By Jeb Wright

Kansas were six young men from Topeka, Kansas who had the crazy notion that they could make a living playing rock n’ roll. None of them were prototype rock stars, in fact, some were Plain Jane's, some were overall wearing hicks and others fancied Rollie Finger’s type mustachios. Singer Steve Walsh was the closest thing to a pinup boy the band had. No one, not even the band members, can explain why music mogul Don Kirshner signed the six marauders to his record label in the mid-1970’s. Kirshner was famous for The Monkees and The Archies, both of which were a long way from being comparable to Kansas.

The band recorded three albums and toured coast-to-coast with any band that would let them on the bill. Despite seeing each album outsell it’s predecessor, the band were falling deeply in debt and if a hit song didn’t happen, and soon, they would find themselves back in Topeka, sitting on a barstool telling stories of the good old days.

The band returned to Topeka and began work on what would become Leftoverture. Unbeknownst to the rest of the band, Kerry Livgren was about to go on a creative surge that would keep Kansas on the road for the next 35 plus years. It seems the Rock Gods opened up the clouds and gave the blonde haired muse the inspiration to create the best songs he had ever written. The band watched enthusiastically as Livgren topped his best song ever written on a daily basis.

Still, as good as the music was, there was no apparent hit single. With this in mind, the members of Kansas packed up their gear for the drive to The Studio in the Country in Bogalusa, Louisiana to record the new tracks. Before leaving, Livgren announced to his fellow band members that he had one more new song that he wanted to work up. That song turned out to be “Carry On Wayward Son,” a fitting sentiment indeed. Don Kirshner finally got that hit single he so desperately desired. “Carry On Wayward Son” went Gold and reached # 11 on the Billboard Singles Charts, while the parent album, Leftoverture reached # 5 on the Billboard Album Charts and sold multi-platinum.

In the interview that follows, Kansas drummer, Phil Ehart, takes us back to Topeka and discusses the songs, the songwriting and the success of Leftoverture.

Phil: It just hit me a couple of months ago, that it has been that long. You know, that is a really good question, as I am not sure what 35 years is supposed to feel like. Albums are a snapshot of what was going on at that time. When we think of Leftoverture, we can tell you where we were, what we were doing, where we worked up the songs, and when we went down to Bogalusa, Louisiana to record it, but we really can’t tell you much about anything else from that time period. It is pretty to cool to have things like that.

Phil: It is a pretty well known fact that Leftoverture, being our fourth album, had Don wanting us to have a hit. He had had enough of the FM radio play, and of having us be an opening band for seven thousands bands across the country. It wasn’t really pressure. He would just say, “Guys, let’s try to get something on the radio.” As it turned out “Carry on Wayward Son” was that song.

Phil: It almost didn’t make it on the record. We had already worked up, chosen, and rehearsed all of the songs that were going on the record. We were packing up all of our gear and Kerry [Livgren] said, “I have another song that I wasn’t to play for you when we get down to the studio.” If he hadn’t have been persistent, and not believed in the song himself, then it might not have happened. Of course, as soon as we all heard it, we worked it up immediately.

Phil: It was one of Kerry’s most prolific periods. Everyday, we would just wait for Kerry to show up and then we would all be going, “What do you have today? Do you have another new song?”

Phil: We were still in Topeka, well, some of us had relocated to Atlanta, but we were back in Topeka for rehearsals. We actually worked up the music in a vacant store in a strip mall. I don’t remember exactly where it was, but I remember the place well in my mind.

Phil: The first album sold 50,000, the second had done 100,000 and Masque sold 150,000. We gained a lot from being an opening act, and FM radio was playing the heck out of our longer cuts. Kirshner wasn’t losing money on our albums, but we were not making enough money, on the road, to pay for being on the road. He was providing tour support and when you’re playing 300 gigs a year, then that gets expensive. I think before Leftoverture, we were a half a million dollars down. Today, that would not be considered a lot of money, but in ‘70’s money that was a lot. Our touring expenses were really starting to build up and I don’t think Don was willing to keep doing that. We were really lucky that it hit when it did.

Phil: It was a work in progress. He knew we were coming up to work on the album and he had a few songs and some ideas. After the first three or four songs, then it got to the point that he had to go home and write new songs, and come back the next day. We would work on them, and then he would go home and write some more. He was just very prolific. Steve was in a bit of a writing slump at the time, but Kerry was hitting on all cylinders. All of us just stood back and stayed out of his way. He would bring in “What’s On My Mind” one day, and the next day he would bring in “Cheyenne Anthem,” and the next day he would bring in “The Wall,” and then he would bring in “Miracles Out of Nowhere.” When you are on a roll like that, then you just stay out of the way and let it happen.

Phil: It was the music, and the lyrics, and it was all the best he had ever done. We would work on the arrangements, as a band, but when he would bring in the songs, Rich [Williams] would look at me, and I would look at him, and we would both just go, “Whoa.” It was awesome. We just couldn’t get to it quick enough and start playing. “Miracles Out of Nowhere” has such an odd beginning to the song, with all the odd time signatures in it. There were things like that, which were quite difficult to really get the feel of and make it sound like a rock song. There were a lot of different parts going on.

Phil: It is hard to totally remember what happened back then. None of us read music, so it was not like Kerry just wrote it out for us. With a song like that, where Kerry put together so many changes, then it makes it hard to play drums and keep it all together. It is difficult to make sure it is a four-legged dog running, and not a three-legged dog. We had to really work at it; it was unlike anything we had ever played. We all feel that is very much a prog type of song, but it also really rocks.

“Miracles Out of Nowhere” could be the quintessential Kansas song. It has great lyrics and challenging music. It opens and it has acoustic guitar, then it has the whole counterpoint thing in the middle, then it breaks loose and rocks hard at the end. It is like a movie in music. I am just proud to be a part of it. We all kind of look at that song that way. It was interesting that Robby [Steinhardt] sang it but Steve was also involved with the vocals. “Miracles” worked every cylinder of the Kansas engine that we had at the time.

Phil: As I remember, one of the things we really liked about it was that is started a Capella. One of the things that really blew us away was when Steve went in to sing the opening. When we came back a few hours later, with just him singing it, it sounded like a brass section. It really just hit so hard. It was a great beginning to a song that was unlike anything we had done before. There are still a few songs that we play off that album every night because they are still such a big part of the band.

Phil: I would say it has been pretty consistent. What is really funny is when we worked up that song we used to open our show with it. We were pretty green back then. It was a hit and we played it first in the set. We started noticing a large section of the audience saying, “See ya” after we played it. We decided we might be wise to move it back a bit in the set list.

That song has always been a big part of a Kansas show. I can’t remember not playing it at a Kansas show since Leftoverture was released. It is our biggest hit next to “Dust in the Wind” and it is a killer song. We have always enjoyed playing it.

You never get tired of playing it because of the audience reaction that it gets. It is all about audience reaction. If we don’t get a good audience reaction, then we usually drop the song from the set. If you play your heart out, and you see the audience talking to each other, then you know it’s not working. That never happened with “Wayward Son.”

Phil: And what awesome lyrics… Kerry just kind of whipped them out. To this day, it’s almost a goose-bumpy song for us. As you said earlier, that album really did start to grow out of Masque. The seeds were sown on that album and the direction for Leftoverture was set forth.

Phil: Those songs pretty much sow the seeds of Leftoverture.

Phil: The ending was from another song that he had written a number of years earlier. Kerry had so many different parts and pieces hanging around that a lot of the song could have come from parts he had sitting around. It is a great song. Steve really brought a lot to that song with the melodies and the way that he sang it.

Phil: That song worked when Kerry was in the band because it is about his wife. Once he retired and we moved on…it is a great song and it has a great guitar riff, but it just didn’t really work for us anymore. It wasn’t personal to any of us and there were just other songs that we would rather do. It is a great song on Leftoverture, though.

Phil: No, it didn’t. We have played “Opus Insert” for a number of years. The one thing that nails us on “Opus Insert” is that it is so high for Steve to sing. If you listen to that, it is so stratospheric that it takes a real toll on his voice. We ended up having to just set that one aside. Luckily, there are a lot of other great songs on Leftoverture to choose from.

Phil: It was a lot of parts. At the time, Kerry was writing all the time. If he wasn’t writing in the studio, he was at home writing, and then he would get up in the morning and begin writing. He would often bring in these parts. If they wouldn’t work with anything, we would set them aside and do something else. That song was actually going to be called “Left Over Overture.” Dave [Hope] shortened it to “Leftoverture.” The song was literally a bunch of leftovers. In-between cigarettes, Dave said that, and we just went, “That is the name of the album.” We used that as the album title, so we deiced to use “Magnum Opus,” which is a phrase for a large musical piece for the name of the song.

Phil: We just rehearsed it until we had it. None of our songs, in the heyday, were ever spliced. We would count out and play the songs all the way through, whether it was a four-minute song, or a twelve-minute song, just to get a drum track. I would play that twelve minute song nine times until there was nothing left and we would then go and put the bass on. We never cut tape and that is why you hear some of the imperfections.

If you listen to “Carry On Wayward Son,” when Kerry starts the first verse with just the piano, he slows it way down. When I come in then I pick it up a bit. It is nothing that you would ever notice unless you listen for it. If you go back and listen to that song, then you will hear it speed back up to the speed that it is supposed to be. We didn’t have click tracks, and we just played to feel. It is boring when it is the absolute perfect tempo, from beginning to end. I think songs need to breath. We would just rehearse, and rehearse, and rehearse, and then, when we were ready, we would go to tape.

Phil: Jeff Glixman is a great one to talk to that about. Somebody asked him, “Do you think “Wayward Son” is a hit song,” and he said, “If it wasn’t us, then I would think it was.” You are so inside it that it is hard to step outside and see if it is going to be a hit. You can’t tell when you’re on the inside. Leftoverture had an amazing sonic quality with Jeff Glixman producing and Bill Evans engineering. The way that album sounds is, to this day, impressive.

Phil: He really was. We had played in local bands with him; he was an organist. When we were going to hit the road and go out with The Kinks, we called him because he had a great ear. I asked him if he wanted to be our soundman.

In that Ryder truck, in the cab, was our three crew guys. Jerry Gilleland was our drum tech. He went on to have a career as a production manager with U2, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and ZZ Top, among others. Jeff produced albums that have sold over sixty to seventy million copies. The other guy was Merle McLain, who was the lighting guy for Journey, Yes and Michael Jackson’s Thriller tour. All of those guys were from Topeka. We had one heck of a road crew coming out of the little town of Topeka, Kansas.

Phil: Kirshner sent us some artists who wanted to do the cover. One artist drew up some mock stuff and we loved the old man with the sheet music that ran from the front cover, to the back cover. We changed the logo up just a little bit. We thought it was kind of a cool cover. We didn’t know it would become so iconic. Of course, we didn’t know it would sell so many copies, either.

The pictures inside just had the guys getting their picture taken. It was just, “Okay, step into this light. Thanks. Next.” It was like having your driver’s license picture taken. The art directors at Sony were good and the pictures came out okay for a bunch of ugly guys. We felt that we needed to identify ourselves. On Masque, the pictures were dark and hard to make out. Some of the guys looked different as well, so we just thought we needed some good pictures of the guys. It was a very simple package but that old man ended up taking on a life of his own.

Phil: Don was a pretty awesome guy, may he rest in peace. You could have the six of us sitting at a table right now and nobody could tell you what it was that he saw in us. We were such an oddity. We were not singer/songwriters. We were not The Monkees or The Archies. We were not like anything that he had ever signed, or even been around. He was a publisher, and a song plugger, and then he had a weird group of guys out in Topeka that he was so passionate about. He really cared about us. He was not fawning; he was not a back patter. He didn’t come into the studio and pat Steve on the back and tell him what a great singer he was. He looked at us almost like a peer, or an equal. He was our label guy and we were the artist.

I don’t remember him saying anything about Leftoverture when he got it. He must have liked it or he would have made us go back and rerecord stuff. He would call down to the studio and Jeff would hold the phone up and let Don hear what was going on. Don would say, “Okay guys, it sounds great. Keep up the great work. Give me a single; I could sure use a single. I love you guys.”

We refereed to him as Uncle Don. He was really like a rich uncle who would support you in whatever you wanted to do. When he passed away, we all sat there and thought, “What would our lives be like today if it hadn’t been for Don Kirshner?” His was the only offer we ever got; it’s not like there was a bidding war for Kansas. He was a great guy. He was never a whiner and he never came down and shook his finger at us. He always wanted to know what he could do to help us. I think we are one of the only bands who ever had somebody like that; he was so singular. We were the only band that he ever signed to his label. He also signed Lisa Hartman, who is Clint Black’s wife. We have always said that if we ever run into Clint that we want to make sure to let him know we were label mates with his wife.

Phil: When the members of the band write the songs, then there is a window of about ten to fifteen years where most of the great stuff happens; the stuff that is around forever. There are exceptions to that but most bands will show that is true. Most writers will tell you that there is a time period where they were very prolific, and that they were never able to recreate that again. There is a time where everything is wonderful, and then it gets a little less wonderful, and you move downhill from there. Every once in a while you, will write something that kicks the meter again, but most writers will tell you there is a period of their career where they were more prolific than they were at other times.

Phil: We had been working hard as an opener and we had just been able to touch some areas where we could headline small theaters. When “Carry On Wayward Son” hit, it was so big and so fast that it was almost overnight. Luckily, we had been playing so much, over 300 shows a year, that the transition was not bad.

The one thing that helped us the most was playing forty dates with Queen. Those dates gave our lighting and sound guys the ability to pace a show and to see how a show should go. By the time we hit Leftoverture, we had learned a lot from Queen on how to do it. We also learned a lot from Bad Company. It wasn’t easy by any means, but we were ready. We had over six hundred shows under our belt as an opener, so we knew what we wanted to do as a headliner, and we knew how to do it thanks to the bands that we were working with.

Phil: It happened so fast that we didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it. I remember our manager, Bud Carr, walking into the dressing room one night and saying, “You have a hit song.” We all looked at him with surprise, and he said, “’Carry On Wayward Son’ is a hit. It is climbing up the charts in the Northeast.” It hit some major radio stations and it just exploded.

We didn’t come home for two and half to three years. It was across the States to Japan, to Europe, back to the States, back to Japan, back to Europe and up to Canada. We didn’t really have a chance to think, “We are really doing well.” It was just “Go!” We got up there and played our ass off every night, slept, got up, and played our ass off again. Right after that, we had Point of Know Return, which had “Dust in the Wind,” which was even a bigger song than “Carry On Wayward Son.” We had six to seven years of constant touring.

Phil: Rich and I went back to our high school reunion during the Point of Know Return tour. Rich and I were such naïve guys back then. We just thought, “Let’s go back to Topeka West for our ten year reunion and see how our friends are.” We never thought what they thought of us. We just thought we would be Phil and Rich, who were a couple of idiots in high school. Well, it wasn’t quite that way. Most of our classmates had our albums with them for us to sign. We had no idea. We were truly naive. We just showed up to hang with everybody else.

That afternoon, we had been onstage with the Rolling Stones with ninety thousands people in the audience. You run into your classmates and you say, “So what are you up to?” They say, “I’ve got a job at Sears.” You reply, “I was just onstage with ninety thousand people with The Rolling Stones.” We didn’t actually do that [laughter]. It was a real culture shock. We had never thought of ourselves as being famous, or being that big of a deal. It really shocked us. We eventually left, as it was just too uncomfortable. It was very odd. That is when we first started getting the thought that we were getting fairly famous. I mean we couldn’t even talk to our old classmates without signing autographs. Fame wasn’t anything that any of us were ever comfortable with. It was more inconvenient than anything else.

Phil: I think I could honestly say that, as an overall album, Leftoverture is my favorite album. That includes the sound of it, the performances, the songs that were written, the lyrics and the liner notes. I don’t know if it was our high point, it was pretty darn close. I think if someone were to ask, “What was Kansas like?” Then that is the album I would give them. You would miss having “Song For America” on there, and you would miss “Dust in the Wind” and some things like that. Overall, I think that is the one. Leftoverture doesn’t really have a ballad on it. It wasn’t until “Dust” and later “Hold On” that we did ballads. At that time, we were more about just going out there and rocking hard. Overall though, I would say Leftoverture is the one.

Phil: You’re right. There are times where my favorite album we have ever done is In the Spirit of Things. It just depends on the mood I am in and what I want to hear. I love the Power album as it was a really cool time period. Freaks of Nature has some interesting songs on it. There are different time periods where there are things that you’re proud of. It is nothing more than 100% pure Kansas. It is hard to pick one. I would only pick Leftoverture from the overall picture, from beginning to end. It represents the Kansas heyday. As most people know Kansas is represented in Leftoverture.

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