by Will Romano
“We had a band in Topeka [White Clover], and we were looking for a keyboard player, and he came over as an organist,” says Ehart. “The big Hammond C-3 with the foot pedals. We heard him and we said, ‘That’s great, but we’re kind of looking for someone who can sing.’ He said, ‘Well, I can sing, too.’ And he sang ‘Walk Me Out in the Morning Dew’ just on the organ. We all stood there with our mouths open. It was like, ‘Who is this guy?’ It was like, ‘Man. Me and this guy have got to work together.’”
The mid 1970s Kansas. Left to right bassist Dave Hope, guitarist Richard Williams, drummer Phil Ehart, guitarist/keyboardist Kerry Livgren, vocalist/keyboardist Steve Walsh, and violinist/vocalist Robby Steinhardt.
(Neal Preston/CORBIS. Courtesy of Legacy Recordings)
Kansas: Two for the Show (1978)
“Phil is a kind of visionary,” says Glixman. “Some people assign that description to others in the group, but I would have to give it to Phil. He saw it and he heard it before anyone else did.”
“Putting the people together is about as much as I can take credit for,” Ehart says. “But I had to believe in these guys, they in me, and us in each other that we could do this. Once we added Kerry to the band and became Kansas, it just took off as something none of us had really been prepared for.”
Despite their considerable talents and admirable Midwestern determination, Kansas aren’t considered by some purists to be a progressive rock band, largely because of their two massive radio hits and R&B- and country-tinged tracks such as “Can I Tell You,” J. J. Cale’s “Bringing It Back,” and “Two Cents Worth.” But then, where would we place “Magnum Opus”? “Cheyenne Anthem”? “Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)”? “Song for America”? “Death of Mother Nature Suite”? “The Pinnacle”? While these songs are not esoteric musical excursions of the avant-garde variety, they often proved challenging for mainstream musical tastes.
“All the guys in Kansas were self-taught,” says Ehart. “You know, sticky-carpet gigs, frat parties, rodeos, biker bars. When we read about other people, you know, ‘He graduated from the Royal College of Music,’ what the hell? We’re just so much more Americanized. Our background, I can say for all six of us, was in the Midwest. Robby, playing the violin, did have quite a bit of classical training to learn how to play that instrument, because, realistically, that’s the only way you’re going to learn that instrument, unless you’re going to be a fiddle player. But Robby was never a fiddle player. His dad was the head of musicology at the University of Kansas, and Robby grew up with that. By the time we were all nineteen or twenty, we had all dropped out of college and concentrated on what we were doing.”
Like any other band of its generation, Kansas aspired to success (they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be signed to a record deal if not), but what’s amazing is that they didn’t come up with a hit record until 1976’s Leftoverture.
They were an unlikely fit for rock stardom—initially, the band hadn’t realized just how lucky they were to be signed and given a chance. “Don Kirshner discovered us—out in the middle of freakin’ nowhere in Enola, Kansas, where we staged a concert giving away free beer,” says Ehart. “We knew that when Kirshner and his people came to see us we had better have some people there. We said, ‘How are we going to do this?’ So we bought a bunch of kegs and gave away free beer, and that was how we had a bunch of people show up. So when Wally Gold, Kirshner’s right-hand man, shows up, there are people wrapped around the theater. He’s thinking, ‘They are like the Beatles.’ But in actuality they showed up to drink beer.
“To be discovered by a guy who had his own rock TV show?” Ehart continues. “He started this label, Kirshner Records. He saw something in us that nobody else did, which was the violin and Steve’s singing. We were naïve in those days. We worked real hard and our parents always told us that if you work really hard, you will get to do what you want to do. [laughs] Wrong. Little did we know that ninety-nine out of one hundred bands never get that opportunity. Ever.”
Kansas’ 1975 record, Song For America, straddles many musical lines. “They were doing some things that we wish we could have done,” says keyboardist Mike Ponczek of the American progressive rock band, Ethos (Ardour), signed to Capitol Records in the mid 1970s.
The band went to New York City to cut their debut. The recording was, as Ehart put it, “a freakin’ joke.” For one thing, Kansas were told not to bring their gear because the studio, the Record Plant, was well stocked.
“We went in to record and all the gear was crap,” says Ehart. “It was junk, beat up, studio gear that ... [was] not quite as good as we had imagined. Those were songs that we had been playing for years. No click track, no overdubbing—well, maybe some overdubbing because of the vocals and leads and stuff, but on a lot of those songs like ‘Death of Mother Nature Suite,’ ‘Journey from Mariabronn,’ which is a complicated song with all those starts and stops, and Apercu,’ it was ‘One, two, three go. Okay, next song.’”
Kansas (1974)
Kansas: Masque (1975)
Kansas: Leftoverture (1976)
Kansas: Point of Know Return (1977)
Kansas: Monolith (1979)
Proto-Kaw: Before Became After (2004)
“Lonely Wind” escapes the realm of the secular musically, spiritually, and lyrically. “Lonely Wind” is a white man’s symphonic gospel song, complete with mournful violin playing filtered through European influences.
Kansas, the state, does have a history of evangelicalism, as the cover of the debut record indicates, featuring a painting by John Steuart Curry, Tragic Prelude, with Kansas radical abolitionist John Brown as the center image with a Bible in one hand and a Sharps rifle (also known in Kansas as a “Beecher’s Bible”) in the other.
“That album cover was a painting I had seen as a young teenager in the state capitol building,” says Ehart. “I remember standing there thinking, ‘If I ever have a band, this is going to be my album cover.’ What did I know? I specifically remember telling some of the guys and they said, ‘Are you kidding?’ But it was like a no-brainer. Anyway, we get this onto an album cover—our first record. I couldn’t find a picture of that mural anywhere, but my neighbor across the street, Don Richards, was the state photographer and had a picture of that in slide form. What are the chances of that? I got the slide from him and sent it to CBS Records and they put a crappy logo on the front.
“The photograph on the back was taken by this doofus named Don Hunstein, and I say that in all respect,” continues Ehart. “It turns out he was one of the most famous rock photographers of all time. He was putting us out in front of Mack trucks and McDonald’s, eating hamburgers. Then we looked up into the sky coming out of the west, the western sky of Kansas, and this big storm was coming in. It was one of those storms that spawns tornadoes, and there was one point in the plains of Kansas called Burnett’s Mound, they didn’t even call it Burnett’s Hill, ‘cause it wasn’t even a hill. It truly was a mound [and the highest place in Topeka]. We went up there and that storm came behind us and the sun came through the storm—the storm was behind us—and the sun is out in front and it was [an atmospheric condition] that lasted about thirty seconds. Then the sun went behind the clouds, the winds started blowing, and it turned into a crappy day. Don went back and touched up all the houses in the background, so they’re all gone. It looked like we were standing out in the middle of the plains.”
Whether they intended it to be or not, the 1975 epic tune “Song for America,” from the band’s sophomore record of the same tide, is an anthem for all progressive rock bands in the U.S.
No British, Italian, Finnish, German, French, or any other European band wrote or could have written “Song for America”—one of the most enduring of Kansas’s tunes, and certainly one of the greatest non-instrumental American progressive rock songs to be written prior to 1975. And no American band—prog or not—wrote this kind of material. ‘“Song for America’ is one of the songs among many that sets us apart f
rom a lot of the corporate rock bands at that time,” says Ehart.
Rivals Styx, roughly a year later, would make their own statement about American society—a society Dennis DeYoung had feared was in danger of decline—with “Suite Madame Blue,” which fuses sobering criticism, tough love, and pleas for a new start in the U.S. (The Italians PFM did it with Chocolate Kings, also the same year, but their take seemed more inciting than insightful.) “I’ve got three themes in my music, but I didn’t know it at the time—my relationship with my wife and what that meant to me, the state of our country, and the belief that winners are losers who got up to give it one more try,” says DeYoung.
Song for America also boasts the Livgren-penned grand haunter “Lamplight Symphony,” which opens with rumbling timpani; the wheezing organ, evocative jazz piano, and suspended chords underscore the song’s gripping plotline (about a grieving husband visited by the ghost of his wife, who soothes his pain by explaining that they’ll be together someday). Even more fascinating is the band’s blues in 11/8 (“Lonely Street”), the first song on side two of the original LP. Is this not the epitome of what it means to be an American band, influenced by blues and roots music while adding complexity?
Closing the record, “Incomudro—Hymn to the Atman” could very well be the most spiritual song of the entire Kansas catalog. The term Åtman (or atman) is a Hindu (as well as Buddhist) term referring to the soul. In this case, Livgren, the songwriter, is speaking of the soul’s attainment of nirvana through reincarnation, the circular nature of our spirits, the Zen attitude of meeting life with a smile, and the simple act of meditating to achieve a higher state of consciousness.
Kansas followed Song for America with Masque, a fan favorite, featuring “Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel),” “All the World,” and the gnarly “Mysteries and Mayhem” (about being cursed by God to forever wander the earth, as in the biblical story of Cain and Abel in Genesis), which complements the following song, the aforementioned “The Pinnacle”—impressive, occasionally sprawling compositions all. Sandwiched between them are more straightforward songs, such as “Two Cents Worth,” “It Takes a Woman’s Love (to Make a Man),” and “It’s You”—the Kansas schizophrenia at work.
“It amazes us how [Masque] is a favorite for so many Kansas fans,” says Ehart. “It sounds odd. It has a dark cover. It was a record we came off the road [to record], did in a hurry, went back on the road in a hurry. It has real light and poppy songs like ‘Two Cents Worth’ and ‘It Takes a Woman’s Love’ and yet also ‘The Pinnacle’ and ‘Mysteries and Mayhem.’ To me, Masque is kind of a metamorphosis. We were in a cocoon—a [caterpillar] changing into a butterfly, if you will.
“By Masque, [Kirshner] needed a hit,” Ehart continues. “The first record did fifty thousand [sales], the second album 150, and Masque got up to 250. So he was making money. It wasn’t like he was losing money. But Kirshner was all about publishing hit songs, and, by accident, ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ came along and kaboom-o. It was a success, because in those days there was such a thing as artist development and such a thing as FM radio where a band could go out for three or four albums and actually build a following. On tour we went from the Kinks to Queen to Bad Company to Jefferson Airplane to the Beach Boys to Billy Joel and Hawkwind. Mott the Hoople. We just went from band to band to band as an opener. Radio at the same time was playing ‘Song for America’ [an edit] and ‘Icarus,’ and we were starting to get a following. So when you hear ‘Mysteries and Mayhem,’ heck, yeah. It’s very obvious it was pre-Leftoverture. We had things like ‘Icarus,’ where Kerry was starting to write this really impressive material. If you pay attention to what we are writing and how we are writing, you can tell that something’s coming.”
That “something” would be the band’s critical, artistic, and commercial success, Leftoverture, an album recorded in just seven weeks. Songs “The Wall,” “Questions of My Childhood,” “Miracles Out of Nowhere,” “What’s On My Mind,” “Magnum Opus” and “Carry On Wayward Son,” the last song to make the record, have become classics and set a standard in musicianship and audio fidelity. Sections that could have been imbalanced and muddy are sharp and possess a kind of glow. Where older Kansas material seemed to absorb darkness, Leftoverture is bright and detailed; each individual instrument in the mix can be heard, and the integrity of the song isn’t compromised. We hear with crystal clarity every crack of the bullwhip (“Magnum Opus”) and every crisp beat banged out on a throaty tom-tom (which is partly the result of the studio’s pecan-wood walls and tile floor), a perfect fusion of songwriting and production.
“Things just sounded great,” says Ehart. “Everyone was singing and playing well ... and we were focused and well rehearsed. We were all starting to see money for the first time, so people could actually eat, which was a new concept for a starving musicians.”
The rehearsals for the record would prove to be the most productive of the band’s career; Livgren, who had contributed so much to the previous albums, was at his creative peak, and the band could do no wrong. “Every day at rehearsals it was like, ‘What did Kerry bring today?’” says Ehart. “That’s how ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ got on the record. After we heard it, it was a no-brainer, you know? And it almost didn’t make the record.
“We had already finished rehearsing for Leftoverture, and we had worked up the songs, and as we were breaking down our gear on the last day,” Ehart continues, “Kerry had one more song that he said he would like to play for us down at the studio. Once we got down there and heard the song, we were all going, ‘Yeah. That is a really serious song there.’ So that song made it by the skin of our teeth. If someone would have said, ‘Nah, we have enough stuff,’ ‘Carry On Wayward Son’ [might] never have surfaced.
“The freakin’ idiotic drum part that was at the beginning?” says Ehart. “You know, ‘Don’t you cry no more ...’ boom-boom, boom-boom, dat. When we were recording the song, we were actually starting to overdub, and we learned that song in the studio. That drum part you hear was only supposed to be a marker. I’d go back in and put down some mind-numbing part that, you know, went skeetly-deeddely doodley doop. Something like that. Something a bit more impressive, because at the time I was into impressing people, as we all were at an early age. So we went on to record that song and that boom-boom, boom-boom, plat was just there. We’d do the guitar parts and we’d have to hear that. We recorded the vocals and we’d have to listen to that. So it started to grow on us. I remember Jeff Glixman turning to me and saying, ‘I think you ought to leave that drum part in there.’”
Upon its release, Leftoverture soared to number five on the Billboard charts, and “Carry On Wayward Son” would forever be a staple of FM radio and an audio standard. Major rock bands from Heart to Foreigner would request their records sound like Leftoverture.
That’s why it was a surprise to find that Point of Know Return was a bit of a sonic mess. Not that the band suffered commercially. Point of Know Return went to number four on the U.S. charts and sold more than four million records in the U.S. at last count. And the songs were there—the title track (which saw heavy radio rotation) and the clincher, “Dust in the Wind.” The ubiquity of that song—which reached the country charts—was and is frightening.
The odd times, strange arrangements, and same weird amalgam of symphonic prog were all present. But something was missing. “You listen to Point of Know Return and it was like, ‘Whoa. What happened there?’” says Ehart. “We ran into some recording problems—the studio we were in shut down and we had to move to another studio, and then another one in L.A. That record was moved all over the place.”
Due to the success of Leftoverture, the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and excess perhaps did a number on Kansas. Personal problems invaded the band’s production process, causing havoc. The songwriters weren’t on the same page and weren’t working together—or at all, in some cases. Far from presenting the cohesive vision of Leftoverture (which by comparison feels like a concept recor
d), Point of Know Return limped to the finish line.
Somewhere to Elsewhere (2000)
Paradise Theater (1981)
Pieces of Eight (1978)
To make matters worse, the band was booked for a national tour and needed music sent to radio stations across the nation before they set foot on a tour bus. Walsh was nursing throat issues (he even threatened to quit—and did only temporarily before rejoining), while the rest of the production team and band were floating in and out of studios just to complete the project. It was nothing short of a nightmare.
Whether anyone could really see it, the band’s greatest commercial and progressive period was drawing to a close.
“It really was the end of a cycle,” says Ehart. “It wound down at that time for us.”
The band went on a massive stadium tour of North America to support 1979’s Monolith, which helped the record go gold, but the members of Kansas were going in different directions. Walsh released a solo record, Schemer-Dreamer, and returned to the band for 1980’s Audio-Visions. “Steve and Kerry started doing solo albums, and once you do that, you don’t give the band your best material,” says Glixman. “It is too bad. Neither one of them did alone what they did as a unit. They never wrote together as a unit, per se, but their collaborations were exceptional.”
If Monolith was the closing chapter to the band’s 1970s escapades, then Kansas’s second consecutive self-produced record, Audio-Visions, was the beginning of new creative directions, opening different vistas. Even Peter Lloyd’s cybererotic album cover artwork seemed an attempt by Kansas to distance themselves from their past and appear futuristic. Audio-Visions presents a much slicker (more so than Monolith a year prior), more refined Kansas, who were further polishing their prog tendencies to create muscular, deceptively complex songs.