Seventh Heaven
An Interview With Billy Greer

	Photo Credit: Bruce Rusk

For sixteen years, Billy Greer has been a member of the legendary American progressive rock band Kansas. That's several years longer than Dave Hope, the man he replaced. While covering Hope's classic bass parts note-for-note, Billy has also enabled Kansas to perform authentic renditions of the band's vast catalog of songs with what is probably his strongest asset as a musician: his voice. The amazing three-part harmonies you hear at a Kansas show simply would not happen if not for Greer's powerful tenor chops. Joining a classic band with two excellent lead singers (Steve Walsh and Robby Steinhardt, of course) has put Billy's considerable vocal talents in the back seat. That is, until now. On the eve of the release of his first solo album, I spoke with Billy about his career from his pre-Kansas days to the recording of Seventh Key, the record that finally puts him in the driver's seat as a singer and writer.

House of Shred: I'd like to start right from the beginning, if that's okay.
Billy Greer: Alright.

HoS: What instrument did you start on?
BG: I started on bass.

HoS: How old were you?
BG: I think I was fifteen years old. My brother had been wanting a set of drums for a while and had been bugging my parents and what happened was, we saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and said, "Man, I wanna do THAT!" So, we just drove our parents crazy! He's like, two and a half years older, so he was going to put a band together with all his buddies from high school. Well, they started getting all the members together and the guy that was going to play bass, his dad wouldn't buy him an instrument, so they came around, "Well, you wanna play bass?" (Laughs) So, yeah, I was the bass player, plus I could sing a lot better than any of the rest of the guys.

HoS: Were you already playing at that point?
BG: No. I was starting from scratch. (Laughs) My cousin Alvin, who played guitar, knew three chords, C, F and G. His dad had played guitar and he had an electric Magnatone guitar. Alvin knew the three chords, so we just kind of worked up a three-chord song and from there, discovered that there were lots of three-chord songs out there, like Louie, Louie and Hang On Sloopy. At our first gig, we only knew the one song, but we played it over and over at a birthday party. You know, with guitars and bass running through the same amp.

HoS: (Laughing) ... and vocals?
BG: Yup. My brother had a really nice set of drums. He bought a set of Ludwig drums like Ringo's. He's still got those and they're probably worth a fortune. They bought me a Sears bass, black, trimmed in vinyl, you know?

HoS: Yeah. Was it anything like my first guitar, where the action at the twelfth fret was about three inches?
BG: (Laughing) As I recall, it was! Then, I started trading around and went downhill from there!

HoS: (Laughing) What kind of bass are you holding on the new CD?
BG: It's a Dean. Actually, I played it through a Pod. They have a bass Pod now and I've never played through one, but I understand they're pretty cool. I just used Mike's regular guitar Pod, so we got this really gritty sound. If you listen to it by itself, it sounds like PPPHHHHH... PPPHHHHH! (Laughs). It sounds like a broken speaker, but it sits in the track really well.

HoS: That's what you want. I guess it was pretty much the same for me. I didn't see The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, but it was a few years later when they did that All You Need Is Love thing that was on TV. That's what I saw and that pretty much did it for me. I think I'm a little younger than you.
BG: I'm forty-nine, so...

HoS: Yeah, I'm thirty-seven. I was about three, you know and I got this toy guitar and although I'm right-handed, I had to play it lefty because I was Paul!
BG: (Laughing) Oh, okay.

HoS: I didn't even know he was playing a bass. It was just a guitar to me.
BG: So, are you still playing lefty today?

HoS: No. I play right-handed and I don't play bass, I play guitar. Mostly, I'm a singer.
BG: Me, too, you know. It's taken me 'til I'm forty-nine years old to let the rest of the world know that I'm really a singer. I'm a half-assed bass player, but...

HoS: Actually, you're a pretty good bass player, but you're an excellent singer. It's nice to see you finally have an outlet for it.
BG: That's been my ticket, though. I've always gotten the gig over the really great bass players who couldn't sing or really great singers who couldn't play an instrument.

HoS: And it's the bands with the tight harmonies that really make you take notice. Like, if you walk into a place and there's a local band you've never heard before and they're doing really good three-part, which doesn't happen often, you're like, "Whoa!"
BG: The bands I've played in all seemed to have really good vocals, so...

HoS: You were in quite a few bands before Kansas. You had a band called Passenger...
BG: Yeah, Passenger. That band is still going on today.

HoS: Really? Wow!
BG: With all the same guys except me.

HoS: Come on! That's going back a while.
BG: Well, they all branched out for a while. At one point, they were touring as the backing band for... I don't know if you remember a country artist named Janie Fricke?

HoS: Yeah.
BG: So, they went out and did that and they've done a lot of other things. One of the guys kind of got a solo career started in Nashville, but now they're doing gigs and it's the same guys.

HoS: Right... and they're a rock band, right?
BG: Yeah.

HoS: But, they backed up Janie Fricke?
BG: Yeah, she needed a back-up band and somehow they got hooked up with her. They were on the road with her for three or four years in her heyday when she was at the top of the charts and stuff.

HoS: Hey, good for them. That was like mid to late eighties, right?
BG: I think so, yeah.

HoS: And then QB1...
BG: QB1... we had some revolving members in the band Passenger. Marty Cohn was one of them. He was a guitar player.

HoS: He was a good friend of yours, right?
BG: Yes, he was a dear friend of mine. He had quit the band and gone away and was front-of-house engineer for The Whitford-St. Holmes band. He had gone with them on a European tour and he came back with a pocketful of money and had written a couple songs. So, he asked me and Terry Baker, the drummer from Passenger, to go into the studio with him and record this song that he had written with my vocal range in mind and it was Cold Hearted Woman. So, we recorded that song and he took those tapes and moved to Atlanta to try to... (pauses)

HoS: Yeah, in a way, you built the band around those songs, right, because there was some local interest?
BG: We sure did. There was more than a local interest. I don't know if you've read the bio and stuff, but he submitted it to 96 Rock, the big classic rock station there in Atlanta, Georgia. They were doing a contest and were going to put out their own record of local talent with one song from ten different bands. Well, they did that and our song was song one on side one of the album and they put it in heavy rotation on the station and it became a regional hit for us. So, we had to go do a showcase at the Agora Ballroom, which used to be called Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom. That's where Kansas first played when they came to Atlanta. We did a showcase and God, you would have thought we were The Beatles when we walked out on stage. We had just kinda thrown this band together and all of a sudden, we have management offers flooding in and everybody wanting a piece of us. So, we signed with a guy named Charlie Brusco, who is Styx's manager right now. He's managed Lynyrd Skynyrd and he was The Outlaws' manager at the time. He's gone on to manage several major bands... Bad Company, I think he manages. So, he signed us to a production deal and got some money coming in for us, so we just went in and woodshedded and started writing tunes. Then we showcased for every major label in the world. Everybody thought we were only the one song deep. They kept waiting for us to write the second...

HoS: Of course, you probably disagreed.
BG: Well, looking back, I don't know if that song was just a fluke, but for whatever reason, we didn't have a second song to follow that one up with, so we kept getting rejections from all these labels. Steve Walsh had come to one of those showcase gigs at The Agora and he approached me afterwards because we were about to break up. The money had run out, so we were having to go out and play clubs and (pauses)

HoS: Yeah, and Steve lived there, right?
BG: Yeah, Steve lived there in Atlanta and he had quit Kansas and was putting Streets together at the time and he already had Mike Slamer and Tim Gehrt and had gone through a number of artists trying to fill out the line-up.

HoS: It's always hard to find a bass player!
BG: Yeah, you know? Tim could kind of sing backing vocals a little bit and Mike didn't really sing at all, so he needed somebody that was a strong vocalist on bass and he came to one of my showcase gigs. My manager had found out that Steve was looking for a bass player. So, he came and heard me play and we met after the gig and he gave me a tape and asked if I would like to audition. So, we set up an audition and I went down and it was scary as hell and I was sure I hadn't got the job and you know, I don't know if they were just at the end of their rope but they said, "Yeah, let's go with this guy." (Laughs)

HoS: Did you sing at your audition?
BG: No, I didn't.

HoS: I didn't think so. That's not usually the way it goes.
BG: No, they had given me a tape with three or four songs and I had like two or three days to learn them and go audition. I did okay on the bass playing thing, 'cuz he had heard me sing already and so they invited me to lunch and said, "Do you want the job? It's yours." (I said,) "Great!" So, that was the end of QB1 at that point.

HoS: Did Steve have label interest at that time?
BG: Well, he had been talking with several different labels, but I was pretty sure that there wouldn't be a whole lot of trouble in getting a recording contract, you know, it was Steve Walsh.

HoS: Right.
BG: It was a matter of choosing which label came up with the best offer as opposed to if a label would come in with an offer. So, we showcased for (John) Kalodner, who was still with Geffen, we showcased for RCA... I can't recall all of them, but we finally ended up going with Doug Morris who had come down and heard the band, from Atlantic and we did a showcase for him.

HoS: Do you think Atlantic backed the band as well as they could have?
BG: No.

HoS: I've always felt that Streets was such a good band that they really dropped the ball with you guys.
BG: Yeah, I agree with you. We kinda got lost in the big shuffle there. Foreigner records were coming out and I forget who else... some of the bigger names...

HoS: Oh, God... we all know how huge Foreigner was around that time! I think Foreigner 4 is still the biggest selling album in the history of the label.
BG: Is it, really? I don't doubt that. Actually, Steve has tried to get the master tapes for Streets so we can put them on CD and they will not give 'em up.

HoS: Yeah, Steve said he feels like they have it in for him somehow. It's not like it's some big cash cow for them. It'd be nice if you guys had 'em.
BG: You know, I've heard they've done the same to other bands, Blackfoot in particular, is what somebody told me. Blackfoot had tried to get their old tapes so they could release them on CD and they wouldn't give them up.

HoS: I just saw a new Blackfoot compilation CD and everything on it is good.
BG: I remember hearing that band... they were opening up for somebody in Johnson City. I can't remember who the headliner was, but Blackfoot just blew me away.

HoS: Ricky Medlocke - what a performer!
BG: I've never seen such energy on stage.

HoS: Supposedly, the guy's got one lung, have you ever heard that?
BG: I haven't heard that, no.

HoS: Supposedly, he has one lung, man and he sings like that! It's amazing! He's with Skynyrd now along with Hughie Thomason. (Outlaws guitarist/vocalist)
BG: Yeah, I've gotten to know Ricky over the years. They got such a good reception there in Johnson City where I lived, that they kept coming back and playing this big rock club that we had there. So, I've gotten to know Ricky over the years. He's a nice guy...
excellent player.

HoS: Yeah, very talented. I guess he started out as Skynyrd's drummer.
BG: He did, yeah. That's funny, isn't it?

HoS: That is funny!
BG: I'm living in Lynyrd Skynryd territory now, down in Jacksonville, Florida. Actually, my stepson works at The Free Bird Café, which is owned by Judy Van Zant.

HoS: Yeah, I've heard about that place.
BG: She set up kind of a Hard Rock Café type of thing with all the Skynyrd memorabilia and stuff on the walls and she has bands in...

HoS: She's still part owner of the band, too.
BG: Oh, yeah.

HoS: I've read a lot of stuff about how that's caused a lot of problems.
BG: I think it has over the years. Go figure... a wife causing problems in a rock 'n' roll band? (Laughs)

HoS: Yeah, ...huh, you know? Speaking of guitar players, I've always thought that Mike Slamer was probably the best guitar player that nobody's heard of, you know? I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment, but unless you're a Kansas fan or maybe a City Boy fan... you know what I mean? But, the guy is just sooo good!
BG: Yes, he is... and he's gotten better. I was really pleasantly surprised when we started doing the record. All Mike does is, he's a composer and he works in his studio about every day and he has mellowed like a fine wine, man. He has gotten better with age. He has definitely got some rock 'n' roll chops, boy!

HoS: A real good producer and engineer, too.
BG: Excellent producer. He's got great ears. He can do a great mix where everything has it's own frequency range and you can hear everything and the bass doesn't screw with the bass drum and the other way around. I can't praise Mike enough for the work that he did on this record. You know, he did three records with Mutt Lange producing, the City Boy records and he probably went to school on that one! I've always loved Mutt Lange's production.

HoS: He produced Foreigner 4.
BG: There you go.

HoS: Are you in touch with Tim Gehrt at all?
BG: No, I fell out of touch with Tim. Mike and Tim and I actually got together and did a quasi-Streets reunion gig out here in Los Angeles. It was like, early nineties and Mike and Tim came up with this idea but Steve didn't really want to be a part of it so we went ahead and got this other guy, a good singer that Mike knew out here. We practiced for a couple of days and did a little reunion gig at The Palamino Club. After that, Tim was working for Alesis. When they developed their first keyboard, he was working for them. Later, I saw him at a NAMM show and he was working for someone else. Mike fell out of touch with him, too.

HoS: Who asked you to join Kansas? Was it Steve?
BG: Well, one of the gigs we did with Streets, we played at a club in Atlanta and Phil (Ehart), Kerry (Livgren) and Richard (Williams) all came out to see the band, so they had heard me sing. When Streets broke up, we all kind of went home to lick our wounds. Mike moved away and I went back to Tennessee, where my family was from, trying to regroup. It wasn't too much later and Steve was actually out on tour with Cheap Trick as their backing vocalist and keyboard player. It was while he was on tour that Phil had decided to get the band back together. Kerry and Dave had gone away and formed the band AD and were doing the Christian rock thing, so Steve was going to come back as the lead vocalist and I was asked to come in as the bass player. (Steve) Morse had signed on to play guitar. So, Phil Ehart was actually the one who called me, but I'm sure that he and Steve had discussions about it. Phil told me later that when he had heard me sing live with Streets that he was really blown away with my vocals.

HoS: I had heard that Phil was Streets' manager, but obviously, that's not true.
BG: No, Derek Sutton was Streets' manager. Derek used to be Styx's manager and had worked with Jethro Tull in the past.

HoS: Do you think people accepted that incarnation of Kansas as legitimate?
BG: The Morse line-up? No, I don't really think they did because the band had become so "hit-oriented" because of pressure from the record company.

HoS: Also, I think the absence of the violin was a big part of it. I know as a longtime Kansas fan, I was excited to hear Steve sing again. I was familiar with Steve Morse and knew he was a great player... umm... liked the band, but to me it was more like The Morse-Walsh Band. I liked the band, but it just wasn't...
BG: It had lost its signature sound.

HoS: Right. What I thought of as Kansas wasn't there.
BG: Steve Morse did a heck of a job making up for that, playing so many parts on guitar, but...

HoS: And if anybody could, it would be him! And he got accused of selling out when he joined Kansas. I remember an article where he said that people just didn't understand what a difficult gig it was. I mean, he was trying to fill in violin lines, he was singing back-ups...
BG: It was so intimidating when I first joined the band because this is probably the best guitar player on the face of the planet and here I am looking at some of the other bass players that he's played with over the years and thinking, "Oh, my God... "

HoS: "I'm dead meat!"
BG: (Laughing) I didn't have a lot of confidence, but I had a lot of confidence in my vocal ability. So, it came around to where we started having to sing and we told Steve, you know, "Steve, you're going to have to do some vocal parts." That's when I saw the human side of Steve Morse because he had never sung before, so I saw that same insecurity in him that I had.

HoS: So, it kind of evened things up a little bit.
BG: Yeah, so that kind of made me feel better, you know. He could hit the notes and stuff, but you could just see that he was a little bit insecure about doing it. So, that made him seem human all of a sudden. That was good for me and I learned a lot. I learned to relax around Steve and he was very patient.

HoS: He's a real mellow guy.
BG: Absolutely. It's not like he was demanding, like, "You piece of shit, you're screwing up everything!" (Laughs) If you weren't getting something right, he would take the time to...

HoS: He wasn't Ritchie Blackmore! (Laughs)
BG: Exactly. He wasn't overpowering... very patient, very understanding. I learned a lot playing with Steve.

HoS: "All I Wanted" was a top forty single, wasn't it?
BG: Actually, it was, yeah. I think it made it into the top twenty. It was a top ten video on MTV. (Editor's note: For you younger readers out there, MTV actually used to show music videos by living, breathing rock bands! It was pretty cool.).

HoS: I think the single got up to like number eighteen, or something, which isn't too shabby.
BG: That was right before we went out to tour in support of the "Power" album.

HoS: "In the Spirit of Things" was the next record and you used some outside writers on that album and I wondered why.
BG: Again, it was pressure from the record company to have what they considered might be hit songs.

HoS: What a shame, because with Bob Ezrin producing, it really could have been something.
BG: You know, I think the record company missed the boat on that. When we first signed with MCA, the A & R guys were Thom Trumbo and Steve Moir, who were really big Kansas fans and when Al Teller came over from CBS, he fired Moir and Trumbo.

HoS: Is that what happened to MCA? Because shortly afterwards, that company just went to hell!
BG: Yeah... and Tiffany was their big artist! (Laughs) You'd walk inside MCA Records and there was this big banner that said "Tiffany".

HoS: (Laughing with disgust) Oh... my... God!
BG: For, I guess his own reasons, he claimed the label of every band that had ever been associated with CBS in the past, Kansas being one of them. So, we did the record while he was there, but it got no push.

HoS: I think there's some really great songs from that era: The Bells of St. James, Can't Cry Anymore, Taking in the View. What are some of your favorites from those two records?
BG: Oh, geez! I don't even think I have a copy of those records... maybe on vinyl somewhere in the closet. It's been so long since I've listened to that stuff. House on Fire was one of my favorites.

HoS: That song rocks! The Bells of St. James is probably my favorite of the Morse-era. You guys were doing that back around ninety-three or so and it was cool to hear Rich get to solo on that song. I want to hear more of his playing. I just love his playing. He reminds me a lot of Martin Barre, you know, he doesn't play a lot of notes, but he plays the right notes!
BG: Yes, he has an uncanny ability to put the right combination of notes together and it's not necessarily all flash and speed, just taste, you know, putting the right notes in at the right time.

HoS: Right. I remember seeing you guys before the box set came out and you were performing Wheels on that tour and this was before the song was recorded. I was talking to Rich outside after a show and he said he was dying to record the song and as it turned out, he didn't even play on it. Why is that?
BG: They ended up just basically using Kerry's demo. I don't think that I played on it, either.

HoS: So then Steve sang it and David (Ragsdale, former violinist) put his violin parts down, I guess. It just made me feel bad when I read the credits, after what Rich had said to me. There was a single pressed up of the song, right?
BG: Yes.

HoS: It was probably just wishful thinking on the part of a fan, but I really hoped it would catch on because I think the song really connects with everyone from my generation. Kerry had written another great one!
BG: I agree, it is a great song, but without support... without somebody pushing it down radio's throat, you know...

HoS: The music business is so different now from when Kansas had their heyday in the late seventies and early eighties.
BG: We can't buy airplay today.

HoS: Do you think Kansas is handicapped by the "classic rock" tag?
BG: Well, I guess we are. We're too old to be new, so... It's really been a double-edged sword. It's put us in the minds and ears of a whole new generation and kids who listen to classic rock are familiar with the big three: Carry On (Wayward Son), Dust (in the Wind) and Point (of Know Return). So, it's allowed us to keep touring over the years.

HoS: Carry On Wayward Son and Dust in the Wind are two of the most widely known songs in rock history. Not that Dust in the Wind is rock, but it's transcended genre and become somewhat of a classic folk song that reaches across the boundaries of age, race and even religion. I bet there are thousands of people who are completely oblivious to Carry On that could sing every word of Dust in the Wind.
BG: I was really surprised when we were touring Mexico back in December and we had a lot of really young fans that would come out and when we played Dust in the Wind, the crowd would go absolutely berserk!

HoS: That's gotta feel great!
BG: Yeah, they all knew that song... every word. At one point, Steve just quit singing and pointed the mic out.

HoS: That must be awesome! Do you think the popularity of those two songs, especially, makes it difficult to market new material?
BG: Well, yeah... we're tagged, you know, pigeonholed as an old, dinosaur classic rock band. For that reason, they won't play any new material and there's no radio format that does play any new material from classic rock bands.

HoS: When Robby came back in '97, how did it change the complexion of the band?
BG: First of all, Robby was part of the distinct sound of Kansas; the way his vocals meshed with Steve's and his style of violin playing. Plus, he took back over the job of fronting the band, which Steve had done when Robby wasn't in the band. Robby's just really good in front of a crowd.

HoS: A great orator.
BG: So, it became more of what the band was all about when he came back.

HoS: He makes you feel like you know him. He's very warm and articulate and that just suits the band.
BG: I don't think Steve was really comfortable in that position. Of course, he had never had to do it.

HoS: Yeah, he was behind his keyboards for so many years.
BG: So, I think Robby was more comfortable with the whole thing and therefore, the better frontman.

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