Album: Equinox
Year: 1975
. . .
So before we get into all of this utter madness, here is a Styx fact that you probably didn’t know: when they had their first massive hit, “Lady,” they were an indie band. It’s true: the first four Styx albums — Styx, Styx II, The Serpent is Rising and Man of Miracles — were all on a Chicago independent label called Wooden Nickel records. And “Lady,” which was originally released as a single in 1973 and ended up at #6 in the spring of 1975 because of reasons, was from Styx II. Given that this was the early 1970s, one can only conclude that Styx were indie rock pioneers!
I can also confidently tell you that none of those albums were any good, because your humble correspondent went through a short-lived but intense Styx phase in the the first part of 1978, and he bought up their entire catalog in that period. Said Stygian phase had commenced in late 1977 with their massive breakthrough, The Grand Illusion, which came smack dab in the middle of my prog phase. The Grand Illusion had Styx’s second top ten hit, “Come Sail Away,” — a song one of the stoners in my high school insisted proved that they were an English band because they sang “come sail away, lads” and only a English band would sing “lads” in a song — as well as the title track and a bunch of songs I don’t remember by looking at their titles right now.
Which was the thing about nearly all of those Styx albums: they all had two or three songs I liked, max. Most of rockers were flat, the ballads were saggy and the prog epics drifted absolutely nowhere. And remember, 15-year-old Jim was totally primed for all of this and still couldn’t like it.
That said, I still have more than a modicum of affection for “Lorelei,” the lead single from their first A&M album, 1975’s Equinox, which was famous in 70’s teenage circles not just for opening with a weed anthem called “Light Up” — whooo! — but also having a trippy album cover that featured an ice cube on fire. “Whoa, dude, it’s an ice cube and it’s on fire, how did they do that?” is a thing that people definitely said. “These must be songs of ice and fire” is something that nobody said. Well, maybe one guy: clearly George R. R. Martin got his inspiration from the Equinox album cover.
Anyways, “Lorelei” starts out with a circling keyboard figure from keyboardist Dennis De Young, who also provides the vocals.
When I think of Lorelei, my head turns all around
As gentle as a butterfly, she moves without a sound
At this point guitarists Jon “JY” Young and John Curulewski — Tommy Shaw wouldn’t join for another year — start riffing around him as he continues:
I call her on the telephone, she says be there by eight
Tonight’s the night she’s movin’ in and I can hardly wait
Whoo-hoo! Dennis DeYoung is going to get laid on a regular basis! By his Lady L! Though it’s pretty inconsiderate to your new neighbors to start moving into your place at 8:00PM. I mean, we had neighbors do that, and it was the first of many many incidents that led to the rest of the tenants going to the landlady and basically saying “it’s us or them.” Luckily, she chose us.
Anyways, as the rhythm section of the Panozzo brothers — fraternal twins John on bass and Chuck on drums, unless it was other way around — power up, the guitars switch into a hard rock crunch. A mid-1970s corporate hard rock crunch to be sure, but still crunchy enough as these things go.
The way she moves, oh oh oh, I gotta say
Lorelei, let’s live together
Brighter than the stars, forever
Lorelei, let’s live together
Brighter than the stars, forever
Oh baby, forever
And what the hell, “the way she moves” in this context is clever enough, and yeah the stacked harmonies are both too much and just enough, and the guitar leads accompanying that chorus are also kinda cool, to boot, especially the quick lead before “oh baby, forever.” And now I’m wondering if one of Lorelei Gilmore’s paramours ever actually used the phrase “Lorelei, let’s live together,” because that might be the kind of reference that Amy Sherman-Palladino — or more likely Daniel Palladino — would use. Or maybe whomever it was that ran the final season of Gilmore Girls.
In the second verse, DeYoung notes that it’s “time to celebrate,” (which he pronounces “sell-eee-brate”, because now that I think if it, 70s U.S. prog rockers sang with fake English accents the same way 60s Brit rockers tried to sound like American bluesmen) which echoes the chorus of the previous song, the aforementioned “Light Up,” and maybe I don’t remember any of the other songs on the album because they weren’t about selleebrating sex and drugs.
Anyways, despite a overly bombastic multi-overdubbed harmonies ending that showed they’d been listening to their Queen albums, “Lorelei” only made it to #27 on the Billboard Hot #100, though as you know, they’d do better. Meanwhile, fast-forward to 1978, and two things ended up killing my Styx fandom: the first was the release of Pieces of Eight, which I didn’t like — especially that fucking “Renegade” song which got played every five minutes — but in the end, it was The Cars who killed it on both a metaphorical and very literal level.
At some point that summer, I dipped my toes into what folks were calling “new wave” and bought The Cars, based up the singles that had somehow made it to radio, and fell deeply in love with it, especially side two, still one of the greatest achievements in Western Civilization.
The Cars was the beginning of my turn away from corporate rock and prog rock and my turn towards punk and indie: before the year was out, I’d be listening to The Clash, The Jam, Ramones and Television, among others. Life happens fast when you’re a #teen.
That was the metaphorical arrow. The literal arrow was when we saw The Cars open for Styx at Selland Arena on October 25, 1978 and the slick coolness of The Cars totally and utterly blew Styx off of the stage. I seem to remember the nadir being an embarrassing bit of kayfabe where Dennis DeYoung hae everybody yell for Tommy Shaw to come out for the encore — right, like Tommy Shaw wasn’t going to come out for the encore! I’m so sure.
Anyways, that was it for me, punctuated by their first #1: the utterly horrendous and utterly inescapable “Babe,” though after that, I could shut them out to the point where even “Mr. Roboto” has been more of a meme than an actual song to me.
“Lorelei”
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