Raise your hand if you had Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello joining forces with ex-Styx singer Dennis DeYoung on your 2021 Bingo card. If you did, well, consider yourself the unlikeliest of winners.
Though Morello may not agree with Adam Sandler’s Sonny Koufax in Big Daddy that Styx is the greatest American rock band, he definitely seems to be a fan.
This afternoon, Morello shared that he guested on “The Last Guitar Hero,” a track from the forthcoming DeYoung solo effort titled 26 East, Vol. 2. Supposedly, this is DeYoung’s final foray into recorded music. So why (and a better question perhaps, how) did he get Morello to participate? Leave it to the man himself to explain.
“When Dennis DeYoung (the singer of STYX) sheepishly approached me about playing a shredding solo on his song “THE LAST GUITAR HERO” with the attitude “Hi Tom, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with my music but…” Morello began in a series of tweets. “I said, ‘Stop right there!! EVERY single time I’m in my hometown I PACK the jukebox at the local bar with those great Styx songs all night long! Man Of Miracles? Renegade? Suite Madam Blue? Mr. Mother Flippin’ Roboto?!Fellow Illinois rocker, it would be an honor.’”
So there you go.
Listen to “The Last Guitar Hero” below.
DeYoung co-founded Styx in 1970 in Chicago, which makes sense based on that geographical development as to why Libertyville native Morello would be down to collab with the hometown hero.
I said, “Stop right there!! EVERY single time I’m in my hometown I PACK the jukebox at the local bar with those great Styx songs all night long! Man Of Miracles? Renegade? Suite Madam Blue? Mr. Mother Flippin’ Roboto?!Fellow Illinois rocker, it would be an honor.”
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) May 11, 2021
