James “J.Y.” Young has been in Styx long enough to have outlived half the trends people assumed would kill rock music. He’s also the only member who has played every single Styx show since 1972. At this point, his job is equal parts guitar hero, historian, and benevolent uncle to a band that somehow keeps making records that matter.
The newest is Crash of the Crown, a socially reflective album that J.Y. calls “the 49th year victory lap,” even though they’re hitting 50 next. It’s a record that sounds surprisingly awake for a band with nothing left to prove. He also doesn’t take credit — literally. “I have no writing credit on this one,” he says. “First time ever.”
But it’s not because he was checked out. It’s because Tommy Shaw, producer/co-writer Will Evankovich, and Lawrence Gowan essentially showed up at his metaphorical front door with an album that was already breathing. “Tommy and Will said, ‘J.Y., we’ve got parts for you to play — come down,’” he recalls. “So I sang, I played, I added comments where needed. But they wrote the thing.”
Most musicians would instinctively recoil at that arrangement. J.Y. shrugs. After five decades, he knows when to steer and when to lay back. And besides: “It resonates with every era of Styx,” he says. “Every song touches something from our past.”
The themes aren't exactly subtle — The Fight of Our Lives, Hold Back the Darkness, Save Us From Ourselves. These are songs that try to do what classic rock always promised but rarely delivered: make a little sense of the world. “If people are listening to what we say,” he insists, “then it’s our responsibility to lead them in a positive direction.”
The man who once shredded through Snowblind has now entered his civic-minded era.
But don’t mistake that for softness. When he starts talking guitar, he lights up like someone half his age. “Will says to me, ‘J.Y., nobody plays like you,’” Young says. Then he pauses, because even he knows how that sounds. “I don’t think that’s exactly true.” Then he casually mentions he saw Jimi Hendrix five times and learned Clapton’s “Crossroads” solo note for note. Suddenly, the claim seems pretty safe.
And sure enough, Crash of the Crown has the kind of guitar moments where you can tell he’s smiling behind the strings. “My favorite is ‘Red Storm,’” he says. “I get to stretch out — it just works beautifully in that song.” When you’ve watched both Hendrix and Cream in their primes, your definition of “stretch out” is different from the rest of us.
Lyrically, Tommy Shaw is still Styx’s resident philosopher-poet. “Sound the Alarm,” the record’s emotional centerpiece, is the one J.Y. keeps coming back to. “It’s quiet, but powerful,” he says. “It’s a very moving song, especially now.”
And speaking of now — 2021 marked 40 years of Paradise Theatre, and J.Y. admits he sees echoes. “We reflect the times,” he says. “Best of Times was Dickens; Snowblind was the American Dream gone crazy. We’re still doing that — trying to help people find some joy every day.”
Then there’s the looming milestone: February 22, 2022 — the band’s 50th anniversary. “When we all wake up alive on that day,” J.Y. jokes, “we’ll find something stupid to do. Hopefully nothing too self-destructive.”
It’s that Midwestern dryness that makes him such an unexpectedly charming interview. He’ll talk outer space (he won’t go to Mars, by the way — “too many issues getting back”), ecological collapse (“when it’s dinner time, you have to turn back to Earth”), or why Styx hid The Mission for years (“nobody was looking for it”), and he delivers every line with the ease of someone who has finally stopped caring what critics think.
Maybe that’s why the band still sounds this fresh. They’ve lived long enough to earn the right to be earnest again. And if Crash of the Crown proves anything, it’s that Styx isn’t here to coast toward the finish line. They’re here to keep pushing, keep playing, keep insisting rock can be useful.
And if you need a mission statement, J.Y. already gave it: “Push the negative away and embrace the positive with all your might.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
