One critic’s view: “‘Mr. Roboto’ offers glib paradoxes about technology in a hackneyed techno-pop style that borrows science fiction sound effects from the Alan Parsons Project. ... While one wants to applaud Styx for their good-heartedness, again and again one is brought up short by the shallow derivativeness of their music and the awkwardness of their lyrics.” – Stephen Holden @ New York Times, “Serious Issues Underlie a New Album from Styx”, Mar. 27, 1983
The public’s view: 2.65 / 5.00
The early 1980s was the heyday of the Moral Majority, a conservative political group headed by a televangelist named Jerry Falwell. The Moral Majority is one of the two most misnamed things ever invented, the other being Grape-Nuts cereal. Just as Grape-Nuts contains neither grapes nor nuts, the Moral Majority was not moral and it represented the interests of only 5 or 10 percent of the population. Actually, Grape-Nuts would have been a slightly more accurate name for Falwell’s organization. There were no grapes in that wacky Virginia vineyard, but there were plenty of nuts.
Falwell and similar agitators often competed for attention by making unfounded attacks on rock music, with the more ridiculous the charge the better. A few of the evangelists went too far when they alleged that Styx’s anti-drug track “Snowblind” included a Satanic message that could be revealed by playing the record backwards. Some acts would have embraced and monetized the false accusation by adopting a lucrative new image as devil-worshippers, starting by sacrificing their fans on stage and drinking their blood. (It’s too bad no one found any occult references in “You and I”, because I would have loved to see Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle try this tactic.) Ritual human sacrifice conflicted with Styx singer Dennis DeYoung’s devout Christian beliefs, however, so the band chose not to pursue this approach. Instead they retaliated with a concept album, Kilroy Was Here, that depicted a music-hating cult which had taken over the world. This unflattering caricature of the Moral Majority was a solid foundation for the record, but DeYoung decided that the project needed more than that. It needed robots.
Robots have always been a favorite science fiction motif, but in other genres in Kilroy’s era they were usually a symptom of writer’s block. When it was time to make the 92nd episode of Benson or the 3rd sequel to Rocky, and the idea mill was running on fumes, a robot could be tossed into the screenplay to shake things up. It was the last plot device to try before deploying an even more desperate trope like Benson getting amnesia, or Apollo Creed somehow accidentally switching bodies with Paulie before an important fight. Robots were also able to get away with stuff that would be controversial if human characters did it. Evangelical groups bitched about everything 24 hours a day, but they never threatened to boycott Star Wars over the same-sex relationship between C3PO and R2D2.
Although DeYoung was traveling down a well-worn path with his embrace of robots, there were logistical issues to overcome. It would take a 600-page novel to fully explain why an army of Japanese androids had allied itself with a record-burning preacher in the dystopian future. But Styx was making an album of nine songs, at least one of which was required to be a groaner love ballad to keep radio programmers happy. How was the band going to tell such a complex tale under these constraints?
As usual, DeYoung thought he had the answer. He decreed that Styx would star in a 10-minute pre-concert movie to introduce the implausible robot-and-preacher-infested milieu, and then act out the remainder of the story on stage. The other band members had no thespian ambitions, however, and went along with this without enthusiasm. Tommy Shaw grimaced his way through the performances as if he was being forced to give his grandfather a pedicure. He would later describe, with a measure of satisfaction, fans rushing to the exits when subjected to DeYoung’s sci-fi meanderings during the band’s headlining set at a festival.
The first single from Kilroy Was Here was “Mr. Roboto”. Those who had seen the stage act knew that this song described the pivotal plot moment in which the outlawed rock star escapes from the cult’s prison by disguising himself as one of the robot guards. These informed fans were few in number, unfortunately, because DeYoung had insisted on starting the Kilroy tour in intimate venues where his vision could be fully realized. Instead of selling out stadiums like they usually did, his band was playing to small crowds in community theaters and school gymnasiums. You couldn’t plan a birthday party for your cat without worrying that Styx might show up with their 10-minute movie and their silly robot costumes. Meanwhile the general public remained blissfully unaware of the Kilroy story, and most incorrectly believed that “Mr. Roboto” was some sort of protest against technology. Or maybe it was an ode of praise for technology – DeYoung does keep thanking the robot, after all. Either way, the gimmicky storyline and self-indulgent tour obscured the album’s anti-censorship message and earned Styx decades of ridicule.
All of this makes “Mr. Roboto” sound like a total fiasco. Today, however, it is seen primarily as a charming piece of musical nostalgia like other quirky 1983 hits such as “She Blinded Me with Science” and “Puttin’ On the Ritz”. Although Dennis DeYoung may have taken himself way too seriously, he at least put a semi-original thought or two into this song. That’s more than we can say for a couple of the other records I’ve discussed here recently.
My rating: 6 / 10
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