Originally, AXS TV came to me last year and asked me if I'd be interested in doing an acoustic 'Live from the Grammy Museum' performance. But I was bound and determined to do an electric show with this great band to dispel any notion that I wasn't a 'rock guy' in Styx.

Look, nobody is a bigger fan of Tommy Shaw than me. The day I met him in 1975 I knew he was going to be a great guitar player, performer and songwriter. I was his biggest fan, and I'm Styx's number one fan.

I saw Styx in sixth grade. I loved Tommy Shaw. I got sneakers like him - he wore these tan Nikes.

And for REO - they get to play for some Styx fans and then we get to play in front of some REO fans. It helps spread the new music to the following of other bands.

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.

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.

I gave my life for Styx and I'm really very proud of it and I didn't want to perform that music and screw it up.

I don't wanna be a solo artist. I wanna be in Styx.

After being replaced in Styx, everyone around me encouraged me to try and stop them legally. I just couldn't. It would have been like suing myself and I held out hope they'd ask me back. They toured under the STYX name for a year and a half before I initiated legal action. I didn't sue for money or use of the name. I simply wanted back in the band.

When I went to see Kansas and Queen and Styx, I don't even remember the music. But I know what I saw.

But there are rock and roll fans all over this continent and all over the globe, really, and we're just set at marking the planet with Styx music until the day we die.

I made 'Desert Moon' and when I made those solo albums, I was trying not to be Styx, because I thought, 'That belongs to us.' So, I made different kinds of solo albums that were not dipping my hand back into the magic Styx jar and pulling out all the tricks - because bands, they have tricks, don't they? That's what makes them different.

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.

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.

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.

The Beatles are here, and if you could see me my hand is on the ceiling. Styx is here, and my hand is in the basement.

We were together; we were a group; we were a team; we wanted people to love Styx.

I couldn't resist painting Orpheus and Charon on the River Styx. There was something strangely intriguing about seeing Orpheus playing his lyre as he is being shuttled across the river.

In the story of Thetis and Achilles, it's clear this isn't really a safe environment. She's gone down to the River Styx - the dead are being ferried across in the background. There's something in this mythology that says that if you want invulnerability, if you want immortality, you pay a price.

And I said - Styx - as a musical group it is our place to reflect the light that is shining on us back onto this place and say - this is where so much great stuff started.