Sparkshooter

Bands break up.  That’s a fact.  Some bands split and re-form;  others never play together again.  In the rock era, it’s not uncommon to see bands reunite, occasionally without a former, crucial member.    On one hand, things happen.  People die.  Other bands form.  Enmity exists that’s too deep to cross.  That’s life.

Then again, in my estimation, one band has taken this to an incredible low.  And that’s Styx.

Why’s that?  Well, anyone that’s seen the Styx episodes of VH-1′s “Behind the Music” and “Behind the Music: Remastered” can tell that there’s significant disdain for former lead singer Dennis DeYoung coming from Tommy Shaw and James “J.Y.” Young.  The reasons for that are varied and sundry, and you’re free to take a look at those episodes or read about the band to make your own determinations.  But here’s the thing that gets me.  On the band’s official website, www.styxworld.com, they’ve scrubbed any mention of DeYoung from the band’s history.   Seriously.

DeYoung isn’t referred to by name at all.  He’s not listed as the writer of “Lady”.  He’s not mentioned in terms of the mid ’90s reunion or the formation of The Tradewinds with the Panozzo Brothers (which was the original incarnation of the band).  Hell, J.Y. came as the fifth member, but was actually the sixth guy to be in the band.  Shaw wouldn’t join for another five years.  That takes balls to pretend that the singer from (with Tradewinds) 1961 to 1999 didn’t exist, especially since he wrote seven of your eight Top 10 songs (those being Babe (#1), Show Me The Way (#3), Mr. Roboto (#3), Best of Times (#3), Don’t Let It End (#6), Lady (#6), and Come Sail Away (#8)).  Tommy Shaw, for the record, wrote “Fooling Yourself”, “Renegade” and “Blue Collar Man”.

I considered other bands with messy history, and looked to see if they had done anything similar on their sites. REO Speedwagon, known for the fact that Kevin Cronin was both the second and fourth vocalist for the band (fourth time stuck), and also known for the contentious split with guitarist/writer Gary Richrath, acknowledges all phases of the band on their site.  Under the Band tab, you’ll find not only a Band/Bio but a matrix of Former Members that charts how long each guy from every iteration of the group was in the band.  Contemporaries Journey not only acknowledge Steve Perry, but are both complimentary and kind to him, particularly in the paragraph about their final break-up.

Guns N’ Roses, for their part, have a Music section of the site that lists all of their recordings by cover, and breaks down the personnel that played on each record, even by individual instrumental credit per song in some cases, as well as making multiple versions of the songs available for purchase from multiple outlets with a click (Prefer iTunes?  Prefer Spotfiy, Amazon?  Right there).  The band is also honest about edits and re-recording, noting of “The Spaghetti Incident” that “Many of the tracks were recorded with original Guns N’ Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin during the Use Your Illusion I and II sessions and then were later re-recorded by Gilby Clarke. “  That’s pretty straight-forward.

You could go on.  The Classic Motown section of Motown.com acknowledges the shuffling of The Temptations over time.  Foo Fighters made a documentary that’s frequently painfully honest about the line-up changes in that band.  The surviving key members of The Beach Boys (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston) just reunited.  Mick and Keith aren’t afraid to mention former Stones.  And so on.

I find it galling that a band would chose to pretend that a member didn’t exist, specifically when they go out and play his songs night after night.

We’ll be dealing with the aftermath of a band break-up in the pages of Sparkshooter, noting things like “who gets the songs” and the process of rebuilding.  But honestly, I can’t imagine my boys ever pretending that the rest didn’t exist.  Not even Ray would that!  (Although the Crazy Yeats website might read Crazy Yeats featuring Ray Sheridan!  I could see him doing that.)