50 years ago tonight, on Saturday, Jan. 11, 1975, Styx played a show at the Wausau West High School fieldhouse in Wausau, Wisconsin. It was the first rock show I ever attended. I was 17.
I’d hoped to have a date, or at least meet a girl at the show. No such luck on either count. I do remember running into a guy from school who seemed surprised that I would be there at all. That was an indication of my place in the social strata in my senior year of high school.
Styx’s single “Lady” was on the radio at the time. The band — five young guys from Chicago — was making the rounds of the Midwest in support. It had just released or was about to release a new album, its fourth on Wooden Nickel Records, an indie label out of Chicago. Thus the gig at a high school gym.
That night, Styx must have played tunes from those first four records, three of which are decent enough but mostly forgotten today. No one really wanted to hear those tunes, though. They wanted to hear “Lady.”
So Styx played “Lady” early in the show, maybe the second or third song. The place went nuts. Then they played some other tunes that were received politely enough.
Styx wrapped up the show, and everyone fired up the lighters. They kept cheering for an encore. They kept cheering for a certain encore.
So Styx, the five young guys from Chicago trying to make it big nationally, came back out and played “Lady” again. The place went nuts again, and everyone went home happy.
The show took place during a near-blizzard on a bitterly cold night.
Tom Hanley was a custodian at that show: “Styx would not go on until all the lights in the gymnasium went off because they entered to strobe lights. … I was tasked with trying to find the emergency light switches in the panel. I had no idea which ones they were, so I just kept flipping switches. Suddenly I heard the roar from the crowd and I knew I had found them.
“You can’t imagine what a mess that gymnasium floor was afterwards. All the water and snow brought in from outside, plus all the debris left behind. (That debris included beer, wine and booze bottles, and anything left over from all the weed smoked there that night.)
“Years later, I was working for PolyGram and Styx was on one of our labels, A&M. I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of the guys about that night. … They certainly remembered the night because it was a horrible trip in the snowstorm to play that show.”
The night before, on Friday, Jan. 10, Styx had played a hastily assembled gig at the WBAY Auditorium in Green Bay. Head East opened. The show was staged on three days’ notice, presumably advertised via radio stations and in record stores. It was promoted in the Appleton paper, but there was no mention of it in the Green Bay paper.
The Wausau show I saw likely came together much the same way, presumably advertised via radio stations with nothing in local papers. The poster above likely made its way into local record stores. Blackwater Gold, the opening act, was another Chicago-area band.
Within a month of these shows, Styx was touring the Midwest as the opening act on a bill that featured Queen, Mahogany Rush and Kansas.
I’ve never seen Styx since that bitterly cold night in Wausau.
All these years later, the only Styx records I’ve kept are some of those earliest albums released on Wooden Nickel from 1972 to 1974. They’re an interesting mix of boogie rock and prog rock.
My favorite is “Man of Miracles,” the album that came out two months before I saw Styx in that high school gym. Give a listen to these tunes, all written by guitarists James Young and John Curulewski.
Young has been with the band since 1970, when it was known as TW4. Curulewski left Styx in December 1975 — Tommy Shaw took his place — and died in 1988.
“Rock & Roll Feeling,” foreshadowing Boston?
“A Man Like Me,” inspired by Foghat? And dig those horns!
“Havin’ A Ball,” arriving at the same time and sounding like Head East, which also came out of Illinois and had opened for Styx in Green Bay the night before.
All by Styx, from “Man of Miracles,” 1974.
Reader’s note: Much of this post was published here in 2009, but I’ve rewritten it slightly and added some details for the 50-year anniversary.