the grand illusion

Styx crossed from the rock underworld into mainstream success with this dramatic progressive rock concept album. 'The Grand Illusion' was recorded at Paragon Recording Studios in Chicago and produced by the band, which consisted of Dennis DeYoung on keyboards, synthesizers, and vocals; Chuck Panozzo on bass and vocals; John Panozzo on drums and vocals; James Young on guitar, keyboards, and vocals; and Tommy Shaw on vocals and acoustic and electric guitars. Much of the material was developed during the tour for their album 'Crystal Ball'. DeYoung recalls: "We went on the road and toured and it really took that time for us to become a band with Tommy. We became writers together and 'The Grand Illusion' is the outcome...I was the theme guy in Styx and I had come up with the theme for 'The Grand Illusion'. I got everyone together and I said, 'Look, in the last year we’ve made more money than we ever thought we would make in our entire lives. How has it affected us?' I know how it had affected me. We set on a course of trying to make a loosely thematic album based on success, failure and money."


'The Grand Illusion' was the band's seventh album; and they found it quite fitting to release it on 7/7/77. It became a huge success for Styx, eventually going triple-platinum. Tommy Shaw remembers: "It was just fantastic, it was exciting, and we were all in such a great creative zone at that point. We were too busy to have been jaded by it all, those first two or three years together. And things just kept getting better and bigger. We could hardly keep up with the way success was coming to us. I mean, I was just so happy to have that bowling-alley lounge gig. I’d spent the last three years making fifty dollars a week, if I was lucky. I would be lucky to pay my bar tab. I was hoping something good would happen, but this really came out of left field." 'The Grand Illusion' went to number thirty-eight in Sweden and peaked at number six in the US.











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A top thirty hit, 'Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)' was written by Shaw. He says: "Some people have different ways of motivating themselves. I was just happy to be onstage, and so many times I would look over at him and he would get really cross onstage. I think he got homesick a lot. He didn’t like to be on the road. I just didn’t understand it when I first joined the band. Because this was early on, and things were going so well for us; I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t happier. But then time would go by, and I would realize I could use those same words on myself. You know, when I would get moments of weakness and look at life and be so cynical about things. It would surprise me. It’s like your dreams—you are every character in your dreams. I was the one who wrote those words, so I can’t really put them on anyone else other than myself. "








'Come Sail Away' went to number eight in the US. Songwriter DeYoung reflects: I think the song 'Come Sail Away' means so much to people because it is a song of a great journey to be someplace else. It is a song of guarded hope that it can be better. The character in the song says in the very beginning that he wants to set a course for a virgin sea. He doesn’t want to be held back; he wants to have all options open to him. It is fraught with peril and he realizes in the second verse that he chased the pot of gold but that he didn’t get it. We, Styx, didn’t get it either, but that isn’t going to stop us from moving forward...This is about the disappointment of what I had lived through. It is the realization of the good and the bad; some happy, some sad. The song talks about childhood friends. I’m talking about the band and our dreams and I’m trying to encourage myself to carry on. I had to carry on; I needed to." Shaw explains their promotional campaign for the song: "There was this guy Jim Cahill, who now does international stuff for Fox News. He is a very creative force. He and I were the same age, and we were probably on the leading edge of the bad behavior in the band. So we were fearless. I was in an unhappy situation at home, so I was more than happy to work on my days off and go out of town. Jim and I would just be on these relentless campaigns with the local promo guys, or anyone who would come with us. And we would have a pocket full of, you know, fun-powder and cash, and we just went around and did everything that we could to get this song on the radio. We had big plans for that song, so we just went at it like a kamikaze: 'We are going to get this on the radio or we are going to die trying.' We went coast to coast and gave away TV sets and VCRs and promised this and that—plane tickets, anything—and we got the bullet back. "












'The Grand Illusion' 
full album:

Side One

"The Grand Illusion" (Dennis DeYoung) – 4:36

Lead vocals: DeYoung

First guitar solo and guitar fills: Tommy Shaw

Second guitar solo: James Young

"Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)" (Shaw) – 5:29

Lead vocals: Shaw

"Superstars" (Young, DeYoung, Shaw) – 3:59

Lead vocals and lead guitar: Shaw

Soliloquy: DeYoung

"Come Sail Away" (DeYoung) – 6:07

Lead vocals and synthesizer solo: DeYoung

ARP Odyssey: Young

Lead Guitar: Shaw

Side Two

"Miss America" (Young) – 5:02

Lead vocals and guitar solo: Young

"Man in the Wilderness" (Shaw) – 5:51

Lead vocals and guitar solo: Shaw

"Castle Walls" (DeYoung) – 5:59

Lead vocals: DeYoung

Lead guitar: Young

"The Grand Finale" (DeYoung, Young, Shaw) – 1:57

Lead vocals: DeYoung

Lead guitar fills: Shaw

Melodic guitar lead: Young

'Le Blanc-Seing' by René Magritte