In the Studio with Leftoverture, featuring Kansas
This interview was taken from In The Studio with Leftoverture,
featuring Kansas. It's show #172, and originally aired on October 7,
1991. The following abbreviations are used:
RB: Red Beard (interviewer)
PE: Phil Ehart
KL: Kerry Livgren
SW: Steve Walsh
Here Goes!
RB: Today, we'll go In The Studio, with the album that put Kansas on the
musical map.
KL: Hi, this is Kerry Livgren.
PE: Hi, this is Phil Ehart.
SW: And I'm Steve Walsh of Kansas, in the studio with Leftoverture.
RB: In the early 1970s, the style of rock & roll which came to be known
as progressive rock was played almost exclusively by English bands.
British groups such as King Crimson, YES & ELP began experimenting with
complicated arrangements & sounds that sometimes had as much to do with
classical music, as they did with rock & roll. It wasn't until the mid
1970s that American bands began to successfully follow suite. And one
of the most successful of the American progressive rock bands was
Kansas. Leftoverture, the band's 4th album, was released in October,
1976, and would go on to sell over 3 million copies. It went to #5 in
the album charts, and contained their 1st big hit, Carry On Wayward Son.
The critics, however, were never kind to Kansas. Kerry Livgren, who was
the band's lead guitarist & chief songwriter for the Leftoverture album,
thinks it was because critics couldn't simply accept the idea of a
progressive rock band coming from Topeka, KS.
KL: The fact that - I think that we were an American band - that in a
lot of ways emulated the progressive rock from England was something
that really bugged a lot of American critics. You know, they tend to
love the American favorite bands - and you know personally, I didn't
care where somebody came from, if I liked their music, then I liked
their music. And, what influenced me, influenced me. And we were as
from Kansas and the midwest as you can get. But they thought, well, you
shouldn't sound like that, if you come from Kansas. So, they didn't
like that, and apparently people didn't seems to care, because we sold
millions of records anyway.
PLAYS OPUS INSERT
RB: In addition to Kerry Livgren, the Kansas line-up that recorded
Leftoverture was lead singer Steve Walsh, drummer Phil Ehart, bass
player Dave Hope, guitarist Rich Williams, and violinist Robby
Steinhardt, whose father was a musicologist at Kansas University,
specializing in the study of music from the Renaissance period. Here's
the band's co-founder, Phil Ehart.
PE: Well from the beginning, Kansas was just a, and always has been,
basically, a bar band. People always say, well, you know, what's your
background? What musical school did you go to? And we, we were
self-taught, guys who grew up playing bars, high schools, rodeos, you
name it, we played it. Robby did have some classical background, his
father being a classical violinist & stuff, and I think you have to be
classically trained to play a violin. But most of us were just - we
were just rock musicians. And what it was meant to be from the get-go -
that's a real good question - because we didn't know. I mean, we didn't
consciously sit down and go, well you know, guys, let's be real
interesting this way, and it was just like - anybody got a song? Ya, I
wrote a song - OK well let's do it! But it was these 6 guys - we all
were poor as church mice, I mean nobody had a nickel to their name, and
we all lived in a band house, and you know - every penny we made went to
keeping the bus running - the school bus that we had - going into the PA
system, and keeping Dave, our bass player, in cigarettes. So, I mean it
was basically what the gigs entailed. And I'm sure every band has the
stories of starting out & starving & stuff, but that's the way we were.
But, we never quite fit into this mold, you know, we were always a
little bit - kind of out in left field.
RB: Kerry Livgren started, as so many bands do, through high school
friendships - in this case, West Topeka High School. Here's Phil Ehart.
PE: Topeka, KS is where it started. Four of us went to high school
together. It was that simple - and had grown up together. Steve was
from a neighboring town of St. Joe, MO, and Robby was from a neighboring
town of Lawrence, KS. So we were all within an 80 mile radius, and we
were all in different bands - and we were always in pretty much rival
bands - and Steve's band would come to town and we'd go up to that area,
and we'd run into each other. But as we got older, you know, as other
people would get jobs and drop out of bands, the guys that were the
"lifers", that I called it - you know, the guys that were in it for the
duration, the numbers got smaller & smaller, and you knew that - who you
wanted to play with, and who you didn't want to play with.
RB: Kerry Livgren
KL: They actually used to call Topeka, KS in the early 60s, they called
it the "Little Liverpool". The reason was - there were so many garage
bands in our school - I almost can't think of anybody in any high school
class that wasn't in some kind of a band, either as a player, or roadie,
or something. I mean, it was just like this incredible fad to be in a
band. So just about everybody was some kind of a musician. And there
was only one gig for every 30 bands in the bars and high schools &
stuff. So most of them played in garages (laughs).
RB: Kerry Livgren had said that Topeka was a place with no real musical
tradition of its own. So when the members of Kansas were growing up in
the 60s, they were particularly receptive to music from other places.
KL: We were totally receptive to outside influences. People say that
the world is a "global village". Well, that's absolutely true. Topeka,
KS, because it's in the middle of wheat farmers in the midwest, doesn't
mean we're not exposed to every kind of music. I mean, you can get any
kind of music anywhere in the country. You could live in Cody, WY, and
go in a record store, and buy the same things you buy in New York City.
Maybe not quite the variety, but nevertheless we were exposed to all
different kinds of music. And people assumed that because we were from
Kansas, that we should be a fiddle band or, I don't know what they
thought we should sound like, but we were a product, and all artists are
a product - of one degree or another, of what they listen to at an early
stage - and what they're exposed to. We heard all kinds of British rock
- you know, everything from Cream to King Crimson, and we incorporated
that in our music - and we heard ZZ Top, and we incorporated that in our
music. I mean, we were a little of all these things. That's true of
anybody. The one thing that was important, was that we didn't try to
duplicate them, we emulated all those things - we put all those things
in a big blender and turned it on high speed. Above all, we wanted to
be original - we really wanted to have our own sound, which I think we
did.
RB: Phil Ehart
PE: We were a terrible copy band when we played clubs. We couldn't
imitate anybody! I mean the closest we probably came - was to Grand
Funk Railroad, because Steve could sound somewhat like Mark Farner. But
even that - how do you do that with 6 guys and a violin? I mean that
didn't come off real good either, you know (laughs). We couldn't do
anybody! Basically, what we'd do is we would get up and we'd announce a
song that we had written - but we didn't tell them we wrote it. We'd
announce it as a new ELP song, and then we'd play our song! And that
way, the club owners and the people out front were just thinking - "Oh
yeah, they're doing ELP, oh, they're doing Yes, and that's weird - I
haven't heard that Yes song!" (laughs). "But it sure is good!" Well,
it was our stuff. And that's how we got away with doing club gigs, and
existing because we could not - we were so stylized with this violin,
and with Robby, and with Steve. We couldn't copy anybody else - we were
just us.
RB: That band that the world came to know as Kansas, actually grew out
of 2 Topeka groups. One, formed by Phil Ehart, was called White Clover.
The other, formed by Livgren, had also been called Kansas. In 1972, the
bands joined forces under one name, forming what Livgren called a sort
of local supergroup. By 1973, Kansas was in search of a record deal.
Phil Ehart remembers how they got it.
PE: We had heard from a friend of ours in NYC, that Don Kirschner - of
rock concert fame - wanted to start his own label. So we sent a tape up
to this engineer friend who I, to this day, still can't remember who the
guy was - but he took the tape over, and he called me, and he said -
"Phil, I just put it on Don Kirschner's desk - on the receptionist's
desk, and there was already 80 tapes in, so yours was the 81st". So I
said, well, forget about that, we'll never hear about that. And, you
know, we sent out a few other tapes and got rejected, so we started
gigging, and we were at a gig in Dodge City, KS, where we played every
once in a while, and you could imagine the bar we were playing in - in
Dodge City, KS, this waitress came up, and goes, "Which one of you guys
is Phil Ehart"?, and I said "well, that's me", and she says "Well,
there's a long-distance phone call for you", and I said "OK", so I got
behind the bar, and he goes "Phil, this is Wally Gold, I'm Don
Kirschner's right-hand man, and I'm calling to say hi, and say that we
got your tape, and we're very interested in hearing your band". Well,
my 1st inclination is that somebody's pulling a major joke, but it
really was Wally Gold, he wanted to come out and hear us. So we
scrambled, to try to find a place in KS where this - cause this was our
only chance - I mean, this was our only shot, and it turned out to be
the only shot we ever got. So, we didn't want to blow this. So we
found this hall in Ellenwood, KS, which probably held 1500 people, and
for 2 weeks prior, we advertised everywhere, that it was going to be
FREE BEER. Come and drink all the free beer that you can pour in your
face - because we wanted this place packed when this guy shows up, so he
thinks we're the freaking Beatles, you know! (laughs) As far as he's
concerned. So he takes a private plane down from NYC, he lands, I mean
we spent, you know, every penny we had, which was minimal, to buy kegs &
kegs of free beer. So, (laughs) so we pull up to the - and there's
people wrapped around the hall, I mean, you could imagine every cowboy
and redneck in KS - and farmer & stuff was there cause they had heard -
they didn't know who Kansas was, they didn't care! They wanted the free
beer! Well, the guy from NY didn't know that - he saw all this - this
crowd and he thought - these guys must be incredible! Everybody's
plowed out of their brain, he got hit in the back of the head with a
beer bottle - I mean, it didn't hurt him - but you know people spilled
beer on him, but he was in heaven. I mean, he thought this is the most
incredible band I've ever seen, because no matter what we played, the
people went crazy. Because they were so plowed. You know, he went back
to Don Kirschner and said "Yeah, I've seen these guys - they're
incredible - the crowds that they draw - you know, in thousands", and
ya, it was quite a ridiculous story.
PLAYS WHAT'S ON MY MIND
RB: What's On My Mind, written by Kerry Livgren, each verse, about a
different person. Next, we'll find out about the last minute recording
of Carry On Wayward Son.
[Break]
PE: Welcome back. I'm Phil Ehart of Kansas, in the studio for
Leftoverture.
RB: And I'm Red Beard. Kansas released its debut album in March 1974.
Following that with Song for America in February 1975, and Masque in
November of the same year. Now that's working! And in the midst of
that, the band was touring constantly doing more than 250 shows a year.
The only break in touring came when it was time to release & record
another album. Here's Phil Ehart.
PE: When we did Leftoverture, we had practiced up in Topeka, getting
ready to go to Bogaloosa to record, Bogaloosa, LA. Kerry walks in on
the last day - I mean I'm breaking down my drums - packing them up - and
Kerry goes "I've written one more song for the album. I don't know if
you guys are interested in doing it, but I'd like to at least try - once
we get down - we don't have time to rehearse it here. Let's rehearse it
when we get to Bogaloosa". And I said, well OK, does it have a name?
He said yeah - it's called Carry On Wayward Son.
PLAYS CARRY ON WAYWARD SON
RB: Kerry Livgren
KL: We were completely done with this record. We were finished with
Leftoverture - we were working on tightening up the songs cause we were
going to leave in a couple of days to go to the studio, and I was
sitting at home, and my dad had bought me a piano at a garage sale. And
I was living in my parents basement - cause we were so poor we didn't
have no where else to live at the time. My dad bought me this old piano
- and it was down in the basement - and I sat down there, and I started
playing this song - and I thought man, this is kind of neat, you know.
And I kept working on it and working on it, and it turned into Wayward
Son. And I came in the last day of the rehearsal and thought, the guys
are going to hate me - and I said guys, I got one more song, and I think
we ought to listen. And so I played it for them, and everybody's kind
of looking at each other - yeah, this is maybe happening, and we didn't
even have time to learn the song. So we went down to Bogaloosa, LA,
where we recorded, and somewhere along the line we made the decision -
yeah if we pulled something else off the album and put this song on -
and we literally learned COWS almost as we where recording it. And once
we stood back and listened to it, we began to realize - this song was
moved not only on to the album, but to the front! It was like the
opening cut, and it turned out to be our 1st hit. It was kind of a good
thing I brought it up at the last minute.
RB: Steve Walsh
SW: One thing that was about Wayward Son is, we all liked it. We all
liked the song, and gravitated toward it. So that the concept of
writing a hit single or coming up with a hit single - we had been beaten
up over the head for the past 3 albums - you guys have got to come up
with a hit single. And so the next album would come along, and now
you've REALLY got to come up with a hit single. Well, this album,
Leftoverture - we all liked the song, so we just missed it - we didn't
think it had a chance in hell, because we liked it so much! (laughs)
Too much to be a hit single. Little did we know.
RB: Leftoverture was recorded in Bogaloosa, LA in a place called the
Studio in the Country, where Kansas had also recorded the Masque album.
As Kerry Livgren recalls, to say it was "in the country" was being kind.
KL: In the middle of a swamp. (laughs) It was literally in the middle
of a swamp. You could walk out of the studio and there were gators, you
know, & mosquitoes the size of B52s & stuff. It was really an unusual
experience - we used to have armadillos walk into the control room &
stuff. It was an interesting place to record. (laughs) It was a great
place to record in a way - we were isolated, and we were there to work.
And that's what we did.
RB: Before going to Bogaloosa, the band had rehearsed back home in
Topeka, although calling the sessions rehearsals, is something of an
understatement. They were, in fact, frantic, pressurized sessions,
where the band members had to write & arrange new material, under
incredibly strict deadlines. The bulk of the songwriting burden fell on
the shoulders of Kerry Livgren.
KL: When it came time to do Leftoverture, we had no songs. And so we
would go into the rehearsal hall, and we would have a rehearsal the next
day. That night I had write a song. So I'd write a song, come into
rehearsal the next day, would learn it - OK we had to have one for the
next day, so I had to go home that night, write a song, come back the
next day - and so these things were just cranked out. It was an
incredible flurry of creativity for me, and a lot of - it was high
pressure, you know. It was an environment I didn't really enjoy. I
didn't like writing with a gun to my head on a schedule like that. You
know, I'd have to say at it - it was one of my high points. I had a lot
of inspiration happening, and I had a lot of ideas. It made it tougher
because at that point in time, for some reason, Steve just dried up as a
writer - didn't have anything. We'd come into rehearsal and it was like
"well Kerry, have you got anything?" - yeah got one. Next day I
thought, gosh - come on, Steve! Bring something in here, man - I can't
take this! And I'd come in the next day and Steve wouldn't have
anything. So well, OK - I've got a song. I actually remember sitting
there in that rehearsal hall when we were working on Leftoverture, and
while one guy - I was teaching one guy a part to a song, I'd go over to
my keyboard and start playing something off what I had to have for
tomorrow, you know - I mean - so it was a tough time, but some of the
best songs I ever came up with.
RB: Even now, Phil Ehart and Steve Walsh are amazed at the music Livgren
came up with under those conditions. Of the 8 songs on Leftoverture,
Livgren wrote 5 of them on his own, and co-wrote the other 3. Phil
Ehart remembers.
PE: At this time, Kerry's at full gallop - OK? Kerry wrote the majority
of Leftoverture. The band is probably at its tightest - one of its
tightest - the band is really a band. Kerry was the musical leader, but
there was no leader in Kansas at the time. We had 6 guys and there were
6 leaders. And it was very tough to work with - because nobody really
was guiding where the band was going, and it was just like - everybody
just kind of went along, you know. Luckily we had such one vision
together, that that's where we all wanted to go. That, in later times
really caused a lot of problems, but at this time, Kerry is eating,
breathing, and sleeping Kansas - OK? I mean, it's coming out of every
pore in his body.
RB: Steve Walsh
SW: At this particular time it was Kerry's vision. We interpreted it,
and in doing that, little by little - would definitely add things to the
music. Some he liked, some he didn't. But I would definitely say that
it - yeah - this was not only his vision from song to song, but his
vision as an album, I think.
PE: Kerry had a lot of pressure put on him, because he & Steve had
written together on all the previous albums - the 3 previous albums.
This particular album, Steve had hit some sort of a writers block. I
don't care who the other writer was, whether it was Steve, or whoever.
I don't think anybody could have topped what Kerry was coming up with.
I mean, Steve was coming up with stuff, but he come up with a song the
same day Kerry walked in with Miracles Out Of Nowhere. Well, Steve kind
of goes "well sheesh, I guess it's back to the drawing board!" Well
Steve comes in the next day, and Kerry says "well, I've got Cheyenne
Anthem". Steve kinda goes, "well, I don't think I'll show you this song
today that I've got". Steve was writing, but Kerry was way up here, and
Steve was - I mean Kerry was just on a roll! There was just - I mean
everybody that was there at the time just said, god, this guy is coming
up with such incredible stuff, that there was no stopping him.
SW: Yeah, and I didn't want there to be, either. At the time I can
remember really looking forward to him bringing in stuff like this. At
this particular time it was wonderful to be a part of things like
Cheyenne Anthem.
PE: It was really just kind of - stand back and watch.
SW: Oh yeah - it was.
PE: It was like - just kind of like "what's he going to bring in today?"
And as soon as he started playing it, we'd just look at each other and
just go "this is incredible!" I mean, it was such a quantum leap from
Masque, you know - which had some good stuff on it, but Kerry, this -
this stuff was a cut above. I mean, the guy was definitely on his way
up as a major songwriting force in rock & roll. And we were just happy
to be there (laughs).
PLAYS QUESTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD
RB: That was Questions of My Childhood, written by Kerry Livgren & Steve
Walsh. When we come back, we'll hear how life changed for Kansas, when
they found success. I'm Red Beard, and your in the studio, for
Leftoverture.
SW: Welcome back. I'm Steve Walsh of Kansas, In The Studio for
Leftoverture.
RB: And I'm Red Beard. In addition to their ornate instrumental
structures, many of the Kansas songs, particularly the ones written by
Kerry Livgren, dealt with spiritual themes - the question of man's place
in the universe. A good example is Livgren's song The Wall.
KL: The Wall was an intensely personal song for me. I remember when I
wrote that song - my parents would go to work during the day and I'd go
out of my basement, where the piano was upstairs, where my dad had a
Lowry organ. And it had this one setting that sounded like a big pipe
organ, or something. And the sound of that organ caused me to write in
a little different vein that I might have with a guitar or piano. The
Wall, lyrically - I guess represented - maybe better than any song I've
ever written and that point in time - my personal spiritual longing to
find an answer to life and who we are and why we're here and all that
kind of stuff. And I felt like at that time I was just up against this
invisible, inpenetrable wall that wouldn't let me get any farther and
wouldn't let me get any closer to that. And it was a very intense,
almost Wagnerian kind of a scenario with that song, and it would have
lent itself well to that kind of a music. So the marriage of the music
and the lyrics on that song - I think really, really worked well.
PLAYS THE WALL
KL: You know, I think I put up the wall looking back on it. I was a
very philosophical, mystical, religious pilgrim - I guess would be the
best way to describe myself. I went a period in my life where I was
just - the guys used to say I was the charter member of the religion of
the month club, you know. I would just go from one thing to another.
And in 1979 I became a Christian, and at that point I consider that wall
to have tumbled down - and found everything I was looking for.
RB: After recording Leftoverture, Kansas started touring again - almost
immediately. Until Carry On Wayward Son became a hit, touring was the
only way for the band to gain a following. So, they spent years in
rented cars and 2nd hand vans. The nightmare life, of an opening act.
Phil Ehart.
PE: It was a touring blur. I mean, we were literally on the road for 11
months. And when I mean on the road - I mean GONE, on the road. We
come back, we wrote a lot of stuff on the road, we'd go in and rehearse,
and go right down and record. So I mean - we just went in and did it.
Everything was just 1st or 2nd takes - just get it down - and then boom,
right back on the road again, because as an opening band, we made $750 a
night. And the more we toured, the more we went in debt. And by the
time Leftoverture hit - COWS hit, we were approximately $175,000 in
debt. Because it cost us more to get to the gig - to open for Mott the
Hoople, or to open for the Kinks, or to open for Bad Company or Queen or
whatever - it cost us more to get there than we were paid. So we were
constantly, constantly in debt. So it's a good thing that we did have a
hit or we would all been in debtor's prison of some sort.
RB: The band, in fact, was so busy touring, they didn't even know COWS
had become a hit. They didn't even know how close they were to being a
headlining act with a triple platinum album. Steve Walsh remembers the
first clue that something had changed.
SW: I can still remember the people that handled all the accounting and
everything. I called them because, at the time, I think, we were - you
know right before Wayward Son hit, we were all on - I don't know, some
kind of salary from the band.
PE: Right.
SW: We all got like $75 or $100 a week, and then I started to hear
Wayward Son on the radio and understand that we were a bit more
successful. I had no idea how well it was doing, and I remember calling
them one day and saying "Is there any way that we could get maybe $150 a
week?" (laughs) You know, instead of $100 or $125. And they said "Well,
you know, you can have a lot more than that if you want!" (laughs) And I
said "WHAT"? You know, this was so - Oh Boy. I mean it was a wonderful
feeling. I'll never forget that! (laughs) As long as I live. It was a
great phone call.
RB: Eventually, Kansas would find that success had its drawbacks - that
the pressure to repeat was sometimes the toughest pressure of all. By
1983, the old Topeka friends had splintered apart, amidst law suites and
bad feelings. Happily, however, the wound have healed. Ehart & Walsh
formed a new version of Kansas with Rich Williams and Livgren is
pursuing a solo career. He has fond memories.
KL: One thing about Kansas - we always looked at an album as an
absolute, total package. I mean, we didn't just make music and then
hand it over to somebody else and be done with it. We were totally,
personally involved with our album covers, with everything that was -
all the text that was on the album covers - everything that was said -
the comments, the liner notes, both sides of the cover, the inner sleeve
- we were always in on the design of that - the sequencing of the songs
- everything about the album we saw as a thing that ultimately we wanted
to be responsible for. And that was just one case where it all really
worked - it all fell into place. There was kind of a magic feeling
around the recording of Leftoverture, that years later, as we recorded
our subsequent albums - we kept saying what was it we did that made this
come out that way. And you know, I really think we went back to the
same studio, we used the same place, the same people, and we weren't
able to recapture that. So I attribute it to the songs. The songs
themselves are structured in a way that allowed the instruments to sound
good. It was a good lesson in production, really. I think it was kind
of accidental - it wasn't something that we knew to do beforehand. It
was just kind of the way they turned out. And Miracles Out Of Nowhere
was a song that was wide open for everything to sound good. You know,
it was a song that allowed for a lot of different musical textures
within the framework of the same song. And it just really worked.
PLAYS MIRACLES OUT OF NOWHERE
RB: We'll be back, In The Studio, after this.
RB: This is Red Beard. And I'd like to thank Kerry Livgren, Phil Ehart,
and Steve Walsh for recalling the time, when they were truly miracles
out of nowhere. And special thanks go to Budd Carr, Dexter Schafer, and
to Tom Gooseman of Sparrow Records.
THE END