As one of the original members of Kansas, Robby Steinhardt helped craft the band’s distinctive sound from their 1974 debut onwards. Also known for his work with Stormbringer and Jon Anderson, the violinist and singer was working on a new solo album before his untimely death in July 2021 at the age of 71. Prog remembered the virtuoso musician that year.
Robby Steinhardt once blamed Kansas for encouraging bad habits in his violin playing. “It wasn’t the band’s fault,” he explained in 1981. “But I tended to hold my violin onstage in a way that I could hear what the rest of the boys were doing. I was touching the instrument in a way that meant I couldn’t be anywhere near my best.”
Steinhardt was a virtuoso born in Chicago on May 25, 1950. He was classically trained, starting violin lessons when he was eight. “I was lucky that my adopted dad, Milton, was a significant musical figure at the University Of Kansas,” he said, referring to Milton being head of the music history department. “He encouraged me to play with the best musicians around, including orchestras.”
In 1972, he joined a fledgling band in the city of Topeka called White Clover, who became Kansas the following year. He shared vocals with keyboard player Steve Walsh – but it was his violin playing that established the band as one of the most dynamic progressively-inclined acts in the States at the time.
His importance to the Kansas style was obvious on their self-titled debut album, released in 1974. It gave them a classical sound that was both individual and refreshing. He was also a major figure on their breakthrough album, 1976’s Leftoverture, which sold more than five million copies in the US and featured the immortal hit single Carry On Wayward Son.
A year later they had their highest-charting album in the US as Point Of Know Return peaked at No.4, with Dust In The Wind becoming their only Top 10 single there. On March 25, 1978, Kansas made their live debut in the UK, playing a sold-out date at the Hammersmith Odeon, where Steinhardt was very much the centre of attention.
His colourful persona and erudite yet occasionally manic manner of playing the violin held the crowd spellbound. He overshadowed everyone else on the stage with his charisma and ease. This was the man who had become the face of Kansas.
“I love being in front of people,” he once said. “While I enjoy the process of creating new music in the studio, I just become a different person on stage. I seem to grow in stature several inches – and my hair just explodes.
“I don’t set out to be the one everyone looks at, but it’s the way things seem to happen, and I believe the fact that people are watching me means the others can just get on with playing, away from the pressure. That suits them.”
Steinhardt was never a prolific writer; he co-wrote just four songs on the eight Kansas studio albums he played on between 1974 and 1982. It wasn’t something that bothered him. “Kerry Livgren is better at this side of things than I am,” he explained. “I just don’t feel motivated to get involved as a writer.
“I contribute in the studio in the way I help to bring his compositions to life. Why should I try and do something that I’m just not very good at? It’s better for the band that I stick to my strengths.”
Steinhardt left Kansas for personal reasons at the conclusion of the tour to promote their Vinyl Confessions album in 1982. He teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Rick Moon on the project Steinhardt-Moon, who released a self-titled mini album in 1995.
Robby was the link between the band on the stage and the audience
Kerry Livgren
For six years from 1990 he was a member of Steinhardt-Moon/Stormbringer, as the aforementioned duo teamed up with Florida’s Stormbringer. This collaboration released two albums.
Then in 1996, he was one of the performers on the Jethro Tull tribute album To Cry You A Song – A Collection Of Tull Tales, contributing vocals and violin on A New Day Yesterday. The following year he returned to the Kansas fold. Over the next decade he brought his inimitable talents to such albums as 2000’s Somewhere To Elsewhere, which featured all five original members of the band. However, in March 2006, he quit again, saying he no longer wanted to be a member of the band.
Seven years later he suffered a heart attack, which necessitated a quadruple bypass operation. There were doubts as to whether he’d be able to play again, but Stormbringer got him to do the occasional live guest appearance with them as he got back on his artistic feet.
When I play Carry on Wayward Son or Dust In The Wind, I see what they mean to people… I come into my own on stage
Robby Steinhardt
He also played violin on the track Activate, featured on Jon Anderson’s 2019 solo album 1000 Hands: Chapter One. More recently, he was in the throes of planning a solo venture.
He’d just finished recording an album with producer Michael Franklin, and was due to go out on tour later in 2021 before complications brought on by acute pancreatitis led to his death on July 17 at the age of 71. The album, titled Not In Kansas Anymore: A Rock Opera, was released three months later. His passing robbed the rock world of one of the most important Americans in the history of progressive music.
Livgren summed up how much Steinhardt meant to the success of Kansas, saying: “Robby was the link between the band on the stage and the audience.”
The man himself said that it was the fan reaction to the classic songs that inspired him. “When I play Carry on Wayward Son or Dust In The Wind, and I see what they mean to people, that’s what moves me to perform them to the best of my ability. I need that feedback – which is why I come into my own on stage.”
An undoubted master craftsman, he was Kansas’ man of the people. “The fact that we’ve sold millions of records is a meaningless figure,” he said in 1981. “But when I see the faces of those who bought our albums, it adds flesh to the bone. Then the reason we do this makes sense.”
