James Young

You know the puritan ethic that started out four centuries ago in this country, needless to say - at least for the moment - a thing of the past - from what I can tell.

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.

Seeing our VH-1 Behind the Music shows just how dysfunctional some of the moments of the band were but this new line-up has put the fun back in dysfunction.

Sometimes that mantle is hard to adjust to wearing but we are at a stage that we are comfortable with it and we recognize how we are perceived and how the real core individual that each one of us has apart from the facade that the public believes that we are.

The band we have now on stage is the band I always wanted to be in.

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy.

People tell us they have been inspired by our music to do great things.

Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.

Yes, indeed, in fact I would tell you that we go out of our way to be true to the original feeling and sort of sonic and musical pallet that we painted with back then.

In my own mind, we are a much happier and much more functional family and a much more well balanced group of individual s both off and on the stage - in the current incarnation.

We always got a strong response but I think in this day in age there is less of a marijuana fog at concerts and more of people just more naturally exuberant - it seems to me.