Dennis DeYoung didn’t plan to hallucinate angels over the Pacific, but then again, nothing about the creation of Come Sail Away ever followed an earthly logic. In April 1977, Styx were in Hawaii for the Crater Festival, a gig they’d earned only after years of slogging as support act to Aerosmith, Kiss, ZZ Top… basically anyone with a functioning smoke machine. Six albums in, one Top 10 hit on the board, and still “always the bridesmaids,” as DeYoung half-jokes, half-laments.
But then the sun hit the water, the boats bobbed, and something in his brain clicked. A vision. Maybe angels, maybe not. DeYoung laughs today that he “wouldn’t know Ezekiel from the pizza delivery guy,” but that moment, whatever it was, delivered the core image: a vessel, earthly or otherwise, arriving to take you away to the place you most want to be.
Back in Chicago, he did what he always does: work. No magic beams of inspiration. No mystical transmissions. Just relentless editing, keep the good, kill the bad. Slowly, the song grew into a mini-epic. A delicate piano intro, then a thunderclap of guitars and drums. “That’s Styx pretending to be The Who,” he says, gleefully admitting he told drummer John Panozzo, “Play like Keith Moon.” It’s The Who via Chicago pomp, all theatrical vowels and hurricane crescendos.
But the rocket fuel was the story. The yearning. The angels. And the twist that only a band operating in the year of Star Wars and Close Encounters could make seem logical: the angels aren’t angels. They’re aliens. Or, depending on who you ask, maybe Captain Kirk.
The alien idea came from James “JY” Young, the band’s resident sci-fi evangelist. DeYoung wasn’t into extraterrestrial lore, but he was into keeping the peace. “He goes, ‘What if they were aliens?’” DeYoung shrugs. “I wanted to make JY happy.” The irony? He insists he meant “starship,” not UFO. Less little green men, more Shatner-era ambition: escape, transcendence, becoming something bigger. “I wanted to be a star on a ship,” he says. Classic DeYoung, earnest, slightly absurd, completely sincere.
Released in August 1977, “Come Sail Away” instantly connected. Audiences heard grandiosity. Radio programmers heard dollar signs. Styx heard the door to the bridesmaid’s dressing room finally creak open. The song became their second Top 10, a soaring anthem that somehow balanced sci-fi escapism with pure emotional release.
Years later, DeYoung found himself watching Freaks and Geeks when the song suddenly appeared in the soundtrack. He didn’t feel pride or nostalgia first, he felt capitalism. “I started to tear up,” he admits, “thinking of the money I was gonna make.”
Half spiritual vision, half accidental sci-fi detour, and 100% unapologetic pomp, “Come Sail Away” remains the greatest alien-abduction power ballad ever written, because it was never really about aliens. It was about longing for something bigger, brighter, and far away from whatever stage Kiss were currently melting.
And somehow, against every odd, Styx got there.
