Styx II (1972)
1.You Need Love
2.Lady
3.A Day
4.You Better Ask
5.Little Fugue in "G"
6.Father O.S.A.
7.Earl of Roseland
8.I'm Gonna Make You Feel It
The band’s second outing, Styx II, while still not what one would call essential listening, is at least a marked improvement over the disjointed debut. For starters, the band now takes full responsibility for their own material—writing nearly everything themselves—and the result is a more coherent and confident effort. Gone is the awkwardly patched-together suite from the first record. This time, what we have is a straight collection of songs. Mostly, that works to their advantage.
The album is best remembered—if remembered at all—for one undeniable milestone: Lady. This would go on to become the band’s first bona fide hit, albeit two years after its original release. Initially ignored, the song was rescued from obscurity by a local Chicago DJ who decided to give it some airplay. The public responded, and suddenly Lady was a Top 10 single. Classic case of a record label (Wooden Nickel, in this case) failing to recognize a gem when it was in their own backyard.
Lady also marked the arrival of the “Styx sound”: a gentle, classically-tinged keyboard intro giving way to a full-blooded rock crescendo. It’s a trick the band would return to again and again, and it usually worked. Another notable track is the seven-minute-plus Father O.S.A., featuring pipe organ and some impressively layered vocal harmonies. DeYoung even opens the piece with a few borrowed bars from Bach’s Little Fugue in G minor, because… why not? It’s rough around the edges, but full of promise.
DeYoung also throws a couple of compositions toward James “JY” Young, who sings lead on You Need Love and I’m Gonna Make You Feel It. The former is a decent, if dated, number with more in common stylistically with The Allman Brothers than what would become known as the “Styx sound.” It was released as a single, but promptly sank without a trace.
Original guitarist John Curulewski—soon to be replaced by Tommy Shaw—also gets two songwriting credits here. His track A Day is a slow, dreamy affair reminiscent of something Carole King might have come up with after a long nap. At eight and a half minutes, it overstays its welcome. Worse is You Better Ask, a clunky stab at humor that misses the mark by a wide margin. It’s hard to say exactly what they were aiming for, but it lands squarely in the category of “skip.”
In retrospect, it’s easy to see the bones of something stronger taking shape. Styx II still suffers from low-budget production and an apathetic promotional campaign—legend has it Wooden Nickel spent less than $200 pushing this record—but it is, by most accounts, the strongest of the early Wooden Nickel releases. It wouldn’t be until their fifth or sixth record that the band would truly find their audience, but Styx II is a respectable early step in that direction.
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