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The Chicago band’s concept album named about a famous venue in their home city went all the way to No.1.
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The early 1980s were heady days for Styx . By 1981, it was already nine years since they had made their American chart debut with their self-titled album, one of their four releases on the Wooden Nickel label.
During the second half of the 1970s, the Chicago band had gone from regular gold-selling status into the multi-platinum realm. On January 31, 1981, their concept album named about a famous venue in their home city started a chart journey that took it to No.1 on April 4. It was Paradise Theatre.
The huge success of the ballad “Babe” had propelled its parent album Cornerstone to No.2, in a 60-week run on the Billboard 200. Paradise Theatre would go one better, spending 61 weeks on the survey. Produced, as usual, by Styx themselves, the album may not have contained another single with quite the impact of “Babe,” but it still took the band into the Top 10 of the Hot 100 twice, with the rocker “Too Much Time On My Hands” and the slowie “The Best Of Times.”
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The popularity of Paradise Theatre was thanks in no small measure to a huge national and international tour by the band, which started on January 16 in Miami and extended to no fewer than 140 dates. Manager Derek Sutton told Billboard that it was expected that a minimum of $1 million would be lavished on advertising the itinerary, and it was well spent: the outing became one of the most successful rock tours of its era.
After entering the Billboard album chart in late January, the album climbed steadily, and by early spring was taking over from REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity, for a non-consecutive three-week run at the top.
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In 1996, the Paradise Theatre band line-up reunited for the Return To Paradise tour, which produced the following year’s gold-selling live album and home video of that name. The current band were in frequent live action before 2020, and played another North American tour in 2018 behind their latest album The Mission . Styx’s 17th studio album Crash of the Crown arrived in 2021, as they continued to tour indefatigaly, Their sense of “theater” lives on.
Buy or stream Paradise Theatre .
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How Styx Crafted ‘Paradise Theatre’ Into Their Only No. 1 Album
Styx finally hit the multi-platinum jackpot with a trio of hit records in the late '70s, after spending the better part of a decade struggling to achieve their mainstream breakthrough. Then, emboldened by success, they went for broke with an ambitious gamble that paid off with their only No. 1 album to date.
To reach the top of the charts, Styx had to endure an arduous uphill climb filled with challenges both inside and outside the band's ranks. "We've always been different personalities," guitarist Tommy Shaw told Kerrang! in 1981. "I remember in the old days, when we couldn't afford to buy clothes, we would look like we didn't know whether we were going to be Jackson Browne or Kiss . ... We were all over the place. We couldn't agree, so nothing emerged as a common image for the band. We used to fight about it."
While they found their footing as a band, they foundered on the charts where consistent success eluded them until the release of 1977's The Grand Illusion . A triple-platinum hit, their seventh LP kicked off a string of bestselling albums and singles that continued with 1978's Pieces of Eight and 1979's Cornerstone . Along the way, as Shaw put it, "osmosis finally got the best of us," and they started to truly gel as a creative unit.
Still, there were cracks in the foundation. Shaw and fellow guitarist James "J.Y." Young favored a more basic, rougher-edged rock approach, but frontman Dennis DeYoung always had loftier ambitions for Styx. When his compositions started gaining the traction they'd worked so hard to achieve on the charts, Styx found it difficult to argue with his quest for a more complex, expansive sound that made room for sweeping ballads alongside their rockers.
As long as the records kept selling, it was easier to put those concerns on the back burner, so when DeYoung pushed for their 10th LP to be a concept album that used the gala opening and eventual abandonment of Chicago's Paradise Theatre as a backdrop for some pointed commentary on the state of America in the late '70s and early '80s, the group responded with one of its most accessible, well-rounded efforts. Titled Paradise Theatre , the record arrived Jan. 19, 1981, and immediately added another entry to Styx's growing stack of hits, cementing their status as one of the era's biggest bands.
Watch Styx's 'The Best of Times' Video
As with any concept album, the key to Paradise Theatre 's mainstream success lay in the listener's ability to enjoy the songs without necessarily caring about — or even being aware of — the narrative arc that was supposed to hold them all together. Presented as a cohesive whole, the record was still easily parted out to pop radio, where Shaw's "Too Much Time on My Hands" and DeYoung's "The Best of Times" cracked the Top 10. The group's rock credibility was further maintained with a pair of AOR hits: "Rockin' the Paradise" – a co-write among DeYoung, Shaw and Young – and the Young/DeYoung number "Snowblind," which had the added benefit of being singled out by religious fundamentalists as "Satanic."
Paradise Theatre 's triple-platinum sales and No. 1 chart status seemed to make believers out of DeYoung's bandmates, at least temporarily. Admitting that they'd been "skeptical" of the notion that the record-buying public would respond to the album's concept, Shaw even suggested that for their next release, they might follow their ambitions even further outside the mainstream.
"We got away with it, which is real rewarding," Shaw said. "All of us love the theater, like Broadway — I like all it encompasses. I love being taken in, being drawn into it and believing everything, and the technical aspect — being able to do so much with so little. We're trying to go further and further into that — not to hang ourselves by the neck; we'd still like to keep an audience — but I think we'd like to get even more daring and progressive and involve a little bit of a risk."
Shaw's prediction would prove prophetic, although the results weren't the unifying success Styx enjoyed with Paradise Theatre . When they returned in 1983 with their next effort, Kilroy Was Here , DeYoung's theatrical vision for the band provoked a split with Shaw, who quit prior to the release of the 1984 live collection Caught in the Act . For the remainder of the decade, the band slumbered through a lengthy hiatus.
Styx went through a number of lineup changes after finally reconvening, and following DeYoung's eventual ouster in 1999, they've mainly concentrated on live performance. Aside from arguably representing the creative apogee of this group's classic incarnation, Paradise Theatre also remains Styx's sole No. 1 album — and an evident source of lingering fond memories for DeYoung, who restaged its tour for a DVD release in 2013.
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Paradise Theatre Turns 40 Today!
- Jan 19, 2021
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Today’s the day Paradise Theatre first made history when it was released 40 years ago on January 19, 1981.
by Mike Mettler, resident Styxologist
Is it any wonder that Paradise Theatre made such a lasting impression when it was released 40 years ago today by A&M Records on January 19, 1981? In fact, Paradise Theatre (or Theater , depending on which part of the album sleeve you’re viewing) was Styx’s first album to reach No. 1, which it did for three non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart not too long after its release. It ultimately sold over 3 million copies, making it Styx’s fourth multiplatinum album in a row — the first time any rock band in history had ever achieved such a vaunted sales feat.
“Has it really been 40 years already? I can hardly keep track of all of our anniversaries!” guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw told me with a hearty laugh this past week. “But I really do love how much Paradise Theatre has endured, and I appreciate all the ways the fans continue to embrace this music of ours.”
Onward to the facts: Paradise Theatre , Styx’s tenth studio album, was recorded, engineered, and mixed in 1980 at Pumpkin Studios in Oak Lawn, Illinois, with the late, great Gary Loizzo at the helm. (Loizzo passed away five years ago after a long battle with cancer on January 16, 2016.)
The album’s tone was set by the wistful bookends “A.D. 1928” and “A.D. 1958” — as well as, of course, its final 27 seconds, Dennis DeYoung’s Vaudevillian piano outro “State Street Sadie” (a particular favorite track of Styx’s keyboardist/vocalist since 1999, Lawrence Gowan) — all serving to frame a concept album that chronicled the glorious opening and eventual glum closing of a fictional Chicago theater. “I know exactly physically what building I was in when I wrote that riff for ‘Rockin’ the Paradise,’” says co-founding guitarist/vocalist James “JY” Young. “I still drive by it sometimes in the south suburbs of Chicago, where we were rehearsing at the time. Tommy came up with the verse and Dennis came up with the lyrics, and there it was.”
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Adds co-founding original bassist Chuck Panozzo, “ Paradise Theatre really captured us at our best, when everyone was working towards achieving a common goal. And now I like that we’re able to recreate that feeling of rocking the paradise onstage every night with the people we have in the band.”
Two huge singles emerged from the record. Keyboardist/vocalist DeYoung’s touchingly reflective “The Best of Times” (JY’s self-admitted favorite DeYoung ballad, in fact) made it all the way to No. 3, and Shaw’s instantly iconic “Too Much Time on My Hands” reached No. 9. “Too Much Time” remains a crowd favorite to this day, and it appears prominently in every Styx live set. “It was like the song was playing in my head,” Tommy recalls of writing “Too Much Time” on the literal last day of recording for the album. “I heard that riff in my head, but I didn’t have anything to record it on as I was driving to the studio. When I got to the parking lot, I turned the car off, ran inside, got everybody together, and said, ‘Chuck, play this riff, and then do this .’ It was like it came together in a package, and all the pieces were assembled right then and there.”
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“Too Much Time on My Hands” has garnered much additional pop-culture cache in the ensuing years. Back in April 2016, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon began singing snippets of the song during his post-monologue, show-opening desk pieces (“I’ve got the 12 o’clock news blues!”), with house band The Roots picking up the beat to riff on it right alongside him. “I was impressed with Jimmy’s vocals — and the band did a fine job on it too,” Tommy told me at the time.
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Soon enough, Fallon and his Tonight Show team created a frame-by-frame remake of most of the song’s instant-classic concept video imagery that had made it an unabashed early MTV staple, with Fallon taking on DeYoung’s vested role and Paul Rudd ( Ant-Man , Anchorman ) donning the infamous blue jumpsuit and requisite blonde wig to replicate that perfect of-era Tommy Shaw look. You can see their video homage in a side-by-side comparison with the original clip right here .
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More recently, in December 2020 and in support of Steelers Nation, our man Shaw, along with every other current Styx bandmember — JY, Chuck, Lawrence, drummer Todd Sucherman, and bassist Ricky Phillips — took to Zoom to collectively perform an updated remake of the song for our modern times, in a video and audio package produced by the band’s formidable live engineer, Chris “Cookie” Hoff. You can watch that energetic and quite kinetic version of “Too Much Time” on Styx’s official YouTube channel right here .
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Other classic Paradise cuts continue to be performed live by the band, including the aforementioned “Rockin’ the Paradise,” which has since turned into a top-hatted Lawrence Gowan performance showcase — and a song that also has the fine distinction of being the 10th video ever shown on MTV on the very day the music channel debuted on U.S. cable systems on August 1, 1981. “It reminded me of the kind of song Elton John was doing in the early ’70s. That’s how it felt to me, and I fell in love with it immediately,” admits Lawrence. “It’s a dissertation, that lyric. And it’s very uplifting, very positive . Live, it’s an over-the-top performance where I realized, yeah, I could really rev up this character. I’d done a kind of ringmaster - y character myself in the past, and these lyrics fit with that idea. I also thought I might be able to get away with a sequined coat on that one. (chuckles) It’s a song where I’d like to play piano from top to bottom, but the only spot where I can get away with it and still be the showman is in the middle. ”
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And then there’s “Snowblind,” which returned to the live set for the first time in a number of years in early 2016 and subsequently became a setlist favorite during Renegades in the Fast Lane , the band's five-show residential run alongside Don Felder, which was held at the Venetian Theatre in Las Vegas between January 6-14, 2017. “Snowblind” also made occasional appearances as part of Styx’s first round of live sets in January 2020, with Young’s effects-laden lead vocal as eerie/creepy as ever, perfectly countered by Shaw’s atmospherically cool wah-wah guitar tone during the “Mirror, mirror” verses. Observes Chuck, “That was the first time I played bass pedals on a song. We were doing some things that really took us out of our comfort zone. ” Notes JY, “When you sing the soft parts of a song, you get to hear the crowd singing with you. A number of years ago, when I started singing the line, Mirror, mirror,’ I got to hear the whole place singing along with me for the first time. I had never experienced that before. It was like, ‘Holy crap! This song has touched a lot of people.’ It keeps resonating.”
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An extensive international tour quickly followed the album’s release in 1981, encompassing over 100 shows in North America and 14 European gigs, as well as a pair of tour-closing dates at the legendary Budokan in Tokyo, Japan, in January 1982. The Japanese shows are especially notable because the setlist included traditional Japanese songs “Sakura Sakura” and “Sukiyaki,” which featured Tommy playing a koto, a zither-like instrument he bought locally and learned to play in his hotel room. “ My most fond memories of Paradise Theatre w ere when we put it up as a show, and we played it onstage,” Tommy recalls. “ I had never seen a backdrop like that — where you’d see one thing when it was lit from the back, and then see something totally different when it was lit from the front. It was just magical. ”
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One particularly auspicious and serendipitous U.S. performance on the Paradise Theatre Tour took place on August 25, 1981 at the Roanoke Civic Center in Roanoke, Virginia. Not only was that concert the very first Styx show ever attended by your trusty Styxologist (see my actual ticket, shown above), but it was also attended by Todd Gallopo, t h e owner and creative director of meat and potatoes – design and branding (all-lowercase letters intended). Gallopo happens to be the man responsible for the album design and visual conceptualization for Styx’s most recent studio album, June 2017’s The Mission , as well as other catalog releases in the Styx canon under the Universal/ UMe umbrella including August 2003’s Rockers compilation, May 2004’s Come Sail Away: The Styx Anthology , and May 2005’s Big Bang Theory . “ My mom and I went to that show in Roanoke, along with my best friend who I played hockey with,” Gallopo told me in May 2019. “I t was the first show I ever saw. I don’t have my ticket anymore, but that was the first concert I ever went to. I was way into Styx at the time. I was a young ki d playing my own music, and Styx was cool. And that show was also about a week and a half after my birthday. I t’s amazing you were there too ! Going way back like that, you can see the full circle that happened between Styx and me. ” (Without a doubt, brother!)
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Finally, we must share a few words about the album’s initial vinyl release. In that regard, adding to the overall Paradise coolness factor was the laser-etching of the band’s name along with some theater flourishes on the label-less Side 2. “That was done to thwart bootleggers, which was a big problem back then,” reveals Tommy. (These etchings can also be found on some, though not all, subsequent Paradise Theatre vinyl reissues.)
All of this wonderfully majestic detail, of course, serves well to keep alive the memories of Paradise.
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- Jun 11, 2024
PICTURE DISC AND LIMITED-EDITION INDIVIDUALLY NUMBERED SILVER VINYL AVAILABLE AT ALL TOUR STOPS STARTING JUNE 11 AND SELECT RETAIL JULY 12
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“Cold As Ice,” “Too Much Time On My Hands,” “Juke Box Hero,” “Renegade” and more! Nothing sounds more like the soundtrack of summer than STYX’s and FOREIGNER’s biggest hits. Recently announced as inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, FOREIGNER hits the road in June co-headlining the “Renegades & Juke Box Heroes” trek with STYX and special guest John Waite. Adding to the excitement, STYX and FOREIGNER announce RENEGADES & JUKE BOX HEROES , a very special limited-edition companion album, available exclusively at tour stops starting June 11 and at select retail on July 12. This must-have collector’s album, available as a picture disc or in elegant silver vinyl, features both bands’ greatest hits and was mastered for vinyl by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound with lacquers cut by Joe Nino-Hernes. Tracks include FOREIGNER’s most beloved hits including “Feels Like The First Time,” “Cold As Ice”, and the worldwide #1 hit, “I Want To Know What Love Is,” alongside STYX massive hits “Blue Collar Man (Long Nights),” “Come Sail Away” and “Renegade,” and more. Just 1,000 copies of the picture disc and only 5,000 individually numbered copies of the silver edition are available. With many tour dates already selling out, demand is sure to be high. When they are gone, they’re gone for good! A 13-track CD featuring all three artists and including the vinyl tracks is also available. The songs are available on all digital outlets. The picture disc will be available at https://foreigner.merchmadeeasy.com/products/renegades-jukebox-heroes-picture-disc and the silver edition will be available on Amazon on July 12. The “Renegades & Juke Box Heroes” tour is set to launch June 11 in Grand Rapids, MI at the Van Andel Arena. John Waite’s #1 songs, “Missing You” and “When I See You Smile” will help ensure a summer evening of feel-good anthems. Tickets are going fast, available at LiveNation.com . For more information, please visit www.foreigneronline.com or www.styxworld.com .
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- Jan 19, 2022
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- Dec 03, 2021
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- Dec 01, 2021
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- Nov 14, 2021
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- Nov 08, 2021
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- Sep 01, 2021
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- Jul 16, 2021
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- Jul 07, 2021
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- Jun 18, 2021
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- Dec 21, 2020
- Dec 03, 2020
STYX has just released a video for its classic hit "Too Much Time On My Hands" , filmed from the band's home studios in support of the Pittsburgh #SteelersNation and their game against the Baltimore Ravens .
Check it out below!
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- Dec 01, 2020
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- Nov 14, 2020
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- Nov 08, 2020
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- Oct 19, 2020
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- Oct 14, 2020
White Castle®, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, has been an inspiration to artists and bands for decades. The home of The Original Slider ® celebrated titans of the music industry by inducting three extraordinary Cravers into its exclusive Cravers Hall of Fame.
STYX singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw, renowned concert promoter Danny Zelisko, and the late singer-songwriter John Prine join fellow legends in the Castle halls of Crave. John Prine very sadly passed away in April 2020 due to complications caused by COVID-19.
Reserved for the most devout fans, White Castle's Cravers Hall of Fame has been inducting legends from main street to the main stage for nearly 20 years. Among the well-known honorees are rock icon Alice Cooper, the late comic pioneer Stan Lee, and the stars of "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," John Cho and Kal Penn.
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- Oct 01, 2020
Bensalem, PA
Parx casino, jim thorpe, pa, penn's peak, new york, ny, beacon theatre, washington, d.c., warner theatre.
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ROCK 'N' RETAIL: STYX ON TOUR Sutton
![styx paradise theater tour 1981 ROCK 'N' RETAIL: STYX ON TOUR Sutton](https://s1.nyt.com/timesmachine/pages/1/1981/08/16/233936_360W.png?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
Tony Scherman is a reporter for The Record in Hackensack, N.J. By Tony Scherman igh above the ocean in Hollywood, Fla., Derek Sutton paced his hotel room, energetically criticizing the members of his profession. ''The music industry,'' he said, ''has traditionally been a bunch of whores, amateurs and egomaniacs. That must change. The fat years are gone. In order to survive as an industry, we've got to professionalize. I, for instance, am growing accustomed to seeing myself not merely as the manager of a rock band, but as executive vice president of a large-volume retail operation.'' The retail outfit to which Sutton was referring is Styx, a rock band he manages which is scheduled to appear this week at Madison Square Garden as part of a world tour. The ''Paradise Theater'' tour, billed as the largest in rock-music history, could bring the group $15 million in ticket sales. Their current ''Paradise Theater'' album on A&M Records has sold almost three million copies, and if it tops that mark, as it is expected to, the record will be Styx's fourth consecutive ''triple platinum'' album - something not even the Beatles or the Bee Gees ever accomplished. With assorted merchandise tie-ins, such as T-shirts and hats, the tour and album will gross $60 million worldwide this year, at a time when the industry as a whole is suffering a prolonged slump.
Despite the fact that it is perhaps America's most popular rock band, nobody over 18 seems to have heard of Styx. It is a band with a grass-roots, rather than a critical, audience. While teen-age fans sit in slack-jawed wonder at a Styx concert full of flashy, supercharged theatrics, most rock critics write off the music as slickly packaged, empty pomposity. ''If these are the champions,'' wrote a Rolling Stone magazine reviewer in 1979, ''gimme the cripples.''
But this is not a story about Styx's music. At dress rehearsals for their tour in an Indiana suburb of their Chicago home base, several of Styx's five members, discussing their careers, offhandedly said, ''Well, that's capitalism.'' And it is as a contemporary business phenomenon, as rock-and-rollers cum capitalists, that Styx is important.
Rock-and-roll was once a music of rebellion. Rockers played, and often lived, for the sheer, crazy, defiant pleasure of the moment. ''Hope I die before I get old!'' shouted the English band, the Who, 15 years ago (and one of them did indeed die, at the age of 31, in 1978). But the theme of the new corporate rocker might well be ''Hope I get rich before I get old.'' Though some rebels -like the British punk rockers Clash - remain, groups like Styx have stopped trying to outrage the bourgeoisie and have become simply the creative arm of a complex industry. If rock music once had a dynamic need to flout convention, the five members of Styx have little desire to flout anything. They see themselves as entertainers in an era demanding nothing more than good, professional entertainment.
What makes the people associated with Styx the very model of a modern, major rock-and-retail operation is their business conservatism. This band is in it for the long run, not for immediate profits. As played by Styx and as packaged and sold by Derek Sutton, rock music is not merely big business. It is an increasingly conservative, cautious big business utilizing ever-more sophisticated advertising, intensive planning and market research.
For two reasons - its own growing weight and complexity, and because it is still emerging, older but wiser, from the slump of the late 1970's - the rock-music business is struggling today to reduce the element of chance built into its very nature. There is no better place to watch this effort than behind the scenes of the Paradise Theater. erek Sutton is a compulsive worrier. On the night of the tour's first date, at a slightly down-at-the-heels Hollywood, Fla., venue called the Hollywood Sportatorium, Sutton spent the last preshow minutes hurrying anonymously through the crowd of 10,000 teen-agers, his face deeply lined from the strain of keeping tabs on absolutely everything. ''At this point,'' he said, ''I become extremely nervous. Bit of a stage mother. And I have no outlet for it; I can't jump onstage like the boys can.''
''The boys,'' understandably anxious at the start of a 148-date tour, were, however, no strangers to the stage. The keyboard player, Dennis DeYoung; the guitarist, James Young; the bass guitarist, Chuck Panozzo, and his brother, John Panozzo, the drummer (all in their early 30's) have been together since 1970, when they started playing bars, dances and other low-profile gigs in the Chicago area. The band's Alabama-born guitarist, Tommy Shaw, 28, joined in 1975. Despite one national hit single that year -a song called ''Lady'' - Styx was struggling.
Later that year, the band became Sutton's first client (he has since added the West Coast singer Nicolette Larson and the English guitarist Robin Trower to his intentionally small client roster). Born in Scotland 39 years ago, Sutton has a master's degree in geophysics from Kings College, Durham University. After five years spent mostly in oil exploration, Sutton went full-time into the music business, in which he'd dabbled as a college concert promoter. Between 1969 and 1975, he worked for the Chrysalis Group, running the London firm's United States operations. When he left Chrysalis, Sutton began looking for an act to manage - and discovered Styx.
What the well-traveled entrepreneur found was a rock band flexible enough to develop into what the industry reverently calls ''a monster.'' Styx's music, though basically the hard rock that has remained popular with teen-agers all over America, is a little of this and a little of that: sci-fi synthesizers and screaming guitars for the kids; syrupy ballads, like the huge 1979-80 hit ''Babe'' (written by DeYoung for his wife), for the middle-American housewife, and anthems like this year's ''The Best of Times,'' whose 1960's-style high vocal harmonies and wistful lyrics about ''the end of paradise'' mirror the nostalgia of aging former hippies.
Songs like ''Babe'' have broadened Styx's album appeal to the over-18 set. But it is the teen-agers who have always flocked to the band's shows. And, compared with a performance by a hard-rock group like Van Halen, whose modus operandi is simply to blast adolescent audiences into a stupor, Styx is all-resourceful. It beguiles as well as steamrolls: This is the key to its hold on kids. Girls squeal at DeYoung's quavering vocals on ballads. Boys bellow approval when James Young struts to center stage, shouts, ''My mother never let me play my electric guitar in the house!'' and launches into a maxidecibel solo. And everyone joins in when ''cute,'' elfin Tommy Shaw hops about with an acoustic guitar leading fans through a clapalong number.
In 1976, Derek Sutton took these multiple resources and put them on the road with a vengeance: The band played 186 dates in its first year under his direction. The touring never stopped, and Styx prides itself on being a ''working band,'' storming city after city. ''Touring,'' said DeYoung during rehearsals, ''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?''
A major rock tour has sometimes been compared to an army offensive, and Derek Sutton is very much the field marshal. One promoter, while calling Sutton a ''great'' manager, also says, ''Derek Sutton is very militaristic; he would've done great in the corporate world. I'll bet he has a very clean desk.'' Sutton's passion for order is, of course, a blessing for Styx. The manager's two- and three-year plans, said Chuck Panozzo, ''equal commitment. Derek isn't someone who thinks, 'I'm gonna make $2 million this year, and next year they can go to hell and find another manager.' We're a working team.'' Sutton's office provides business direction, Styx provides music - and the two actively collaborate on advertising, which they agree is crucial.
During the Sutton years, the rewards have poured in: the triple platinum albums, the healthy six-figure incomes for each band member that more than satisfy the requirements of their basically staid lives. (Though all live in the Chicago area, they go their separate ways when not working, from DeYoung, raising a family, to Shaw, raising horses.) For Sutton, the rewards are a comparable income, as well as industry encomiums, such as the 1980 Personal Manager of the Year award from the trade publication Performance Magazine.
Sutton and Styx, ever the wise vendors, have plowed receipts back into overhead, into the stage shows that teen-agers consider magic: elaborate light effects, dry ice and a few well-timed explosions. Shows like the one Sutton awaited as he paced nervously on opening night.
Sutton's worrying takes place against a music-industry backdrop of caution. Although a number of record companies claim to be on the road to recovery from the slump of 1979 - which saw the shipment of records and tapes drop from $4.2 billion in 1979 to $3.7 billion in 1980 - the recording industry has become soberly cost-conscious. A&M, for instance, has reduced its artist roster from approximately 100 artists to 45, and such tactics as market research, designed to maximize sales and minimize inefficient advertising, are becoming more important.
Along with other factors -such as a gradually aging audience as the baby boom tapers off - the record-industry slump has had a delayed but decided effect on the concert business. Record companies have traditionally underwritten many groups' touring expenses, but with funds tighter, fewer bands have been supported - and fewer bands tour. Concert promoters across the country, especially those handling the big 10,000-to 20,000-seat arenas that bands like Styx play, reported as much as a 30 percent drop in business for 1980. The concert slump has continued and even deepened in the spring and summer of 1981, with many promoters reporting a 20 percent drop below 1980's depressed ticket sales.
''What is now required,'' Sutton explained before the ''Paradise Theater'' tour, ''is the application of logic to the marketing situation. The disposable income of the average family is being eroded by inflation to the point where we in the music industry are now in direct competition with McDonald's, Mattel and Honda for leisure-market dollars. Companies such as these apply advertising as a science. They do not slapdashedly spend money. They research in depth and they advertise with great power and efficiency. Traditionally, the music business has not done that. We have so many egotists looking for a little piece of the action -the artist, who wants to express his creativity; the record company, which wants to express its creativity; the concert promoter, who wants to express his ego.'' Everyone, Sutton said, is ignoring what he sees as the need to work together in a straitened leisure market and focus on the product. ''When you're competing with Honda, Mattel or Pepsi-Cola, your advertising has to be as good as theirs, or you're going to lose in the competition.''
Early last December, Sutton took an unusual step. He flew to four American and five European cities, conducting a whirlwind series of ''seminars'' for the promoters who would be presenting Styx during the ''Paradise Theater'' tour. The letter from Sutton's Los Angeles office announcing the seminars invited the promoters to ''Advertising 101,'' a ''prerequisite'' for ''Styx 101'' - in other words, attendance was a condition for presenting the band in concert. At the seminars, Sutton said: ''Styx is now a franchised operation. You are the local franchisees.''
'' 'Franchise? Franchisees?' The promoters all said, 'What the hell are you talking about, Derek?' '' recalled Sutton. Whereas promoters have usually been responsible not merely for presenting a show, but for the show's publicity as well, and thus for a good part of the band's local image, Sutton wanted that control. ''We want imagecontrol in the hands of a central producer. I told the promoters, 'Look, McDonald's would never dream of letting the local McDonald's franchise down the street do its own advertising. And so we are not going to let you put your own stamp on things. We are going to provide you with all the advertising materials you need, just as if we were McDonald's or Holiday Inn or Midas Muffler. Everything is going to be designed to revolve around a single focus: Styx, Styx, ''Paradise Theater,'' ''Paradise Theater.'' ' ''
While Styx and A&M together are footing the $2.5 million advertising bill for the tour and the album, creating the campaign was largely the responsibility of a 28-year-old, self-proclaimed ''half artist, half businessman'' with wispy long hair. Jim Cahill, Styx's full-time advertising and promotion director, worked for Alice Cooper in the mid-1970's. He is paid between $150,000 and $200,000 a year, half by Sutton's management company and half by Styx. Today, more and more rock bands hire their own advertising men.
''I am a student of the rock business,'' says Cahill. He also studies the marketing strategies of other businesses. ''When McDonald's decides that the Egg McMuffin needs a boost,'' he says, ''they pull all their hamburger ads. You will never see a Big Mac billboard when Egg McMuffins are on television. The technique is to create your entire campaign around one single product.''
While Cahill was pondering Egg McMuffins, the members of Styx were busy writing songs for the new album. Dennis DeYoung had come up in early 1980 with the ''concept'' of ''Paradise Theater,'' an idea based on an actual Chicago movie theater built in 1928 and torn down in 1958 when television took away its audience. The image of the theater would be used to make a sort of allegorical statement about the collapse of American prosperity and the need to assume a new stance of realistic toughness while still remembering and drawing inspiration from the lost days of ''paradise.'' In April 1980, Cahill got a phone call from DeYoung, who outlined the promotion strategy: The album would be called ''Paradise Theater''; the tour would be the ''Paradise Theater'' tour. ''Now, make something happen,'' DeYoung told his ad man.
It took Cahill months to come up with the basic approach to be used: a combination of nostalgia for a lost American ''paradise'' and a hard sell of Styx's appeal as an unpretentious, hard-working ''people's band.'' Then he spent almost half a year writing and producing the most extensive and well-coordinated advertising campaign ever designed for a rock band. Following the McDonald's cue of pushing one product, Cahill chose not to advertise ''Styx in concert'' or emphasize the band's past work, but to drum in the notion, on 350 radio stations all across America, of ''Paradise Theater - from Styx.''
''... American rock 'n' roll,'' intones a ghoulish, resonant voice over an insistent background from the ''Paradise Theater'' album. ''The vision of its own identity has become blinded by the glitter of its own device. The time has come for some changes. For the one band with the power to reach beyond what has been and explore what could be. But only a band that has played a thousand nights on the road and represented this nation on every continent of the globe is worthy of that task. The time has come. Five men have made the decision to - bring back paradise.''
This somber spot, featuring the voice of Earl Levy (''How does America handle a headache? Bayer aspirin,'' and ''Sears - for great American homes like yours''), is the second of some 15 radio advertisments produced by Cahill to promote the ''Paradise Theater'' tour and album. After the spots were made, Cahill played them for all the promoters at the December ''seminars.'' They were then ''customized'' by Cahill for each show by inserting specific dates into the basic tracks, and shipped to the promoters, who place them on local radio.
Cahill's radio campaign constitutes the bulk of the $2.5 million advertising budget. The spots have generated widespread interest; not only are stations getting requests from listeners to ''play that Styx commercial one more time,'' but the music industry is listening, too. ''Actually,'' Cahill said, ''the ads are sophomorically simple. There is a built-in authority factor with 17-year-old kids. That's why we used that voice: I wanted 'Jaws.' If you've got a wimp doing the announcements, it gives the show no credibility with the kids. And there's a little bit in there, too, from the Reagan television ads'' -which Cahill thinks were ''fabulous'' for their hard-sell approach. ''That's what got Reagan elected - it was those ads and their peer pressure.''
A sustained campaign like Cahill's for Styx is geared toward a basic music-industry fact. A band on tour is not just selling tickets; it's selling its record as well. As elaborate and expensive a campaign as Styx's isn't needed to sell out the concerts, but Sutton and Cahill want to heighten public awareness of the band as well.
''What we are doing is creating 111 little Paradise Theaters in cities all across the nation,'' Sutton said, ''111 foci for promotional campaigns which will result not merely in ticket sales, but also in album sales and in the expansion of general awareness of the band. Styx is grossly under-reported and grossly under-respected. We're changing all that.''
A&M Records is working toward the same goal. It did not blindly send ''Paradise Theater'' out into the world in the hope that the recording would somehow manage to find its way onto three million turntables and tape players. Long before a note of the Styx album had even been composed, A&M began preparing for the work of advertising and selling it as efficiently as possible. Bob Reitman, A&M Records' vice president of marketing services - who likes to say he is in ''artist research'' and whose background in advertising includes work for, of all places, Mattel and Honda -had his staff compile a wealth of statistical information on Styx's previous forays into the market: the ''Cornerstone'' and ''Grand Illusion'' albums and tours.
''With our research,'' said Reitman, ''we know where to focus our efforts.'' Using Reitman's data, A&M's vice president of sales, David Steffen, then takes responsibility for getting the album into stores. Starting last December, the distribution branches began to solicit orders from retailers. At the same time, they did a second type of soliciting: for floor space. ''We want a commitment,'' said Steffen, ''from all the stores that can give it to us of a certain amount of square feet. What we want to achieve is, basically, mini-Paradise Theaters in every store.'' If 111 Paradise Theaters are blooming in concert halls around the nation, several thousand cardboard Paradise Theaters are going up in record stores, constructed of posters, album-cover ''flats'' and a die-cut, five-foot-long replica of the omnipresent Paradise Theater marquee.
''We're in a partnership with the retailers'' said Steffen. ''We're telling them, 'Look, we're giving you a product that's going to sell. To put you into a position to buy and sell more, we'd like you to make a Paradise Theater in your store.' '' The display areas range from 12 square feet in small outlets to 250 square feet in larger stores: a substantial ''Paradise Theater'' record-store shrine. A&M is even willing to send a company representative to arrange the display for local merchants.
David Steffen takes his precedent not from McDonald's, but from Campbell's. ''I've learned a tremendous amount about selling records,'' he said, ''from looking at the food industry, and I draw explicit parallels between what they do and what I'm trying to do. If I am the major supplier of canned soup in the United States, I have to extract a commitment from stores, either by paying promotional moneys or paying for floor space, to obtain a certain amount of visible representation on the soup shelf. Whatever it takes, I'm going to make sure that every one of my soups is represented. We want high record-store visibility for Styx for the entire duration of the 'Paradise Theater' tour.''
The final, drawn-out note of the show's brief opening song, ''A.D. 1928'': Dennis DeYoung, onstage alone in front of a painted screen depicting a decrepit theater, brings his arm down to a sudden burst of fireworks and a wrenching chord from guitarists Young, Shaw and Panozzo, who are hidden behind the screen. The screen rises as strobe lights flicker dizzily and, directly above the stage, a massive marquee spelling ''Paradise'' - identical with the theater marquee on the cover of the new Styx album -lights up. ''What'cha doing tonight?'' sings De Young teasingly, as the suddenly visible band churns into action. In answer, 10,000 teen-agers leap screaming to their feet; those in front shove up against the barricaded stage. (In spite of the 1979 Cincinatti disaster in which 11 fans were trampled to death in a rush for open seats at a Who concert, 40 percent of the ''Paradise Theater'' shows have open seating: unreserved seats that encourage a mad scramble to be as near the stage as possible. Sutton says, ''If one train or one airplane crashes, does that mean that all trains or airplanes are unsafe? We generally do not have a lot of problems.'')
Watching the pandemonium, the tour accountant, a burly Virginian named Doug McNeil, breaks into a smile: ''Audiences are just going to eat this show up,'' he says, and briskly heads out to the Hollywood Sportatorium box-office area. McNeil will spend the next two hours ''settling'' with the promoter: determining show costs against gross receipts and accepting the promoter's check for 85 percent of the gross after costs. The promoter will keep the remaining 15 percent.
While DeYoung, sprinting back and forth between piano and center stage, sings ''Rockin' the Paradise'' (''Don't need no fast-buck lame-duck profits for fun / Quick-trick plans take the money and run / We need the long-term slow burn getting it done''), Derek Sutton and Doug McNeil are offstage seeing to it that this specific economic philosophy is carried out. The profits that the band will reap from this, and most, shows, are not staggering: about $50,000.
A figure like that is not enough for some bands of Styx's popularity, and many therefore demand a higher percentage in their deals with promoters. In the face of a general recession, a common impulse is ''take the money and run'' - charge a stiff percentage and high ticket prices, especially since you can't be sure you'll be able to draw a crowd the next time around. This is neither Sutton's nor the band's outlook.
''To get to the level where an act is making money,'' Sutton recently told a reporter from a music trade paper, ''and then take money away from the people that are helping you get there is the worst kind of shortsightedness.''
''A Derek Sutton needs promoters,'' said Doug McNeil. ''He doesn't want to put them out of business.'' As Ron Delsener, promoter of the band's Madison Square Garden show, said, ''Sutton could've been tougher, but he's smart. If a band forces a promoter to make a stiff deal, God forbid that band should ever go downhill. But if they give me a fair deal, I'll still play them somewhere even when they're not so hot. They'll know they're going to eat.''
A Derek Sutton also needs loyal Styx fans, and Styx tickets are often several dollars cheaper than those for shows by comparable groups. But, according to Sutton, ''only about 10 percent of what we take out in ticket sales can be applied to any kind of profit. That is not enough, especially when you have over half a million outstanding in investments before you even hit the stage.'' (The band collectively took out a $500,000 loan before the tour; Sutton, mortgaging his Los Angeles home, chipped in another $250,000.) ''So we have to make money from our merchandise.''
Sutton has begun focusing much of his attention on selling T-shirts and other Styx merchandise. At one point before the Hollywood Sportatorium show, asked why he was spending so much time talking with his head of concessions, Sutton said, ''Because he's making us our profit.'' As the band plays onstage, brisk T-shirt sales in the lobby are turning the tour from a marginally profitable venture into more of a moneymaker. Sales of T-shirts and other items are expected to generate $6 million during the ''Paradise Theater'' tour, only $600,000 of which, however, is clear profit for the band.
In general, Sutton and Styx are involved in a balancing act on this tour, juggling austerity and high-budget grandeur. Sutton wants badly to cut down on the ''waste and extravagance'' that used to characterize rock tours. ''You just don't ask for a brandy snifter full of only brown jelly beans anymore,'' he says. ''The costs themselves - rent, ticket commissions, union costs -are getting so high that you can no longer afford extravagances.'' On the other hand, the band is putting a lot more money into its elaborate show than it ever has before. ''We don't have to spend $4 million on production,'' said Sutton, ''but we choose to. It's an investment in our future. If we make some sacrifice in terms of profits now, we are paving the way to a more stable future.
''The tour will break even, or possibly make money. It's not a matter of making a lot of money on tour. The better part of the band's profits for 1981 will come from albums'' -some $1.5 million from ''Paradise Theater'' - ''but we want to go out there and make people remember us. So that if there is a, well, a problem with the economy and people can afford to buy only one album in 1982 or 1983, it will be a Styx album. I still want to be in this business in five years.''
Early-August figures from McNeil's accounting department suggest Sutton has little to worry about. As the band approaches Madison Square Garden, it has sold out 84 of 91 dates. McNeil's calculations show that 99.1 percent of all ''Paradise Theater'' tickets put up for sale have been bought - an amazing figure for hard times.
Whether Styx will continue to prosper at its 1981 height is an open question. Rock-and-roll fans are fickle. But one thing is certain: Behind the 99.1 percent ticket sales and the triple-platinum albums is not only a horde of teen-agers, but an aggressive, efficient juggernaut of an organization. And while the band itself is quick to separate the music from the marketing, Derek Sutton argues that if the new sales methods are not increasingly used in the music business, it may cease being a business altogether. This band works very hard; its manager works hard; its advertising director works hard; its record company works hard - all in an interlocking, carefully planned partnership for mutual profit. As they say in the band, ''Well, that's capitalism.''
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Styx Hit #1 With Paradise Theatre
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Styx hit #1 in the US with Paradise Theatre , a concept album based on the rise and fall of a theatre in Chicago.
Keyboard player Dennis DeYoung came up with the concept after seeing a piece of artwork by Robert Addison depicting the theater in decay. The majestic venue was built in 1928 but lost its luster just a few decades later, and was closed in 1958. DeYoung saw it as a symbol of America's fall from grace, and the need to pull together as a country to make it right. The cover art is based on Addison's work, with a painting by Chris Hopkins showing the glistening theater during its 1928 opening on the front, and another depicting it shuttered in 1958 on the back. The opening track, " Rockin' the Paradise ," most defines the concept, but the biggest hit from the album has nothing to do with the theme. That would be " Too Much Time On My Hands ," a song guitarist Tommy Shaw wrote on the fly when they needed another track to complete the set. Paradise Theatre is the only #1 album for the band; it gets a revival in August when MTV goes on the air and starts playing the videos Styx made to promote it.
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Styx Setlist at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ, USA
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- Feb 13 1981 Pan American Center Las Cruces, NM, USA Add time Add time
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Styx's 1981 Concert History. Styx is an American rock band from Chicago that formed in 1972 and became famous for its albums released in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They are best known for melding hard rock guitar balanced with acoustic guitar, synthesizers mixed with acoustic piano, upbeat tracks with power ballads, and incorporating ...
Internationales Congress Centrum. Dec 06, 1981. Stafford, England. Bingley Hall. (118 Performances: 2 shows postponed/rescheduled) This is a fan site. It is in no way associated with Styx, its members, or its management and makes no claims to do so.
View the concert map Statistics of Styx in 1981! setlist.fm Add Setlist. Search ... Midwest Rock-n-Roll Express 2013 Tour (21) Paradise Theater (132) Pieces of Eight (94 ... Lane (5) Renegades in the Fast Lane 2 (5) Return to Paradise (77) Rock to the Rescue (1) Songs From The Sparkle Lounge Tour (12) Styx II (24) Styx Tour (21) Styx World ...
Paradise Theatre is the tenth studio album by American rock band Styx, released on January 16, 1981, by A&M Records.It was the band's most commercially successful album, peaking at #1 for 3 weeks on the Billboard 200 in April and May 1981 (non-consecutively). It was also the band's fourth consecutive album to be certified triple-platinum by the RIAA.. Four singles from the album charted on ...
Get the Styx Setlist of the concert at Wembley Arena, London, England on November 8, 1981 from the Paradise Theater Tour and other Styx Setlists for free on setlist.fm!
An exact setlist wasn't found. Here is their closest one (from 03/17/1981), which may be similar: "A.D. 1928" "Rockin' the Paradise" Snowblind "Too Much Time on My Hands"
Get the Styx Setlist of the concert at Capital Centre, Landover, MD, USA on April 13, 1981 from the Paradise Theater Tour and other Styx Setlists for free on setlist.fm!
On January 31, 1981, the Styx concept LP 'Paradise Theatre,' named for a famous venue in their home city, started its US chart route to No.1. ... as they continued to tour indefatigaly, Their ...
Art Rock, Classic Rock, Glam Metal, Hard Rock, Pop Rock, Progressive Rock, Rock, Rock Opera, Soft Rock, Symphonic Rock, Album Oriented Rock (AOR), Melodic, Mellow ...
Titled Paradise Theatre, the record arrived Jan. 19, 1981, and immediately added another entry to Styx's growing stack of hits, cementing their status as one of the era's biggest bands. Watch Styx ...
Today's the day Paradise Theatre first made history when it was released 40 years ago on January 19, 1981. by Mike Mettler, resident Styxologist. Is it any wonder that Paradise Theatre made such a lasting impression when it was released 40 years ago today by A&M Records on January 19, 1981? In fact, Paradise Theatre (or Theater, depending on which part of the album sleeve you're viewing ...
The ''Paradise Theater'' tour, billed as the largest in rock-music history, could bring the group $15 million in ticket sales. ... Whether Styx will continue to prosper at its 1981 height is an ...
This is the Paradise Theater album from the great band Styx, released in Janurary of 1981. I do not own this album, nor any of the music within however. I in...
Chicago based superstars STYX returned home to Chicago to a heros welcome in spring 1981. A proclamation from Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and 3 sold out perform...
Paradise Theatre, an Album by Styx. Released 19 January 1981 on A&M (catalog no. SP-3719; Vinyl LP). Genres: AOR, Pop Rock. Rated #424 in the best albums of 1981. Featured peformers: Dennis DeYoung (keyboards, harmony vocals), Chuck Panozzo (bass guitar, bass pedals), John Panozzo (drums, percussion), Tommy Shaw (guitar, harmony vocals), James Young (guitar, harmony vocals), Hangalator Horn ...
Get the Styx Setlist of the concert at Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY, USA on July 30, 1981 from the Paradise Theater Tour and other Styx Setlists for free on setlist.fm!
Released on January 19th 1981, "Paradise Theatre" is the tenth studio album by Styx. Paradise Theatre was the Chicago band's concept LP about a famous venue in their home city. Billed as the world's most beautiful theater, it is regarded as one of the finest designs by architect John Eberson. Poor acoustics eventually led to its demolition ...
Film reel of credits that ran at conclusion of STYX Paradise Theatre Tour_1981. Produced by STYX Project Director Jim Cahill
No setlists. Cologne Germany. 1981 17 Nov. Saarlandhalle Paradise Theater. Saarbrücken Germany. Log in to access pagination and browse all events in the system. Login with Spotify. Styx performed 128 concerts on tour Paradise Theater, between Wembley Arena on November 8, 1981 and Hollywood Sportatorium on January 16, 1981.
1981. Styx hit #1 in the US with Paradise Theatre, a concept album based on the rise and fall of a theatre in Chicago. Video unavailable. Watch on YouTube. Keyboard player Dennis DeYoung came up with the concept after seeing a piece of artwork by Robert Addison depicting the theater in decay. The majestic venue was built in 1928 but lost its ...
Paradise Theatre is the tenth studio album by American rock band Styx, released on January 16, 1981, by A&M Records. It was the band's most commercially successful album, peaking at #1 for 3 weeks on the Billboard 200 in April and May 1981. It was also the band's fourth consecutive album to be certified triple-platinum by the RIAA. Four singles from the album charted on various charts, with ...
0:00:00 - *Introduction0:01:10 - A.D. 19280:02:54 - Rockin' The Paradise0:07:00 - Blue Collar Man0:11:58 - The Grand Illusion0:18:49 - Lights0:25:00 - Lady0:...
Harking back to 1981, the group played two songs from their "Paradise Theater" record, "Rockin' The Paradise" and "The Best of Times", (with "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" breaking up the pair of ...
Get the Styx Setlist of the concert at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, AZ, USA on February 16, 1981 from the Paradise Theater Tour and other Styx Setlists for free on setlist.fm!