Over the years, the rock band Kansas has sold more than 30 million albums around the world.
Despite this, however, they're not quite a household name — and
there's still a lot even their fans might not know about them.
Plenty of bands have named themselves after where they came from, but the name "Kansas"
really cuts to the chase. Five of the original members were Kansas-grown: in fact, Phil Ehart,
David Hope, Kerry Livgren, and Rich Williams all graduated from Topeka
West High School within a year of each other. Meanwhile, Robby Steinhardt was from Lawrence.
Steve Walsh, who was born in Missouri, moved to Kansas when he was 12 years old.
But a shared home wasn't the only thing these six men had in common; they were also incredibly
skilled musicians. Each of them had already been playing with other bands when they got together.
In fact, Livgren was already in a band called Kansas, a name which the new group would soon
take for themselves. Driven by that talent and experience, and inspired by a shared love of the
biggest bands of their era, these six men holed up in a house together — and quickly got to work.
Among the most significant sources of inspiration for Kansas in their
early days was the British rock scene of the 1960s. In the end, the band's music
became a kind of fusion of British prog-rock and the sound of the American heartland.
By the time Kansas had formed, there were plenty of other bands out there who were already writing
epic, symphonic rock music, such as Queen or Jethro Tull. But Kansas didn't want to
be Queen or Jethro Tull. Rather, they took their inspiration from another popular British band:
King Crimson. The iconic prog-rock group had been founded in 1969,
and have since gone on to inspire whole generations of bands and musicians.
What Kansas truly appreciated about King Crimson was the band's lush,
harmonic sound. And although the initial response to King Crimson's debut album,
In the Court of the Crimson King, was relatively muted, the Kansas boys loved it from the get-go.
Today, that album's influence is plain to hear in Kansas' music.
Sure, White Clover might sound more like a tripped-out psych rock band from '60s
San Francisco than an early prototype of Kansas, but the group meant well in giving it that name.
In fact, the name 'White Clover' came from the pinkish-white plant that can be found
in fields all over Kansas. At the time, they weren't so much a southern-style prog-rock
group as they were a local cover band. Nonetheless, they toured relentlessly,
gradually honing their sound and brand as they went. In the early '70s, White Clover paid $300
to cut their first demo in Liberal, Kansas. It wasn't until White Clover had finally officially
merged with Kerry Livgren's Kansas, however, that the band signed with Don Kirshner's label in 1973.
Kansas didn't produce their first album right off the bat. Instead,
they spent most of their time touring around the state in a school bus, playing at 3.2 beer
bars — the little neighbourhood joints that had sprung up towards the end of Prohibition
and lingered for decades afterwards. Even for their first show in front of Don Kirshner's
studio reps, the band had to come up with a pretty creative way to draw a crowd.
"And we thought that if we advertised enough that we were giving away free beer,
that people might come."
Still, all that hard work paid off, and in 1974, they finally released their eponymous debut album.
Writer Tim Horan of the Salina Journal remembered that, when he saw them at a bar in Kansas,
the only way to get the new album was to buy it directly from the band. Horan writes:
"I can tell you the music heard that day was like nothing I'd ever heard before."
Indeed, at a time when performers like Barbara Streisand and the Jackson 5 were
making the music charts, the music of Kansas was a refreshing eye-opener. Horan continues:
"Kansas wasn't my older brother's music. It was all mine."
And many others felt the exact same way.
Fame found Kansas quickly. Unfortunately, the tribulations of fame can change people — something
the group learned for themselves. As Kerry Livgren once told Louder:
"When you're in your early 20's and suddenly become famous, and you've got women literally
chasing after you, it's almost impossible not to give in to temptation. What began
to change us was success. It was all very satisfying, but left an inner void in us all."
Despite their runaway success, however, the band insisted on maintaining their own independence.
More specifically, they were staunch in their resolve that Don Kirshner wouldn't
own their name. Taking a stand on this, however,
could easily have cost them their recording contract. Phil Ehart once told Innerviews:
"Kerry [said] 'It says in the contract that he’s going to own the name. It could be a
deal breaker.' I said 'If it is, then it is. We don’t have to give up our name.'
We let Don know and it got blocked out of the contract and we went on. I don’t know why I felt
it was important, but it’s a good thing we did it. [...] To this day, we still own our name."
Kansas' album art is some of the most intriguing out there. Rich in detail and shrouded in fantasy,
each cover was specifically selected by the band to really stand out — and deliver a message at
the same time. Take their first album, Kansas, which features the famed abolitionist John Brown.
Brown, a highly controversial figure, fought against slavery using violent
means that helped give that period in state history the nickname "Bleeding Kansas."
Their second album, Song for America, features a dark, twisted variant on the otherwise patriotic
symbol of the eagle — although Ehart once revealed that one reviewer actually thought it
was a stylized crab. The cover of the next album, Masque, is more intricate, and centers around a
portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian the Second by the renowned artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
The cover of the band's fourth album,
Leftoverture, depicts an old man writing with a quill pen who is,
naturally, left-handed. It was rendered by the artist Dave McMacken, who has illustrated
covers for countless other bands, including Journey, the Beach Boys, AC/DC, and the Beatles.
Meanwhile, the renowned artist Peter Lloyd painted the cover for Point of Know Return.
And Kansas' devotion to their album covers has paid off:
In 2018, William Counter recreated the cover of Kansas for a piece he called Kansas LP.
The artwork now hangs in the Kansas State Capitol, near the original mural of John Brown himself.
Considering the nature of some of their music, you might wonder whether there's ever been a
Christian element to the music of Kansas. After all, early songs such as "Carry on Wayward Son"
hinted at a religious undercurrent, with that song in particular making reference
to heaven. And sure enough, Kerry Livgren became an evangelical Christian in 1980.
The thing is, though, Livgren wasn't a Christian when he wrote the song,
and he has since said the lyrics weren't meant as religious — although he did once explain:
"I saw myself as the 'Wayward Son' alienated from the ultimate reality,
and yet striving to know it."
The more famous Kansas became, however, the more Livgren searched for meaning in his spiritual
beliefs. In 1979, he pursued his own album, Seeds of Change, which delivered a more explicitly
religious message. A few similar songs appeared on the 1979 Kansas album Audio-Visions. Meanwhile,
bassist Dave Hope also pursued Christianity, and has since placed great emphasis on his
experience as a born-again Christian. Today, he is even ordained as an Anglican minister.
Kansas may have been named for their home state, but the band
has also paid tribute to the indigenous peoples who first lived there. In fact,
the word "Kansas" itself comes from a Sioux word meaning "People of the South Wind." The state
is home not to just the Sioux nation, however, but 35 other tribes, too, including the Apache,
Arapaho, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Comanche, Kiowa, Pawnee, and Shawnee tribes.
The band decided to honor these indigenous peoples with a song on their sixth album,
Monolith. More specifically, the song is named for the Kaw tribe, who, in the Kansa language,
are known as the "People of the South Wind." Written by Kerry Livgren,
the song is generally regarded as one of the band's poppier, more easily accessible tunes.
"People of the South Wind" was relatively successful when it debuted in 1979,
peaking at an admirable 23 on the Billboard Top 100. Sadly, for a long time, the band was
under the impression their fans didn't much care for the album Monolith. As a result,
"People of the South Wind" was excluded from Kansas' concert setlists until the mid-1990s.
Let's face it — a band isn't a band until they've been through a rough patch or two.
Kansas first broke up in 1981, when Steve Walsh departed to start his own solo career.
Within a year or so, the rest of Kansas had parted ways,
too, but they reunited in 1986 with a host of new members — including Walsh.
For the next several years, Kansas continued touring and put out several more albums.
Then, in 2000, Walsh began struggling with vocal problems. Richard Williams remembered
talking with Walsh about it during one of the band's annual meetings.
Noticing his bandmate was deeply unhappy, Williams told Walsh:
"As much as I love doing this, you hate it an equal amount."
Walsh eventually left the band for good in 2014.
Today, he continues to write and produce his own music.
"Some are calling this the biggest disaster in music history."
On June 1st 2008, an explosion at Los Angeles' Universal Studios set off a "fast-moving" fire
that destroyed a number of movie sets and damaged a video vault. The studio's
chief Operating Officer coolly assured the media that nothing irreplaceable was lost.
What he did not mention, however, was that Universal Music Group, the world's largest record
company, had lost over 100,000 masters of music albums. In total, this amounted to some 500,000
individual songs. Sadly, these included a number of original masters recorded by Kansas.
This was a disappointing turn of events, to say the least, compounded by Universal's
response to baffled artists like Bryan Adams, who went searching for his own
original material — but was met with shrugs by UMG officials. Adams later told the press:
"If you were doing an archaeological dig there,
you would have concluded that it was almost as if none of it had ever happened."
In 2019, NBC News decided to dig further. UMG officials brushed off the loss, however,
claiming that, of the music that had been left in the vault, most had been digitized. But they left
out a crucial detail — namely, that digital copies aren't nearly as high-quality as original masters,
because a little something is lost every time a copy is made. Despite UMG's assurances,
it seems like the fire of 2008 left a permanent scar on the world of music.
Over the years, Kansas have seen plenty of successes. They've released 15 studio
albums and five live albums, which included eight gold records and one platinum record.
Beyond that, Leftoverture was named by Rolling Stone as one of the 50
greatest progressive rock albums of all time.
But they haven't quite got it all. Most notably, Kansas have never won a Grammy,
instead only having been nominated for one: "Crossfire," from the album Vinyl
Confessions, was nominated for "Best Inspirational Performance" in 1982.
And while the band has been inducted into the Kansas Hall of Fame and even the Georgia Hall
of Fame, they've never landed a coveted spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But hey,
never say never — there could yet be a place for Kansas among the gods of rock and roll.
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