A biography for Dennis DeYounghasn’t been written yet.
“I gave my life for Styx and I'm really very proud of it and I didn't want to perform that music and screw it up.”
“If you have talent and you work really hard, it increases your odds but it doesn't ensure anything. But every now and then, the universe must tilt in your direction.”
“Is there anything in life more exhilarating than having 15,000 people absolutely ecstatic to be seeing your human form?”
“Every artist thinks his most recent work is his best. If you didn't feel like that, you wouldn't do anything.”
“When I went out and started making solo records, I was determined not to, I guess, put my name on an album that sounded like Styx. I wanted to carve my own niche, so quite frankly I went in a different direction.”
“I wear sunglasses almost all the time except when I'm on stage.”
“My views are simple. If you're gonna make a commitment, particularly marriage, stick to it. If you can't compromise, you've got no chance.”
“My voice doesn't sound like anyone else's. I wanted to sound like my favorite singers when I was young because when you're young you don't put much value on uniqueness. But later I realized I had something special to offer.”
“The Beatles are here, and if you could see me my hand is on the ceiling. Styx is here, and my hand is in the basement.”
“There are no electric guitars. 'Hunchback' has arias; it's operatic.”
“How lucky am I? I'll go to Naperville and people will come up to me and thank me for coming to Naperville. That's how much music means to people.”
“I don't wanna be a solo artist. I wanna be in Styx.”
“All I ever thought about was music and being a musician.”
“I am what I am. Whatever it was that made me what I am, I thought I should stay around and be that.”
“The fact is, for the first 10 years I toured as a solo artist, I wasn't playing any of the songs I didn't write or sing.”
“Essentially I'm a melody person in a rhythm age, and that's what Broadway is really about, the songs.”
“I just believed in 1979 that prog rock was finished. I just saw the handwriting on the wall. And I believed that if we continued in that direction, our career would be finished. So I kind of led the band to making 'Cornerstone,' which is an album from my point of view which was not trying to be necessarily softer, but more natural.”
“I feel like the luckiest guy on the planet.”
“I had worked so hard on three projects 1997 that it knocked the gas out of me. It was a mystery to the medical profession, but you can test positive for Epstein-Barr and not have it. When you get a post-viral syndrome, for some people it causes chronic fatigue or hearing loss. For me it became light sensitivity.”
“It took me a while to realize that the only way to really communicate with people is to give them your point of view.”