Stevie Nicks Sings “Kansas City” at Kemper Arena in 1983
On July 14, 1983, Kansas City fans packed into Kemper Arena for a concert that offered something more than another stop on a national tour: Stevie Nicks gave the crowd a musical salute to their hometown.
Nicks was touring behind her second solo album, The Wild Heart. The tour had begun June 21 in Knoxville, and Joe Walsh served as the supporting act. Kansas City landed on the itinerary less than a month into the tour.
Her Kemper set was loaded with songs that now define classic-rock radio: “Gold Dust Woman,” “Dreams,” “Leather and Lace,” “Stand Back,” “Gypsy,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Edge of Seventeen.” She closed with “Rhiannon.”
But one selection made this show uniquely Kansas City.
Early in the performance, Nicks included “Kansas City,” the rhythm-and-blues standard written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Surviving set-list records specifically document the hometown-themed addition at Kemper; it does not appear on the documented set list from her very next show.
For local fans, it must have been one of those wonderfully unexpected concert moments—the instant a superstar acknowledges the city and an arena full of people realizes they’re hearing something special.
In the 1980s, Kemper hosted seemingly everyone. But on this summer night in 1983, Stevie Nicks made Kansas City part of the show.
Image Credit: GorianEmpathy, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
