STYX's LAWRENCE GOWAN On Use Of A.I. In Music: 'I Don't Quite Know Yet What To Think'

In a new interview with the U.K.'s Beyond The Vibe podcast, hosted by Ryan Vacey, STYX keyboardist and vocalist Lawrence Gowan weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. Lawrence said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "This is such a hot topic. I don't quite know yet what to think, because we don't know what it's going to… I saw a great interview with David Bowie from the '90s where he said, 'We have no idea what the Internet effect is going to be. It's so beyond…' — I'm paraphrasing what he was saying, but — 'it's so beyond what we can really envision. And it's going to have some devastating effects. It's gonna have some marvelous things [that] will happen as well.'"

Gowan continued: "Any new invention of humankind, it brings with it some of the greatest discoveries and some of the most perilous areas that we can ever weigh into. So I'm aware of that, and I'm aware that there are dangers in all kinds of areas. And so we'll stick with the arts for a moment. And I'd say that so far what I like about [STYX's recently released A.I. conceptual video for the song] 'Build And Destroy' [directed by Jay Ziebarth], what made me wanna continue to pursue it was that it was still human prompting and human kind of rough drawings that that initiated where it ultimately went. We wanted something where there was some sort of battle between nature and and technology. So that was kind of the theme of 'Build And Destroy'. We come up with great inventions and then we decide, 'That's enough of that. Let's knock it all down and move on to the next thing.' That's kind of part of the human experience. And when the little kind of battle between the bees and the birds and the people that were kind of trying to manipulate that or trying to use that to their advantage — this is the little story that unfolds in the video — I found it entertaining. And so often, so many A.I. things that I've seen fall very short of the entertaining factor. And I think that may be because there's not enough of a human directing hand behind it, because entertainment is something that it's hard for anything other than a human being to figure out what it is that another human being is gonna be entertained by.

"I'm not sure if the A.I.'s manipulating us or we're manipulating it, but when we manipulate it, it tends to bring out some results that I've found to be entertaining," Lawrence added. "On the other hand, when it's strictly A.I. generated, I find it really dull, quite honestly. And it's not giving me any kind of emotional response whatsoever. But I wouldn't put it all down because in other fields — medical, for example — there are such phenomenal things that will probably come to our benefit from it. But I could be wrong."

Gowan went on to say that it remains to be seen whether A.I. technologies will amplify our humanity or replace the skills and sensibilities that make us fundamentally human.

"There's no definitive answer to it, really," he explained. "I mean, you can say this is the worst thing that's ever happened. But people have said that anytime… I remember a bunch of old articles about when movies came out, and people [were saying], 'This is the end of live theater. This is destroying that.' And the same thing happened in the 1950s when the Mellotron, that keyboard, came out. People were, like, 'Well, that's the end of orchestras.' It doesn't work that way. At least I haven't seen… Time has not proven that to be correct. We still have those things."

Lawrence continued: "As the artist that that worked on our both videos said — his name's Jay Ziebarth — he said, 'To me, it's just another tool. It's like I'm using stock footage in this way, and for me it's another tool.' But if you're a really traditionalist filmmaker, you would be, like, 'No, I absolutely don't want that at all to enter into what I'm doing.' If you're a traditional musician, you bristle in the same way at the idea of it infiltrating what it is that you do. So I think it's when we cross fields and kind of dip into the other guy's territory that we might be able to find something that otherwise we couldn't or in some ways wouldn't even have the financial means to access."

According to Gowan, his "first introduction to A.I. in music" was when he heard artificial intelligence used to create a "new" BEATLES song. He recalled: "It's funny, when I heard it, the first 10, 12 seconds, I was, like, 'Oh, yeah, that sounds kind of like Paul [McCartney]. That sounds like John [Lennon]. I can actually hear George [Harrison]. And, yeah, that's the worst BEATLES song that could ever be composed.' It's nothing remotely like THE BEATLES, but it's got some flavors in there. It's almost like you'd be eating something that tastes similar to something you've had in the past, and yet your taste buds are not excited by it. I'm trying to use some kind of analogy like that. That's how it felt to me, in a musical sense. So I thought, 'Well, it's useless,' but it's not useless. It comes down to the application."

Gowan joined STYX in 1999, after achieving major star status in Canada as a solo artist under the name GOWAN. He has four platinum and three gold albums in his homeland. In 2003 he received the prestigious "Classic Status" award for the song "Moonlight Desires". This award is presented when a song gets played over 100,000 times on Canadian radio. With this, Gowan joined a small group of singer/songwriters from Canada, such as Neil Young, Bryan Adams and Joni Mitchell, to be so honored. Another Gowan song, "A Criminal Mind", was a No. 1 hit in Canada in 1985, and can also be found on the live STYX album from 2001, "Styxworld".

STYX's eighteenth studio album, "Circling From Above", was released in July via the band's label Alpha Dog 2T/UMe. The LP featured contributions from all seven members of the band, including founding guitarist/vocalist James "JY" Young (affectionately known as "The Godfather of STYX"),guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw, original bassist Chuck Panozzo, longtime drummer Todd Sucherman, Gowan, guitarist/vocalist Will Evankovich and bassist Terry Gowan.

"Circling From Above" was STYX's third album in eight years, building on the creative momentum of recent releases "The Mission" (2017) and "Crash Of The Crown" (2021).