Rock History Music recently shared a clip from an interview with Dennis DeYoung on YouTube. The video showed the former Styx vocalist sharing his thoughts about Lawrence Gowan taking his place in the band after his departure:
“I’ve said this a million times. Larry Gowan’s the very best Larry Gowan on the planet. No one’s a better Larry Gowan than Larry. I’m the best Dennis DeYoung still to this day.”
Referring to the comparisons between him and Gowan in the video, the singer said:
“Players – a dime a dozen. I don’t mean players [with] originality, but copying somebody? I just saw a four-year-old Japanese girl doing all of Eddie Van Halen solos in her bedroom. You can get people to play. But singers… They got DNA, baby! They got DNA. And if you confuse me vocally with Larry, I would be perplexed. [Singing] Yeah? Excuse me? [Singing] Are you being serious?”
He also commented on the keyboardist’s presence in Styx:
“So, Larry took the job. He knew what he was getting into, and he’s got a great – He wears it well. He gets it.”
Meanwhile, since joining the band in 1999, Gowan mentioned being compared to DeYoung on different platforms. In a chat with Jay Oakley, he revealed that people’s words about him ‘replacing’ the former Styx vocalist affected his thoughts on the situation in the early period.
Then, the singer mentioned what changed his mind about the matter by saying:
“I joined the band because the band had kind of faltered and decided to go in a different direction, and they saw the opportunity to extend the life of the band with my inclusion. That’s far more of the heading that I prefer to be under, which is that I didn’t replace anyone. I just joined the band, and at that point, he wasn’t in the band.”
You can watch Dennis DeYoung’s words on the matter in the video below.
