“Many times, I don’t know what I’m going to do until I hear, ‘Roll it,’ ” Kansas guitarist Rich Williams tells Guitar Player. “I don’t like going in too rehearsed because I like the panic of not knowing where I’m going.” He recalls that Steve Morse, a member of Kansas from 1985 to 1991, dubbed him “Mr. One-Take.” “I’ve been very fortunate at creating in the moment.”
Few of those moments have had the impact of “Dust in the Wind,” the 1978 single from the group’s 1977 album, Point of Know Return. Written by founding guitarist Kerry Livgren, it’s the biggest hit Kansas ever had, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earning triple-Platinum certification in 2019.
But getting to that point was anything but easy. In fact, “Dust in the Wind” might have never happened were it not for a passing suggestion from Livgren’s wife. As the guitarist revealed years ago, the song developed out of a fingerpicking exercise he created.
“One day I was sitting at home in between tours, and my wife heard me doing this acoustic fingerpicking bit,” he explained. “She said, ‘That sounds really nice, You should make it into a song.' I said, 'Nah, it’s just an exercise.'
“I was reading a book of American Indian poetry at the time, and happened to come across this line: ‘All we are is dust in the wind.’ It really struck me and stuck with me. I was humming that line along with this fingerpicking exercise, and 15 minutes later I had a song. I put it down on a little four-track analog tape recorder and took it to a rehearsal.
“When I played it for the band, there was stunned silence.”
Williams supports that. In a 2018 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he recalled how Livgren played “a real rough recording” of the song on which he mumbled the lyrics. Despite the bare-bones nature of what they heard, Williams recalled, “We said: ‘That’s our next single.’ ”
“I had never done much acoustic guitar fingerpicking. I had taken banjo lessons, so I was used to playing with metal picks."
— Rich WIlliams
But as Williams tells Guitar Player, playing the song’s circular, repeating fingerpicked acoustic lines over its three-and-a-half minute length was a chore that nearly broke him. To make matters worse, the guitar was quadruple-tracked with a second acoustic, a nylon-string guitar and another nylon-string in Nashville tuning.
“I had never done much acoustic guitar fingerpicking at all,” he says. “I had once borrowed a banjo from a friend of mine and taken some banjo lessons, so I was used to playing with metal picks, which is what I used on this.”
His guitar of choice was a Martin D-28, which now resides in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, thanks to its use on this song. But that honor probably belongs to Williams, considering what he went through to record it.
“Back then, on those old tape machines, you couldn’t even punch in a part; you had to record it in its entirety,” he says. “So it took all day to record, just me alone with a naked, acoustic guitar. It was double-tracked on a Martin, and then I added a nylon-string guitar and double-tracked that with a high-strung [Nashville-tuned] guitar.”
Unfortunately, he says, “I’d get to the end and hit a clam, and then it was, ‘Damn, now I’ve got to start over again!’ After a while, ear fatigue was really wearing on me, but I got it done."
Williams returned to the studio the following day only to learn that everything he'd recorded had to be scrapped.
“I came in the next day, and everyone was hanging their heads, saying, ‘We’ve got to re-do it. Listen to this.’ It all sounded great, except in the background you could hear this noise from all the layering of the guitars. Those metal picks sounded like a team of horses running through the song. So we couldn’t use it, and I started all over again.”
"Those metal picks sounded like a team of horses running through the song. So we couldn’t use it, and I started all over again."
— Rich Williams
Williams eventually got the job done, but at a cost. “My fingers were bleeding by the time we were done with it,” he says. “And, obviously, I got to know the song very well. I knew it inside and out by the time we were done.”
Williams is currently on the road with the latest Kansas lineup for the group's 50th anniversary tour. The band is also working on new material for an album, and the 74-year-old Williams doesn’t see himself getting out of the act any time soon.
“There have been some rough moments — usually they’re travel-related — but I’ve been through so many weird times that we just laugh at it now. It’s a complete surrender to and acceptance of whatever all of this is.
“We just roll with it and keep taking the next step forward, and suddenly 50 years is here. It’s a wonderful life.”
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