As Kerry Livgren looked down at the American landscape from an airplane in the mid-1970s, the view gave him an idea for one of Kansas’ most ambitious early songs.
The guitarist and keyboardist wrote “Song for America” while the band was touring behind its 1974 debut album, drawing inspiration during a flight to Los Angeles. The sprawling composition became the title track of Kansas’ second album in 1975 and an early showcase for the progressive rock sound the band would soon bring to a much larger audience.
Livgren wasn’t interested in writing a conventional patriotic song.
Instead, “Song for America” looks back at the country before European settlement, describing an expansive natural landscape before turning toward colonization, development, and environmental destruction. The aerial view that inspired Livgren gave him an unusual vantage point from which to consider the relatively young nation and the enormous changes it had undergone.
The music was equally ambitious.
Running just over 10 minutes, the album version opens with an extended instrumental passage and moves through intricate shifts in tempo and arrangement. Livgren’s synthesizers and keyboards are joined by Steve Walsh on vocals and keyboards, Robby Steinhardt on violin, Rich Williams on guitar, Dave Hope on bass, and Phil Ehart on drums.
“That’s definitely a full drum workout,” Ehart told Classic Rock Here and Now of the track.
Kansas recorded the album at Wally Heider Recording Studio in Hollywood, marking another step forward for a group that was still working to establish itself nationally. Song for America eventually reached No. 57 on the Billboard 200 and was later certified gold.
The title track was also released as a single in 1975, but its length presented an obvious problem for radio. Label head Don Kirshner cut the 10-minute composition down to roughly three minutes, removing much of its instrumental material. Although the single failed to chart, the full version became one of the most enduring songs from Kansas’ early progressive period.
“Kerry Livgren has written passages of music that are the most powerful things that I have ever heard,” Williams told Classic Rock Revisited. “He is my favorite writer. Hearing the way that we play those things, the way it is put together and the way it ends up after it is put through the Kansas meat grinder, has a dynamic power to it. Look at ‘Song for America,’ where that groove sets in and then it really kicks in and it is like ‘holy s**t.’ This is not just a bunch of blues licks; it is a gigantic, majestic, beautiful melody.”
Bigger commercial success was just ahead. The band broke through with 1976’s Leftoverture and “Carry On Wayward Son,” followed by Point of Know Return and “Dust in the Wind.”
More than five decades later, “Song for America” captures Kansas just before that breakthrough. What began with Livgren gazing out an airplane window became a sweeping 10-minute composition that helped define the band’s ambitious early sound.
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