Happy Birthday DENNIS DEYOUNG (video)

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Dennis DeYoung (born February 18, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, musician and producer best known for being a founding member of the rock band Styx as lead vocalist and keyboardist, a tenure that lasted from 1961 until June 1999. DeYoung has been credited as the writer of more Styx songs than any other Styx member.

Within Styx, DeYoung acted as lead vocalist, keyboardist, accordion player, producer, and songwriter. From the start of Styx's commercial success with the 1972 DeYoung-penned single "Lady", DeYoung became the creative force behind most of the band's hit songs. DeYoung wrote and sang lead on six of the band's seven top 10 Billboard Hot 100-ranked hits during this period, with Tommy Shaw's "Too Much Time on My Hands" (#9) being the sole exception. The six DeYoung penned-and-performed Billboard hits, in order of their peak chart placement:

"Babe", the band's only #1 hit to date
"Mr. Roboto" (#3)
"The Best of Times" (#3)
"Don't Let It End" (#6)
"Lady", the band's 1972 breakthrough hit (#6)
"Come Sail Away" (#8)

A self-taught keyboardist, DeYoung quickly became one of the most notable players of that instrument in rock. Featured on the cover of the January 1981 issue of Contemporary Keyboard magazine (a story that was reprinted in Contemporary Keyboard's book on the greatest rock keyboardists), DeYoung described many of his steps along the way through his keyboard-playing career: He'd never played an acoustic piano until the recording session for 1972's "Lady"; he recorded the track for 1979's "Babe" in a friend's basement on a Rhodes electric piano he'd never touched before; the odd feeling of switching back to playing accordion for the song "Boat on the River" and discovering how small the keys felt to his fingers after years of playing electric organs and pianos.

As a keyboardist in Styx, DeYoung was best remembered for his prominent lead synthesizer solos performed on the Oberheim synthesizer that dominated the mix with a unique tone, a key element of the Styx sound. Influenced by the recent release of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's first album, DeYoung – a novice synthesizer player at the time – used a modular Moog to record the keyboard tracks for the first Styx album. This album featured a rock version of "Fanfare for the Common Man", more than 5 years before ELP came up with a similar idea of recording this classical composition as a rock band featuring the synthesizer that would later become one of ELP's best known recordings.

DeYoung's songs often had a grandiose style to them in the tradition of 1970s theatrical rock, which heavily influenced the group's direction in the late 1970s, culminating in the concept albums Paradise Theater (1981) and Kilroy Was Here (1983). 

source: wikipedia

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