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♪ carry on, my wayward son ♪ ♪ there'll be peace when you are done ♪ ♪ lay your wearyhead to rest ♪ ♪ don't you cry no more ♪ phil ehart: i think one of the most surprising things about the state of kansas, it strikes you how far you can seeand how far you can go, rarely going up a foot or down a foot, or a hill, or even the highest point in kansas they refer to as a mound. many were in this town of topeka.
in 10 minutes you're in the country. dave hope: we lived right on the city limits. i mean, the city limits sign was just a couple houses away. and back then there wasn't, like, suburbia, you know, like it is now. i mean, in a minute of that city limits sign, everything... we were surrounded by farms. phil: as you drive across the state, the wheatfields and the cornfields, they just go forever. and then there you have these little towns that pop up every once in a while.
so it's that expansive nothingness that lends itself to pretty much doing stuff indoors. kerry livgren: growing up in kansas, it was just fantastic. all the books you read about a young boy growing up, i did all that stuff. our world was get up, go out the backdoor, and, "which way are we going?" and go as far as we could, you know? richard williams:it was a beaver cleaverhousehold for me. it was extremely wholesome.
extremely normal. robby steinhardt: it was a great place to live, great place to grow up. all four seasons. i wouldn't trade it for the world. phil: as soon as i was born in coffeyville, kansas, i was gone. my dad was in the military. as an air force family, we moved every two years. and the one thing that remained constant for me in those moves, was teaching myself to play the drums.
kerry:what got me into music, in my early teens i had a great-aunt, aunt lily. she was a great appreciator of classical music, and she used to sit me down in her bedroom and put on these old records, 78s, and as it played, she would talk to me about the composers' lives. and i was so fascinatedby this that i beganto appreciate the music, but i also appreciated the story that she was telling me
about the livesof the great composers. my first recollection of knowing that i could kind of make sense out of music was i was watchingthis bugs bunny cartoon, a musical signature came on, i think it was... [vocalizing] you know, something written by beethoven, or something. and i went over and plucked it out on piano. and i took piano lessons for a short period of time. for some reason, i wanted to play a trumpet.
and my teeth were pretty bad. it was in second grade, i sat in with the music class, waiting to get a trumpet. and finally the teacher said, you know, "you don't have the mouth for it." and i was so disappointed, and, you know, thank god for bad teeth. robby: my parents asked me to play the violin. i guess made meplay the violin would bemore accurate. i was the first chair in my high-school orchestra,
in my junior high-school orchestra, in my grade-school orchestra. dave: about ninth grade,i had no idea howit was going to pan out, but i knew in my core i was a musician. richard: fast-forward to the '60s and the beatles on ed sullivan and it was like,"i'm going to do that." sitting in front of the tv watching ed sullivan, and the beatles came on, and my father just about lost his lunch laughing at them. and i remember looking around at him, going,
"what the hell is so funny? "these people are kind of making sense to me here." richard: and that really was the initial fuse that was lit. but it was not, you know, the "british invasion," quote-unquote, that influenced kansas. it was the black musicians. dave: wilson pickett, white soul, young rascals, just that kind of stuff,and i love r&b. steve walsh: people like stevie wonder were inspiring.
wilson pickett and james brown were my all-time favorite screamers, and i wanted to learn how to scream, but i could never scream like that. unbeknownst to me, my bandmates were listening to the radio at the same time, to the same stuff, because we were all in topeka. so when we got together to play, we didn't, like, bust into some yes song or something, we were playing the four tops, you know, we were playing otis redding,
you know, we were playing, you know, the temptations, those are the songs that we played. even though people sayi put the band together, i guess i did becausei made the phone calls, but i had something in mind, i really knew the guys that i wanted to play with. the first person i called was steve, and the next dayi called rich. phil had called from england to say, "i want to come back
"and re-form... you know, with you guys." phil: "but i want to go full-time." i said, "i really want to go after this." rich goes, "i'm in!" and i said, "what do you think of dave?" and rich goes, "natural! dave would be the best bass player we could get." so next i had to get robby. well, robby didn't know me, i didn't know robby. robby: well, i remember when phil ehart called me,
and he said, "i heard you play "and i wanted to find out if you wanted "to get together and form a band." phil: i remember being in lawrence, kansas, and seeing him playing and singing, and i just thought, "that is a guy that i need to be in a band with." i've never seen anybodyelse like that guy, i've never heard anybodyplay like that guy,
and i've never heard anybody sing that way. robby said, "do you guys have a tape?" so i sent him a reel-to-reel and he called back and he said, "awesome. i'm in." so the formula was there, but the timing was everything. one of the things i saw in phil was this ambition. these guys were pretty good and they were enthusiastic about what they were doing. kerry: that was something that some of my band members who i'd been
through high school with, all those years, they didn't really havethe same ambition. they thought it was funto play in a band, but it wasn't really maybe, "what i want to do with my life." phil: and i'd said to myself, "i got to get kerry." he said, "kerry, i'd like to put together a supergroup." steve walsh needs to be singing kerry livgren's incredible songs. kerry:steve came from st. joe,
and he came down here, and he was in white clover with phil, and i thought, "man, i don't know this guy, but where did they find him?" phil: we heard steve walsh sing, it was a soul in a white man that was very deep. it really was complete once we had, you know, the depth of kerry's songwriting and steve's voice. all of us really on the same page at the same time, in our lives, at the same time in history, all that to evolve into kansas.
steve: we were making a living in mainly the midwest. and it's hard audience sometimes, to get your stuff across to them, but we survived, and i think it made us stronger. phil: as we got awayfrom doing a lot of the,you know, cover songs so we could play gigsbecause we had to exist, and start working on our own stuff, this sound started to emerge. steve: everybody brought something, musically, to the collection,
that we would not have had, had it not been for the six of us. there was a kind of a confidence, like, "this is a good band." phil: the combination of kerry's writing, steve's voice, and robby's violin were the three key ingredients that, to me, really made kansas different than the other bands that were out there. we had absolutely everything necessary for a band to make it,
except that we were living in kansas. phil: we were from a small town in the middle of nowhere. we were not on the east coast, we were not on the west coast, we were as farfrom the music industryas it's possible to get. there were no record companies to go to, there were no entertainment attorneys, there wasn't some big band that we were going to go to and hopefully they were going to listen to our demo and they would get us a deal, we were just guysliving in a band house.
431 roosevelt. and this isthe infamous band house in the history of the band kansas. we actually had two b-3s, two hammond b-3s, a marshall rig, a bass rig, and a drumset in this room. steve: the band house. wow. i slept in a closet about as big as this desk. that was my bedroom, was a closet. david wild: early on, i remember reading about the kansas band house,
and for me, it reminds me of, like, "a hard day's night" for the beatles, it's that thought of, like, bands living on top of one another, and just like being, you know, endlessly engaged in each other's life. five or six days a weekwith eight or nine guys living in a band house,you can't seethe floor anymore. we actually came home one night from a gig, in our school bus, and we looked down the road and we said,
"gosh, look, somebody's house is on fire." and it was this house. it's our time, you know,we don't want to be 25and still doing this. we wanted to start getting out of this local area, and then maybe have a record out. phil: we had played a place out in liberal, kansas, a biker bar, and we knew that there was a recording studio out there. i take all of the songssteve had written,and they were great. i mean, they had a lot of energy and it was us and we were having fun,
and the guys sang great, it was a good little demo. and we thought,"well, what are we goingto do with it?" and we had met a gentleman in new jersey, who had called and said, "i know that don kirshner is starting a label. "he's looking for bands.why don't you send methat demo, "and i'll send it over to him?" he said he took it by, he said there was tons of tapes all over this lady's desk, and she said, "there's about 150 tapes ahead of you.
"you probably won't be hearing from us, but you never know." he said, "thank you, ma'am," put it down, gone. well, we never heard anything, never heard anything, so we went off to play,and continued playingin our school bus, driving around the midwest, just making our $175 a night, living on $1 a day. steve:each of us got $1 a day,and those who smoked, they had to come about their cigarettes in different and colorful ways. phil: we were playing a bar in dodge city, kansas,
and during one of our breaks, the bartender walked over and said, "uh, there's a call for you from new york city. "would one of you like to talk to this gentleman from..." well, we were going, "new york city? "do you know anybody? i don't know anybody." it was wally gold calling. wally gold, come to find out, was don kirshner's right-hand man. and he said, "love the tape. love the violin. you guys are great. "i'm coming out to see you in two weeks.
"put together a gig, we want to see if you guys are real." as soon as he hung up..."yippee!" i mean,we just went... if we'd had anything to throw in the air, we would've thrown it in the air. phil: we knewthis was going to be it. this was going to be it. that this was going to be our one chance. the next day we were sitting in the bus, and we thought, "well, "what are we going to do? where are we going to have this? "if nobody comes to see us...
"if this guy comes and there's nobody there, he's just gonna go, "'well, obviously they don't draw any people.'" kerry: so we picked ellinwood, kansas, this little town in western kansas. there's nothing but a grain elevator, and a gas station, and an opera house. richard: this old opera house was basically the only thing in the quote, "downtown," area, that was downtown. i think it was like $150to rent the place,
and that we were goingto give away free beer. and we put posters upon every telephone pole with a 200-mile radius. phil: and we thought that if we advertised enough that we were giving away free beer, that people might come. forget about who was playing. under in small print it says, "kansas," but, "free beer."
[crowd cheering] and, man, when it came time for that show, they were lined up for miles down the highway. richard: then there's people clamoring to get in. the house was packed, everybody's screaming, well, they're all drunk! robby: i remember that night pretty well because i was one of the people that actually counted the money that came in from the door. we had 525 people therethat night, or 526,
we charged them each a quarter to get in. it was good, it was a smart thing to do, i didn't realize it was that smart, but it packed the place up way over the top. being young and dumb, we did have a momentof brilliance. steve:wally was very surprisedat the crowd reaction, and he... i don't think he knew that we had given away all this beer to all these kids. and the crowd was just out of their mind.
kerry: needless to say, we played our hearts out. steve: if you hear a tape of it, it sounded horrible. ♪ we tried to rise above her ♪ ♪ the ignorance of man will reach an end ♪ ♪ ahhh ♪ ♪ and now we're gonna die ♪ some of the worst vocals we ever uttered in our lives, ever sung in our lives,are on that tape. so we were amazed that wally even signed us.
steve: wally was impressed and that's all pretty much that mattered. phil: he specifically walked over to robby, and said, you know, "because of the violin, i want to sign you guys." somebody at columbia, i think his name was goddard lieberson, you know, heard the violin, and was into classical music, and decided that that might be the way to go. so when we heard that kirshner was interested in us, well, all i knew in my head then, was monkees, and i thought,"god, what in the world does he hear in us?"
after it was over, wally said, "you guys, you're coming to new york." steve:we were ready to get outof topeka and go record. that gig, ellinwood opera house, was the start of our career. phil: again, all part of this miracle that that happened, and this happened, and this lined up. that's how we got signed. they literally seemed like one of the most down-to-earth groups you could ever meet. and i think because it's hard
to get your ass kissed in kansas. in la, it's hard for you not to get your ass kissed. steve: we didn't know anything about the business. there was no internet where you could go and say, "well, how do we do this?" we didn't think to consult an attorney. duh! here's the contract. sign it. there was a big thick one, and then there was justa couple pages called"publishing."
and i'll remember to the day i die, kerry turning me and going, "what is 'publishing'?" "i think it has something to do with sheet music. let's sign it." we signed away30 million albums' worthof publishing. richard: we all willingly leaped to the table and signed this. we weren't thinking about how many points were going to be going anywhere, we didn't knowwhat that meant. don said,"guys, i'm a publisher.
"i havecarole king publishing, "i have beatles publishing, "i haveneil sedaka publishing, "i have monkees publishing, "i've built my empire on publishing. "i'm not really a record company guy, i'm a publisher. "if you want to do this deal, that's what i own. "if you don't want to do it, i wish you all the best." well, if it wasn't for don kirshner,
i wouldn't be doing this interview. not that i regret that, because, like i say, it was the only break we ever got. this was an opportunityto record an album. phil: we were now heading to new york with a whole bevy of new material, unbeknownst to our producer, whose last record was barbra streisand. this is going to be interesting. richard: coming from topeka to new york was very small to very big.
we were very slack-jawed, open-mouthed about it all. we didn't have a road manager, we didn't have a manager. we didn't have anybody, it was just the six of us. nobody was even there to meet us. steve: this was back in the day when 42nd street was really a destination that you were really careful to walk. richard: it was drug dealers and hookers everywhere. that was all very intimidating coming from a place where people didn't even locktheir doors.
phil: let's goto the recording studio. you know, it's the record plant. probably the most famous studios at the time in the world. studio a was alice cooper. bj thomas is in another place. one of the guys that was shuffling in and out of our third-story studio all the time we were doing the first record was rick derringer. still one of the best guitar players ever. there goes steven tyler, and there goes john lennon.
and kansas, little old kansas, was in studio c. dave: we had the midnight shift at the record plant. and, no pressure,$200 an hour, you know. richard: we knew nothing about the recording process, you know, outside of setting up a couple mics and recording ourselves live. our only experience before that was going into a little 8-track studio, where we did the demo. recording was a completely different process then, it was very elementary.
recording a song from beginning to end was a chore. i mean, back then we had to do everything over and over and over again. they had to punch you in and out, clean, and if you made a mistake, you might have to playtwo verses and a chorus before they could punch you out. so one note off, you just sweat it, and then you miss that one again! nerve-racking. very live, there was no copy and paste,
"okay we've got this, now we'll just fly this in every other time..." phil: and these were eight-, nine-minute songs that i was playing from beginning to end? "you know, you'd better get it right." "well, gee, no pressure!" you know, "can i do it again?" "well, you're not going to do "a bunch of nine-minute songs. we don't have enough tape!" so everything had to be done from the beginning to the end in its entirety. and so, by the time you got a basic track, it was such a celebration!
once steve started singing, oh, my gosh. ♪ dreams of fortune fill the young one's mind ♪ ♪ learn the worldly waysof hope to find... ♪ we'd go get a pizza, we'd come back going, "oh, my gosh, well, where'd this guy come from?" you know? ♪ searching to find the light of day ♪ ♪ in his soul he had found... ♪ it was a chance for us to really hear, for the first time, the depth of steve.
♪ but to each otherthey will soon return ♪ ♪ destiny fulfilled,their words will burn ♪ ♪ an eternal flame ♪ we had no idea this guycould go to the moonas a singer. we made that album in two weeks. two weeks total. most of them were first takes, live playing, and that was it. the first time we met don kirshner, going up to his office,
he had probably seen a promo shot, but i don't even know if he had that, but, you know, us walking into his office, larger than life. he must have been impressed because we looked fairly imposing. we were big guys. uh, rich was a huge guy,with overalls on,with hair out like this, robby had hair like this. [laughing] so whatever he was thinking, i don't know. the thing about don kirshner is i'd never seen
a gentleman like that before, $3,000 suits, $200 manicures, pedicures, you know, just perfect from head to toe. i can imagine when we left the room he must've gone to to wally and herb, just going, "what have we got ourselves into here?" kerry: one thing that impressed us with who he was, he gave us a check for 10 grand. now, $10,000 was more money than we had ever dreamed of.
phil: well, my job, when i went home, was to work on the album cover. i was never an artist, so it wasn't like anything i was going to draw or formulate, but i knew in my mind what the album cover was going to be. it's john brown in the topeka state capitol building. i was here in 1966 when i was 15, 16 years old. and i remember walking in and seeing this mural and just going, uh, "that is so amazing, and if i'm ever in a band
"that we're able to have an album come out, that's got to be the cover." but i couldn't find a photo of it. and i had run into a childhood friend of mine, he said,"well, i heard you guysmade a record." again this is all part of this whole miracle thing that just, how do these things line up? he said, you know, "what's your cover?" he was a good friend, so he wanted to know everything about the record. and i said, "well, we're going to use the john brown painting "in the capitol building." and i said, "but we can't find a photo!"
and he goes, "phil, my dad is the kansas state photographer. "my dad's got the photo." "what?" he said, "yeah,my dad's got the photo.i'll give him a call." so he calls his dad, he says, "well, yeah, i got a whole bunch of pictures of that." he said, "they're welcome to use it." i was thrilled about the album cover. i thought it said a lot without really saying a lot, you know? a bible in one hand anda rifle in the other,
you can't get any weirder than that. if there is one iconic image of kansas, it's john brown. and we used his photo on the album cover. the name "kansas" says it all. it's like, you know, as opposed to genesis or yes, there was no pretension really. the pretension was the desire to, you know, push rock a little further. phil: we get a call from cbs at the time, and said, "guys, have you ever done a photo session?"
"uh, no." "well, we're going to send out a photographer, one of our photographers, "a staff photographer to come photograph you guys, "because we need some band pictures." this band is the all-time we-hate-photographers band. phil: the guy shows up and his name's don hunstein. nice guy, probably drew the short straw, you can imagine, "who wants to go to kansas and photograph kansas?" it was like, "okay, well, take a number out of the hat, "low number has to go,"you know?
well, obviously he didn't have a chance to scout any places, so where's the first place he takes us? you can imagine, with all this beautiful countryside, he takes us to mcdonald's. i thought steve was going to punch him in the face. if you look at some of these early photographs of steve, steve's just like... i mean, he was like, you know, "this is not what i imagined,"you know. "at mcdonald's?" and i'm just going, "let's just go with it for now."
"y'all get this?"and steve was just like, you know, biting through metal, you know. then he takes usto a truck lot. because while he's shooting us at mcdonald's, he notices these big semis for sale at a truck lot."let's go over thereto those semis." we're going, "why, don?" "because, you know,kansas has a big sound." "what, like a semi?"
while we're standing there, again, another miracle. a storm moves in. now, kansas storms happen in about five minutes. and he looks offin the distance, and here comes one of those black cloud nightmares coming towards topeka. and it's dark, and it's black behind the band and there's not much light, and all of a sudden, the clouds part, and we light up.
he said, "look that way! don't look at me! look at the sun!" it's like... we're looking at the wind, it's like, blowing, "look at the sun!" and we're going, "god, you're killing us!" you know? that was an iconic picture that remained with us through all 40 years. and he took us to a few more places, but he kept saying, "i got it. "i got the photo." and then thatwas the last ingredient. added it to the cake. and it came out,
the first kansas album. we have made a record. so, you know, now we're gonna be conquering heroes, coming back to topeka. so we're kind of a big deal in topeka because we went to new york and made a record with a big music mogul that everybody was watching on tv every friday night, i guess. and now we're home, so now what do we do? dave: when we came back to topeka, we'd tell our friends, "yeah, our record's gonna be out here pretty quick."
"uh-huh." we had no idea it took that long from the time you cut it. we just thought, "maybe next monthor something." richard: sat and sat. kerry: and we proceededto sit on our behindsfor almost a year. it became kind of a struggle at this point. kind of a scary moment,bit disillusionedby the whole process. the marketing plan had to be put together to satisfy us. 'cause we were spending our dollars on advertising.
we didn't just release it. no, that tuesday thing wasn't in existence in those days like it is now. you release the records in the stores on tuesdays. when it was ready to go,we put it out. phil: "well, we have to eat. "so i guess it's back in the bus and back out i-70." west on i-70 was where our bus would go by itself. i mean, it was one ofthose things, we playedso much west on i-70. everything we played was west, we never went to kansas city,
we never went into missouri, we never went in nebraska, not even, you know, oklahoma. it was get in this bus,and go west, on i-70. dave: i remember that winter we didn't have a heater, we'd picked upthe hitch hiker, dead cold winter, we thought, "that poor guy." and he rode with us for about a half an hour and he says, "hey, i hope you don't think i'm being a jerk or anything, "but would you let me off?
"cause i want to take my chances getting in a car with a heater." we said, "we perfectly understand," pulled over on the sideof the highway,and let him off. to turn this bus, you would turn the wheel, and keep on turning, turning, turning, and it would move about this much. then you go back this way. so you're constantly doing this while you're driving. phil: so here we are. riding back out i-70, we'd just been in new york, wined and dined,
the finest studios, john lennon, yoko, everybody. "hey, how's it..." and now, we're back on the bus, looking at cornfields. richard: we set up our own tour playing around the state, promoting our own shows. and that really got us by. ten months. a record finally recorded in '73, it came out in '74. it came out in the next year! the record was out, it was in stores,
so you could actually goand pick it up and there was that john brown guy looking at ya, and we turned it over, and there was that picture of us standing on the hill, and we thought, "wow, how did that turn out so good?" kerry: and after that,things started happeningpretty fast. dave: finally, kansas is on the map. and now what do we do? enter budd carr. budd carr: it's 1974,i'm working in new york
as a booking agent for a major talent agency. i got a call from a friend i went to college with who is now working for a very large management company in los angeles called b&b associates and elliot abbott was his name and elliott said to me, "so if we're gonna sign them, "you have to sign them as an agent." and i went, "okay." kerry: and we were off to phoenix, arizona,
to open for my childhood idols, the kinks. we found very quickly when we started touring that we needed a sound man. phil: so i mentioned to the guys, i said, "why don't we have jeff "go on the road with usand be our sound man?we need a sound man." "come with us, you love sound, "you're into this whole concept "of putting all the sound through a pa system,
"which, you know, miking it up, "every instrument and controlling the sound, "so why don't you come do that with us, "we're gonna kinda hit the road, "and then, you know, see how it goes." phil: he didn't even think about it, he just went, "all right, i'll do it." steve: and jeff was justas hungry as we were. and jeff learned fast.
from that moment on, we started gettingopening slots, you know,here and there. a year later or so, we were gone. budd: when you're starting bands out, you just do the best you can to continually get them gigs. and the acts that they went out with, mott the hoople, the kinks, they all liked them. for a long time, after the first album came out, we didn't go home.
kerry:it was constant touring. it was one tour after another. that year, that first year, i believe it was 248 gigs that we played touring. we just lived on the road. when you're playing that many gigs, you can't helpbut get tighter. we got to be better players, be better players together. the baptism of fire,if you will,we got dipped into that and it was what we had wanted, exactly what we had wanted,
and we were just livingon the road. what changed my life about kansas, was when i'd see them. and what killed me about kansas, i came back and told my guys, just all of my friends,i said, "i'm not sure what i just saw, "but i know i watched a drummer "playing actual notes,
"not just beats." and to say i was in a nosebleed seat. the good seatswere the nosebleed seatswhere we were. you know, we were past the nosebleed seats. and these guys reached out and just grabbed my soul and brought me in and said, "so, you're really thinking about doing this?" ♪ two began together, lived as one ♪ ♪ each one to the otherhad become ♪ ♪ more than a friend ♪
♪ living to meeta common end ♪ ♪ they were true ♪ ♪ each one knew all is well ♪ and after watching kansas, you come back and you go, "hell yeah." [audience cheering] we had this opportunityto open for this band that we had kind of heard of called queen. dave: they were good. that was one of the groups we played with and i just sat there and went,
"i'm gonna watch them tomorrow night." oh, they just, you know,blew us away. oh, my gosh, what a band. this was gonna be great. kansas to me, as i remember, were a very complete entity the very first time i saw them. they were tight as hell,you know. they were just so well-rehearsed. i remember sitting with freddie watching them do their sound check and thinking,
"shit. these guys can really sing, "they sound like they're a record." ♪ can i tell you something? ♪ ♪ i got to tell you one thing ♪ ♪ if you expect the freedom ♪ ♪ that you say is yours ♪ ♪ prove that you deserve it ♪ ♪ help us to preserve it ♪ ♪ or being free will just be ♪
♪ words and nothing more ♪ dave: one of the biggest things for the band as far as promotion, was "don kirshner's rock concert," the show that he had at that time, which was watched by everybody all over the country. don kirshner was responsible for me discovering kansas. i think it was on "don kirshner's rock concert." and i liked them immediately. it's dude rock and we were young clueless dudes who loved it.
steve: when you saw it on tv, it sounded like 10,000 people going crazy for you. but it wasn't anything like that. phil: there was nobody there. there was supposed to be an audience and there were some chairs and a few like homeless people, you know, they kinda let in. and of course they'd dub in all the applause, and there's nobody there. i don't think they everpanned out at the crowd. and if they did, it wasn't our crowd. brendan o'brien: i watched religiously "don kirshner's rock concert,"
and they came on, i think they played, can i tell you? and i was blown away, i thought it was amazing. i called my friends, we all watched it, we all liked it, we all loved it. and we were super prog heads. it was kind of before the punk rock thing, and all that stuff. and it was, like, the only american band that we even remotely thought was good. we thought they were great. and we played, and just killed it.
by the time we got to the second album, song for america, number one, my writing became much more refined, much more focused. i had this vision of what i wanted the band to sound like. and it was a grand vision, it was a big... that pretty well sums it up. kansas sounded huge. it sounded kind of, um... sort of classical, i suppose. you know, because there was so much structure in it and it was very polyphonic.
you know, there are many, many layers going on. brendan: when i heard song for america it sounded so complicated to me and so difficult and i could hear everything, and i was thinking, "it must have taken a year to do this." [stammers] but it's onlybeen nine or 10 months. i mean, how did that work? they'd been on the road... as a writer now, you get an idea, you put it on tape. "wow, i'm going to add this." back then, it was all really,
you know, kerry would come up with songs sometimes, with so many amazing parts. kerry would sit with me and phil, we'd learn the basics then he'd take rich and him and robby, and work out the top parts. kerry wrote a lot of songs that were rebellious, in a way. i mean, song for america is all about environmentalism. it's all about, you know, what are we doing to the planet? i wrote the lyrics to that song as we're flying out to la, looking out the window of the plane and thinking about america and its history
and all the stuff that had passed by and all the stuff through the years. and i finished itjust before we recorded. we named the album after the song, i mean, that kinda tells you something about it. ♪ virgin land of forest green ♪ ♪ dark and stormy plains ♪ ♪ here all life abounds ♪ ♪ sunlit valley, mountain fields ♪
♪ unseen in the rain ♪ making the second albumwas great becausedon kirshner said, "well, where do you guyswanna go?" they'd previously workedin new york city at the record plant. we were, at the time, really concerned with the vocals and they feltlike in the first album that some of the vocal qualities and things didn't come out. and we all loved the way crosby, stills, nash, and young's record sounded.
we looked on the back, it said, "wally heider, la." kerry: we went out there and it was la wonderland of the '70s. phil: and we stayed at the continental hyatt house and lived the rock and roll lifestyle out therewhile we were making it. by this time, we had been through the studio of experience, we knew much moreof what we wanted to do. phil: don kirshner came out to los angeles during the recording of song for america and took us all out to dinner.
he just said, "guys, i want to try to impress upon youin the music business," he said, "i've made my fortune off of hit records." and he said, "i love you guys," he always said that. every time we saw don kirshner, he'd tell us how much he loved us. he said, "i love you guys! "but i'm spending a ton of money, and i need a hit." i don't think they were fans of the big monster cbs building 'cause we kept seeing singles, singles, singles.
obviously, we all wanted to be a commercial success. but i don't remember kerry or me, either one of us thinking we had to sit down and write a single. phil: we're growing, but kirshner's still bleeding money big-time. now, we're starting to get close to him, almost a million dollars down. yeah, donny supported them the way artists needed to be supported. you had tour support in those days, marketing, a word that still is the most important thing you can do in the music businessand he believed in them.
and that's what's wrong with the business right now today. if you believe in it,support it,financially support it, go after it and try and make it happen. don kirshner is a man who obviously defines the brill building era and a key figure. but with all due respect, this was a guy who thought the monkees were getting too progressive. and yet, kansas within his label and his framework were able to push boundaries.
kerry: we got a lot of college airplay. in those days, there were lots of college stationsthat could play a 10-minute track like song for america. and they did! when that album was released, we had all the fan base that the first album had done. more importantly, all of the touring fan base, the people who didn't even know who we were. phil: now, it's 1975 and we're touring like mad men.
i mean, we are never home. we're doing, like,probably 270, 280 dates. we're out there non-stop. if we're not opening for somebody, we're headlining a club. kerry: once again, we were beating the road to death. do an album, do a tour,do an album, do a tour. kerry: everybody from chicago to zz top. one of the things that's interesting about looking back, as we are, since this is a lot of looking back,
is to think about the funny things that happened to us on the road. one thing that has always really stuck out to us is the respect, or lack of respect, that we got from our peers, the other bands that we worked with. i don't want to includethe band in this, but there was one particular person, a mr. steven tyler, who, by the way, we think is a great singer and a great performer. at the time, steven did not appreciate opening bands doing better than aerosmith.
steve: we knew that hepersonally had a history of pulling the plug on opening acts if they were going over too good or they were going too long. phil: watch out for steven tyler. he will try to sabotageyour gig. but our production manager, jerry gilleland called me out on the stage and he said, "just so this doesn't happen, i've run all our power "to another side of the stage. "all those extension cords are dummies."
steve: steven tyler, didn't know where the ac, where the electricity was actually coming from. so if he comes outand tries to unplug us, he's not gonna be able to do it. and when we got to wichita, kansas, here we are in kansas and the crowd just erupted. you know, it was our hometown crowd. robby: it was a great gig, it was going really well, we were done with our set and they wanted us back for an encore.
phil: so i'm up there playing and we're doing an encore, and we're in wichita, kansas, and we are named kansas, and we're killing. kerry: and steven tyler was standing off to the side with his road manager, just pacing back and forth. and all of a sudden, i look over during our encore and he's standing on the side of the stage and he's having a tantrum. kerry: and then we got a second encore. phil: and when he realized that the song wasn't ending,
he got really mad. i don't know what steven tyler's like as a person, but on that night, it was not pretty. he went over and he started pulling plugs out of the wall. he was out of control. completely. steve: we had no qualms about keeping going because we knew that what he was unplugging was literally nothing. in rock and roll, it's hard to imagine a worse sin than a band member of one band unplugging the other one.
phil: well, dave hope, our bass player, was a big guy, as most of the guys arein our band. i wasn't quite as classy then as i am now. i put down my bass and i took after his butt! and i remember lookingat the dressing roomand there was dave hope, standing toe to toe with steven tyler, basically reading him the riot act. kerry: the other guys in aerosmith came out and said, "we apologize for him. "steven's a verysensitive guy."
phil: steven, who we played with later on, i mean, had a clear understanding that in no way was thatever gonna happen again. and it didn't. we were in dire need of management. and budd was always there. budd: when i startedwith them as a manager,it was the second album, song for america, and took the experiencethat i had as an agent working with managers
and started to try and learn. i mean, i knew what good managers did and i knew whatbad managers didn't do. richard: now, we've got a guy on our team that is giving us an opportunity to do what we do while he's in the trenches just kicking butt. steve:he really believed in us and spearheaded our whole career from then on. keep building, building,building the momentum.
kansas is one of the most respected new musical groups in america and their records are produced by jeff glixman. here are the members of kansas. kerry livgren. in addition to playinglead and rhythm guitar, piano, organ and synthesizer, composes much of what the group performs and adds his voice to some of the harmony vocal parts.
dave hope. plays the bass for kansas and lends his voiceto some of the harmonies and to some of the group's arrangements. phil ehart. started playing drums in the second grade in coffeyville, kansas,where he was born. he got a chance to see the world early on in life, and picked up experience playing with groups in england.
robby steinhardt. has been studying violin for 15 years, and his classical training serves him well in his intense and driving solos. robby also shares the lead vocal chords. rich williams. employs solid musicianship, his size big, his hair very red and his unveering styleof dress, overalls, is no small factor
in the total sound and look of the band. steve walsh. he walked into a kansas rehearsal and said, "i want to audition for your band." his perfect intonation,incredible range and depth of feeling got him a gig on the spot. that's kansas. six musicians, whose lives are wrapped up in the music they compose, arrange and play. ♪ sail on ♪
♪ i will rise each day to meet the dawn ♪ ♪ so high ♪ ♪ i've climbed the mountains of the sky ♪ ♪ without my wings, you know, i'd surely die ♪ ♪ i found my freedom flyin' high ♪ phil: we came home justlong enough for kerryand steve to write masque. kerry: when it came timefor the third album, we had kind of a minor crisis in the band.
steve and i kind of did this. with the chaos and the pressure, and the relationship that you have with your song, it's like your baby. so whenever he would bring in a song, a whole song, and i would try to say, "well, what do you thinkif this came aboutor that came about?" i think both of us kind of had the same, uh, feeling about, "hey, this is something that i worked out for a while.
"i want to hear it this way." and steve went morefor just rock and roll. and i got more progressive. more of the classical, if you will. kind of a competition, really, for a while with kerry and i writing songs. a lot of the songs i wrote for kansas were really written for the wrong reason. a few of them were heartfelt, and a few of them i'm proud of.
but not very many.it was kerry's songsthat really came through as the fingerprint for the band. phil: so we're coming up with all these songs, they're sounding great, and we're hitting it really hard. and jeff glixman walks in, he said, "i got a place we can go record." so we're thinking, la, new york, and he said, "bogalusa, louisiana." jeff: i thought it would be a good place to continue our "us against the world, "we're just a bunch of long-haired guys from kansas" kind of mentality and get down to work.
so we headed to new orleans to record masque. and even though we were kinda country boys, we'd never really been in this kind of country. so when it said"studio in the country,"they were not kidding. -we really were way out in the middle of nowhere. -[insects chirping] god, it was deafening hearing these, uh, bugs chirping and mosquitoes the sizeof your whole palm. phil: you were truly in the bayou. robby: recording in bogalusa at the studio in the country was
one of the best experiences of my whole career because of the studio, the quality of that studio was above all, state of the art. finest control room i've ever been in personally. richard: we found something that worked was going somewhere for the gear, for the location, for the isolation. rather than because it's close to a lot of great restaurants. no distractions, everyone was very nice, very attentive to the band. we had it 24 hours a day. ♪ early in the morning sunlight ♪
♪ soaring on the wings of dawn ♪ ♪ here i'll live and die with my wings in the sky ♪ ♪ and i ♪ ♪ i won't come down no more ♪ then the album came outand really,it was more of the same. the album sales at that point were a couple hundred thousand albums, that's pretty good. but still, no magic. there wasn't a real, good record company reaction,
but there wasn't like a negative reaction like, "oh, man, we don't like the band." it was more like, "we know these guysare going to developa 95-mile-an-hour slider "that no left hander in the world can hit "but it's just not there yet." we're one rung further up, a little bit better touring, a little bit better. more people were starting to recognize kansas,
they weren't all the time shouting, "queen! queen!" ♪ i stood where no man goes ♪ ♪ and conquered demon foes ♪ ♪ with glory and passion ♪ ♪ no longer in fashion ♪ ♪ the hero breaks his blade ♪ brendan: masque had just come out, we friggin' loved that album. and for whatever reason, it may have been the cover, i think i'd just seen itfor the first timeat the fox in atlanta.
and it was queen and kansas were opening. my buddies and i, we got tickets early, we're sitting in about the 12th row, and we were so stoked. and it was great, it was awesome. we knew all the kansas songs, and the crowd dug it, it was big. i mean, they went over big. kerry: they were beginning to appreciate us for who we were. but we really needed that hit single. as much as i hated to admit that, we needed thatto put us over the top.
phil: kirshner's stillbleeding money big-time. and, uh, bless his heart, he hung in there with us. and he said, "let's go with another record." kerry: i call leftoverture, "the pressure album." and that pressure fell on me. it didn't fall on the band, necessarily. it should have, really. but the reason it fell on me, for some reason, steve just dried up as a writer. we came to thatfirst rehearsal
and we said, "hey, steve. what have you got?" he says, "i haven't got anything." "what? "you don't have any songs and i've got two? "what are we gonna do?" so i went home that night, after learning the first two songs, and had to write a third song. so i wrote it and came to rehearsal the next day, and we learned the third one.
"let's learn this part,"and then... it'd take about an hourto just show a segment of about two minutes, and we go, "is that the beginning or..." you know, of a song? "is that... what song you writing?" "i don't know, it justcame to me last night." that's very deep to have an outline of so many parts in your head without the means to actually transcribe them, you know. to write them down or to hear them.
phil: sitting in duringleftoverture and havinghim walk in every day, it was so exciting because we'd just go, "this is going to be awesome. "here comes kerry, what's he got today?" "oh, it's this songi have called the wall." oh, god. we're just going, "when did you write this?" "well, i kind of threw it together last night." and it's like, "seriously?" ♪ i'm woven in a fantasy ♪ ♪ i can't believe the things i see ♪ ♪ the path that i have chosen now ♪
♪ has led me to a wall ♪ ♪ and with each passing day ♪ ♪ i feel a little more like something dear was lost ♪ ♪ it rises now before me ♪ ♪ a dark and silent barrier between ♪ steve: a lot of times, when you get into a groove, in your writing and there's pressure, and you're hearing and being inspired, a lot of times that'll bring out other stuff from you.
and that's the way it was with kerry. when he got on a roll, it was good. the lord came through. he blessed me on that and i wrote song after song after song. jeff: kerry was developing to the point that he was really becoming a master of the songwriting craft. they were starting to flow out of him. i mean, this thing's called "miracles out of nowhere." to me one of the miracles is kerry's evolution as a songwriter.
you never sensed this sense of musical genius, which he truly was and is. you just don't sense it because you're sitting there, eating a hamburger. ♪ here i am just waiting for a sign ♪ ♪ asking questions,learning all the time ♪ ♪ it's always here ♪ ♪ it's always there ♪ ♪ it's just love and miracles out of nowhere ♪ we rehearsed leftoverture, we got all the songs done, we're packing up our gear, i remember i was breaking down my drum set,
and he walks overand he goes, "hey, man,i've got another song." the night before the last day of rehearsal, i went home and i wrote the song called carry on wayward son. i just sat down with a guitar and out it came. [vocalizing] and one note led to the next note. we got down to the studio and kerry presented that song. and it was magic. it was magic from the word go. it just had a magical feel about it. we knew something was different about this album.
phil: not only is it the miracle of him developing as a songwriter that no one even knows whereit's coming from,but at the last minute, he brings the firstbreakout songthat we've been needing. i've never known how that happened. it just beams in. wayward son was special.it was, you know,it was very unique. and it brought all of the elements in that we needed. and we sat back and listened to that first chorus, and we just looked ateach other and thought,
"this is another orderof magnitude of anythingwe've ever had." so i called don kirshner, cranked the thing up, opened the telephone, played him the opening of the song, and i could hear him talking into the phone already, he says, "i love it, i just love it." when jeff came into my office, he had an open-door policy, all producers did, i hear carry on wayward son, you know, and i go, "wait a second." pulled in the promotion staff, into my office. we must have played thatabout 10 times.
well, you got yourself your first hit single. i think i got a preview, i think i heard it before anyone else did. and he said, "i want you to hear this because there's an influence there." he said, "when we heard, um, "now i'm here, the riff goes..." [vocalizing] he says there's a point where the riff swaps over its place in the bar. he said, "i was intrigued by that, the same way you were, brian." and he said, "this is what we've done with wayward son."
kerry: i remember don kirshner saying this, "every notein that song is a hook." [vocalizing]that's hook number one. [vocalizing]that's hook number two. it started off with a hook, "carry on, my..." you know, that was the hook. the guitar solos were hooks. everything about it was a hook. is there a 13-year-old boy on earth who does not either think of themselves as the wayward son, or want to be?
they tapped into something timeless, and in rock and roll,you can't askfor much more than that. garth: they brought muscle to music. these guys were so extraordinarily talented that they just seemed to be from whatever that planet is that brings us all the rock gods in our lives. we start getting call-ins, fm, you know cause you could call and ask for requests, call-ins on carry on. kerry: it was all over the radio. every frickin' station in the country, fm and am,
played carry on wayward son and that did it, that was what put us over the top. and, boom, it's the song that changed our entire lives. kqv played it in pittsburgh. the minute that happened, solly soloman,the promotion man,wrote it in his report. "i went into the radio station, i handed him the record and it exploded." jeff: the record came out and it was gold within four weeks. three weeks later,it was platinum.and it was just soaring. phil: took us from being an opening band to a headliner around the world. after leftoverture came out, after playing them in many other markets
in and around the pittsburgh area, i take them to the civic arena and we do two nights, breaking elvis presley'srecord of 30,000 people. the press lady in new york, susan blond, said, "we gotta throw a party. "we can do something really special, the guys will all come in tuxedoes. "kansas? hmm. 'wizard of oz,' you're not in kansas anymore." she actually found little people, the actors, who were still alive, who were in "the wizard of oz." i said, "and they could throw petals in the air,
"going, 'kansas, they say, is the name of the star.'" yup, i did that. robby: the thing that iremember mostabout our platinum party was when we got there, all the food was gone. and like, here we are,we're the big rock stars comin' in to have a platinum party, we sold a million records, you know. and i think there was a chicken wing left over there, and a there's a couple of chocolate chip cookies in this corner, and... meanwhile, all these new york people had eaten all our food.
dave: the record label, those guys went crazy for the leftoverture album. they just couldn't believe that these guys had put together an album that was as powerful as it was musically, but also had a potential. and from that moment on... pooh! don kirshner recouped his over $1 million, and he got all his money back, and of course he had all our publishing, so ka-ching. he risked all that investment and all that time believing in us. the pressures he must have had from the record company at cbs, going, "don, you're insane! these guys are never gonna have a hit."
can you imagine him walking back into cbs, going "kansas, top-five hit." kerry: we went to headline status. phil: plus, we're not opening for people anymore, we're headlining on our own. we're making a lot of money. so now we have buses, and we have trucks, and production... and our crew of three is now 15, and entourages, and people and managers. and record company people are actually coming to the gigs. where before, we'd invite them, they'd go, "sorry, man, i'm busy with the ramones" or something.
now, they're coming to kansas gigs and for the first time we were a little bit cool. just a little bit cool. steve had eclipsed robby as a vocalist. steve used to just sit behind his organ. he began to come out and be the lead singer of kansas. ♪ masquerading as a man with a reason ♪ ♪ my charade is the event of the season ♪ ♪ and if i claim to be a wise man ♪ ♪ well, it surely meansthat i don't know ♪
♪ on a stormy sea of moving emotion ♪ ♪ tossed around, i'm like a ship on the ocean ♪ ♪ i set a course for winds of fortune ♪ ♪ but i hear the voices say ♪ ♪ carry on my wayward son ♪ steve: you know, i started stepping out a little bit more and trying to deliver it, sell it, a little bit more. robby: steve's going through a lot of changes in my life, and i never was really surprised, maybe a little surprised, but never shocked
by any of them, i expected him to do something different, because he always did. garth: it just grew and grew, and again, the live performance of this band told them probably more than radio could tell them. to the key to everything that moves you in live music, rock is that root. it's what makes us all get up, pump our fist and feel like we can go home now and transfer that energy into whatever we doand be a monster at it. phil: leftoverture is leaving a huge trail of success all over the world, really. the groundwork we had laid with those other albums,
now the fan base was just doubling and tripling. we're finally coming off our first headlining tour knowing this record had sold two, three, four million copies. it was time for a new record. richard: now there's more record company pressure on us to repeat. and we start working onthe point of know returnalbum. but it was also time to renegotiate our contract with cbs records. this is now a multi-platinum album band, who, at that point owed cbs 10 albums
for next to nothing in royalties, and you know, something could be done. i took a page out of irving azoff's book, who i admire, and went in just tore upthe contract and said, "i know you want another record. we're not going to give it to you." we were successful in getting an agreement with cbs where they felt good and the band felt good now that if we can follow this up and make another record like this, we're going to do real well. jeff: for the first time, there was this great expectation. there's going to be a hit.
the record's going to be bigger than the last one. phil: point of know return. it was a title me and budd carr came up with. art director was tom drennon and the cover art was by peter lloyd. and some sort of object going over something that was to the point of no return. start working on the songs, and, man, it was just... kerry and steve were now on all cylinders. ♪ he had a thousand ideas ♪ ♪ you might haveheard his name ♪
♪ he lived alone with his vision ♪ ♪ not looking for fortune or fame ♪ the album was coming along great, then kerry walks in one day with another song. i had come up with this finger exercise to learn how to finger pick. and i had this little studio in what was the dining room of our house. and my wife, vicky,used to walk backand forth and she said, "you know, you should do something with that thing." i said, "no, honey, this is just an exercise. don't bother me." and she said, "no, i'm telling you, you should do something with that."
phil: i remember kerry talking to me on the phone. he called me and he said, "i have a very different song that i want to play you guys." i said, "sure, what..." and he goes, "it's an acoustic song." and i said, "okay." he said, "no, i'm serious. just acoustic guitar. "there's not going to beany drums, nothing." so i played it for him. and when the tape finished playing, there was this kind of a stunned silence. and i think dave said, "kerry, where has this been?" i said, "what? you mean you like it?"
we all knew dust in the wind was going to be a hit. we didn't think it was a hit. we just knew it was going to be a hit. ♪ i close my eyes ♪ ♪ only for a moment ♪ ♪ and the moment's gone ♪ ♪ all my dreams ♪ ♪ pass before my eyes, a curiosity ♪ ♪ dust in the wind ♪ ♪ all we are is dust in the wind ♪
♪ oh ♪ i mean, it was automatic. this was a band that never agreed on anything. not on that song. i don't remember if there was any physical contact, like hugging or slappingor high-fiving, but it was a unanimous, "kerry, that is just stellar." a finger exercise turns into dust in the wind? what? [laughing] what? you know, "yeah, i'm just gonna practice my finger picking,"
and you know, his wife walks by and makes a comment. and the next thing we know we have the biggest song we've ever had in the history of the band. and not only that, it's one of the biggest songs ever. david: there are a lot of songs that were sort of pondering reality. very few of them from the '70s are still being played and still being loved. and that's because i think there was a sincerity in kerry that carries through in the music.
the song is so magnificent. the simplicity,the beauty of the song. dust in the wind is just beautiful. kirshner heard that song. he finally saw what he'd been waiting for all these years. not that he didn't like wayward son, but he thought, "this is going to really be something." ron: when dust in the wind came along, and you heard the first line of the song, and then you got to the hook line, that was about as closeto mailing a hitas you could ever have.
phil: it went across all formats. it was even being played on country radio. rock, hit radio, aor, dust was literally played everywhere. garth: i heard that that whole opening lick, was just finger exercise, is what it was, which joe walsh, life in the fast lane, if you ask him... [vocalizing] it's just a finger exercise. and so, i love that those guys of that mind-set, that they can just take that stuff and turn it into something that not only changed individuals, it changed the world. what dust did for album sales
i don't think is as important as what it did for the band. it put them in a category of some of the most memorable artists in history. kerry, who seems like someone for whom music had a deeply spiritual meaning... ron: "all we are is dust in the wind." it was as good a line of a song as, "the answer, my friend,is blowin' in the wind." and that's the way i promoted it. i remember when i first heard it, i remember thinking, "that's good." then i heard it...like any song, i heard everywhere,
"sick of that song. kind of sick of kansas right now," which, if you were kansas, that is a great thing. the two-second test was, put the needle on the record, 1001, 1002... who was that? they could test you on100 groups, dead, doors,joplin, hendrix. i mean, everything was identifiable within two seconds. to this day, literally,when you hear the firstcouple of notes of it, people, old, young, doesn't matter, they know that song. ♪ i'm dust in the wind ♪ the record was an immediate hit, sold four million out of the box.
dust in the wind became the second signature song for the group kansas. now we're into the big places. -now we're selling out15,000, 20,000 seaters. -[audience cheering] two nights at the spectrum in philadelphia, you know, and playing madison square garden and sold out, playing the forum and sold out. there's nothing like playing for 70,000 people. it takes your breath away. played the canada jam, biggest crowd we've ever played for in canada, toronto.
i think it was right around 120,000 people there. kerry: this was not something we ever envisioned. we envisioned maybe the level we got to with masque. and then we would die out. phil: we were justexperiencing things that we never could have imagined. ever. we play a gig at the hammersmith odeon in england, and queen comes to see us. that's rockin'. i think ultimately the reason we're talking about kansas
in a documentary in the 21st century when most bands of that era are just forgotten is they were about the music. people can talk about the beatles, they can talk about the eagles, they can talk about all they want, put kansas on that list for me. 'cause these guys were not only rock, not only muscle, but intelligence, and i dug every lick of it, man. brian: i think this is why we and kansas hit it off so easily, you know, we had similarkinds of dreams.
we had visionsin our head of whatwe wanted to sound like and how we wanted to come across. and, um, the stuff that we all did in that time is kind of immortal. i could call it a miracle that they were fortunate enough to meet somebody like donny kirshner, wally gold, jeff. yeah, i would goalong with that. but i think it's meant to be. i think that when you have that raw talent, you have that ability to write,
and create poetry and be able to put music to it, it's a different kind of miracle. you know, it's not a godlike miracle, but it's this practical miracle. how do six guys from topeka, kansas, end up, you know, becoming one of the mostsuccessful rock bandsin the world? god, the chances werejust a snowball in hell. it always felt like there was kind of the destiny thing hanging over us or something. it took more than just that. you know, we never had a plan b. there was no plan b. there was never, "what are you going to do if this doesn't work out?"
we were always just going to make it in the music business. we didn't even know what "make it" was, but that's what we were doing. we're as different as six individuals can be, and yet we formed this group that had something special about it. i don't know what it was. it had something special about it that really reached people. steve: we were proud of each other. and we were proud of ourselves. we had something to prove, and it was gonna be hell or high water if we didn't. it's been... geez, i've lived a dream.
phil: we reached the point of surpassing all our dreams. the dreams that we had, um, the dreams that we imagined. from the very first album, you know, things that you'd always hoped, but you'd never... you would never feel that you'd ever get there. to me a band is all about a team, it's not about the individual people in it. it's about what a team can do, if they're all firing on all its cylinders together. i wanted to be part of something that was a lot bigger than i could ever be. being in a band is like being married, only i was married to five guys, you know?
that's a lot of work. dave: it's always going to be the guys first. and we all love music. but i like the guys. we're friends. steve: you've got to have people around you that you trust, and eventually that you love. you know, that's the thing about this band, is that they're the mosttrustworthy peoplethat i've ever met. after 40 years, i'm proud to say, you know, i was part of it. so, going back there and restaging that picture,
was really the first time in 40-some years that any of us had been back there. and to go up there and to stand, and to have the six of us there again, knowing 40 years ago we stood here, and to recreate that, it was, um... it was goose bumps. that's why it makes thisso meaningful. it was the journey, but we actually made it to the top of the mountain. [rock music playing] ♪ the sparks of the tempest rage a hundred years on ♪ ♪ the voice ofthe dreamer screams,the cause of the pawn ♪
♪ the king and the queen are gone, each piece is the same ♪ ♪ the difference between us is a part of the game ♪ ♪ darkness is spreadinglike a spot on the sun ♪ ♪ the dead are the living in the age of the gun ♪ ♪ while everyone clamors for the justice they seek ♪ ♪ the world is corrupted and the strong take the weak ♪ ♪ they mold you and shape you, so watch what you do ♪ ♪ the sparks of the tempest are burnin' you through ♪ ♪ spreading like wildfire, fallin' like rain ♪
♪ though they may promise, they only bring pain ♪ ♪ the future is managed, and your freedom's a joke ♪ ♪ you don't know the difference as you put on the yoke ♪ ♪ the less that you know the more you fall into place ♪ ♪ a cog in the wheel, there is no soul in your face ♪ ♪ run for the cover, millennium's here ♪ ♪ bearing the standardof confusion and fear ♪