Lawrence Gowan Explains Why Styx Started Playing ‘Mr. Roboto’

Gowan says they wanted to add song with difficult history to their set list five years ago.

Styx singer Lawrence Gowan explained why they recently added “Mr. Roboto” to their live set list, saying that they’d been considering it for the past five years.

The band had never performed the song live, although the band's former singer Dennis DeYoung had sung it to backing tapes during Styx's abandoned tour in support of Kilroy Was Here, the 1983 album on which the song appeared. Despite its popularity, "Mr. Roboto" had been avoided because the fallout from the Kilroy era led to the collapse of the band.