Written
by Jon Sobel
Published May 17, 2007
I first liked Styx because
the girl I liked liked Styx. Then I liked Styx because, well, I just liked
them. Their shiny brand of rock may have been tailor-made for teenage
girls, but its romanticism and drama also appealed to a certain type of
geeky adolescent boy. I saw them in 1979 at Nassau Coliseum, with the Good
Rats (Long Island's best-ever band that didn't quite make it) opening. It
was a memorable concert. My friend threw a lit sparkler and got thrown out
before the show even started. The rest of us stayed. What good friends we
were.
The Good Rats banged on their garbage cans. Then Styx brought
their colorful corporate rock show to the stage. When Tommy Shaw shouted
"Get Up" we might have felt a little stupid, but we all got up. And "Come
Sail Away" was as awesome in concert as it was on the record. Which I
owned. And had listened to many, many times.
Behind the band's
three frontmen, brothers Chuck and John Panozzo churned away on the bass
and drums respectively. One didn't pay too much attention to these darker,
unflashy members of the band. Chuck addresses this: "I always had a dark,
brooding look... In some ways, I used my physical appearance as a
deflector. I played it." Your reviewer wasn't a bass player yet, so didn't
appreciate Chuck Panozzo's importance. I suppose I did know the band's
story enough to know that the Panozzo brothers and Dennis DeYoung had
formed it as young teenagers. But one forgets the details of fandom even
though one remembers the songs.
Chuck Panozzo's new autobiography
tells the story of the band and the even more interesting story of how a
closeted gay musician dealt with the "manly" world of rock, the AIDS
epidemic, and his own demons.
Talk about high notes and low notes.
Panozzo had co-founded one of rock's most successful bands, and by his own
account, after four successive triple-platinum albums and years of
lucrative touring, he didn't ever have to work again. On the personal
side, there were co-dependency issues with his mother as well as his
alcoholic fraternal twin brother John, the band's volatile drummer, who
Panozzo says would today probably have been diagnosed with an attention
deficit disorder or learning disability. But how many of us are lucky
enough to have no family drama in our lives? From outward appearances,
fate had smiled on our hero.
Thing was, Chuck was gay, and he
feared, with some justification, that coming out of the closet would
endanger his career, his band, and his family relationships - his whole
existence. So he stayed closeted and miserable. For decades.
Oh,
and by the way, during the days before AIDS awareness, Chuck contracted
HIV, and he later developed full-blown AIDS. Also his beloved, troubled
brother lost his battle with the bottle and died. His mother passed away
while Chuck was at his sickest. And his best friend died of AIDS. And, oh
yeah - prostate cancer! Now do you want to trade places with Chuck
Panozzo, the big rock star?
Remarkably, Panozzo has lived - and
thrived - to tell the tale. He still has medical complications, but his
AIDS drug treatment - which he started late in the game, largely because
of his own denial - has worked. His HIV levels are undetectable. He's in a
lasting, loving relationship after decades of utter inability to establish
one, for reasons the book makes clear. And he is finding fulfillment by
using his celebrity to influence the lives of young people confused about
their sexual identities. "If I can make one person question why he's
hiding his authentic self," he writes in the Introduction, "...and give
him courage to make a change, then I've succeeded."
Like sports,
rock is a pretty macho field. Even now, many gay musicians remain closeted
for the sake of their careers. During Styx's heyday in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, it seemed inconceivable for a member of such a popular group,
with its throngs of young female fans, to be openly gay. Hence, although
Panozzo is pretty tough on himself, only a hard-hearted reader could blame
him for lacking the courage to come out. On the contrary, one closes the
book feeling considerable admiration for Panozzo for having come through
such adversity with a positive outlook and a much-improved life.
My
admiration doesn't extend to his writing style, however, and I guess on
this count one has to point a finger at co-writer Michele Skettino.
Panozzo may have come up with the lyrical hook to the Styx hit "Show Me
the Way," but he's not a writer and doesn't claim to be. Yet, for a book
that's had the benefit of a professional co-writer and (presumably) copy
editing, it has far too many errors and misprints. When I see a celebrity
autobiography with a co-writer credited by name, I expect a competent
text, and I have to say that in a literary sense, Ms. Skettino and the
publisher's editorial staff seem to have let our hero
down.
Nevertheless I found the book hard to put down, especially
during its first half as Panozzo relates how music came into his life, how
Styx formed, and how hard they worked before (and during) their years of
success. "It is not an understatement," he writes of his teen years, "to
say that music was changing my life. Once I started to play an instrument,
suddenly I felt that I had something of value to contribute. Guitar was my
thing. Now, in my own head, I was someone beyond the little, fag queer on
the playground." That will resonate with anyone who has discovered his
"thing," a specific talent or drive that gives his life meaning and makes
him feel worthy to exist.
Panozzo's detour to a seminary, which he
says "essentially... turned out to be a boarding school for incorrigible
young men," gives his discussion of Catholicism credibility. "I think part
of the problem with the issue of gays and the Catholic Church is that gay
priests within the church refuse to speak out. It is not uncommon to see a
priest in a gay bar. Of course, they wear street clothes and don't
publicize what they do for a living..." And of course, "Our environment
and Catholic upbringing did a very good job at repressing our sexuality -
gay or straight."
Writing of the band's days as a Chicago-area
favorite in the early 1960s, he explains that "The more popular we became,
the more I began to wonder what would happen if anyone found out that I
was gay. Would that be the end of it? This made me even more reluctant to
begin exploring my sexuality. Playing in the hottest band around was a
sort of redemption from the barbs and abuse that had haunted me in the
early part of my school life. I wasn't going to mess around with
that."
The author's wry humor peeks through his rather plodding
prose. "A huge bear of a man in leather pants and a cop hat can be a bit
intimidating to a newbie," he says of a visit to a gay bar, "[b]ut as I
worked my way into the crowd and began to hear snippets of conversations,
I realized, 'These guys are talking about recipes!'" Amusingly, our rock
star hero was able to hang out anonymously in the gay community because
"not one gay man I knew cared much about rock 'n' roll." It was the disco
era, after all. I suppose there were probably very few gay people in the
audience at Nassau Coliseum that day in 1979 when I saw Styx.
You
can detect the sparkle in Panozzo's eye even in the misfortune-ridden
second half of the book: "Of course, no one can solve an alcoholic's
problems except the alcoholic himself, but I could kill myself trying."
Fortunately he didn't. His narrative is interesting, and the added
psychological complication of a hidden sexual orientation makes it more
than just a rock bio.
The band that started as a schoolboy
accordion trio playing Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra hits grew into one of
rock's biggest and most original acts. Through infighting, personnel
changes, and breakups, Styx persevered in one form or another and has even
had something of a renaissance in the new century, though without Dennis
DeYoung, who was responsible for many of the band's biggest
hits.
Speaking of DeYoung, honest creative differences weren't the
only things that stood in the way of a harmonious band history. A bit
passive-aggressively, Panozzo gets in his digs at the theatrical front
man. But the book isn't primarily a tell-all. It recounts a life in music
that will interest Styx fans as well as the gay community. Its main
message can probably be summed up in this admission: "I did a disservice
to myself and to the people who loved me by underestimating their
compassion... That is one of the main reasons that I was motivated to
write this book - to help others as others have helped me." Visit
Panozzo's website for more about the bassist, his music, and his
causes. |