current lineup. On the one hand they need to go out and market the band to the existing fan base, but on the other hand they are determined to try as hard as they can to move forward and have this lineup be seen as legitimately being Styx, and not just some touring lineup out playing the oldies circuit. And since this lineup has steadfastly chosen not to play some of the band's biggest radio hits like “Babe”, “The Best of Times”, “Show Me The Way” and “Mr. Roboto”, that has really alienated some of the Dennis fans who came to the band because of those songs and now feel excluded. There is definitely a feeling in some fragments of the fan base that they have been disenfranchised, and that the band values some of its fans more than others. That's unfortunate, but I think it's normal in a situation like that. Fans get attached to a certain lineup, and they don't want it to ever change, and when it does, some fans just won't support that change. Ever. That's something Styx is living with, and will continue to live with.

What other books have you written, and how did you get started as an author? Tell us a bit of your background.
A few years ago I published a book entitled 'Unsung Heroes of Rock Guitar', which was a collection of Q&A interviews with fifteen rock guitarists. They were people from bands like Heart and Kiss and Jethro Tull, bands where you are likely to know the music but might not know the name of the guitarist. 'The Grand Delusion' is my second book.
I knew I was going to be a writer from my very earliest memories. When I was in junior high school I actually wrote a book called 'The Warlord', which was kind of a cheap Tolkien rip-off. It was derivative and not very good, but hey, I was young and finding my way. I guess you could call it “not-so-epic-fantasy”.
I played in a band in Atlanta in the Nineties called Roots of Consciousness, which was a progressive rock band along the lines of early Jethro Tull, King Crimson and such, but faster and heavier. Then when I moved here to Nashville I played for several years in a duo called Beggarz Opera, which was an acoustic harmony act along the lines of Simon and Garfunkel, America and that sort of thing. But that's over with for now, and I'm really focused on writing.

How is the Van Halen book coming along? And who would you like to write about next?
As it turns out, the Van Halen book is not coming along at all. I was looking at doing that when another writer came out with a book entitled 'Everybody Wants Some', which is an unauthorized Van Halen bio. It has done pretty well, and although the reviews have been mixed, I took a look at it, and I thought it was good enough to suit its purpose. That makes less of a market for me to do another one, because you can't come along and say, “Hey look everyone, it's the world's first Van Halen bio”. So I would rather turn my attention to another band where there's a clear playing field.
My next book is going to be about Journey, but I haven't really started it in earnest yet. I still don't have a title. I've made a few exploratory phone calls, and that's about it. I'm still promoting the Styx book and don't want to split my attention, so I'm holding off starting on that until the demand for this one really slows to a trickle, where it won't require much of my time. Right now that hasn't happened yet. I know, I know . . . we should all have such problems.
Another book I am planning is a complete behind-the-scenes history of Spinal Tap. I am really excited about doing it, and I think it could come off as an amazing story. I want to cover the entire thing, from the shooting of the movie, to the TV sequel, to the tours and records, everything. Think of the amazing people that played small roles in the movie, there's bound to be an incredible book in that. I even have a title: 'We Will Mock You: The Inside Story of Spinal Tap'.

Who are your own favourite music journalists/authors - and for each one, why?
To be honest, for the most part I am not a very big fan of music journalists. I know that seems bizarre, given the fact that I am one, but sadly I'm forced to agree with the late great Frank Zappa, who once said, “Most journalists are second-rate hacks. Most music journalists are fifth-rate hacks.” Frank was also quoted as saying, “Music journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't speak, for the entertainment of people who can't read.” I love that, because it's uncomfortably close to the truth at times.
I do actually think that Cameron Crowe did some good work for Rolling Stone, and I also like Timothy White.
As far as authors in other styles, there are far too many to list completely. I read everything from classic literature like Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to pop fiction like Dan Brown, to thrillers like Ludlum and Greg Iles, to a lot of showbiz biographies and non-fiction. I am currently re-reading 'Live From New York', an absolutely masterful history of Saturday Night Live. Another new favorite of mine is Dan Merchant's 'Lord, Save Us From Your Followers'.
When I was a kid I read tons of fantasy and sci-fi, and I used to correspond with both Piers Anthony and Stephen R. Donaldson. Both of them were kind enough to read and take seriously the early efforts of a young and undeveloped writer, and their kindness is something I will always remember.

What would you like to be doing in five years time?
The same thing I am doing now, only better. I want to write more music biographies, and I would like to branch out into other types of showbiz writing as well. I would love to interview actors and authors, so I hope I can find some projects to make that happen. I would also like to try my hand at screenwriting, and one day I would still like to make a solo album. Wow, that would be a busy five years if that all happened! On the other hand I may move to the country, grow a long beard and raise goats. I guess we'll see what unfolds.

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© Get Ready To Roll - 3rd July 2008