Styx In The Studio For 'Paradise Theatre' 45th Anniversary

By Editorial Staff | Published: Jan 12, 2026 10:25 AM EST

The 45th anniversary of Styx's "Paradise Theatre" album is being celebrated by the syndicated radio show In The Studio With Redbeard: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands.

Redbeard shared this synopsis for the episode: Quick, lightning round: if I told you that forty-five years ago one of America's top music acts released a concept album that identified growing cracks in the foundation of our society and presciently predicted practically everything we find today, who would you guess it was? Bob Dylan? Neil Young? Crosby Stills and Nash? I doubt that Styx would come to mind to many, but that is precisely what Paradise Theatre was: part lament, part warning, all expressed, performed, and recorded exceedingly well. And when you hear my guests Styx guitarist James "JY" Young and co-founder/former member Dennis DeYoung discuss the America they were observing in January 1981, it is disconcerting to realize now how those warnings by and large went unheeded.

Over the course of four decades interviewing the various members of Styx it became apparent that, even while ascending to one of America's most popular bands and selling millions of copies of four consecutive albums between 1977 and 1982, a struggle for artistic direction was occurring among keyboardist/co-founder Dennis DeYoung , Styx guitarists Tommy Shaw and James "JY" Young. It became glaringly obvious when Styx followed 1978's hard-rocking multi-million seller Pieces of Eight, heavily laden with Shaw and Young rockers, with the album Cornerstone containing the hugely popular ballad "Babe" written and sung by DeYoung.

What a revelation it was then to find that the band members never actually discussed the elephant in the room until this classic rock interview, which also includes current Styx singer/ keyboardist Lawrence Gowan's somewhat more objective perspective. Not since their breakthrough The Grand Illusion had singer/ songwriters DeYoung, Shaw, and JY contributed as equally and supportively as they did on January 1981's Paradise Theatre containing in-concert perennials "Rockin' the Paradise", "Too Much Time on My Hands", "The Best of Times", "Snowblind", "Lonely People", and "Half Penny, Two Penny". And not surprisingly, the musical alliance yielded the top-selling Styx album ever. Current Styx lifers JY and Shaw, plus DeYoung, screen the American Dream, alternately in and out of focus four and a half decades later, at the Paradise Theatre .

Stream the episode here