Lawrence Gowan Of Styx
Will Lawrence Gowan, now a fixture in Styx, perform his "Wolfcop" track on Monday night?
excerpt by Randy Harward - Salt Lake City Weekly
...Every bit the stereotypically pleasant Canuck (except he's a born Scot), Gowan laughs heartily at the coincidence. And he's gracious when you praise his performance of Styx material. He says they made him welcome from the start. "The first day, before I even played a Styx song, Tommy [guitarist Shaw] said, 'Actually, could you play the last song you played at those shows we did together?'" That was "A Criminal Mind," and Gowan obliged. When he finished, Shaw said, "We should make that a Styx song."
The song became a staple of Styx shows for years. And, after 15 years singing and playing keyboards in the band, Gowan's no longer the new guy. But another of his solo songs is getting a little boost thanks to the 2014 horror-comedy Wolfcop.
A generous 2:20 portion of "Moonlight Desires," from Gowan's 1987 album Great Dirty World (Linus Entertainment), plays just as our hero, cursed cop Lou Garou, is getting the girl. The long, sensuous montage satirizes similar scenes from other 1980s films, and the song is a perfect fit: A high keyboard part intertwines with sultry lead guitar as Gowan—who, in the video, sports a (now long-gone) feathered mullet and stands atop a huge Aztec temple—sings (backed by Jon Anderson of Yes), "These moonlight desires/ haunt me/ they want me, they want me."
It's almost as if the song were written for just that scene. Nope, says Gowan. He says the werewolf similarities aren't lost on him, and the song is about a duality, but not the man-wolf variety. "We all kind of live two lives; there's our internal life and there's the life that we present to the world." Late at night, he continues, "we live on more honest terms with ourselves—and some people blame that on the moon."
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