Dennis DeYoung applauds the efforts of the actors and musicians from the Columbia Gorge in Oregon and Washington who came together to perform a positive parody of his Styx song, “The Best of Times,” which they’ve renamed, “The Best of Corona Times.”
DeYoung says, “What a beautiful job you did on my song. Seeing all the different ages is the best part because music is the universal language and transcends time, for sure…
“I never take it for granted when people do heartfelt renditions of my songs, never. Whether it’s cover bands, college marching bands, characters in TV shows or movies, or the guy or gal in their bedroom pouring their hearts out trying to make a connection.
“When I was in Styx I preached the value of the song day and night to the guys and made the case that the songs will live on longer then our long hair and platform shoes and ability to perform them…
“Tommy [Shaw] and JY [James Young] haven’t played ‘The Best of Times’ since I was replaced. Shame really, although you’d need me there to sing it properly but everybody knows that. I suspect they know it as well…”
Here is former Styx singer-keyboardist Dennis DeYoung on why he wrote “The Best of Times.”
“In 1980, when the album was constructed, we’d just come through the Iranian crisis — remember when they held the hostages. We’d just come through, really, in my mind, the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the oil embargo, and now we had taking hostages. And ‘The Best of Times’ was a song about trying to rationalize in my own mind, having grown up, really, in the late ‘50s-early ‘60s in probably the greatest time to be alive in the history of mankind — to be in this country at that time — and then to go through the turmoil of the late ‘60s and all through the ‘70s.”
