Dennis DeYoung - Desert Moon

When Styx imploded after the band's 1983 tour that gave the world the live album Caught in the Act it was the end of an era. Styx had dropped their debut album in 1972, and while those first few albums on Wooden Nickel were inconsistent there was something undeniable going on, and by the time they released Equinox on A&M the band was starting to make a name for themselves. With the addition of Tommy Shaw in 1976 the band would enter it's classic run. With Kilroy Way Here the band started to come apart at the seams. The album would go platinum, but it wasn't the triple platinum their past few albums had delivered.

Freed from the constraints of being in a band Dennis would drop Desert Moon in the fall of '83 and not long after Tommy Shaw's Girls with Guns was released. For me this was all gravy - I was, and continue be a sucker for all things related to Styx. Dennis got airplay with the title track, and the same with Tommy. However neither album exactly set the charts on fire and minor hits aside it was a long way from what they had done in Styx.

Looking back on it now, it weird to think that Dennis was only in his mid '30s and had been around over a decade. The reality is he was still a young man and no doubt felt he had so much left in the tank that he was just going to pick up where he left off with Styx and chart a new career as a solo act.

I got Dennis' album first as I really liked the title track. However the rest of the album was a collection of meh. That's how I remember it. I've not listened to it in forty years. I'd forgotten that "Desert Moon" doesn't appear on the first side. 

Starting at the beginning which is where things start, the album opens with "Don't Wait For Heroes" and was a decidedly AOR offering and it incorporated the theatrical elements of Dennis' vocal delivery. This was generic pop with a little edge. If the goal was to announce that this was a solo album this was the song to do it with. While the backing vocals were in the Styx vein the song was not. Still, for all that it was kind of catchy, even if it wasn't memorable.

From there Dennis launches into "Please" a mid tempo rocker with a lot of guitars and more flamboyant vocals. It's a game effort and duets were hot in the early '80s and Rosemary Butler seemed to be channelling her inner Ellen Foley. I suppose a few years earlier this could have been sung by Meat Loaf, but it's more Travolta and Newton-John ... yeah I didn't really like it.

If songs were lemmings "Boys Will Be Boys" ran straight off a cliff. I know Disney manufactured the mass suicide, but in this case Dennis deliberately drove the bus off the edge. I suppose for a weirdly '80s synthesizer glam '50s inspired song that sounded like a Broadway reject this song was awesome. It ... is ... terrible, and if I'm being honest it's a song I played more than once. Not because it was good ... I just couldn't reconcile the guy who sang "Queen of Spades" as the same guy who wrote this. Then again, I still have the same reaction when I hear "Babe" so I guess he's a multifaceted performer. Who knows maybe this is the direction he wanted to take Styx in before they broke up.

Side one ends with an interesting cover of "Fire" the Jimi Hendrix classic. Not a great version, but my goodness Tom Dziallo does give it a hell of a go on guitar. His work throughout the album is top shelf, and if nothing else Dennis assembled a crack band to record the album. The performances are all really good, more often than not better than the songs they're supporting.

Side two opens with "Desert Moon" which for intents and purposes is a Dennis DeYoung ballad, and while I always loved ROCK Dennis, his slower songs could be really special. I will exclude "Lady"and "Babe" from that assessment. I've never liked those songs, but "Desert Moon" had a groove and feel that made it seem more like a rock song. The song is elevated by Tom's guitar solo and the outro. His work is so intricately woven into the song that it's inseparable from the rest of the composition. This is by far the best song on the album and the reason I bought the album back then and the reason I bought it again.

Any momentum and goodwill seemed to evaporate with the next track, "Suspicious" a song that I suppose was aimed at the adult contemporary audience. In fairness people who like mid tempo R&B infused songs, would probably like this. The only redeeming element to the song is the killer guitar solo but it's not enough to save this one for me.

"Gravity" is a weird song, and it shouldn't work, but it does, but really it doesn't. It's quirky and honestly the whole far exceeds the sum of the parts. By rights this is a throwaway song, and subjectively (I can't say objectively because that's a tad pretentious on my part) it's a song that is the definition of filler. 

Dennis then pulls out all of the stops and makes a game attempt at going big with the album's closer, "Dear Darling (I'll Be There)" a soaring love song with complicated backing vocals, that seems like a showtune gone wrong. This is objectively (I'll just go and say it) terrible. I don't know who needed to hear this, but it wasn't written for Dennis' established fan base. This was for the casual who liked "Babe" but didn't like Styx.

This was still one giant collection of terribleness that was mercifully held to only eight songs, but "Desert Moon" is such a good song that it sort of makes it all worthwhile. My bitching and moaning is more akin to a kid in the backseat constantly asking, "Are we there yet?" but the reality is it was actually kind of fun listening to this and taking shots. It wasn't good, but it was still Dennis DeYoung and it was like rubber necking at an accident scene.