LEFTOVERTURE (1976)
"It rises now before me, a dark and silent barrier between
All I am, and all that I would ever want to be"1. Carry On Wayward Son (Livgren) 5:23
2. The Wall (Livgren, Walsh) 4:51
3. What’s On My Mind (Livgren) 3:28
4. Miracles Out of Nowhere (Livgren) 6:28
5. Opus Insert (Livgren) 4:30
6. Questions of My Childhood (Livgren, Walsh) 3:40
7. Cheyenne Anthem (Livgren) 6:55
8. Magnum Opus (Livgren, Walsh, Williams, Hope, Ehart Steinhardt) 8:25
a. Father Padilla Meets the Perfect Gnat
b. Howling at the Moon
c. Man Overboard
d. Industry on Parade
e. Release the Beavers
f. Gnat Attack
As the band started preparations for their fourth studio album, Kirshner continue to pressure for hits, hits, hits. So, how did they handle the pressure? Let’s ask Kerry Livgren.
“We knew that if we didn’t do something with this album, we were gonna be permanently put on the shelf. That was such a pressure, that the way we chose to deal with it was to ignore it. And what we did was write and play the songs we wanted to do in spite of everything. And it magically worked.”
No kidding.
Leftoverture put the band over in a big way. Released in October 1976, the album peaked at #5 on the charts in April 1977 where it remained for a month, as part of a run of 42 weeks on the charts. This became Kansas’s first Gold album in January, 1977. It became their first Platinum album in March, 1977. It became their first Double Platinum album in June, 1977. It would eventually go Quadruple Platinum.
Going into the writing sessions for the album, Steve Walsh hit a major dry spell. His writer’s block led to Kerry Livgren writing almost everything for the album. That need for creativity apparently caught lightning in a bottle, because the results speak for themselves.
The opening song, “Carry On Wayward Son,” was the fuel that drove the train of this album’s success. It has become ubiquitous on classic rock stations, and also in commercials, TV shows, films, and everywhere else that music can show up. It is, for me, the perfect marriage of prog and pop, and remains one of my favorite songs of all time. The memorable lyrics, great melody, instrumentation & arrangement, and that glorious chorus combined with the breakdown to the piano in the first verse all combine to make a magical moment in the history of American progressive rock. I don’t think it will ever be equaled in cultural impact, from that perspective. And it almost didn’t make it to the album at all.
Livgren wrote the song on the next to last day of rehearsals before the band would go to the studio. They were not supposed to be working on any new songs at that time, only doing touch-ups on the songs already written. He walked into rehearsal and said, “I’ve got one more song that you might want to hear.” Everybody liked it, so they learned and took it into the studio with their other new material. “By the time we got into the studio and recorded it with the
a cappellavocals, everybody said it should be the opening cut.” Released as an edited single in November 1976, “Carry On” hit AM radio like a blockbuster and became the band’s first hit song, reaching # 11 in April 1977. It was eventually certified Gold.
The album’s second track, “The Wall”, is magnificent. Although not great in length, it is full of the power and majesty that was the hallmark of Kansas at their best. Livgren wrote the song sitting at his father’s Lowry organ. “It had this one setting that sounded like a big pipe organ, and the sound caused me to write in a little different veing than I might have with a guitar or a piano.” But the lyrics may be the real standout for this song. The song’s lyrics “represented maybe better than any song I’d written at that time, my personal spiritual longing to find an answer to life and who we are and why we’re here. I felt like I was just up against this invisible, impenetrable wall that wouldn’t let me get any further.” To, it’s interesting to compare the different directions that Livgren and Roger Waters went with the imagery of a wall. Livgren’s take ends in triumph, while nothing good really comes of Waters’s take. BTW, listen to the outro of “The Wall” and tell me what DT song it sounds like.
“What’s On My Mind” is another of the band’s more standard rock songs, both in length and arrangement. The guitar-driven song wound up being the second single for the album, although it failed to chart (a bit of a surprise given the overwhelming success of “Carry On”). Lyrically, each of the three verses is about a different friend that Livgren had had, with the third being the woman who would eventually become his wife.
“Miracles Out of Nowhere” is a fantastic rocker. This song has some really interesting instrumentation and production, with a cool counterpoint section during the instrumental break and a furious outro following the final chorus. On any other album, this would be one of the standout tracks, but on Leftoverture, it’s just one of the other tracks. Even so, this was a live staple for some time.
“Opus Insert” is, in the words of Livgren, “the great overlooked Kansas song.” I get what he means. The musical arrangement is really cool, and the lyrics are pretty good as well. This is another one, like “Miracles Out of Nowhere”, that would probably be better appreciated if it were on a different album. Very tasteful representation of what can be done with prog in a pop format.
“Questions of My Childhood” is, in my humble opinion, a filler track. I mean, it’s nice, I suppose, but there just isn’t much weight here, if you ask me. It definitely doesn’t hold its own with the rest of the heavyweights on this album. It’s nice, but nothing more.
The next track, “Cheyenne Anthem”, lyrically represents another link between the band and a keen interest in the imagery and narrative of Native Americans. I think this is a noble attempt on the band’s part to produce a song in honor of the Cheyenne. However, it doesn’t work for me. The verses, accompanied by a strumming acoustic guitar, just kill it for me. They are dull and dreary. And then, you have the short bridge sung by children. It’s a shame, because some of the other instrumental sections are really cool and interesting. But the whole is less than the sum of its parts. I’m sure that some of you will like this one better than I do.
The closing track, “Magnum Opus”, is a longer prog composition. It is composed of various musical sections that the band had written for other songs that weren’t used, or sections that had been cut from existing songs. They put them all together into this one extended piece. The original title of the song was “Leftoverture”, but Dave Hope suggested that would be a better name for the album as a whole, so they went with the name “Mangum Opus” which was suggested by Wally Gold.
With the success of Leftoverture, Kansas changed from opening act to headliner act. Before, they had barely made a living, but now they were making plenty of money. Also, now they could afford to invest more money in the live show with better production. And for some reason, they started to add slapstick comedy routines to their live show during extended musical passages. These would run the gamut from a roadie in a top hat, raincoat, and clown mask running on stage during “Magnum Opus” and drop the raincoat, dancing nude under a strobe light, to roadies running around in nun costumes getting disrobed. Things like this flew over the heads of most of their audience. Phil Ehart said “We just thought we were a bunch of funny bumpkins having a good time; we were just a bar band. We didn’t realize what a serious mode we had with our fans, with all these heavy songs and Kerry’s ponderings. So when we started doing funny things on stage, we noticed that no one ever laughed. They thought, ‘What do they mean by that?’”
Holy crap.
At any rate, the 2001 remaster release of the album also included live versions of Carry On Wayward Son and Cheyenne Anthem.
To quote the character Justin Hammer (brilliantly played by Sam Rockwell) from
Iron Man 2, "These are the Cubans, baby. This is the Cohibas, the Montecristos. . . If it were any smarter, it'd write a book, a book that would make
Ulysses look like it was written in crayon. It would read it to you. This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pieta. It's completely elegant, it's bafflingly beautiful," and yes, if you don't like this album, Kansas is probably not the band for you and you should probably move on.
Topic: The Kansas Discography Thread - THAT'S ALL, FOLKS (For Now) (Read 44992 times)