Styx In The Studio For 'Pieces Of Eight' Anniversary

08-21-2023

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

"Doggedly determined, Chicago-based Styx had finally cracked the code with their seventh(!) album The Grand Illusion a year before Pieces of Eight in September 1978. Led by singer/songwriter/guitarists Tommy Shaw and James 'JY' Young along with singer/songwriter/keyboard player Dennis DeYoung, the new album immediately exploded across North America with breathtaking musical pyrotechnics for the first time in Styx's long career arc, including the seminal 'Blue Collar Man', 'Great White Hope', 'Sing for the Day', and the perennial fist-pumper 'Renegade'.

"In this classic rock interview focusing on the 1978 release of Pieces of Eight, former Styx member and co-founder DeYoung confesses that, in spite of his major conceptual songwriting role on the band's 1977 breakthrough three million seller The Grand Illusion, the highly-anticipated follow-up Pieces of Eight was not his finest hour.

"This admission underscores the short term significance of how Styx guitarists/ songwriters/ singers Tommy Shaw and James Young stepped up creatively to fill the void on Pieces of Eight, again selling triple platinum with the muscular 'Blue Collar Man', 'Renegade', 'The Great White Hope', 'Queen of Spades', and 'Sing for the Day'.

"Long term, however, it may have signaled the beginning of a divergence in the creative direction of Styx, an opinion shared by many long time Styx fans but rejected, albeit weakly, by DeYoung in the 2011 Rolling Stone interview." Stream the episode and read more here.