Kansas founding member Kerry Livgren hesitated to bring “Dust In The Wind” to his bandmates, thinking they wouldn’t like it. In a surprising twist, the song was a huge success and helped launch the band’s music career. Even though the song wound up being Kansas’s only top-10 hit, it almost didn’t happen.
Phil Ehart recalled hearing ‘Dust In The Wind’ for the first time
What started out as a chord pattern Livgren used as a fingerpicking exercise turned into Kansas’ most popular song. However, for several reasons, the “Dust In The Wind” almost didn’t exist.
In a recent interview with UCR, Kansas drummer Phil Ehart recalled the day Livgren showed them the song.
“When Kerry played ‘Dust In The Wind’ for us. We had never really done an entire acoustic song,” Ehart explained. “I think we had some acoustic interludes and stuff in some of our music. He prefaced it with, ‘You guys probably won’t like this because this is an acoustic song.’”
Fortunately, the band gave it a chance anyway. “Dust In The Wind” became their most popular song, landing at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Kerry Livgren’s wife encouraged him to write ‘Dust In The Wind’
According to Kansas guitarist Rich Williams, “Dust In The Wind” started as Livgren’s chord pattern for a fingerpicking exercise. It wasn’t until his wife overheard him playing it that Livgren turned it into a song. Williams shared Livgren’s story with UCR saying:
“He just came up with a little chord pattern and was practicing. His wife would come by and say, ‘That’s really nice — you ought to maybe write a song with that.’ He’s like, ‘No, no, we don’t do things like this. The guys wouldn’t really like it.’ But eventually, he did.
He wrote a song, and he brought it to rehearsal as we were working up the album. He said, ‘I’ve got one more song. We probably wouldn’t do it, but anyway, here it is.’”
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Despite being in the early stages of development, the band knew it was a hit.
“Just sitting there and him playing it was something I don’t think any of us will ever forget,” said Ehart. “Because we were the first ones to hear it, and it just blew us away. You know, it was so impressive, even in its embryonic stages. It was easy to hear that this was going to be something special.”
Once they heard the song, they decided to record it for their 1977 album, Point of Know Return. However, recording proved to be more difficult than they expected.
Recording ‘Dust In The Wind’ left Rich Williams with bloody fingers
Despite having a hit on their hands, recording “Dust In The Wind” came with its own set of problems. According to Williams, Kansas used older equipment that made the process especially difficult for him.
“We were using older machines,” the guitarist recalled. “So you couldn’t punch in anything. I had to play it from beginning to end. There wasn’t any spot in which they could just drop me in as an edit. It was a long process because there’s four guitars playing that.”
To make matters worse, the song required Williams to fingerpick the chords, which he wasn’t used to. He used finger picks on their first day of recording, only for the track to sound like “Clydesdales were dancing in the background.” After that, they had no choice but to re-record everything.
“I had to do it without finger picks,” Williams shared with UCR. “It was another long day of recording, and by then, my fingers were bloody, but we got it done.”
In order to properly record “Dust In The Wind,” Williams opted for an engineer’s trick called “Nashville tuning,” where he used a high-strung guitar to improve the sound. It did the trick, and the guitarist stated he utilized the trick on everything Kansas recorded since.
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