CORNERSTONE

Cornerstone is a masterpiece of 1979 and Styx use of some new sounds of this time and proved they could do creative work without raging guitars. The Rhodes electric piano was used in most of the tracks and they almost entirely dismissed the hard rockin' guitars and organ/synthesizers that had just put Styx on top of the popular music world (gallop poll 1979...Styx #1 rock band in America). This was a risky move on their part and yet they produced their first #1 song "Babe", the smash top 10 hit "Why Me", the rockin' hit "Borrowed Time" and another hit "First time". This album also produced one of the band's top European hits "Boat on the River" which used accordian and mandolin along w/ acoustic guitar and bongos and tambourine ...almost 15 years before MTV's popular "unplugged" series aired for the first time. I was fascinated by the album design and even though it may be far from a concept album, one can't help but try and figure out some meaning with the songs on the album and the art on the inside cover (which is the silver stone found on the outside cover). The album cover is a perfect representation of the sound produced on this album. A couple of things of interest about the album that would classify it as a masterpiece: the #1 song babe is actually a demo (keyboards, and lead vocals) the band ended up playing around to put it together. The song Boat on the River and its European/unplugged flavor. The album's final track is a classic Styx sound featuring swooping synthesizers and haunting backing vocals. The song "Eddie" features a fade out AND fade back in to a sudden stop! The song "Lights" features a softer swooping synth and combine w/ the rhodes sound along w/ acoustic guitar creates the "glossy" sound that really covers the entire album and may be why some Styx and more "classic" rock fans do not consider this one of Styx' best efforts. In the end, it is hard to dismiss this album that produced a number one single along with 5 other singles as anything other than mastepiece especially considering the dramatic change in the band's overall sound during this album. Although some might dismiss this album due to the band's change in sound from it's previous two albums, it set the stage for it's most popular (by record sales standards) album "Paradise Theatre" which used many of the same sounds (electric rhodes and addition of Saxophone/horns) into the band's mix. Without Cornerstone's production sound change and experimentation, Styx would have been stuck w/ two great albums and another one in 1979 that sounded too much like the Grand Illusion or Pieces of Eight. And I believe the band would have broken up and we would've missed out on Paradise Theatre and Kilroy was Here.