{"id":323635,"date":"2025-12-01T06:25:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T06:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/323635\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T06:25:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T06:25:27","slug":"styxs-come-sail-away-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/323635\/","title":{"rendered":"Styx\u2019s Come Sail Away: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dennis DeYoung was watching the sun hit the waves in the sea off Hawaii when the angels appeared. It was April 1977, and his band, Styx<\/a>, were on the island to play the Crater festival, aka Hawaii\u2019s Woodstock.<\/p>\n

It was a welcome stop-off on a long and grinding journey. Styx were six albums deep into their career, but they\u2019d managed just a single Top 10 hit a few years earlier, with DeYoung\u2019s proto-power ballad Lady.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe should have been ahead of a plethora of bands \u2013 Queen<\/a>, Kansas<\/a>, we came before them all,\u201d says the effervescent DeYoung, who was Styx\u2019s keyboard player and co-vocalist from their inception in 1972. \u201cBut we were always opening for people – Aerosmith<\/a>, Kiss<\/a>, ZZ Top<\/a>. Always the bridesmaids.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yet here they were in Hawaii, soaking up the sun. For a bunch of guys who had grown up on the south side of Chicago, this was a dream. Seeing boats bobbing on the glinting water, an idea began to form in DeYoung\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

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\"Styx\n<\/p>\n

Styx: (from left) Dennis DeYoung, Tommy Shaw, James \u2018JY\u2019 Young, John Panozzo, Chuck Panozzo (Image credit: Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cI started thinking about sailing vessels, something that can take you away to the place in which you ultimately want to be,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a boat on which you\u2019re the captain, or a gathering of angels appearing above your head, sweeping you into the heavens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t know Ezekiel from the pizza delivery guy. I was raised a Catholic, but devout? No\u201d<\/p>\n

Dennis DeYoung<\/p>\n

That moment of celestial inspiration would be the spark for the song that revived Styx\u2019s fortunes: Come Sail Away. Almost 50 years after it became a US hit, this grandstanding pomp-rock classic occupies a similar place in American culture to Don\u2019t Stop Believin\u2019<\/a>, a shot of pure, euphoric emotion that has appeared in shows ranging from ER to South Park. And it remains the greatest power ballad ever written about alien abduction.<\/p>\n

DeYoung started working up the idea he\u2019d had in Hawaii as soon as he got back to Chicago. \u201cEverybody thinks songwriting is magic \u2013 you pluck it out of the air,\u201d he says. \u201cNo, it\u2019s: \u2018That\u2019s good, leave it in. That\u2019s bad, let\u2019s not put it there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As the band worked on it in Chicago\u2019s SIR studio, the song evolved from DeYoung\u2019s original idea into something even grander and more dramatic. It begins with his delicate piano notes, before a storm of guitars and drums erupt.<\/p>\n

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\"Styx&rsquo;s\n<\/p>\n

Styx\u2019s Dennis DeYoung and James \u2018JY\u2019 Young onstage at London\u2019s Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 (Image credit: Gus Stewart\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Styx pretending to be The Who<\/a>,\u201d says DeYoung. \u201cI said to [drummer] John Panazzo: \u2018Play like Keith Moon.\u2019\u201d The finished track was a six-minute mini-epic that revelled in its own grandeur, from DeYoung\u2019s fantastically theatrical vocals (has any singer ever rolled their \u2018l\u2019s quite like that?) to its euphoric crescendo.<\/p>\n

But what truly kicked it to another level was the lyrics. \u2018We lived happily for ever, so the story goes\/But somehow we missed out on the pot of gold,\u2019 DeYoung sings, capturing the yearning he\u2019d felt in Hawaii. But it\u2019s his declaration that \u2018a gathering of angels appears above my head\u2019 that gives Come Sail Away its golden glow \u2013 a line reportedly inspired by The Book Of Ezekiel in the Bible. DeYoung laughs out loud at the suggestion.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI wouldn\u2019t know Ezekiel from the pizza delivery guy,\u201d he cackles. \u201cI was raised a Catholic, but devout? No. \u2018A gathering of angels appears above my head\u2019? I\u2019ll tell you what that is. That\u2019s the idea of being taken away by a higher power. Anything to get me out of standing behind the stage watching Gene Simmons.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one last twist \u2013 these angels aren\u2019t angels, but aliens, arriving on a UFO to pick up DeYoung and take him away with them. \u2018We climbed aboard their starship and headed for the skies,\u2019 sings DeYoung, welcoming this extra-terrestrial arrival. In the year of Star Wars<\/a> and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, it made perfect sense.<\/p>\n

Styx – Come Sail Away – YouTube
\n\"Styx<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe aliens were JY\u2019s [guitarist\/ co-vocalist James \u2018JY\u2019 Young] idea,\u201d says DeYoung. \u201cHe goes: \u2018What if they were aliens?\u2019 He liked all that stuff. Me, I don\u2019t, but I wanted to make JY happy. But they\u2019re not aliens. I said \u2018starship\u2019. I was thinking Captain Kirk. To me that was what it was about: getting on a starship and going all the way to the top. I wanted to be a star on a ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m watching Freaks And Geeks and Come Sail Away is playing. I started to tear up. I was thinking of the money I was gonna make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dennis DeYoung<\/p>\n

Come Sail Away, the first single from Styx\u2019s seventh album The Grand Illusion, was released in August 1977. Audiences latched onto its grandeur immediately, and, after some initial resistance, so did radio. Come Sail Away gave Styx their second US Top 10 hit, four years after the first. They\u2019d reached the pot of gold.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stopped being the bridesmaid and became the bride,\u201d says DeYoung. \u201cWe broke away and never looked back, until [guitarist] Tommy Shaw quit in 1984.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaw\u2019s departure on the back of the previous year\u2019s contentious Kilroy Was Here album marked the end of the band\u2019s initial run, but Come Sail Away was already a rock radio staple. Then in 1998 DeYoung got a request from the makers of South Park to use the song in the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said: \u2018If these guys are gonna do a Barbra Streisand on Styx, it\u2019s a no,\u2019\u201d says DeYoung, referring to South Park\u2019s notoriously cruel send-up of the musical diva. \u201cBut [co-creator Matt Stone] called me up and said: \u2018No, no, we\u2019re fans of Styx.\u2019 I said: \u2018Okay, do whatever you want, make \u2019em laugh.\u2019 Best decision I ever made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Come Sail Away appeared in two South Park episodes – most famously 1998\u2019s Chef Aid, which featured an affectionately hilarious version of the song with Eric Cartman on vocals and a funky cameo from soul legend Isaac Hayes, who played Chef. Since then it has appeared in loads of TV shows and films, ranging from Freaks And Geeks and ER to The Virgin Suicides and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m watching Freaks And Geeks, and this prom scene comes on and Come Sail Away is playing. I started to tear up,\u201d DeYoung says. Then after pausing a beat: \u201cYeah, I was thinking of the money I was gonna make.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeYoung was squeezed out of Styx in 1999, when health issues prevented him from touring (the band continued with replacement singer Lawrence Gowan). But he remains proud of what he achieved with the band, and with Come Sail Away in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quintessential Styx,\u201d he says. \u201cAll we wanted was to stamp out Queen and Aerosmith, but we touched a generation of people in a way that I never truly understood until years later.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dennis DeYoung was watching the sun hit the waves in the sea off Hawaii when the angels appeared.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-323635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}