Album Review of Paradise Theater by Styx

With the release of their self-produced Paradise Theater concept album in 1981, Styx set the stage for its own demise. I remember reviewing this album for my college paper and heralding it for taking the band in an ambitious new direction. Paradise Theater offered more than the collection of solid songwriting and intense performances of previous Styx albums. Its concept of a theater's thirty year history during the first half of the 20th century in the band's hometown of Chicago invited the listener to conjure their own images as the music played even though the inherent metaphor for the decline of the country was unmistakable.

The album opens with the cut, A.D. 1928, to set the time and mood, and smoothly slides into the rousing, Rockin' The Paradise. This track will be the most recognizable to fans of the 1970s style of Styx. Tommy Shaw and Dennis DeYoung create their classic sound on this cut, which lies somewhere between their previous Grand Illusion and Blue Collar Man. The intensity is ratcheted down slightly for the manic Too Much Time On My Hands. Perhaps the best-known and most-often aired hit from Paradise Theater, today's listener must wonder if it was inspired by the seeds of trouble between bandmates Shaw and DeYoung.

The middle of the album also marks its musical apex with the hit, Best Of Times. Unfortunately, this song is hard to place within the album's concept. The song also seems formulaic - a slightly upbeat redux of their hit ballad, Babe, from the album, Cornerstone, two years before. You can almost envision the record company demanding that their be another hit inserted into Paradise Theater and Shaw and DeYoung shrugging as they pull out a tape of Best Of Times.

Paradise Theater introduces the band's move from hard-charging rock anthems to more pop-like tracks within a concept. And the displeasure with the shift of focus by Tommy Shaw, the band's rock purist, is well-known to fans. De Young obviously conceived of and pushed for the direction change, which culminated in the core band's last album together, Kilroy Was Here. While there would be four more albums under the band's moniker, including a tragic album of cover tunes, neither the original personnel nor sound would come together again.

Kilroy was the next generation of his concept after Paradise Theater and De Young even envisioned a stage play molded around it. The personal importance of this album by the framing of De Young's recent solo shows, with orchestra in tow, by a Paradise Theater set. The show ends with him sweeping up under the theater marquee from the album cover.

Was this album, either standing alone or with Kilroy, worth the loss of one of the 1970s seminal rock bands? The conclusion to such a simple framing of the question has to be, "No." But Paradise Theater offers some solid music and complements the band's prior work. Given the different artistic directions of Shaw and De Young the break was inevitable. Paradise Theater and Kilroy are the encores to the show Styx opened up nearly ten years earlier.

Paradise Theater can be purchased at:
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