I was damn lucky to choose this profession. I had no idea when I started out that I was really an illusionist and a magician.

How lucky am I? I'll go to Naperville and people will come up to me and thank me for coming to Naperville. That's how much music means to people.

Music is magic.

Nobody can figure out why it does what it does to human beings. But there is no other art form greater than music.

Every artist wants to feel like they're still valid in a contemporary way. But you can't be so arrogant not to think that people who have thrown down their hard-earned money don't want to see and hear the things they want.

People go to musicals because they want to hear some really good songs.

It's great when it all comes together in a great musical like 'Sweeney Todd,' when Stephen Sondheim writes songs from heaven, the book is good and the staging is good. But it's very rare when that happens.

Many musicals you can take and throw in the garbage can because no one took the time to write a song you can care about.

If you are going to take me a to a musical, you'd better give me three songs that I'm gonna like. Nobody goes to the opera for the recitative. They go for the aria.

I'm very proud of it. 'Hunchback' contains some of my favorite music I've ever written in my life.

If you try to do a genuine rock musical, rock people will think you're flaccid and Broadway audiences will think you're too loud.

I don't see how 'Hunchback' could ever appeal to children. It's a very adult story that deals with repressed sexuality.

I want to see the '70s guys, if they're gonna do something, stay valid in the '90s. Then they belong. If they're trapped in the '70s, then it's nostalgia. You're not getting me in those platform shoes again.

When we started, there were no other distractions like the Internet and video games, so music was central to young people's lives.

Is there anything in life more exhilarating than having 15,000 people absolutely ecstatic to be seeing your human form?

When I play the first few notes of a song and people start screaming, I think: 'That's why I did this. That's why I wrote this song. That's a good job.' And it is a job.

I still see myself as the kid who plays accordion and tries to keep people happy for 45 minutes. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

I just believed in 1979 that prog rock was finished. I just saw the handwriting on the wall. And I believed that if we continued in that direction, our career would be finished. So I kind of led the band to making 'Cornerstone,' which is an album from my point of view which was not trying to be necessarily softer, but more natural.

This is no condemnation of Chuck Berry, who I greatly admire. But Chuck Berry's music will not translate as well to orchestration because of its very three-chord rock 'n' roll nature. It is the music of the artists that are more pretentious, pompous or closer to the kind of big dramatic stylings that orchestras are good with.

What people fail to realize is that any album we did, really, 90 percent of it reflected the songs people brought in. If someone had brought in two great rock songs for 'Cornerstone'... they would have been on that record.

When I went out and started making solo records, I was determined not to, I guess, put my name on an album that sounded like Styx. I wanted to carve my own niche, so quite frankly I went in a different direction.

I can do anything onstage. Here's the misconception: You could record an album called 'The Best of Styx.' And all you would have to do is pay the individual songwriters a mechanical royalty.

Every artist thinks his most recent work is his best. If you didn't feel like that, you wouldn't do anything.

A unique style comes from not being able to do things in a conventional manner. If David Byrne could have sung like Paul McCartney, he would have.

As an artist you always want to challenge yourself, but as you get older you want to bring the audience with you while expanding creatively.

Sometimes your limitations become your strengths. It forces you to create your own niche.

My voice doesn't sound like anyone else's. I wanted to sound like my favorite singers when I was young because when you're young you don't put much value on uniqueness. But later I realized I had something special to offer.

If you have talent and you work really hard, it increases your odds but it doesn't ensure anything. But every now and then, the universe must tilt in your direction.

I wasn't a guy who grew up wanting to be in 'Funny Girl,' if you know what I mean. I wanted to be in the Beatles.

101 Dalmatians' espouses virtues good to revisit: In times of crisis, families must pull together through love and commitment to overcome obstacles.

People always ask me: How are you? I say I'm the envy of millions. I've been a lucky guy.

My views are simple. If you're gonna make a commitment, particularly marriage, stick to it. If you can't compromise, you've got no chance.

Americans are really good at throwing their hands up and walking away from things.

If you think marriage is gonna be easy, don't do it because when there are children involved, you screw up the rest of society.

I think a lot of bands would rather put mediocre rock tracks on their album to try to maintain some sort of testosterone badge of courage.

Back in 2000, I had come to a crossroads in my life, unsure about what career path I should pursue. Shepherd, bouncer, philosopher king, ventriloquist or perhaps man on the flying trapeze. Fortunately, I was guided back onto the path of the magical world of music.

I've lived a charmed life.

Technology has made music ultimately more democratic.

I don't understand the joy of sitting in my house with nothing to do.

I'm proud of the body of work I was part of and I want people to enjoy it as long as they choose to.

People always want to romanticize relationships within bands. Most of these relationships are based on music first.

When it came time to do 'One Hundred Years' I had been encouraged to really make a Styx album without the guys. I gave myself permission to do that. I set out to get people who sang with me who could make those harmonies.

I was ill in '98. By the end of '99 I was recording and recovering.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

I never imagined that I would have a successful solo career, let alone one in musical theater.

If you pretend to be somebody that you're not when you write songs - and I did that on some of the early Styx albums - nobody cares about what you have to say.

I love Styx as much as I could love anything in my life. I started playing in the band when I was 14 years old. You become so involved in something when you start in it that young; you're doing it purely out of love of what you're doing and a belief in it.

It took me a while to realize that the only way to really communicate with people is to give them your point of view.