DENNIS DEYOUNG: ‘I Want One Last Tour’ With STYX

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Ex-STYX vocalist and keyboardist Dennis DeYoung has once again said that he wants to reunite with his former bandmates for one final tour. DeYoung, the voice behind such STYX classics as "Come Sail Away", "Best Of Times", "Pieces Of Eight" and "Babe", spoke about his previous group while chatting with Steve King of the Albany, New York radio station Q105.7. Asked about the possibility of a reunion of STYX's classic lineup, Dennis said (hear audio below): "There's only two guys in STYX, really — it's J.Y. [James Young, guitar/vocals] and Tommy [Shaw, guitar/vocals]. They replaced me in 1999 when I was very sick, and they took the band — they took the name. And the fans want a reunion. Even Rolling Stone [magazine] had an article [that] there should be a reunion. All the fans — not all the fans; there's a small minority who like the new band that Tommy and J.Y. put together. Fine. I want one last tour for the STYX fans who want this — they do. I don't wanna be back in the band. One last tour — to say 'thank you' to the people who gave us such a great life. That's it. "I just did a YouTube thing at my out-of-tune piano singing into an iPad of 'The Best Of Times' a month ago. It's got over a million views. Seven thousand comments. And the people are all saying the same thing: 'We love you.' 'We want this reunion.' 'We love you, Dennis.' 'We want you back in the band.' I'm humbled by all these comments. In fact, I read the sentences of the comments, and I can't figure out what my name is doing in that sentence, it's so complimentary." DeYoung co-founded STYX as a teenager alongside his neighbors Chuck and John Panozzo in the early 1970s. Young joined shortly after that, with Shaw coming on board in 1975. Dennis will release a new original solo album, "26 East, Vol. 1", on May 22 via Frontiers Music Srl. The LP was originally supposed to be his last album, but he had so much material he split it up into two volumes. Two years ago, Shaw likened STYX's relationship with DeYoung to a divorce. "You get married when you're young and everything's rosy," he told "The Big Interview". "Then, as you start to get a little older, you realize you didn't have that much in common and then you go through a tough divorce… We still have songs that we co-wrote together, and those are our children, and we've managed to find a way to keep those things in play." Shaw went on to say that he is content to let the past remain in the past, choosing instead to surround himself with positivity as he enters the next part of his career. He continued: "Personality-wise, at this stage in my life, I want to be happy. I want to be around people who love me and that have my best interest at heart, and I don't have to fight with. There's just not enough years left that I would want to risk not having that again."