After eight years of singing “Mr. Roboto” with Styx, Lawrence Gowan says his perspective on the song has evolved into a respectful appreciation.
The kitschy Top 5 single from the band’s 1983 concept album Kilroy Was Here has long been a polarizing entry in Styx’s hit-filled catalog and was dropped from concert sets after writer and singer Dennis DeYoung left the group acrimoniously in 1999 — the same year an ad for the Volkswagen Golf, starring actor Tony Hale re-popularized the song.
“It was just far off the mark from what I was interested in performing live, and we have plenty of material without it,” co-founder and guitarist James “J.Y.” Young once told us.
But Styx brought the song back in 2018 — with Gowan, who replaced DeYoung on vocals and keyboards, singing it — and it’s remained in the set ever since.
Young said the group yielded to overwhelming requests from fans, noting that, “While (Mr. Roboto) killed the momentum of the fist huge wave of Styx, it actually spawned the next generation of Styx fans…It just became clear from an unsophisticated poll that there were people coming to our concerts that wanted to hear that song, so we just decided to try to do it.”
Read More: Did ‘Mr. Roboto’ Really End Styx’s Classic Era?
That said, Young added that Styx “reinterpreted it into something much more palatable to Tommy (Shaw) and myself and the rest of the gang.”
Count Gowan among them. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say I loathed (the song),” he tells UCR. “I know for a lot of the Styx faithful it drew a line in the sand for them, so it was controversial and a dividing mark, I believe, in the band’s history.”
From Gowan’s standpoint, meanwhile, “When I first heard ‘Mr. Roboto’ on the radio, I thought, ‘Oh here’s another band — Styx, much like Genesis and Queen and Yes — trying to make the transition from their ’70s sound to something that’s very current for the ’80s. It was like Queen doing ‘Body Language;’ I heard it very much as a kind of catchy but kitschy tune.
“I don’t hear it that way now,” Gowan adds. “I think of it first of all as a very prescient song that held up, at the time a tiny red flag, about technology infiltrating our lives and all the negative effects it can have; we’re still weighing those out, and in fact we’re weighing those out to a greater degree now than we ever have, for obvious reasons.
“So from being able to be inside the song, I feel like this is really a piece of music that a) has stood the test of time and b) it’s referred to in cultural ways, in all kind of movies or general conversations or whatever. I realize this is a really interesting character in the song, who has a secret he wants to reveal and really shouldn’t. It kind of takes the audience into his confidence.
“So those are different levels where you see that song has kind of, in my mind, grown. Even though I had nothing to do with (writing) the song, it becomes part of my life to be able to convey it to an audience every night.”
Why Styx’s Summer Tour With Chicago Made Perfect Sense
Styx recently completed The Windy City Tour — All the Hits…Your Kind of Tour with fellow Windy City-started act Chicago. “Both bands are very adventurous,” says Gowan who spent time visiting in Chicago when his daughter spent six years working as a doctor at hospitals there.
“Styx was adventurous in a progressive rock manner and yet had great pop sensibility, Chicago are a band with more of a jazz leaning but still with that great pop sensibility. They both really wanted to do interesting music that challenged an audience but was still able to embrace a wide audience.
“That’s really where I draw the connection, or the parallels, between the two, is that they both had challenging and kind of adventurous music that still spoke to a very mass audience.”
Is New Styx Music Coming?
Styx has been on a productive roll since 2017, with three studio albums — including last year’s Circling From Above — and an EP, The Same Stardust, in 2021. Gowan says he expects more new music in the future, but plans are loose at the moment.
“We’re always working on something new; that never goes away,” he says. “There’s always ideas being worked on and worked out, and if opportunity and time presents itself we’ll make another record. It takes usually about three songs you feel deserve time to do them justice and finish off.”
After the first three, now you feel an obligation to fill it out with things that connect to that. That’s basically how every record has been done. Right now I’d say we’re at two and a half, so that’s not bad.”
Styx Albums Ranked
Come sail away as we rank Styx’s albums from worst to best.
Gallery Credit: UCR Staff
