Early life & music career
Tommy Shaw was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953 and played with many local bands in his early years. He left Montgomery after high school to join MS Funk, a Chicago-managed outfit that he played with for 3 years, which gave him a chance to be noticed by the band Styx during a 2-week club gig in Chicago. After MS Funk disbanded, he went back to Montgomery to join a local group with his childhood friends called Harvest, which performed at a club in a bowling alley called "Keglar's Kove". Following Styx's move to A&M, guitarist and vocalist John Curulewski suddenly left the band shortly before they were to embark on a nationwide tour, and a frantic search to find a last-minute replacement was launched. While playing at the bowling alley bar, as a result of his previous experience with MS Funk in Chicago, Shaw got the call to audition for Styx and was quickly hired.
Styx — 1970s
The first album with Shaw, "Crystal Ball" (1976), was titled after his own composition and also includes his songs "Mademoiselle" and "Shooz". Its follow-up, The Grand Illusion (1977) became the group's breakthrough album, which went platinum and also featured a radio hit by Shaw, "Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)".
Styx's 8th album, appropriately entitled Pieces Of Eight, was the breakout album for Shaw's songwriting talent with his rock-oriented contributions "Renegade" and "Blue Collar Man", which became `70's rock radio staples and perennial Styx concert favorites, reaching #16 and #21 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart.It also featured a minor radio hit Shaw's tune "Sing For The Day".
[edit] 1980s — 1990s
Though the `80's brought the downfall of Styx, it began with Styx riding a wave of commercial success with the #1 pop ballad "Babe" from the 9th Styx album, Cornerstone in 1979, which was written by keyboardist Dennis DeYoung. However, tension mounted within the band as Shaw and other band members expressed dissatisfaction with DeYoung's desire to pull the band into a pop radio & theatrical direction, while other members preferred the rock direction of the songs written by Shaw and guitarist James "JY" Young. For this reason, unbeknownst to the public-at-large, Dennis DeYoung was fired from the group in early 1980 for a brief unpublicized moment and quickly rehired, but this conflict would arise again. Shaw's ascerbation was furthered with his disatisfaction of the theatrical-themed album Paradise Theater and brought to a boil with the tour for the next album Kilroy Was Here, which featured a progressive stage show combined with an 11-minute movie intro and theatrical performances by the band. Shortly after the tour ended, Shaw left Styx in 1983 to pursue his solo career.
Shaw released 3 solo albums in the 1980s: Girls with Guns (1984), What If (1985), and Ambition (1987), scoring a Top 40 hit with the title track from the 1st album.
1990s — present
In the early 1990s, Shaw, Ted Nugent, Jack Blades, and drummer Michael Cartellone formed the band Damn Yankees. Their biggest hit, "High Enough", was co-written by Shaw. The band had a strong concert following; however, even though the 2nd album went platinum, the band separated.
Shaw returned to a reunited Styx in 1995 and embarked on a subsequent tour with them in 1996. Tommy would later record a fourth solo record in 1998: "7 Deadly Zens". Shaw has also worked with other artists on a "Pink Floyd's The Wall" tribute album. He also worked on a KISS tribute album, "Spin The Bottle: An All-Star Tribute to KISS", on which he sang "Love Gun".
Tommy teamed up with Night Ranger's Jack Blades in a duo appropriately called Shaw Blades and released an album entitled "Hallucination" in 1995. A second collaboration entitled "Influence" was released in early March 2007 and the duo appeared live on VH1 Classic backed up by famed Nashville songwriter Gary Burr. Shaw Blades did a short tour in Spring 2007 that was well-received. The tour included songs from Night Ranger, Styx, Shaw's solo albums and Damn Yankees. The duo also recorded the classic Christmas song "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" which was released in 2002 on the album "A Classic Rock Christmas", a compilation of classic Christmas songs recorded by various Classic Rock artists.
As of 2007, Shaw leads Styx along with James "JY" Young. Shaw & Young are the only remaining members from Styx's heyday.
Hall of Fame
Tommy Shaw will be inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in February, 2008 at their awards banquet to be held in Tommy's hometown of Montgomery, AL..
Reach For The Bottle
Tommy Shaw Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
There's a flaw in the cloth
There's your favorite sweater
Signature of the moth
Shaky hand on the throttle
Says somethings wrong
And you live the song
There you stand in the kitchen
You're fit and your lean
You've got the heart of a lion
You know you're so damn mean
Put your hands in the water
You feel the drain
But your hands are still dirty
They won't ever come clean
I've been lying to no one but myself
To tell you that there's nothing wrong
Nobody knows the trouble that we've seen
And how we tried to get along
Run to the water
Run to the sun
Run to whatever
'Till the hurting is done
Or we reach for the bottle
When we should put it down
And we start the whole thing over
What goes around comes around
The song "Reach For The Bottle" by Tommy Shaw portrays the struggle of addiction, which is evident in lines such as "So you reach for the bottle and you live the song." While the song uses metaphorical imagery to describe the decay and decay in the lives of addicts, the lyrics also hint at the root cause of addiction, unaddressed emotional trauma. The lyrics refer to the "heart of a lion" but this is juxtaposed with the reference to "hands still dirty" suggesting the emotional scars that one can’t easily remove, even with the right tools or help. The emotions that allude to the feeling of hopelessness and the inevitable cycle of addicts repeating the same behavior, such as going through rehab only to relapse, become apparent in the line "What goes around comes around."
The lyrics of the song are written in a way that highlights the destructiveness of addiction, and how it can easily become a habit that can’t be broken. While there is a message of hope within the lyrics, it ultimately ends with a sense of longing for something more. "Run to the water, run to the sun, run to whatever 'till the hurting is done," portrays Shaw's desire to seek solace or a sense of belonging in anything else, rather than reaching for a bottle of alcohol to alleviate his troubles. However, he realizes the escape is temporary, and the cycle repeats itself.
Line by Line Meaning
There's a hold in the picture
There's a flaw or imperfection in the image or representation of something
There's a flaw in the cloth
There's a defect or blemish on the material or covering of something
There's your favorite sweater
Signature of the moth
Your favorite clothing item now has holes or imperfections from moths
Shaky hand on the throttle
Says somethings wrong
So you reach for the bottle
And you live the song
You sense something is not right, so you turn to alcohol to cope and live out the same repetitive cycle
There you stand in the kitchen
You're fit and your lean
You've got the heart of a lion
You know you're so damn mean
You appear strong and tough, but you have inner turmoil that you try to conceal
Put your hands in the water
You feel the drain
But your hands are still dirty
They won't ever come clean
You try to wash away your problems, but they persist and won't go away just by washing your hands
I've been lying to no one but myself
To tell you that there's nothing wrong
Nobody knows the trouble that we've seen
And how we tried to get along
You admit that you've been deceiving yourself by pretending everything is okay, but no one truly knows the difficulties you've gone through and how hard you've tried to handle them
Run to the water
Run to the sun
Run to whatever
'Till the hurting is done
You try to escape or find comfort from your pain by running towards anything that might provide temporary relief
Or we reach for the bottle
When we should put it down
And we start the whole thing over
What goes around comes around
Instead of confronting our problems and resolving them, we turn to alcohol and continue the same cycle, leading to inevitable consequences
Contributed by Hunter Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.