Chicago (my thoughts)

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Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 20, 2022 9:08:34 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2022 9:08:34 GMT -5

I just found this thread! 53 pages! Chicago is one of the first bands I knew about, mostly thanks to my next-door neighbor (they had all their records). At 11, me and him also started play in a band, and before the guitar player would come by, we'd always play "Colour My World" and it's always been an important song, reminds me of the "Old Days" - in a rock and roll band hoping to make it big. I've always wondered more about Terry and Peter's relationship. By all accounts, Robert was very encouraging. I'm still upset they broke their "blood oath" by firing Danny, the guy who also was sober, who found out about the millions of dollars skimmed.

About five years ago, I went through a lot of their songs, but a few months ago, I saw The Terry Kath Experience (btw, the Director's Cut is on vimeo - twice as long!), and then the Chicago documentary, and then listened to their albums from the beginning, and would recommend people do this with everyone. Chicago I and II are very good, III not as much, V lesser, VI gets a little better, VII and VIII are my favorites. X isn't a favorite, but it goes better with XI. I continued to listen even after Terry's death (I sometimes think he's a part of the reason I didn't seek out the music so much) and liked a few songs, especially, "Love Was New" (but the awesome bass is low) and a few other decent ones, buy by 1982, I just couldn't listen to that foster production. I tried. I've listened to songs individually randomly, even the new album, but it didn't move me.

I did read Danny's book, "Street Player", "The Unauthorized Biography of James Pankow" (lots of great quotes, and a lot of non-Pankow stuff), and "Feelin' Stronger Every Day" which is the only one I had to get on hardcover. I like e-books nowadays because it doesn't hurt my neck or eyes to read on my big screen, and I also love to search for keywords. I also love googling quotes, and then finding the entire interview, and perhaps entire blogs with cool interviews.

I can't stop listening to Chicago these days! I usually like random, but after a while, I just think,"Go with it... until you get sick of it". My favorite part was finding favorite songs I never heard before, such as:

-Oh, Thank You Great Spirit (except the last 2 minutes, lol.. TOO Hendrixy - and I know it's a tribute song).. Only played live twice, and one time, the PA or something was off, and you only hear the last bit of singing.
-Something In This City Changes People -- I wish that piano intro was a bit longer. I love it.
-Searchin' -- I'm sure I knew this song, but hadn't heard it in a long time. I'm always moved by the line, "Now I know my life has meaning".. Nice outro, too. There's a concert, Amsterdam 77 perhaps, but definitely 1977, where Peter sings ".... I will understand" adding a "Yes I will.." and hearing Terry back up and sing, "Yes I wiiiiiill" and still have chills.
-Never Been In Love Before -- I LOVE the ballads Cetera sings that were written by Lamm and Pankow
-Women Don't Wanna Love Me -- funky as hell! Peter belts the hell out of this.

Cetera's voice used to annoy me; being kinda whiny. Reminds me a little of Henley. But if I had an epic song, I'd pick those guys to sing it, especially a song with oomph that needs power. His bass playing is remarkable. He's obviously influenced by Paul, and even a few songs sound like his. Walter thought "If You Leave Me Now" was a McCartney song. "Baby What A Big Surprise" is very Beatles-like, and the bridge especially.

I've been talking to music friends about Chicago, and most seem to hate "If You Leave Me Now". I don't love it, but I like it, especially the bridge. It's an eclectic band, and if that's what he writes and feels... but it sounded (in the doc) very secretive. I think Guercio did a good job producing, gave them their chance, but I don't trust that guy at all. Nothing he says. Besides the people I know, I'd check out YouTube comments. And the amount of disinformation is crazy. I'm an archive guy - I want the truth only. Anyway, some would say "Terry refused to play the song on stage and would quietly leave" - not true. I've heard and seen a handful, and Terry plays bass, but I think Guercio plays bass and one acoustic on the record.

I read all three Chicago books, and I looked up Danny's again, just to search keywords. At one point he said, "Terry and Lee were usually doing their own thing" and on an interview not too long ago, I read Lee say he and Terry were as "thick as thieves". One more thing about "Call On Me". The book (Feelin' Stronger Every Day) has both Peter and Lee's quotes. If anyone wants it, I'll go to my bookshelf and peruse for the exact quote, but Peter says how Lee showed the band the song, and was laughed out of the room. So later on (Carribou) Peter went up to Lee, and said he changed some words, and the melody, and voila. Lee says he didn't remember it quite that way, saying, how Peter changed it so he could sing and play bass at the same time, but acknowledged that they both helped to make it a hit.

"Song of the Evergreens" and "Byblos" are two of my favorites on that album. Although I always wondered why they chose Lee Loughnane to sing the lead on "Evergreens" since he really only sounds like a weaker-voiced version of Kath anyway.

This was my thought exactly. But after listening to about a hundred Chicago concerts in the last few months, you can hear Terry say something like how everyone is writing, and how "We're particularly proud of Lee Loughnane, our trumpet player" and then introduces "Call On Me".

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 20, 2022 9:33:46 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2022 9:33:46 GMT -5 www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjjhYLr1Yf5AhXzOX0KHbknB8cQFnoECB8QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.legislature.mi.gov%2FPublications%2FFirearms.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0u5czEFANRXsOUpEQh5CDM

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Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 20, 2022 10:16:09 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Jul 20, 2022 10:16:09 GMT -5

Lowdown
Peter/Terry (with Michelle)
They only let Peter sing ONE song after a #1 hit!
The ROad
just you n me (high heeled boys)
little one (isolated vocals)
70s brass was too loud... guitar too quiet.... Terry's wah-wah
interpersonal problems....

lack of interviews!

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Chicago (my thoughts) Aug 16, 2022 19:05:08 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2022 19:05:08 GMT -5

EDIT a little

This page has been popular for YEARS because, well for me, music (movies, and stand-up) is all I've ever had in my long life. I'm interested in the truth, but yeah, I'd love to hear a nice story that took place between Terry and Peter, for example. I've spent days reading all these, and can't reply to all of them, so I'll try to do this the best I can.

Chicago is one of the first bands I knew about, mostly thanks to my next-door neighbor (they had all their records). At 11, me and him also started play in a band, and before the guitar player would come by, we'd always play "Colour My World" and it's always been an important song, reminds me of the "Old Days" - in a rock and roll band hoping to make it big. I've always wondered more about Terry and Peter's relationship. By all accounts, Robert was very encouraging. I'm still upset they broke their "blood oath" by firing Danny, the guy who also was sober, who found out about the millions of dollars skimmed.

About five years ago, I went through a lot of their songs, but a few months ago, I saw The Terry Kath Experience (btw, the Director's Cut is on vimeo - twice as long!), and then the Chicago documentary, and then listened to their albums from the beginning, and would recommend people do this with everyone. Chicago I and II are very good, III not as much, V lesser, VI gets a little better, VII and VIII are my favorites. X isn't a favorite, but it goes better with XI. I continued to listen even after Terry's death (I sometimes think he's a part of the reason I didn't seek out the music so much) and liked a few songs, especially, "Love Was New" (but the awesome bass is low) and a few other decent ones, buy by 1982, I just couldn't listen to that foster production. I tried. I've listened to songs individually randomly, even the new album, but it didn't move me.

I did read Danny's book, "Street Player", "The Unauthorized Biography of James Pankow" (lots of great quotes, and a lot of non-Pankow stuff), and "Feelin' Stronger Every Day" which is the only one I had to get on hardcover. I like e-books nowadays because it doesn't hurt my neck or eyes to read on my big screen, and I also love to search for keywords. I also love googling quotes, and then finding the entire interview, and perhaps entire blogs with cool interviews.

I can't stop listening to Chicago these days! I usually like random, but after a while, I just think,"Go with it... until you get sick of it". My favorite part was finding favorite songs I never heard before, such as:

-Oh, Thank You Great Spirit (except the last 2 minutes, lol.. TOO Hendrixy - and I know it's a tribute song).. Only played live twice, and one time, the PA or something was off, and you only hear the last bit of singing.
-Something In This City Changes People -- I wish that piano intro was a bit longer. I love it.
-Searchin' -- I'm sure I knew this song, but hadn't heard it in a long time. I'm always moved by the line, "Now I know my life has meaning".. Nice outro, too. There's a concert, Amsterdam 77 perhaps, but definitely 1977, where Peter sings ".... I will understand" adding a "Yes I will.." and hearing Terry back up and sing, "Yes I wiiiiiill" and still have chills.
-Never Been In Love Before -- I LOVE the ballads Cetera sings that were written by Lamm and Pankow
-Women Don't Wanna Love Me -- funky as hell! Peter belts the hell out of this.

Cetera's voice used to annoy me; being kinda whiny. Reminds me a little of Henley. But if I had an epic song, I'd pick those guys to sing it, especially a song with oomph that needs power. His bass playing is remarkable. He's obviously influenced by Paul, and even a few songs sound like his. Walter thought "If You Leave Me Now" was a McCartney song. "Baby What A Big Surprise" is very Beatles-like, and the bridge especially.

I've been talking to music friends about Chicago, and most seem to hate "If You Leave Me Now". I don't love it, but I like it, especially the bridge. It's an eclectic band, and if that's what he writes and feels... but it sounded (in the doc) very secretive. I think Guercio did a good job producing, gave them their chance, but I don't trust that guy at all. Nothing he says. Besides the people I know, I'd check out YouTube comments. And the amount of disinformation is crazy. I'm an archive guy - I want the truth only. Anyway, some would say "Terry refused to play the song on stage and would quietly leave" - not true. I've heard and seen a handful, and Terry plays bass, but I think Guercio plays bass and one acoustic on the record.... When "If You Leave Me Now" hit #1, there were 8 members in the band, so why did Terry (with Danny) show up with Peter Cetera at some England pop hit tally. It was at #2, and I think Billy Connelly asks Terry about the song, so he could introduce Peter..

Oddly enough, Peter said Robert was the only one who encouraged him, but to this day, Robert will say, "That just wasn't us" and then throwing a "I know it bothered Terry a lot" (but then why did Terry show up with Robert, along with Danny in England?)... Seems like Robert wants to help his case by throwing Terry's name every time he criticizes that stuff.

I think it's an OK song. I like an album with diversity, and with 8 members (3 lead singers with a trombone player who wrote almost as much as anyone) you are bound to have different stuff.

What's interesting is how after their first #1, they only let Cetera sing in one song in the next album. Peter didn't write a thing in the 1st album, but sang plenty on it. I think it was one of those, "Let's stop this thing", but then Terry dies months later, and they had to revert to "hits", especially with Robert behind a piano, Peter was the only front-man, etc etc..

I read all three Chicago books, and I looked up Danny's again, just to search keywords. At one point he said, "Terry and Lee were usually doing their own thing" and on an interview not too long ago, I read Lee say he and Terry were as "thick as thieves". One more thing about "Call On Me". The book (Feelin' Stronger Every Day) has both Peter and Lee's quotes. If anyone wants it, I'll go to my bookshelf and peruse for the exact quote, but Peter says how Lee showed the band the song, and was laughed out of the room. Peter himself said it was horrible. But later on (Carribou) Peter went up to Lee, and said he changed some words, and the melody, and voila. Lee says he didn't remember it quite that way, saying, how Peter changed it so he could sing and play bass at the same time, but acknowledged that they both helped to make it a hit.

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Chicago (my thoughts) Aug 25, 2022 10:27:52 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2022 10:27:52 GMT -5

According to Cetera, though, he needed some help. "I tried to help Lee Loughnane with a song," Cetera says, "and that song turned out to be 'Call On Me.' Lee had written a song. It wasn't called, 'Call On Me,' it was called something else, and it in fact was terrible. I talked to him at the ranch one day, and he was all bent out of shape. He said that he had played the song for the guys, and they had told him in fact to get the heck out of there with the song. I said, 'Well, come on, let's have a go.' So Lee and I went and re-wrote the lyrics and re-wrote the melody and came up with the song called, 'Call On Me,' which was a big hit for him." Loughnane remembers it a little differently. "Peter changed a couple of the words and the way he sang the melody in order for him to be able to play the bass and sing the melody at the same time because that's the way he felt it." Loughnane added, "I appreciate his efforts, and we did make the song a hit."

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Chicago (my thoughts) Aug 25, 2022 10:37:38 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Aug 25, 2022 10:37:38 GMT -5

In June 1973, the first results of the Caribou Ranch sessions were released in the form of the future-classic single, 'Feelin' Stronger Every Day. "I can remember the exact beginnings of that one," recalls Peter Cetera, who co-wrote the rock song that returned Chicago into the Top 10. "We were at the Akron Rubber Bowl, in Akron, Ohio, an outdoor gig that was delayed a bit because of rain. And so, we got there our normal hour and a half before the gig, and we're sitting around, and we were told we're gonna hold for at least an hour, and I heard Jimmy Pankow in the other room playing the actual beginning of that song, and I said, "Well, that's nice". I walked over, and I said, "What is that?" and he went, 'Oh, I don't know, I'm just messing around.' So, I said, "Well, God, I like that', and he goes, 'You do?' and I went, 'Yeah.' I went and got my bass, and we sat there and played around with it, and a few weeks later, after we got off the road, I went to his house, and we wrote Feelin' Stronger Every Day.

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Chicago (my thoughts) Aug 27, 2022 7:44:25 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Aug 27, 2022 7:44:25 GMT -5

Terry Kath, I think. He was the most outstanding (in the sense of “best” as well as “most distinctive”) vocalist in the band while he was alive. Cetera obviously had a sound that everyone recognizes, but for the first 5-8 albums he was more of an equal participant than the main attraction.

I think early on, Terry appeared as the leader, front-man. I also think his voice is distinctive, but not like Cetera, who you can tell a mile away. And I have small critiques about both. Cetera's voice is a little whiny, Terry's sometimes sounding too gruff and uninspiredPeter didn't write a song in the first album, but was always given songs by Lamm, Pankow, and even Terry with "The Road". Lee gave him "Call On Me", and probably should have, since Cetera helped make it. According to Cetera, though, he needed some help. "I tried to help Lee Loughnane with a song," Cetera says, "and that song turned out to be 'Call On Me.' Lee had written a song. It wasn't called, 'Call On Me,' it was called something else, and it in fact was terrible. I talked to him at the ranch one day, and he was all bent out of shape. He said that he had played the song for the guys, and they had told him in fact to get the heck out of there with the song. I said, 'Well, come on, let's have a go.' So Lee and I went and re-wrote the lyrics and re-wrote the melody and came up with the song called, 'Call On Me,' which was a big hit for him." Loughnane remembers it a little differently. "Peter changed a couple of the words and the way he sang the melody in order for him to be able to play the bass and sing the melody at the same time because that's the way he felt it." Loughnane added, "I appreciate his efforts, and we did make the song a hit."

Terry seemed to come alive on XI, starting the album with "Mississippi Delta City Blues" (I love the new funky arrangement), and then he has "Takin' It On Uptown", a rockin' song with no horns, only to end the album with the beautiful, "Little One". I really think they were going to move away from the softer stuff. After an international #1, they only let Peter sing one song, his own, "Baby What A Big Surprise" and it was by far the most played on the radio, despite great songs like, "Take Me Back To Chicago" along with the aforementioned. In this magazine in 76, he says, "Our next album (XI) is going to be more balls-out" but once he dies, and with Robert behind a piano (and admittedly having problems of his own), and Cetera losing weight, getting in shape, he was the only "frontman" and I think they did a 180, going with what hand they were dealt after the death blow.

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Chicago (my thoughts) Dec 29, 2022 7:18:31 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Dec 29, 2022 7:18:31 GMT -5

Hi, and I guess I'll give my "Introduction" and feel free to give yours. I love reading people's stories, especially if they saw the band in concert. There's a lot of things one can see that we can't on a concert from the 70s. I'm a musician, writer, archivist, and have been collecting Chicago (Terry Kath era) related stuff for decades. I love music, movies, stand-up comedy. That's about it, now that my traveling days are over. I am a talkative person, love message boards. Chicago is one of the first bands I knew about, mostly thanks to my next-door neighbor (they had all their records). At 11, me and him also started play in a band, and he was getting lessons weekly from Craig Frost (Grand Funk, Bob Seger) and it was a time I look back at a lot, especially when I listen to Chicago and other bands around middle school. Before the guitar player would come by, we'd always play "Colour My World" and it's always been an important song, reminds me of the "Old Days" - in a rock and roll band hoping to make it big. I've always wondered about Terry's relationship with each individual member, on a personal level. I try to google every quote, hoping to get the entire thing. I don't like hearsay and 3rd hand information. I'm only interested in the truth, which is why I've been collecting these newspapers, interviews, concerts for decades, despite being 40 - it's just a huge part of my life. By all accounts, Robert was very encouraging. I'm still upset they broke their "blood oath" by firing Danny, the guy who also was sober, who found out about the millions of dollars skimmed, so I don't blame him for focusing on that side again, not wanting to get burned again, and maybe wanting to show the band his worth more. I think he has a tendency to say the right thing once its too late, too. I've listened to a show from 1990, and although I didn't listen to it all, I didn't notice anything crazy, but he admitted he wasn't playing well. Oddly enough, I just read an interview by Peter Cetera that said it was over "stage presentation". Balding? Bad hair piece?

About five years ago, I went through a lot of their songs, but a few months ago, I saw The Terry Kath Experience (btw, the Director's Cut is on vimeo - twice as long!), and then the Chicago documentary, and then listened to their albums from the beginning, and would recommend people do this with everyone. I think I'd go for periods without listening to Chicago BECAUSE of Terry's death. I was about 12 when I heard the story, and so I try to find any interviews and articles I can.

I did read Danny's book, "Street Player", "The Unauthorized Biography of James Pankow" (lots of great quotes, and a lot of non-Pankow stuff), and "Feelin' Stronger Every Day" which is the only one I had to get on hardcover. I like e-books nowadays because it doesn't hurt my neck or eyes to read on my big screen, and I also love to search for keywords. I also love googling quotes, and then finding the entire interview, and perhaps entire blogs with cool interviews.

I can't stop listening to Chicago these days! I usually like random, but after a while, I just think,"Go with it... until you get sick of it". My favorite part was finding favorite songs I never heard before, such as:

-Oh, Thank You Great Spirit (except the last 2 minutes, lol.. TOO Hendrixy - and I know it's a tribute song).. Only played live twice, and one time, the PA or something was off, and you only hear the last bit of singing.
-Something In This City Changes People -- I wish that piano intro was a bit longer. I love it.
-Searchin' -- I knew this song, but hadn't heard it in a long time. I'm always moved by the line, "Now I know my life has meaning".. Nice outro, too. There's a concert, Amsterdam 77 perhaps, but definitely 1977, where Peter sings ".... I will understand" adding a "Yes I will.." and hearing Terry back up and sing, "Yes I wiiiiiill" and still have chills.
-Never Been In Love Before -- I LOVE the ballads Cetera sings that were written by Lamm and Pankow
-Women Don't Wanna Love Me -- funky as hell! Peter belts the hell out of this.

Cetera's voice used to annoy me; being kinda whiny. Reminds me a little of Henley. But if I had an epic song, I'd pick those guys to sing it, especially a song with oomph that needs power. His bass playing is remarkable. He's obviously influenced by Paul, and even a few songs sound like his. Walter thought "If You Leave Me Now" was a McCartney song. "Baby What A Big Surprise" is very Beatles-like, and the bridge especially.

I've been talking to music friends about Chicago, and most seem to hate "If You Leave Me Now". I don't love it, but I like it, especially the bridge. It's an eclectic band, and if that's what he writes and feels. And despite some bullshit being said - "Terry refused to play the song on stage and would quietly leave" - not true. I've heard and seen a handful, and Terry plays bass, but I think Guercio plays bass and acoustic on the record.

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Chicago (my thoughts) May 10, 2023 9:18:38 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on May 10, 2023 9:18:38 GMT -5

Peter Cetera: ''I was never comfortable with Chicago's jazz-rock label. I never liked playing it or being associated with it. Chicago was a bunch of nice guys brought together by music, but from the very beginning everybody's head was in a different musical direction. Within a year, I felt the urge to leave. But our first manager led us to believe that any one of us could be replaced at any time, so we lived as a group and never opened our mouths. The group went through three phases. In the beginning, Bobby Lamm and Terry Kath were the strongest members, in the middle Jimmy Pankow dominated, and toward the end I did.'' - The New York Times, Aug. 6, 1986

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Chicago (my thoughts) Jun 30, 2023 10:58:43 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Jun 30, 2023 10:58:43 GMT -5

Mr. Shy’s first composition for the band was a song called “Call on Me,” which was a huge pop hit, No. 1 Adult Contemporary hit, and the first song he had ever written. “When I presented it to the band, it was very sheepishly. ‘You guys wanna listen to my song? I’ve got this song here if you wanna hear it.’ It was pretty pathetic, but Peter (Cetera) decided that he wanted to sing it, and I think they had a problem lyrically with it, what are we gonna do with these lyrics? But they were wrong about the lyrical content, as simple as it is! It was a love song, it was unrequited, it was the end of my first marriage. I’ve gone on to end three others beyond that. This business is not one for long-range relationships. It was amazing that the song became a hit. I was excited about it, and I had another one with ‘No Tell Lover’ after that. Danny and Peter were co-writers on that one. ‘Call on Me’ I wrote myself. Pank wrote the brass part, but I wrote the song, music and lyrics. If I hadn’t been in Chicago, I would’ve been in the one-hit wonder category. But then we had ‘No Tell Lover’ after that, so I would’ve been a two-hit wonder!”

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 1, 2023 12:00:58 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 1, 2023 12:00:58 GMT -5 "Now this jagoff is telling me that Peter Cetera's Melody Mafia"

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 1, 2023 12:01:19 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 1, 2023 12:01:19 GMT -5 yes, he inspects ALL Harmony

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 1, 2023 12:05:34 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 1, 2023 12:05:34 GMT -5 what IS the SC on what a woman is? anyone I would fuck?

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 3, 2023 13:02:17 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 3, 2023 13:02:17 GMT -5 i.imgur.com/ZNw47hy.jpeg

Admin Administrator Posts: 4,289	Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 3, 2023 13:02:26 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Admin on Jul 3, 2023 13:02:26 GMT -5 imgur.com/bhI0ik1

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Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 4, 2023 15:02:50 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2023 15:02:50 GMT -5

DK: I also really like your hit “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day.” How did you write this song with Peter Cetera?

Here’s the audio of Chicago’s hit, “Old Days.”

Pankow: “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day” was about breaking up and moving on. (He starts singing the title hook). It was a ballad, but it morphed into a double-time rocker like “Magical Mystery Tour” (by the Beatles). And Peter joined me because I [envisioned] his voice, his tenor voice on the song. He also came up with the majority of the lyric. Because Peter would be singing it, he wanted to help me craft a lyric that was really singable and a lyric approach that he could sing and feel natural with. So he and I shared writing the elements of the song. I was more about the music, going into the double-time thing—kind of a part one and part two. The first part of the song has the slow tempo which asks the question, “Can I make it through this? Will I be alright?” The first part had an apprehensive but hopeful theme…I can get through this. And when the double-time comes in, it was, “Yeah Man, I can do this…Feelin’ Stronger Every Day!” So we went into this double-time and put a positive buzz on this song.

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Chicago (my thoughts) Jul 4, 2023 15:17:39 GMT -5

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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2023 15:17:39 GMT -5

Welcome To AlbumLinerNotes.com
"The #1 Archive of Liner Notes in the World!"

Home Page
Artists List
Chicago
Group Portrait
Chicago Box Set Essay

Group Portrait

________________________________________________________________________________

Chicago
Group Portrait (Box Set)
Columbia Records
_____________________________________________________________________

Compilation Producer: Amy Herot
Digitally Remastered by Mark Wilder, Sony Music Studios, New York
Project Director: Gary Pacheco
Design: John Berg
Package Coordination: Gina Campanaro
Liner Notes: William James Ruhlman
Special Thanks to Jimmy Guercio, Peter Cetera. Robert Lamm, James Pankow, Walter Parazaider and Don DeVito

This collection is dedicated to Terry Kath.
Cover Photo: Horn/Griner
Photo Research: Josephine Mangiaracina
_____________________________________________________________________

PERSONNEL
Peter Cetera - bass, vocals
Terry Kath - guitar, percussion, vocals
Robert Lamm - keyboards, percussion, vocals
Lee Loughnane - trumpet, percussion, vocals
James Pankow - trombone, percussion, vocals
Walter Parazaider - woodwinds, tenor sax, percussion, vocals
Danny Seraphine - drums, percussion, congas, antique bells, timbales, vocals
Laudir de Oliveira - percussion
(appears on Chicago VI and Chicago VII, and joins the band officially as of Chicago VIII)

Donnie Dacus - guitar, vocals
(replaces Terry Kath for Hot Streets and Chicago 13)
_____________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION (6:35)
(T. Kath)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

DOES ANYBODY REALLY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? (4:35)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

BEGINNINGS (7:55)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

QUESTIONS 67 & 68 (5:03)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, with Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: James Pankow, Robert Lamm

LISTEN (3:22)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

POEM 58 (8:36)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

I'M A MAN (7:40)
(S. Winwood/J. Miller)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Robert Lamm

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago Transit Authority, GP 8
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Fred Catero
Recorded January 20-31, 1969, New York
_____________________________________________________________________

BALLET FOR A GIRL IN BUCHANNON
(J. Pankow)

MAKE ME SMILE (3:29)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath

SO MUCH TO SAY, SO MUCH TO GIVE (1:02)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

ANXIETY'S MOMENT (:57)
Instrumental

WEST VIRGINIA FANTASIES (1:33)
Instrumental

COLOUR MY WORLD (3:00)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath

TO BE FREE (1:31)
Instrumental

NOW MORE THAN EVER (1:10)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Robert Lamm

FANCY COLOURS (5:10)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm, Peter Cetera

25 OR 6 TO 4 (4:51)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE (2:50)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago II, KGP 24
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Donald Puluse, Brian Ross-Myring, Chris Hinshaw
Recorded August, 1969, Hollywood and New York
_____________________________________________________________________

FLIGHT 602 (2:45)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Robert Lamm

FREE (2:16)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

WHAT ELSE CAN I SAY (3:13)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera

MOTHER (4:28)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

LOWDOWN (3:35)
(P. Cetera - D. Seraphine)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago III, C230110
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Don Puluse, Sy Mitchel
Recordists: Lou Waxman, Will Grur
Recorded November, 1970, Hollywood and New York
_____________________________________________________________________

A SONG FOR RICHARD AND HIS FRIENDS (6:22)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

Song above from the Columbia album, Chicago at Carnegie Hall - Volumes I, II, III, IV, C4X 30865
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Don Puluse, Bud Graham, Hank Altman, Aaron Baron, Larry Dalkstrom Recorded during the week of April 5-10, 1971 at Carnegie Hall, New York
_____________________________________________________________________

A HIT BY VARESE (4:51)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: Robert Lamm

SATURDAY IN THE PARK (3:56)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

DIALOGUE PART I (2:57)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Terry Kath

DIALOGUE PART II (4:12)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Terry Kath

ALMA MATER (3:52)
(T. Kath)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago V, PC 31102
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski
Recorded September 20-24 and 27-29, 1971, New York
_____________________________________________________________________

FEELIN' STRONGER EVERY DAY (4:14)
(P. Cetera – J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera

IN TERMS OF TWO (3:30)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: J. G. O’Rafferty; pedal steel

CRITICS' CHOICE (2:49)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

JUST YOU 'N' ME (3:43)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera

SOMETHING IN THIS CITY CHANGES PEOPLE (3:42)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm, Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Lee Loughnane

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago IV, KC 32400
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski, recording assistant: Jeff Guercio
Mixed by Phil Ramone; Richard Blakin, assistant
Recorded February, 1973 at Caribou Ranch, Nederland, Colorado
_____________________________________________________________________

LIFE SAVER (5:18)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

HAPPY MAN (3:31)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: James William Guercio, acoustic guitar; Laudir de Oliveira and Guille Garcia, percussion

(I'VE BEEN) SEARCHIN' SO LONG (4:28)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: David J. Wolinski, ARP Synthesizer
Brass arrangement: James Pankow
Strings: Jimmie Haskell

SKINNY BOY (5:12)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Additional personnel: Terry Kath replaces Peter Cetera on bass; Ross Salomone replaces Danny Seraphine on drums; Guille Garcia, congas; The Pointer Sisters, vocals.
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

BYBLOS (6:16)
(T. Kath)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Personnel: Terry Kath, bass and guitars; David J. Wolinski, ARP Synthesizer, Fender Rhodes, melotron; Wayne Tarnowski, piano; Danny Seraphine, hi-hat and bass drum; Guille Garcia, congas

WISHING YOU WERE HERE (4:33)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath, Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: James William Guercio, guitars; Peter Cetera, guitars; Terry Kath, bass; David J. Wolinski, ARP Synthesizer; Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson, background vocals

CALL ON ME (4:01)
(L. Loughnane)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: Guille Garcia, congas
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago VII, C232810
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski, Jeff Guercio
Mixed by Phil Ramone
Recorded August-December, 1973 at Caribou Ranch, Nederland, Colorado
Strings recorded by Armin Steiner, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________

BRAND NEW LOVE AFFAIR PART I & II (4:29)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Strings orchestrated by Pat Williams

HARRY TRUMAN (3:01)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

OLD DAYS (3:29)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Strings orchestrated by Pat Williams

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago VIII, PC 33100
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski, Jeff Guercio, Mark Guercio
Mixed by Phil Ramone
Recorded September, 1974 at Caribou Ranch, Nederland, Colorado
Strings recorded by Armin Steiner, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________

YOU ARE ON MY MIND (3:21)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: James Pankow

IF YOU LEAVE ME NOW (3:54)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: James William Guercio, bass, acoustic guitars
Strings and French horns orchestrated by Jimmie Haskell

TOGETHER AGAIN (3:53)
(L. Loughnane)
Lead vocal: Lee Loughnane
Bass arrangement: James Pankow

ANOTHER RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK CITY (3:01)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: Othello Molineaux and Leroy Williams, steel drums

HOPE FOR LOVE (3:03)
(T. Kath)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Additional personnel. David J. Wolinski; piano, melotron;
James William Guercio, guitar

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago X, PC 34200
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski; Tom Likes, assistant
Mixed and recorded March-April, 1976 at Caribou Ranch, Nederland, Colorado and New York
Strings recorded by Armin Steiner, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________

TAKE ME BACK TO CHICAGO (5:15)
(D. Seraphine - D. Wolinski)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Additional personnel: David J. Wolinski, ARPs; Chaka Khan, background vocals
Brass arrangement: James Pankow, Daniel Seraphine

MISSISSIPPI DELTA CITY BLUES (4:40)
(T. Kath)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

BABY, WHAT A BIG SURPRISE (3:05)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: James William Guercio, acoustic guitars, bass; Terry Kath, electric guitars; Tim Cetera and Carl Wilson, background vocals
Orchestral conception and orchestration: Peter Cetera, Dominic Frontiere, James William Guercio

PRELUDE (LITTLE ONE) (:52)
(D. Seraphine - D. Wolinski)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Additional personnel: Lee Loughnane, flugel horn
Conception: Danny Seraphine
String and orchestral arrangement: Dominic Frontiere

LITTLE ONE (5:44)
(D. Seraphine - D. Wolinski)
Lead vocal: Terry Kath
Additional personnel: David J. Wolinski, Fender Rhodes
Brass arrangement: James Pankow
String and orchestral arrangement: Dominic Frontiere

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago XI, JC 34860
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Wayne Tarnowski; Tom Likes, assistant
Recorded and mixed April, 1977 at Canbou Ranch, Nederland, Colorado
Strings recorded by Armin Steiner, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________

NO TELL LOVER (4:13)
(P. Cetera - L. Loughnane - D. Seraphine)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Brass arrangement: James Pankow

CLOSER TO YOU (4:54)
(D. Dacus - S. Stills – W. Schwebke)
Lead vocal: Donnie Dacus
(Released as the non-LP B-side of the single "Must Have Been Crazy," but recorded at the Hot Streets sessions)

GONE LONG GONE (3:59)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera

ALIVE AGAIN (4:05)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Donnie Dacus

Songs above from the Columbia album, Hot Streets, FC 35512
Produced by Phil Ramone and Chicago
Engineering: Jim Boyer with Don Gehman and Lee DeCarlo; Dave Martone, Kevin Ryan, Peter Lewis, assistants
Recorded May-June, 1978 at Criteria Studios, Miami, Florida
Fixes: The Record Plant, Los Angeles, California
Mixes: A&R Recordings Inc., New York City
Remixed by Jim Boyer and Phil Ramone
_____________________________________________________________________

MUST HAVE BEEN CRAZY (3:24)
(D. Dacus)
Lead vocal: Donnie Dacus

Song above from the Columbia album, Chicago 13, FC 36105
Produced by Phil Ramone and Chicago
Engineering: Jim Boyer
Engineering Associates: Nick Blagona, Robbie Whelan and Roger Ginsley at Le Studio, Montreal, Canada; John Beverly Jones at A&M Studios, Los Angeles; Peter Lewis and Brad Leigh at A&R Studios, New York
Recorded May 18, 1979 at Le Studio, Montreal, Canada and A&M Recording, Los Angeles
Mixed at A&R Recording, New York
_____________________________________________________________________

DOIN' BUSINESS (3:25)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm
Additional personnel: Mark Goldenberg, guitar
(Unreleased track from the Chicago XIV sessions)

SONG FOR YOU (3:41)
(P. Cetera)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera
Additional personnel: David J. Wolinski, keyboards; Mark Goldenberg, guitar; Ian Underwood, synthesizer

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING (3:32)
(R. Lamm - D. Seraphine)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Robert Lamm
Additional personnel: Chris Pinnick, guitar

THE AMERICAN DREAM (3:17)
(J. Pankow)
Lead vocal: Peter Cetera, Robert Lamm
Additional personnel: Chris Pinnick, guitar

Songs above from the Columbia album, Chicago XIV, FC 36517
Produced by Tom Dowd
Engineering: Michael Carnevale; Bill Freesh, Karat Faye, Ricky Delem, assistants
Recorded and mixed April-May, 1980 at The Record Plant, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________

BEGINNINGS (LIVE) (6:15)
(R. Lamm)
Lead vocal: Robert Lamm

From the Columbia album, Chicago at Carnegie Hall - Volumes I, II, III, IV, C4X 30865
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineering: Don Puluse, Bud Graham, Hank Altman, Aaron Baron, Larry Dalkstrom
Recorded during the week of April 5-10, 1971 at Carnegie Hall, New York

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It was probably at the Big Thing's next appearance at Barnaby's, March 6-10, 1968, that Guercio came back for a second look. Finished with the Buckinghams and impressed by the band's improvement, he took action. "He obviously decided that his initial opinion was correct, and he figured that we indeed would be worth developing," says Pankow. "So, he told us to prepare for a move to LA, to keep doing what we were doing, working on our original material, and he would call us when he was ready for us, and he got a little two-bedroom house under the Hollywood Freeway, and he told us that he was ready. We made the move in June of 1968. We threw all of our lives in U-haul trailers and drove across the country."

The band that moved to Los Angeles in 1968, now renamed Chicago Transit Authority by Guercio in honor of the bus line he used to ride to school, was in a creative fervor. Kath, Pankow, and especially Lamm were writing large amounts of original material, with Lamm completing two of the group's most memorable songs, "Questions 67 And 68" and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" just prior to the departure from Chicago. And once they reached California, work commenced in earnest.

"We got disturbance calls from the neighbors five times a day because all we did was practice day and night in the living room of this house," says Pankow. "The married guys left their wives at home at first because they couldn't afford to bring their families out, and they eventually brought their families out and moved into apartments around the corner from the house, and we just woodshedded and rehearsed original material. We wrote and rehearsed and wrote and rehearsed at constant writing and rehearsal seminars, and all of this material was what was to become Chicago Transit Authority, the first album." "When you think about it," adds Parazaider, "the first three albums that were double albums, and especially the first two, we had enough material for two double albums by the time we ever set foot in the studio for the Chicago Transit Authority album."

"In the meantime, we were working as an opening act at the Whisky A-Go-Go and college bars and other rock 'n' roll clubs in the LA area," says Pankow, "and by word of mouth, we started becoming the new sensation in LA. It started happening all over again. Jimmy Guercio figured that the Whisky would be a great springboard for people in the record industry to hear us, and indeed through those engagements Jimmy Guercio was able to negotiate a contract with CBS."

In his autobiography, Clive: Inside The Record Business, published in 1974, ex-CBS Records president Clive Davis tells a curious story about the signing of Chicago Transit Authority to Columbia Records. Davis says that he received a call from David Geffen (then an agent) praising the group, and that he waited for Guercio to bring them in, since Guercio had a contract giving Columbia first look at all his artists until the label selected three, and two (Firesign Theatre and Illinois Speed Press) had already been picked. But when Guercio did come calling, with producer Mike Curb in tow, he tried to sell Davis the Arbors, a group CBS had dropped from a subsidiary label months before. The wily Davis then insisted he would turn down every suggestion until Chicago Transit Authority was offered up.

It sounds like half a story at best. Guercio disputes it completely. He has a much more involved story to tell.

"I had invested all of my dollars in keeping this band [Chicago Transit Authority] alive," he says. "It probably created the seeds of resentment. It was so tough. I took them out of making $200 a night. I had moved them to California, and I knew they were my best project. The group does not know the struggle. I was beating the shit out of them in rehearsals. 'I don't like this tune.' 'Change the structure.' 'This isn't good enough.' And they were just playing bars. It was very tough. I wasn't real polite about it, 'cause we didn't have much time, and it wasn't an easy thing to do. So, you create a lot of resentment."

When he had the band in shape, Guercio showcased them for CBS at the Whisky (the date was probably August 19, 1968), and the label's West Coast A&R department turned Chicago Transit Authority down. According to the terms of the contract, the label was allowed three opportunities to see each act, and this was strike one. Later (perhaps in late September), they were turned down again.

It is perhaps worth pausing to consider Guercio's position vis-a-vis CBS at this time, since it seems simultanously close and somewhat adversarial, and would continue to be. Today, independent producers are an accepted fact of life in the record industry. But in 1968, producers were usually employed by record labels, and worked only in studios also owned by the labels. Guercio may have worked exclusively for CBS, but he was an early maverick.

"I was an independent producer," he explains. "I was not allowed to exist. It was like being the lowest form of life on the planet. These guys [staff producers] all had overhead, American Express cards, limos, salaries, and a small percentage. They all looked down on me - there were a couple that got along with me. They all hated my guts because I was making a fortune. I had everything signed to me personally, then I leased it to CBS."
_____________________________________________________________________

POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CHICAGO #2:
That Blood, Sweat And Tears Came First
_____________________________________________________________________

The group that later took the name Chicago, Walter Parazaider's "rock 'n' roll band with horns," was formed February 15,1967, and spent almost two years rehearsing, playing, writing, and preparing for the release of its first album. Blood, Sweat and Tears was formed in mid-summer 1967, but reached the recording stage sooner because of band leader Al Kooper's established record industry connections.

"I take pride in that we were the first to try this rock 'n' roll band with horns thing," says Parazaider. "Unfortunately - and when you look back at it I have to say I'm happy with the timing of the way everything happened - we just happened not to be the first rock 'n' roll band with horns to get out there on record."

Great minds think alike, but Chicago was there first.

But Guercio also had a demonstrated ability to deliver hits, especially with a horn band, which may help explain the amazing turn of events that now ensued. Blood, Sweat and Tears had released its debut album, Child Is Father To The Man, to only moderate sales, and had then gone through a reorganization during which Al Kooper was ousted and singer David Clayton-Thomas joined. Now they were preparing to record their second album. Three guesses who they thought would make a great producer.

The approach came at what Guercio recalls as an outrageous Hollywood party, during which Janis Joplin brained Jim Morrison with a liquor bottle. "Bennett Glotzer (BS& T's manager) is following me around saying, 'You gotta produce Blood, Sweat and Tears,' Guercio recalls. "I said, 'The first album's a stiff, I've already got a horn band, give me a break! Alan wanted me to do the first project.' He says, 'You've gotta do it. It's a new band. We've got this Canadian singer, David Clayton-Thomas. You gotta come back to New York. You gotta see it.' I made it so difficult because I was running out of money, and I was getting turned down by CBS. I said, 'Listen. These son-of-a-bitches have just turned down my group at two showcases.' He says, 'I can get anything you want.' I said, 'You get me a studio, you get me a hotel room at the Drake Hotel for as many months as I want it. You pay for all my plane tickets. I commute to LA every weekend. I fly in for four days. You get this band rehearsed, and I'll think about it. Call me Monday.' And that's what happened. They rolled out the red carpet, and they really were pissed off about it, but Bennett pulled it off. Nobody ever talked to me. Nobody ever put a [purchase order] in front of me. All of a sudden, from being turned down, not being able to get one penny out of CBS, not being able to get studio time, I got carte blanche if I'd do Blood, Sweat and Tears."

Though he was doing the project primarily to continue funding Chicago Transit Authority and to find a way to get them signed to CBS, Guercio was still faced with the problem of explaining his apparent defection to the group.

"Jimmy called me up, and he asked me to ask the other guys, would it be okay if he did the Blood, Sweat and Tears second album," Parazaider recalls. 'At first I was going, 'Well, jeez, man, that's horns and what's going on?' and I voiced that opinion to him. He says, 'To tell you the truth, I really haven't recorded horns as a whole band situation. I've recorded horns that did sort of blaps here and there or little parts here and there. This would be a good way for me to learn how to record horns.' I don't think it was lip service, because he really hadn't recorded horns per se. He has some background horns, and we were basically a band with integrated horns in the band, not as backup horns. I have to believe him on this because, if you think about it, what the horn section did, from the start, was a lot different than Blood, Sweat and Tears, and the sound was copied many times over after we got 'the Chicago horn sound.' So, I think with Blood, Sweat and Tears the horns were recorded in a much different way than Chicago's horns were. Of course, if you look at the two bands, you would say that they were really a jazz-rock 'n' roll band, where we were - they called us a jazz-rock band after Blood, Sweat and Tears faded away, but we were basically a rock 'n' roll band with horns."

"Terry was really pissed off," says Guercio. "I said, 'Terry, there ain't even a guitar player in this band. On top of it, I'm using studio players, and I'm only doin' it three, four days a week. Let's get this shit together. We'll blow 'em off the stage. Don't worry about it.' So, I'm flying back to New York, and I made the most antiseptic record you could ever make, but I thought it was pretty good. But I had a very tough time, and those guys really don't like me, 'cause I was just there for one album. Bennett got me everything I needed, and I felt there was a tacit agreement that I'd get a chance to record Chicago immediately after that."

Trouble was, the tacit agreement didn't seem to be getting any nearer to ink on a contract. This, according to Guercio, is where Mike Curb, also an independent producer in Los Angeles at the time, came in. "I called Mike up," Guercio says. "Mike was the only guy that would help me. He had a little demo studio. I said, 'Listen, CBS has turned them down. I'm having a big problem with Clive Davis. I'm going to do Blood, Sweat and Tears, it's going to be a hit, but they turned down Chicago again, and I've got to record them. I'm running out of money.' He says, 'I'll record 'em.' So we all went in, and we did a demo for Mike Curb (this is the recording Lamm remembers), and Clive heard, which I knew he would do. Mike immediately started touting it everywhere. The minute Mike had an interest and started calling everybody, saying 'There's this incredible band that Jimmy's recording, I let 'em in my studio, listen to this,' CBS changes their position.'

From the New York studio where he was producing Blood, Sweat and Tears, Guercio was summoned to Davis's office. "Chicago gets signed with CBS because Clive insists that it was a mistake by the California A&R department, that they never should have turned Chicago down, and he always wanted Chicago," Guercio says, though he doesn't believe the explanation he received. Rather, he has his own theory. "He (Davis) was trying to break me," Guercio says. 'And he ended up doing it. Chicago's entire advance was $5,000 when Clive eventually caved in."

So, through a complicated series of maneuvers, Guercio had managed to get Chicago Transit Authority signed to Columbia Records, with recording sessions scheduled to begin in January. Seven months after arriving in California, almost two years since they had formed in Parazaider's apartment back in Chicago, and after more than a cumulative half century of playing and practicing, the seven members of Chicago Transit Authority finally were ready to take all they could do and put it onto a record album.
_____________________________________________________________________

SO MUCH TO SAY, SO MUCH TO GIVE
Only the beginning
Of what I want to feel forever more

"Beginnings" by Robert Lamm
_____________________________________________________________________

In January, 1969, when Chicago Transit Authority flew to New York to begin work on its first album, it faced two problems it knew nothing about. Their first was the status of its producer/manager in the record company to which CTA was signed, with regard to a project it had nothing to do with. Let us return briefly to Jim Guercio's studio work of the previous October.

"I'm doing Blood, Sweat and Tears, I'm going over budget, I'm a total prima donna," he says. "But as soon as I finished the record, they told everybody the guy that swept the halls produced it" As far as the label was concerned, the cleaning man might have been an improvement. When Blood, Sweat and Tears was turned in for a December release, record executives felt it fell between the chairs of jazz and rock, and would be an inevitable flop.

"I finished the record, I am accused of destroying one of their best acts," Guercio says. "But nobody knew what the record was. It wasn't rock 'n' roll, it wasn't jazz, and that was it for me. I'm finished. They only shipped about 5,000 copies."

Worse than that from CTA’s perspective was that Columbia curtailed the amount of time the band would have in the CBS studio, instead scheduling in another act. (Recall that a CBS performer had to record in a CBS studio.) "They took all of my recording time because Blood, Sweat and Tears was not a hit. It was a disaster, and Clive Davis wouldn't take my calls," says Guercio. The group was allowed only five days of basic tracking and five days of overdubbing. And then there was the second problem. Although they were well rehearsed, the band members had never been in a studio before.

We actually went in and started making Chicago Transit Authority, and found out we knew very little about what the hell we were doing," says Walt Parazaider. "Being a reed player, I had done commercial jingles in Chicago, but this was a totally different thing for all of us. The first thing we ever did was with Roy Halee, who did all the Simon and Garfunkel records. He was the engineer. The first song we recorded - and we tried to record it as a band, live, all of us in the studio at once-was 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?' How the hell do you get seven guys playing it right the first time? I just remember standing in the middle of that room. I didn't want to look at anybody else for fear I'd throw them off and myself off. That's how crazy it got. I think that we actually realized after we didn't get anything going that it had to be rhythm section first, then the horns, and that's basically how we recorded a lot of the albums." (Halee, however, left the sessions after the first night.)

But after working out the basic mechanics of recording, the large bulk of material the band had amassed began to be a problem to fit on the then-standard 35-minute, one disc LP Though Terry Kath and James Pankow had come up with some strong songs, Robert Lamm had been especially prolific.

We were being encouraged and given carte blanche to create music of our own," Lamm recalls, "and I considered the very broad palette of a band with brass and a great guitarist and a great bass player and three vocalists, and just that idea was very stimulating. So in my own naive way, I basically learned by doing, and every time I wrote a song I learned something valuable about music and I learned something valuable about what the band was capable of, which was nearly everything. A tune like 'Beginnings,' for instance. When we got to California, there was a club called Ash Grove that featured mostly blues and folk or folk-rock artists, and I went to see Richie Havens. I loved the rhythmic approach that he played guitar with, and that inspired the approach to 'Beginnings.' All the time, I was writing lyrics about my life and writing what I was seeing around me, my take on what was going on."

If the band seemed to have a lot to say, both musically and lyrically, this seemed like the time to say it. Early 1969 was a period when what was increasingly being called "rock" rather than "rock 'n' roll" was taking on a seriousness and ambitiousness undreamed of only a few years before. The Beatles had recently released their two-record "white" album and had also shattered the previously sacrosanct "three-minute limit" for a single by spending over seven minutes singing "Hey Jude." Producer Jim Guercio and the band felt it was necessary to make a statement with the first CTA album.

'Along the way, we realized we had so much material that it was going to be a double album," says Parazaider, "and Columbia freaked out over that. They came back to us and said, 'Who do they think they are? The Beatles just put out their double white album, and here they want to put out a double album, and they want to have it black, and they're a new group. Guercio just went back to them and said, 'The group feels so strongly this is a statement of where they are right now, and we really believe strongly it should be a double album.' So, Columbia came back, the business people said, 'We'll let them have the double album. It's gonna cost us more money.' Records at that time were $3.99, $4.99. They said, 'If they believe in it so much, have them cut their royalties.' And we did, because we die believe in it that much."

Guercio's hand was strengthened in his roller coaster dealings with cm by a new wrinkle in the Blood, Sweat and Tears saga. While he had beer frantically trying to do the CTA album in a matter of days in late January, the BS& T album was becoming an unexpected hit. Released with little fanfare in December, 1968, it finally hit the charts on February 1, 1969, with "You’ve Made Me So Very Happy," the first of three gold-selling singles, following in March. By the end of 1969, Blood, Sweat and Tears would be one of the five biggest selling albums of the year, and it would win the Album of the Year Grammy the following February.

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Chicago Box Set - Page 8

Chicago Box Set - Page 3

This was, in a sense, a mixed blessing for CTA, since it meant that, initially - and in many subsequent rock history books - the group was seen as copying a band it had in fact preceded into existence. But BS& T's success also helped give Guercio the clout to get CTA’s debut album released in the form he wanted it.

Heard today, Chicago Transit Authority is a time capsule of the popular musical styles of the late '60s, with CTA’s own unique flavor on top. One can pick out the group's classical, jazz, R&B, and pop influences, hearing references to the Beatles as well as Jimi Hendrix. One can hear the band's own history: Kath's "Introduction," which does in fact introduce the band in confessional form ("We're a little nervous"), is CTA’s own version of the kind of funky bar band rave-up of Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance To The Music" or Archie Bell and the Drells' "Tighten Up." Midsong, one moves from the bar to the lounge for some lovely horn playing, and moments later one is in a concert hall listening to a screaming rock guitar solo by Kath.

And so it goes. "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" starts with an acoustic piano that is equal parts Erik Satie and Art Tatum, while the song itself is a bright, pop melody contrasted with a typically antiestablishment lyric. "Questions 67 And 68" combines a stately horn chart with some hot guitar and a musical cadence reminiscent of pop songs such as "Up-Up And Away" All through, there are the inventive horn charts, the sophisticated rhythm changes and startling musical juxtapositions, the alternating smooth (Lamm), soaring (Cetera), and soulful (Kath) singing that would become hallmarks of the classic Chicago sound.

Released in April, 1969, Chicago Transit Authority was played by the newly powerful FM album rock stations, especially college radio. “AM radio wouldn't touch us because we were unpackagable," says Pankow. They weren't able to pigeonhole our music. It was too different, and the cuts on the albums were so long that they really weren't tailored for radio play unless they were edited, and we didn't know anything about editing. Actually, we released three singles off the first album. We edited three sogs and released them, but AM radio was nowhere near ready for this kind of music. The album was an underground hit. FM radio was embraced by the college audiences in the late '60s. All of a sudden, the college campuses around the country discovered Chicago, and it was over. That was the beginning of the snowball. If you didn't listen to Chicago, you weren't hip. It was the college kids and word-of-mouth that made that album such an incredible, enormous mainstay on the pop charts."

The album broke into Billboard magazine's Top LP's chart for the week ending May 17, 1969, and eventually peaked at Number 17. By the end of 1972, it had amassed 148 weeks in the chart (and that wasn't the end of its total run), making it the longest running album by a rock group ever. In June, 1969, Columbia released "Questions 67 and 68" as a 45. It broke into the singles chart for a few weeks, never getting beyond the bottom third of the top 100. It and other songs from the album would be heard from later, however.
_____________________________________________________________________

POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CHICAGO #3:
Whatever Happened To Walt Perry?
_____________________________________________________________________

Several rock encyclopedias and history books list a mysterious early member of Chicago, one Walt Perry, who appears on the first album and disappears from the band and, apparently, from the face of the earth. Where is Walt Perry today?

Peter Cetera laughs at the question. "Walt Perry is Walt Parazaider," he says. "See, back then, everybody had stage names. I don't know why. Walt Parazaider was Walt Perry, Bobby Lamm was Bobby Charles, Cetera was in fact Peter Lawrence for a very short period, Danny Seraphine was Dan Sera."

Meanwhile, the band toured incessantly. "I booked every university in this country with over 2,000 kids in it and played it," says Guercio. "The album was selling like hotcakes 'cause we played about 300 days in 1969," says Parazaider. "You figure we should all have been dead after that year no matter how young we were. But we built up quite a following that way."

"Being from Chicago and working the kind of hours that we were so used to working - you know, we were used to a lot of work," says Cetera. "In Chicago, you worked a lot. There were always long hours, and it was hard work, and to be on the road, jeez, that was like fun. That was nothing. I remember in the part of the year we did, I don't know, 250 one-nighters, or whatever the hell that was, I don't know how many. We drove across all of Canada. That was fun to us. Sure, it was tough, but we were low income to middle income boys from Chicago who were happy that nobody was on to us that we were having so much fun in all this work, and we were very naive in every way, but musically we were happy, and that's why we did it, 'cause it was like, 'Jeez, can you believe this, they're actually clapping now.’"

The group's exposure was aided by some of the biggest acts in rock, who invited CTA to open their shows. "We toured with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin," Parazaider notes. "Jimi happened to come to the Whisky A-Go-Go when we were headlining there (probably in September, 1968) and he tapped me on the shoulder and he says, 'Jeez, your horn players are like one set of lungs and your guitar player is better than me.' He says, 'I've just gotta take you out. If you'd like to be my opening act, I'd love it, and I'd love to use the horns on a record.' Here's Jimi Hendrix at the height, the apex of his popularity, he taps me on the shoulder, I look right into his eyes, I figure he's gonna turn me into a pillar of shit. But he was very normal and just really, genuinely enjoyed the band. The same thing with Janis when we ran into her. They were really a big break for us."
_____________________________________________________________________

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

During the course of 1969, Chicago Transit Authority became, simply Chicago. Why did the change come about?

Manager Jim Guercio explains. "We heard from the municipal transportation district," he says, "that it was the proprietary property of the city of Chicago transportation department and that if we continued to use the name, they would look at all their legal remedies if we didn't cease and desist. It was that kind of letter. They never filed a suit. It was my decision to shorten the name. And I just didn't want to have any problems."

'As it was, we almost sued the bus line 'cause the CTA was actually using 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?' without paying any royalties, using it to plug their bus line," Walt Parazaider notes. But by 1976, fences had been mended, and Mayor Daley awarded the group the city's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Merit.

By December, Chicago Transit Authority, still without benefit of a hit single, was a gold-selling album, and Chicago was a famous band. It changed their lives. "Your life dream is to have a hit record," says Parazaider. "It was amazing because we were close friends, we had gone through all of this upheaval, emotional upheaval plus a physical upheaval of leaving Chicago, moving to LA at a young age, leaving our families, just rolling the dice. We stuck real close together, kept everybody's ego in check. I think (for) some guys in the group it was harder to cope with the success than others, just from the fact that the fame part of it wasn't something that really was our cup of tea. We didn't like it. I don't think there were any of us that sat down around my kitchen table that day in February in '67 and said, 'Hey, our goal is to be famous.' Our goal was to try to make the best possible music, to go for it and see where it would take us. It did change our lives, and it changed our lives forever because we became famous people whether we liked it or not. Now, the one good thing that seemed to help us is, we were the faceless band behind that logo."

Indeed, though critics would always misinterpret their intentions, Chicago's logo and its facelessness were very much in keeping with the style of the times, the late '60s anti-fashion that valued group effort over individual ego, a leaderless "movement" that eschewed stardom. For Chicago, the music was more important than the image, but critics, never known for their logical consistency, insisted on seeing a kind of creeping corporatism in the stylish logo that adorned the albums and berated the band for rejecting the kind of starmaking the critics themselves claimed to oppose. It was one part of what would be a continuing paradox in the way Chicago was seen by the press.

In between tour dates in August, 1969, Chicago had found the time to record its second album. Once again, the material was extensive. "I was writing all the time," says Lamm. "Especially during those days, I never really wrote with the album in mind. I just wrote because that's what I did, and for the next six or eight albums, whenever it became time to get together and rehearse to prepare to go into the studio, I just brought an armload of music and we went through it."

One of the first songs Lamm brought in for the second album was called "25 Or 6 To 4," a song with a lyric Chicago fans have pondered ever since. What does that title mean? "It's just a reference to the time of day," says Lamm. As for the lyric itself: "The song is about writing a song. It's not mystical."

Perhaps the album's most ambitious piece was Pankow's "Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon," which affected the tone of the whole LP. "The second record had more of a classical approach to it," says Parazaider, "whereas the first one was really a raw thing. The second one seemed a little more polished."

"Originally, I had been inspired by some classics," says Pankow of the "Ballet." "I had bought the Brandenburg concertos, and I was listening to them one night, thinking, man, how cool! Bach, 200 years ago, wrote this stuff, and it cooks. What a concept, I mean, if we put a rock 'n' roll rhythm section to something like this, that could be really cool. I was also a big Stravinsky fan, and his stuff cooked. These Russian composers, they boogie. It's classical, but yet it's got a great passion to it, and it's got some really rhythmic stuff going on. So, I kind of toyed with the idea. We were on the road, and I had a Fender Rhodes piano between Holiday Inn beds, and I came up with things that emulated the classical composers, but yet identified with the modern idioms. The next step was arranging some horn lines with these grooves that I had come up with, and then I found myself just going back to some arpeggios, a la Bach, and along came 'Colour My World.' It's just a simple 12-bar pattern, but it just flowed. Then I called Walt into the room, and I said, 'Hey, Walt, you got your flute? Why don't you try a few lines?,' and one thing led to another. These things were disjointed, but yet I liked it all. So, I figure, I wonder if I can sew all this stuff together and do kind of a mini-symphony thing. That's what Stravinksy does, after all. One movement is completely different from the next. Why can't a rock 'n' roll band do that? And, bang, we started rehearsing it, and ultimately it was a matter of just sewing these things together, creating segues and creating interludes to sew one little piece to another."

#4

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POPULAR MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT CHICAGO #4:
That it is a "college-educated," 'jazz-rock" band

Because Chicago got its start at the impetus of a group of musicians, some of whom were students at DePaul University, and because its musical arrangements are often sophisticated and daunting, the band has gained a reputation as being made up of college-trained musicians. In fact, it's a mixture in which only one performer has actually earned a degree.

"Everybody thought we were college trained," says Peter Cetera. "In fact, we weren't. The whole rhythm section wasn't. The only guys that actually were going to college were the horn players, and, I believe, Bobby, the keyboard player, was going for a while [privately], but, really, in actual fact, Danny, the drummer, myself, Terry Kath, the guitar player, and Bobby were all street musicians. I think particularly in rock music, it's okay to be college-educated, but by no means does it make you better or worse. I think sometimes the street player has the edge when it comes to rock music. Sometimes, rock music, the more you know, the less you feel."

Yet Walt Parazaider, who gave up a chair in the Chicago symphony to play rock, says it's Cetera who may have the best education of anybody. "Peter was playing when I was playing at 13," he notes, "and his education came from the smoke-filled bars, and you know what? That's a knowledge that you could never flop down your tuition money to get, because I saw both sides of that coin. That is as valid an education as me having the sheepskin on the wall. There were so many diverse personalities in this group that sometimes I had to wonder why this didn't blow up after about a year's worth of success. But we loved music so much. Peter wrote country tunes on the third album. There was also as much diverse interest in all aspects of music. Jimmy Pankow was a stone cold jazzer who loved the Beatles. Lee Loughnane loved playing big band jazz, but loved rock 'n' roll. The same thing with myself. And then you had people who loved the Jimi Hendrix stuff, like Terry, or just rock 'n' roll stuff, like Danny, and if you think about it, there is everything from blues, classical, the big band sound. It became a meld into the band where any kind of music, as long as it was played well, was valid."

A related misconception is the notion of Chicago as a so-called "Jazz-rock" group. "From our point of view, we were just nothing more than a bunch of guys in club groups that got together and formed a group and did whatever kind of music we wanted to do," says Cetera. "It wasn't until the press and everybody else got a hold of it and started throwing in that stuff about 'schooled musicians doing jazz-rock' - that just wasn't the case. Everybody, I think, was rock 'n' roll-oriented, except, possibly, James Pankow and Lee Loughnane, the trombone and the trumpet."

The second album also saw the debut of a new songwriter in the band, although the circumstances under which he became a writer are unfortunate. During a break in the touring in the summer of 1969, Peter Cetera was set upon at a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. "Four marines didn't like a long-haired rock 'n' roller in a baseball park," Cetera recounts, "and of course I was a Cub fan, and I was in Dodger Stadium, and that didn't do so well. I got in a fight and got a broken jaw in three places, and I was in intensive care for a couple of days.”

The incident had two separate effects on Cetera's career. The first was an impact on his singing style. "The only funny thing I can think about the whole incident," he says, "is that, with my jaw wired together - and I had a broken front tooth which allowed me to shove little bits and pieces of food in there and drink some liquid - I actually went on the road a lot sooner than I should have, just because of the economics of everything, and I remember, I believe it was the Atlanta Pop Festival, although I'm not sure if it was the Atlanta or the Texas Pop Festival, there were like 300,000 people there, and I was actually singing through my clenched jaw, singing backgrounds, which, to this day, is kind of still the way I sing. I have a fairly closed mouth, just because of that."

The second effect of the incident was Cetera's first foray into composition. "I came from a band that did Top 40," he says, "and as far as I was concerned, especially when the Beatles came along, number one, all melodies had already been taken, and, number two, certain people were songwriters and certain people were singers, and I didn't consider myself to be a songwriter."

But with a broken jaw, the erstwhile singer had some silent time on his hands. "I had just gotten out of the hospital," Cetera recalls, "and was lying in my bed convalescing when they landed on the moon, and I grabbed my bass guitar and started this little progression on the bass, and started writing 'Where Do We Go From Here.' I think Walter Cronkite actually had said that, and I thought, 'Wow, where do we go from here?' So, in a melancholy way, I wrote it about that, and then I wrote it about myself, and about the world, and about everything in general, and that was my first writing credit."

In addition to its expanded musical horizons, the second album also took a more direct look at the political situation. Chicago had included chants from the demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic Convention on its first album, and here one of the LP's extended suites was entitled, "It Better End Soon," a plea for the end of the Vietnam War. Though the lyric cautioned, "We gotta do it right - within the system," the title spoke to the impatience of young people at the start of 1970.

Similarly, the album's liner notes (penned by Robert Lamm) dedicated the record, the band members, their futures, and their energies "to the people of the revolution ... And the revolution in all of its forms." It is difficult more than two decades later to describe the multiplicity of meanings the word "revolution" had for young people at the time, and even harder to determine whether a "revolution" actually took place. Clearly, something changed. "I think there was one," says Lamm today. "You may argue with the term 'revolution,' but I think for those of us who were sweaty kids in our late teens or early 20s, that sure was a sexy word."

At the time, however, the band's political commitment was subject to some misunderstanding. Robert Lamm was actually the chief political exponent of the band, and he just felt the need as a composer, as an American and a human being, to talk about these things because they were major issues in his life, and he felt that we had an incredible platform and a gift, and we could use it for things other than entertaining," explains Pankow. "We were even at the point of putting voter registration information at concerts. Robert figures if 18-year-old kids were old enough to get their brains blown out in Vietnam, they should be old enough to vote. Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted by a lot of the nut cases. The SDS and the Chicago Seven and all kinds of people were approaching us on the basis of rioting, of, "Hey, let's tear the system down.' All of a sudden, we were being enlisted to become politically involved to the hilt. I'm sure that it had a lot to do with our longevity and people taking us seriously, however, it got to the point where it almost became a burden in light of the fact that it started to infringe on the musical goals. We started thinking about this, and we started realizing, hey, man, people come to a concert or put a record on to forget about that shit. So, we decided to put our objectives in perspective and entertain people. That's what we do best, that's what our niche in life is, and so that's what we decided to do, we put our politics on the shelf."

In commercial terms, the major change that came with Chicago II, which was released in January, 1970, was that it opened the floodgates on Chicago as a singles band. In October, 1969, Columbia had re-tested the waters by releasing "Beginnings" as a single, but AM radio still wasn't interested, and the record failed to chart. All of this changed, however, when the label excerpted two songs, "Make Me Smile" and "Colour My World," from Pankow's ballet, and released them as the two sides of a single in March, 1970.

"I was driving in my car down Santa Monica Boulevard in L.A.," Pankow remembers, "and I turned the radio on KHJ, and 'Make Me Smile' came on. I almost hit the car in front of me, 'cause it's my song, and I'm hearing it on the biggest station in L.A. At that point, I realized, hey, we have a hit single. They don't play you in L.A. unless you're hit-bound. So, that was one of the more exciting moments in my early career."

The single reached the Top 10, while Chicago II immediately went gold and got to Number 4 on the LP's chart, joining the first album, which was still selling well. A second single, Lamm's "25 Or 6 To 4," was an even bigger hit in the summer of 1970, reaching Number 4.

But instead of reaching into the second album for a third single, Columbia and Chicago decided to try to re-stimulate interest in the first album, and succeeded. The group's next single was "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" which became their third Top 10 hit in a row by the start of 1971. "Up to that time, to be very honest, I don't think people were really ready to hear horns the way we were using them," says Parazaider. "But after we established something with horns - '25 Or 6 To 4,' but actually 'Make Me Smile,' which was our first bona fide hit-it seemed like it broke the ice and it became easier, and they accepted stuff that was recorded easily a year before."
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CHICAGO AND THE SINGLE EDIT

In 1968, when Richard Harris and the Beatles enjoyed top-selling hit singles that ran over seven minutes each, it seemed as though the old habit of keeping songs down to three minutes - an ancient holdover from the pre-tape days of the first half of the century when recordings couldn't physically be longer - was about to be buried. True, radio had patterned itself after the three-minute limit for its commercial considerations, but clearly the audiences were willing to accept longer songs.

Artists may have recognized the change, but record companies didn't, and so, as tracks got longer and longer, groups got into fights - in the already politically adversarial days of the late '60s - over having their songs edited down to something around three minutes for single release. This was a particular problem for Chicago, who, as they became a singles force in the early '70s, more and more faced the razor at Columbia Records.

"The normal problem of that time for any group was, they would try and take a four-minute and ten-second song, and try and make it three minutes long," recalls Peter Cetera, "and we were just against that. There was a big thing at that time to be totally album-oriented, and anything that smacked of you doing this to be a single was commercialism, which was terribly frowned upon. What you really wanted was to be on the big FM [album] oriented stations, and not the Top 40 twinkie stations."

"It was a problem," argues Parazaider. "I think it was a problem for the writers, too, because they were writing whole pieces. It bothered all of us that some of these things were taken right out of context and chopped up and put on the radio. And then they became hits, what can you say? How do you complain? Say, 'Take it off the radio. We're ashamed of that musically'? We weren't ashamed of it musically. It's just, the people weren't getting the whole story. The only thing we took comfort in was, a lot of people were buying the albums, so they would definitely see these little three-minute ditties in context."

"We considered it an abortion," says Pankow about the edits. "But we were convinced by our management company and Jimmy Guercio that, hey, if you guys want to become establishment, if you want to sell millions of records and become a true phenomenon, you have to make allowances for the nature of your music. We realized at that point that it was indeed a necessary evil."

Robert Lamm, who was perhaps the most frequent victim of the edits, disputes the version of the story told in Clive Davis's autobiography. Davis says that Guercio understood the situation and helped convince the band to compromise. Lamm says Guercio's antipathy to the edits was stronger than his own. "The problems that Chicago had with Clive Davis were not really problems between the band and Clive Davis," he suggests. "They were problems between Jimmy Guercio and Clive Davis. The thing about always being at odds with [Davis] about the singles, I don't think we ever really cared that much other than we were naive and we were being programmed by Guercio into thinking that this music that we were creating was so perfect in its virgin state that nobody had the right to edit it."

Guercio certainly felt strongly about the issue, but he insists that, whatever you think of the cuts, he, not Davis, made them. "Those edits were terrible," he says. "The promotion guys, radio guys, were yelling at me to give them two to three minutes, that was it, and I had to cut everything down to so many minutes. But I cut everyone, as good or bad as they were, I did 'em all, the final ones. I had a contract: they couldn't couple anything, they couldn't package anything, they couldn't change the artwork, they couldn't do anything without my approval, 'cause I didn't take any money up front. So, I had very strong creative controls. If you want to talk about the strength of Chicago, that's the one thing that I did negotiate for and that I got, is, nobody could touch anything."

For the record, here's a list of Chicago songs that were drastically edited release as Columbia singles, with their LP and single timings. Actually, the problem diminished over the '70s, as radio loosened up its length restrictions and Chicago's song lengths shortened.
_____________________________________________________________________

LP Time 45 Time

Questions 67 And 68 ..................................... 4:59 ...... 3:25
Beginnings ................................................... 7:50 ...... 2:47
Make Me Smile ............................................. 3:16* ..... 2:58
Colour My World ........................................... 3:01* ..... 3:01
25 Or 6 To 4 ................................................ 4:50 ....... 2:52
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? .... 4:34 ...... 3:17**
I’m A Man .................................................... 7:41 ...... 3:27
Dialogue (Part I & II) .................................... 7:09 ...... 4:53
Brand New Love Affair ................................... 4:31 ...... 2:30

*Excerpted from "Ballet For A Girl In Buchannan."
**There is also a 2:53 edit.
Unlike some other Columbia compilations, this set contains only the LP edits.
_____________________________________________________________________

AS January, 1971, rolled around, once again Chicago, despite criss-crossng the country and playing during every month of the previous year, had found time to record a new double album. "That third album scared us," says Parazaider, "because we basically had run out of the surplus of material that we had, and we were still working a lot on the road. So, we were checking in, going into a rehearsal, and I think we were a little afraid that we were writing and rehearsing and getting ready to record a little under the gun. But I don't think it shows on that album, and I think what came out of there was some strong stuff. I'll give us credit, but I'll also give Jimmy Guercio a lot of credit for coordinating all this stuff and keeping us inspired. A hell of a producer."

"That whole album was more adventurous in terms of instrument, exploration than the first two albums," says Pankow. "Robert wrote a lot of in-depth stuff."

Cetera was also flexing his muscles as a writer again, though, according to him, not without resistance. He recalls a specific effort in tandem with drummer Dan Seraphine: "Danny and I had got together one night, and I said, 'I got this little thing that I've been working on.' That was at a point when I was sort of told that 'Where Do We Go From Here' was probably the end of the line as far as my writing ‘cause the group was very happy with the writers they had, thank you, and we didn't need any more contributions. Danny and I got together, Virgos would, and said, 'Well, we'll show them, We'll write a song.'''

The result was "Lowdown," which became the second single from Chicago III. "I can't think of anything good to say about the song from group perspective," Cetera notes. "I was very proud of it, but one thing bad is that Terry said, 'Don't you ever tell anybody I ever played guitar this record,’ and he proceeded to play the song exactly like that, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Terry kind of played that song with I-don't-give-a-shit attitude, and actually, when he did that to that song, in effect kind of [took] any heart out of it. I was never really happy with outcome 'cause it was played with one or two takes in mind. I'm still proud of it, it's one of the first things I did, and every person has to have a start.”

The first single from Chicago III was Lamm's "Free," which broke group's Top 10 run by peaking at the base of the Top 20, although the album would peak at Number 2 and go gold immediately. "Lowdown" was even more of a disappointment, reaching only the bottom half of the Top 40. Columbia then turned back to the first and second albums, which still in the charts, re-releasing as a single "Beginnings" backed by "Colour My World." It was up to Number 7 by August. In September, the label completed this re-release series by coming back with the first album's first single, two and a half years after its initial release, and "Questions 67 & 68" finally made the Top 30 (in Cash Box magazine, it got to Number 13).

All of this meant that, with its first three albums, Chicago had reached astonishing popular success. All three double albums were still on the charts throughout 1971, and hits came from each one. But how to top that? In October, Columbia released a lavish four-record box set chronicling the group's week-long stand at Carnegie Hall the previous April.

#5

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CHICAGO AND THE CRITICS

"I'm not crying sour grapes," says Walt Parazaider," 'cause we've sold 100 million records, we're gonna celebrate our 25th anniversary coming up next February, we're still a viable recording act, which is all pretty amazing in itself, and we're going out and tour for the 24th summer. We've never missed a summer, we've thrown a party and thank God, every summer people have come. But I call us really the Rodney Dangerfields of rock 'n' roll: can't get no respect."

Indeed. Amazing as it may sound to Chicago's millions of fans over the last quarter century, the group may be the worst reviewed major rock band of all time.

In retrospect, it isn't difficult to understand why this should be the case. As the 1960s crossed its midpoint, it became apparent that there was a journalistic void where rock music was concerned. Increasingly, magazines and newspapers felt compelled to cover the music, initially more as a phenomenon than anything else, but they tended to throw at it only what they had available: "straight" reporters who didn't understand the music or its attendant culture, or critics more accustomed to reviewing jazz.

Inevitably, the music came to develop its own press, and several music magazines grew up around the country, including Crawdaddy! in Boston, Creem in Detroit, and Rolling Stone in San Francisco, while left-leaning newsweeklies such as New York's Village Voice began to devote more coverage to rock, written by neophyte rock journalists. Just as inevitably, the publications tended toward praise of their own local scenes, so it was no surprise that Creem and such resident writers as Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh touted acts like the MC5 and the Stooges, or that Rolling Stone gave disproportionate coverage to San Francisco's acid rock.

Also sacrosanct were established, especially British acts such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But upcoming performers in the late '60s, often ones building upon the music of the era and heading in new directions, tended to suffer. Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin initially drew negative notices in the new rock press, as did Chicago.

Of course, there was more to it than regionalism. Though rock critics have since bemoaned the loss of the musical unity found on the pop charts of the '60s, most did their best to stamp it out. Lacking much real musical knowledge themselves, they declared that rock must be a simple, two-or three-chord affair, its rhythms rudimentary, its singing harsh. Rock was seen to be a revolution of the unwashed and the unskilled. At the same time, the critics tended to praise specific, supposedly unsullied genres of music, notably the blues, in a kind of folk purist vein. As the early '70s came on, it also didn't help that Chicago became an enormous, commercial success, especially in terms of Top 40 singles.

The band's first album was ignored by Rolling Stone, and when the magazine deigned to discuss Chicago II, at a time when the group had already established itself as one of the major acts of the period, it waited more than five months to run a review, then bunched it into a notice along with three unknown and forgotten records, attempting to brand what they did "big band rock." (For once, thank God, a journalistic attempt to invent a new category failed.) Chicago's third album was reviewed and reviled in Rolling Stone by Lester Bangs, and its live album was again bunched in with a notice about another band (the Brecker brothers' Dreams). In this notice, Bob Palmer mixed faint praise ("the music is pretty good, the band competent and tight") with criticism of the album's length, which he called "excruciating," and of what he dubbed Chicago's "formula rock." "Their roots," he said, "seem to be firmly planted in AM radio." (Again, note the implication that popularity is bad and that, to be good, music must be narrowly focused, tightly defined.)

All of this says more about the limitations of the critics than it does about Chicago and its music. Clearly, the reviewers were unfamiliar with many of the band's antecedants and entirely out of touch with its aspirations. For them, the function of horns could only be to dominate the music, as in jazz, or to punctuate the music, as in R&B. It never seems to have occurred to them that horns might integrate within an arrangement along with a rhythm section, although that is exactly what Chicago was trying to do.

In a sense, one can argue that the critics' failure to appreciate Chicago shouldn't bother the band or its many fans. As Parazaider notes, "The one thing that we clung to is that we had done the best record at the time that we possibly could have, and that's all you can do, you throw it out there and you see what happens, and if it doesn't get the critical acclaim, you can't get beat up over it, especially if the albums are selling two million copies apiece. Basically, what the critics were telling a million to two million people was that they were full of shit buying the album. So we had to leave it at that." Still, he admits, "I don't know if they think rock 'n' rollers have feelings, but it sure hurt ours."

Yet there's more at stake here than hurt feelings. Many of the rockers of the '70s, notably Led Zeppelin, have seen their critical reputations refurbished to the point that people can barely believe they ever got a bad review, while Chicago, perhaps because it maintained and even increased its Top 40 leanings, has never enjoyed a reassessment. Thus, as the heavy "rock history" tomes start to fill the bookshelves, the legacy of one of the most innovative and popular rock bands of all time goes unwritten. That isn't just unfair to the band, it's unfair to music. It may be that, even 25 years after "rock criticism" began, it still fails to measure up to the music it seeks to celebrate.

"I said to Robert Lamm one time," notes Parazaider, "when we get a good record review in Rolling Stone, I think we ought to think about retiring."

Chicago At Carnegie Hall was perhaps the most elaborate record album released by a rock group up to that time, and a testament to Chicago's success. For various reasons, however, it is an album that holds mixed memories for the band members. One objection concerns the circumstances of the recording itself. "We weren't fond of it," says Cetera, "mainly because we were told it would be unrestricted, do what we want, and that was agreed upon, whereupon, when we came for the sound check, for every one mike that normally you would see in front of us, there were maybe three mikes taped together. It wasn't like a normal sound check all of a sudden, it was like we were doing a sound check to do a recording, and it totally inhibited our performance. I remember within the first two or three songs of the opening night of that, I'm sitting there singing and playing, and all of a sudden the level on my bass drops considerably, and I turn around and there's a roadie out there messing with my knobs. I'm wondering, 'What the hell are you doing?' He goes, 'Well, the sound truck told me to tell you to turn down, and since I couldn't tell you, they told me to go out here and turn you down.' That's kind of what happened all the way along with everybody, and it just totally inhibited the heck out of us."

Parazaider, on the other hand, discusses the band's thinking in doing the album. "The reason behind the live record for Carnegie Hall is, we were the first rock 'n' roll group to sell out a week at Carnegie Hall, and that was worth rolling up the trucks for, putting the mikes up there, and really chronicling what happened in 1971," he says. "This was Carnegie Hall, we were trying to get the sounds right."

But it may have been precisely because it was Carnegie Hall, an acoustic wonder for acoustic instruments but a notorious foe of amplification, that getting the sound right was so hard. "I hate it," Pankow says. "Well, I hate the horn sound. The acoustics of Carnegie Hall were never meant for amplified music, and the brass was amplified, solely, obviously, to compete with the rhythm section, which is amplified, and for whatever reasons, the sound of the brass after being miked came out sounding like kazoos."

Robert Lamm, however, defends the album as an accurate record of what happened. "I have rarely ever heard a live recording that wasn't studio-enhanced later on that really sounded anything like a studio recording," he notes. "But what this was supposed to capture was an event and the excitement and the things that happen when a band plays live, and I think it does that famously. That was an exciting week, to actually play in Carnegie Hall."

Lamm got the chance to premiere a new song that never appeared on a Chicago studio album, ''A Song For Richard And His Friends." April, 1971, was a long time before Watergate, and the resignation of a U.S. president was an unknown thing, but that didn't stop Lamm from offering a helpful suggestion to Richard M. Nixon. "I love that song," Lamm says, "and later on I did a version of it for a solo album [not released] where, in the tag chorus I add the line, 'Thank you, John Dean.' I've been told by one of the foremost psychics in Los Angeles that I'm psychic, I just don't know it."

Of course, another criticism made of the Carnegie Hall album when it came out was that it was overblown. The album may have marked the last nail in Chicago's coffin as far as rock critics were concerned. It had also encountered difficulties at CBS because of the attendant expense, prior to its release. "I had a big fight with Clive over the package," says Guercio. "They thought I was extravagant. I said, 'What is this all about? A dollar nineteen? Eighty-nine cents? Listen, I'm paying for it.' 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I will pay - what's your break-even, what's your break point?' 'Well, if we sell 500,000, the cost of the package goes down dramatically.' And that was the agreement I made on that record, I remember very well. I said, 'If it doesn't sell a million units, send me the bill. Now shut up. What's next?' That's how the packaging happened. I rolled the dice every time 'cause I believed in what I was doing."

The bill never arrived. Chicago At Carnegie Hall went gold out of the box, and has since been certified for sales of two million copies. But that hasn't stopped the criticism. (The album was recently listed seventh in a book compiling the worst rock 'n' roll records of all time, largely on the grounds of excess.) Cetera especially shares the critics' feelings. "The Carnegie Hall album was one of the things that started out to be a plus, but ended up being a big minus," he says.

"I think we chronicled a period of time in our career, and it was a good thing," Parazaider replies. "The album was a success." And whatever one thought of it, that's true. Until the release of Bruce Springsteen's live album 15 years later, Chicago At Carnegie Hall stood as perhaps the best-selling box set by a rock group ever. It marked the end of a chapter in Chicago's history.

#6

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When Chicago gathered at the Caribou Ranch to record its seventh album in the fall of 1973, there was an initial intention to do a "jazz" album, and though the concept would later be dropped, the two-record set does return to Chicago's tendency toward what Parazaider calls "ambitious jazz-type pieces," such as the opening set of tunes, "Prelude To Aire," “Aire," and "Devil's Sweet," contributed by Seraphine, Parazaider, and Pankow.

On his own, Pankow brought in another gorgeous ballad, though this time his subject matter went beyond romance. "'(I've Been) Searchin' So Long' was a song about finding myself," he says. "I was starting to figure out what I was put on this earth for. I don't think anybody in the band had written a song about the quest to meet that person inside and find out what he was all about, what his ideals were. I just had to talk about who I was and what I was feeling at the time. I felt after it was recorded that maybe other people could relate to that, 'cause the '70s was a time for soul-searching, it was a time for discovery, and I think that song was probably indicative of what a lot of young people were feeling at that time."

Cetera, who never claimed to be a jazz musician, was disheartened at the original concept of the album, and also at his lack of participation as a songwriter. "I had just about had it with any more writing because the group was content with having the three writers," he says, "when three or four of the guys in the group had said, 'we're doing a jazz album this time, nothing but jazz songs.' I went, 'Hoo, boy,' and I think we tried that for a couple of weeks. That was the first time I could really talk to Guercio, and he goes, 'I hate this, this is not working,' and I said, 'Well, so do I.' He says, ‘all right, this is not gonna work. Let's come up with a compromise,' [which] I think was, maybe, one of the records would be a so-called jazz album, and the other one would be the singles stuff, and he asked me if I had anything. I said, 'Well, I just have these couple of things here."

One of the songs Cetera showed Guercio was the lilting, Latin-tinged ballad "Happy Man," which the producer has called, "a Number 1 record that was never released as a single." "You know when people talk about these flashes of something coming?" Cetera asks. "They do, in fact. Every once in a while, a song will just come out of your mouth, the words and everything. It's remembering it or having a tape player around when that happens that's the important part, and most of the time people don't. And for some reason, they disappear just exactly the way they come, into thin air. 'Happy Man' was a song that I wrote about midnight driving down the San Diego Freeway on my motorcycle, and that song actually came to me just like I wrote it. It was the one and only song that I ever remembered, words and music, and I went home and sang it into a tape a day later, and that's how that song came out."

Cetera's second last-minute contribution to Chicago VII is one of the album's best-remembered songs, "Wishing You Were Here." "There's two people that I always wanted to be," Cetera confesses, "and that was a Beatle or a Beach Boy. I got to meet the Beach Boys at various times and got to be good friends with Carl [Wilson]. I remember I was living on the ocean, messing with the guitar one night, and the waves were rolling in, and I started learning that little lick that opens the song, and my then-lady was lying on the couch sleeping. We were going on the road within the next day or so, and with the waves coming in and that little lick, I wrote about the road."

Cetera wrote the song in the style of the Beach Boys, who just happened to be at Caribou when it was to be recorded. Guercio, who had known the group since his backup days in the mid-'60s, had recently taken over their management and was attempting to resurrect the venerable band's career, then in a deep trough. He would succeed spectacularly, but we'll get to that.

Cetera screwed up his courage and asked the Beach Boys to sing on the bridge and chorus of "Wishing You Were Here." "I always wanted the Beach Boys to sing on my song," he says, "and they said, 'Yeah, we'd love to sing backgrounds on that.' So, I got to do the background harmonies - myself and Carl and Dennis [Wilson] and Alan Jardine. For a night, I was a Beach Boy."

Cetera wasn't the only friendly competition the triumvirate of Lamm, Kath, and Pankow faced among Chicago songwriters on Chicago VII, as trumpeter Lee Loughnane entered the lists. According to Cetera, though, he needed some help. "I tried to help Lee Loughnane with a song," Cetera says, "and that song turned out to be 'Call On Me.' Lee had written a song. It wasn't called, 'Call On Me,' it was called something else, and it in fact was terrible. I talked to him at the ranch one day, and he was all bent out of shape. He said that he had played the song for the guys, and they had told him in fact to get the heck out of there with the song. I said, 'Well, come on, let's have a go.' So Lee and I went and re-wrote the lyrics and re-wrote the melody and came up with the song called, 'Call On Me,' which was a big hit for him."

Chicago VII was preceded by the February, 1974, single release of "(I've Been) Searchin' So Long," which became the band's eighth Top 10 hit. The album itself, released in March, not only topped the charts, but brought back into the charts its six older brothers. The entire Chicago catalog was listed in Billboard during the year.

Loughnane's "Call On Me" became the second Top 10 single from Chicago VII during the summer, a season that also saw the release of Robert Lamm's first solo album, Skinny Boy. "Wishing You Were Here" became the album's third single in October, peaking at Number 9 in Cash Box, Number 11 in Billboard.

The year 1974 also marked the addition of an eighth member of Chicago, Brazilian percussionist Laudir De Oliveira. De Oliveira had first appeared on Chicago VI as a sideman. "I used percussion a lot in the records to complement the drums," notes Guercio. "I think Danny brought Laudir in, and we ended up using him quite a bit. He was a nice guy."

“We were looking for a couple of things," Lamm explains. "One was that were getting into more poly rhythmic Latin groove things. The hope that we could bring in this other color to enhance and flavor some of songs we were writing during that time. The other thing was to help the rhythm section in a more consistent groove."

Chicago began work on its next album August 1, 1974, at Caribou Ranch, and the results started to emerge in February, 1975, with the release of the single "Harry Truman," Lamm's tribute to a President America could trust, and thus a reference to the recently concluded Watergate scandal. The song reached the Top 20, and all that was unusual about it was that it was the first Robert Lamm song released as a single by Chicago in more than two years, a noticeable fall-off for a man whose writing had once dominated the group.

“I think I was getting a little stagnant," Lamm admits. "We were partying pretty hard, too. There was a lot of drug abuse, a lot of alcohol abuse. That slowed us down. I was writing a little bit less, but not much less, and I think I was stuck creatively, so that even the things that I wrote were mediocre or not fully thought out. The touring schedule and the recording schedule slowly began to catch up to me, because I wanted to also have a life, and I was really trying to figure out that balance, and it was not easy. For myself, those were the factors, but I also think that Peter began to writ more and other members of the band began to write more."
_____________________________________________________________________

THE SINGERS AND THE SONGS

As a general rule of thumb in bands that the person who writes a song generally gets to sing it. But not in Chicago. The band boasted three impressive singers with entirely different styles (Lamm, Kath, and Cetera) and four consistent writers (Lamm, Kath, Pankow, and Cetera), and the group's approach was to use the best man for each song.

This was especially true in the early days, when Lamm was the dominant songwriter. "I would cast the songs as I was writing," he says. "I did ways write songs for myself. I wrote songs for Peter. I tried to spread the stuff around a little bit."

Pankow, who for most of Chicago's career sang only backgrounds and demos, used other vocalists for all his best-known songs. But unlike Lamm, he didn't cast them, he let the band compete. "'Make Me Smile’ was tried by Terry, Peter, and Robert,' he notes. "Terry wound up with assignment. 'Searchin' So Long' was, again, sung by all three guys, (Peter wound up with the assignment. I wrote my songs like I felt them, in the keys that I felt comfortable writing them in. I really didn't have particular vocalist in mind when I wrote those songs. We'd have a sing-off.”

Pankow finally sang a lead vocal – reluctantly – on "You Are On My Mind" on Chicago X when he felt that none of the other vocalists could capture what he wanted. The same thing happened on "Till The End Time" on Chicago XI. "The reason I wound up singing those two tunes,” he explains, "is that they didn't make sense in terms of inflection and attitude until I went in there and I said, 'Hey, guys, this is what I hear: and Guercio said, 'You sing it!' I went, 'Oh man, you're kidding,' cause I had never a lead vocal in front of a mike in a studio before."

Cetera, on the other hand, usually sang lead vocals on his compositions, with one notable exception. "We recorded [the musical track for "Wishing You Were Here"] in a wrong key for my voice," he says. "It actually should have been up a step, step and a half. For some reason, I just didn’t realize that until after we had recorded it. So, therefore, that put the verses in such a low key that I just couldn't sing it, and that's how Terry got involved singing that one." No one seems to mind the result.

If Lamm's muse was beginning to fail him, James Pankow retained his ability to pen one or two gems per album. This time, his most notable composition was the bright, sentimental "Old Days." "It's a memorabilia song, it's about my childhood,' he says. "It touches on key phrase although they date me, are pretty right-on in terms of images of my childhood. 'The Howdy Doody Show' on television and collecting baseball cards and comic books. Peter absolutely hated singing that song. He said, 'I'm not going out there and singin' "Howdy Doody,' man! And "baseball cards and blue jeans." I mean, this is corny, man. I'm not sing in' this shit.' And we stopped doing it live, ultimately, because Peter refused to sing those lyrics." Whatever Cetera thought, "Old Days" was a Top 5 hit when it was released as the second single from Chicago VIII, which had appeared in March, 1975.

The year is arguably the peak in Chicago's career, a year during which the band scored its fourth straight Number 1 album, a year when, once again, all its previous albums were in the charts (Guercio estimates worldwide sales for 1975 alone at 20 million), and a year during which it undertook one of the most successful tours in history.

In May, Chicago hit the road with the Beach Boys as its opening act, not realizing what was going to happen. According to Guercio, who was managing both acts, he had deliberately set up the tour to give Chicago a kick in the ass, feeling that its concert programs, given over to hit medleys, had become complacent and sloppy. The Beach Boys, on the other hand, had, under Guercio's tutelage, become a renewed success, with their Endless Summer compilation of early '60s hits topping the charts, and Guercio had turned them into a tight, impressive stage act as well. The tour ultimately played to 700,000 people and grossed $7.5 million.

In September, Chicago's string of 16 consecutive Top 40 hit singles was broken with the relatively low placing of "Brand New Love Affair." It was far from the end of the band's hit-making days, and, as the third single from an album (unusual in those days), could be written off, but it was the first indication in five years that everything Chicago touched did not necessarily turn to gold.

Its next album, Chicago's Greatest Hits, released for the 1975 Christmas season, was, however, a predictable major hit, and, at certified domestic sales of four million, remains the band's biggest selling album.

Chicago returned with an all-new album in June, 1976, when it released Chicago X. The album is best remembered for a song that just barely made the final cut, Peter Cetera's "If You Leave Me Now." "That was one of those magical 'Jeez, guys, we need one more song' [situations]," Cetera recalls. "In order to get everybody involved in it, I - which is probably one of the first times we'd ever done it this way - suggested that perhaps since Jimmy Guercio had learned the song from me, while I showed him the guitar part that I'd played, and he was a better guitar player than I, that he should play acoustic guitar, and then we'd let Terry play bass, Bobby would play piano and Danny would play drums and I would sing, and we would do it all together. 'Come on, guys, like the old days.' 'You mean, we're gonna record all at once again?' And I said, 'and I'll tell you what, I'll even kind of do it like a lounge singer. I'll take a mike and kind of walk around and show you guys where we're going with the song.' So, we learned the song, and that song, as you hear it, was actually recorded live, albeit the vocal was done over, just because I was walking around so much. I counted the song off, and we went into that groove, and what you hear is the song that we did. The only overdubs were the electric guitar that Terry put on later." (Cetera is not counting the beautiful Jimmie Haskell string arrangement added to the song later in Los Angeles, an arrangement that garnered the song one of its two Grammys.)

Parazaider remembers things a little differently, and his account also points up the piecework nature of the group's recording techniques by this time. "The rhythm section was really struggling over some song,' he says. "Lee, Jimmy [Pankow], and myself were done with our part of the recording. The foreman was taking us down to Denver to get us out of town. I remember Guercio and Peter talking, 'cause it was Peter's song, saying, 'If this doesn't work within the next couple of takes, we're gonna shine this. We've got enough tunes for the album.' I'm sitting around my pool three months later, and the local station goes, 'We've got the debut single by Chicago coming up.' A song comes on. I'm cleaning my pool, and I'm going, 'That's a catchy tune. Sorta sounds like McCartney. Where have I heard this before?' The next thing, they go. 'That's Chicago's latest release, "If You Leave Me Now.'" The main point of the story, outside of me being a dummy, is that usually, things that just made the album end up being some of the biggest hits."

That the group didn't recognize the song's likely popularity is indicated by its decision to release Lamm's Latinish 'Another Rainy Day In New York City" as the first single. But after that record only made the Top 40, "If You Leave Me Now" came out on 45 in July. It streaked to Number 1, Chicago's first Billboard singles chart topper. Chicago X itself failed to top the charts, peaking at Number 3, but won the band its first of the newly minted platinum record awards, selling a million copies in three months, and spawning a third Top 50 single in Pankow's vocal debut, "You Are On My Mind."

Nevertheless, the success of "If You Leave Me Now" overshadowed the album from which it came, and also consolidated what by now seemed a definitely stated preference on the part of radio, if not Chicago's audience in general, for lush ballads sung by Peter Cetera over any other style the band might care to put forward.

"Since 'If You Leave Me Now' became a single, we've become victims of our own success," says Pankow who sees the impact continuing to this day. "Radio thinks of us as power ballads, period. If we give them an uptempo song or we give them another kind of a groove, they won't play it because it's not what they hear as being Chicago."

"To be sure, the ballad-ness that the band became identified with through the singles after 'If You Leave Me Now,' that drove me crazy," says Lamm. "I know it drove Terry crazy, because that isn't what we set out to be and it isn't how we heard ourselves, and it's still not how we think of ourselves."

By the start of 1977, after eight relentless years of touring and recording, strain was beginning to show in the firm of Chicago Music, Inc. "I think it was taking a bit of a toll," says Parazaider of the pace of the band's career. "We were getting pretty tired. We'd cut down the touring from 300 dates to 250, down to 200, which is still a hell of a lot of days on the road, and I think at the end of some of the tours we were getting a little tired. Some of the shows could have been better. But let's face it, we were booming."

So they were. In January, 1977, Chicago reluctantly undertook another world tour, and the band was in Europe when Chicago X won the Grammy for Album of the Year and "If You Leave Me Now" won two Grammys, for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals and for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus.

Chicago returned to the U.S. and recorded a new album in the spring before heading out for another European tour and another American tour. For the record, Peter Cetera contributed another of his lush ballads in "Baby, What A Big Surprise." "I just think it's the next evolution from where I was at before that," he says. "It was just something that I had worked up at my house and kept working on it, and I recall the Beatles' 'Penny Lane,' where there's that pocket trumpet, a piccolo trumpet. I wanted to get that effect with Lee, and that song came up."

Another strong song on the collection was drummer Dan Seraphine's "Take Me Back To Chicago," written with David "Hawk" Wolinski. Seemingly nostalgic, it is a song with a darker theme than may be immediately apparent. "Take Me Back To Chicago' is about Freddy [Page], the drummer in the Illinois Speed Press that died very tragically," says Guercio. "Everybody came from Chicago to make it. Illinois Speed Press had the best shot, had the biggest budget, had the first record, and totally could not get along."

By September, 1977, when Chicago XI was released, it was Chicago and Guercio who could not get along. The split between group and manager had been a long time coming, with antipathy on both sides. "It started happening with the tenth record," says Parazaider. "Things started getting pretty strained. He didn't want us to learn any of the production techniques. He'd go to sleep at nine o'clock, and we'd start producing the records ourselves. Or trying to. I think if you're the producer of your album, you have a fool for a client. You can't be that objective about what you're doing on both sides of the glass."

"I think basically we felt at that point that we had been used," says Cetera. "We had signed contracts that we were told to sign that we believed to be fair that weren't, and I think it was just utter frustration of being let down, 'cause here we are, a bunch of guys from Chicago that were honest and believed in people, and we found out that everything wasn't as kosher as we thought it was. The second reason is that, musically, I think he'd had enough, and we'd had enough. We felt that he wasn't around to produce us anymore. He wanted to do other things, obviously, and we wanted to do other things with other people."

If Cetera criticizes Guercio as a producer, Lamm notes that the band was also dissatisfied with him as a manager. "He wasn't ever our really hands-on manager," Lamm says. "Larry Fitzgerald was our hands-on manager, he was the guy that ran the office and talked to the promoters. Guercio owned the management company. Howard Kaufman, who now manages the band, was the business manager. Guercio had some kind of disagreement with these guys and fired them. Then he took on the actual management, or he tried to, himself, and that lasted just a few months, and then we fired him."

Not surprisingly, Guercio disputes these accounts, though he does not absolve himself from blame for the split. "You can't have that much control and not have people resent it after a while," he says. "I only intended to do it for a few albums. I did not intend to have it go on for ten records. If you really study the records, and you study the transitions of the albums, I'm pretty proud of all the records I made, 'cause they were not easy to make. As I look back, I was much too hard on these guys. I felt a thoroughbred by committee is a goddamn mule. I gotta take the rap. I think I totally manipulated them for my own ends as well as theirs, whether they understood them or not."

And Guercio makes clear that the ends toward which he manipulated Chicago were broadly ambitious in a way the band never realized - and perhaps never could have been expected to realize. "The only reason I made a commitment to contemporary music was because it was important to me to put Stravinsky, and to put Thelonious Monk, and to put Glenn Miller on the radio every ten minutes across the world," he says. It was to this end, he suggests, that he became involved in management and production. "The only thing that ever could manipulate me was a song, or a voice, or talent," he says. That's all that ever moved me. The only ability I have, by the way, is, I can make people 20 feet tall, if I see something special in them."

But at the height of their success, when Guercio was ready to take Chicago to a higher artistic peak, they disappointed him, he says. He recalls protracted arguments in which he told them, "You're breaking down the doors for all these other jazz musicians, classical musicians, to enter into the pop mainstream, and that's a sacred responsibility. So you got ten number one records. Great. What are you gonna do about it? Why aren't we doing an opera? Why aren't we doing a symphony?" "That band achieved about 20 percent of what I thought it was capable of doing, and 10 percent of what I wanted it to do," Guercio says today. "The music was no longer the basis of the relationship. It wasn't a creative enough process for me. The success could have continued, but I really needed to change what I was doing with my life."

In retrospect, it's not hard to see why the partnership, no matter how successful (and, perhaps, in part, because of its success) had to end. Guercio had exerted a powerful control over the members of Chicago, especially in the early days, and as they became stars, it seems inevitable that they would begin to chafe under his admittedly harsh leadership, even as they were eager to dispel the impression, prevalent in the press, that they were no more than enthralled Trilbys in the hands of a sinister Svengali. Guercio's final comment on the subject seems undeniable: "I was difficult to work with, but I knew what I was doing."

In the short term, little seemed changed. "Baby, What A Big Surprise" sailed into the Top 5, and Chicago XI was certified platinum the month after its release. But in dropping Guercio, Chicago was stepping into the unknown. And only a few months later, the band would be devastated by a loss from which, in the eyes of many inside and outside of the group, it has never recovered.

#7

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ALIVE AGAIN
Knowing that you would have wanted it this way
I do believe I'm feelin' stronger every day

"Feelin' Stronger Every Day" by Peter Cetera and James Pankow
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On January 23, 1978, Chicago guitarist and singer Terry Kath died from an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Various accounts have been published of this incident, so it's important to get the facts right. To begin with, Kath was not, as some reports have it, "playing Russian Roulette," which is easily determined since he was killed with an automatic pistol, not the sort of cylinder-loading gun needed for the deadly game.

"He was at my place the night before he died," recounts James Pankow. Kath, the trombonist recalls, "had been having a major hassle with his lady," had been awake for a couple of days, and "had been doing substances." A gun collector and aficionado, Kath was on his way to a shooting range. "He wasn't incredibly depressed, but he was bumming, and he was tired," Pankow says. "I said, 'Terry, do yourself a favor and lie down and get some sleep, man.' " Kath said that, after shooting his guns at the range, he would be going to stay at the house of Chicago keyboard tech man Don Johnson.

Johnson is the sole witness to the shooting, and Pankow provides his account of what happened. "He loved shining his guns, taking them apart, and putting them back together," says Pankow. "Evidently, he had gone to the shooting range, and he came back to Donny's apartment, and he was sitting at the kitchen table cleaning his guns. Donny remarked, 'Hey, man, you're really tired. Why don't you just put the guns down and go to bed.' Terry said, 'Don't worry about it,' and he showed Donny the gun. He said, 'Look, the clip's not even in it,' and he had the clip in one hand and the gun in the other. But evidently there was a bullet still in the chamber. He had taken the clip out of the gun, and the clip was empty. A gun can't be fired without the clip in it. He put the clip back in, and he was waving the gun around his head. He said, 'What do you think I'm gonna do? Blow my brains out?' And just the pressure when he was waving the gun around the side of his head, the pressure of his finger on the trigger, released that round in the chamber. It went into the side of his head. He died instantly. Only Terry knows what he was thinking at that moment."

While the incident itself seems accidental, the circumstances leading up to it are more difficult to assess. "He was an unhappy individual," Pankow acknowledges. "His relationship was not going well. He was also certainly more dependent on chemicals than he should have been. He wasn't addicted to anything, but he was abusing drugs. We were all doing drugs at that stage of the game. But if you're incredibly unhappy and depressed and doing the drugs on top of that, it compounds the situation."

A part of Kath's dissatisfaction was professional, according to Pankow. "He was also unhappy because Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, all the English guitar players were getting all the credit, and Terry Kath was a monster," Pankow says. "He was making his guitar talk and make animal noises before Jimi Hendrix knew what he was doing. We were working clubs in Chicago, and Terry was banging his guitar against amplifiers and making it talk, and then the Jimi Hendrix Experience comes out, and this guy gets all the credit, and needless to say, Terry Kath idolized Jimi Hendrix. When we went on the road with him as his opening act, they spent hours together talking shop. But Terry never got credit for being probably one of the most inventive rock 'n' roll guitar players in history. The press overlooked him."

“I do not believe, nor will I ever believe, that Terry was suicidal," Pankow says, “Terry was a very strong individual, and he had never alluded to any notion of suicide, and Terry and I were very close."

“Terry was really a passionate element in the chemistry of the band - passionate and energetic and imaginative," says Robert Lamm, who calls Kath his best friend. "He was an original thinker. He was an inventor, in many ways. He invented the way he played his guitar. He was the kind of guy that could probably teach himself to play almost any instrument. He had ability to really work hard. So, in a band with as many pieces as this band had, for there to be only one guitar player, that's a big job, because he was playing rhythm and lead. I don't think there's ever been a better rhythm player. And then, Terry's leads are, for that day especially, world class stuff."

“Terry Kath was a great talent," says Jim Guercio, who worked with him on a solo album that was never completed. "The most supportive guy was Terry. Terry's the big tragedy of the whole thing for me. He was the best guitar player. Hendrix idolized him. He was just totally committed to this band, and he could have been a monster [as a solo]. He never could get it together. The guy was the leader of the band. He had an incredible amount of talent. He had a great vocal potential. I knew him the longest. We grew up together."

Kath's death devastated Chicago, and the band considered breaking up. “Right about there was probably what I felt was the end of the group,” says Peter Cetera. "It seemed to me like that was a good point to end it all right there and begin again. Doc Severinsen [of "The Tonight show"] was of those who said, 'There's just too many people out there that would miss the music.' I don't know, I think we were a bit scared about going separate ways anyhow, and we decided to give it a go again. It wasn't easiest thing I'd ever done."

Ironically, "Little One," a Seraphine/Wolinski song with Kath's lead vocal, was released as a single around the time of the guitarist's death. It would be a minor hit in the late winter of 1978, followed by the elegiac "Take Me Back To Chicago," which by now seemed as much about Kath as about Freddy Page.

If the band was going to continue, it would need a new guitarist, and auditions began in earnest (or perhaps in desperation, given the band’s mood and the pressure of an upcoming tour) in the spring of 1978.

"We were looking for anything at that time, I think," says Cetera. "We felt that we were being left behind by the new music, and we thought what we needed was a young guitar player with long hair. One of the worst things you can do is interview new people, and that's what we had to do. We sat through I don't know how many guitar players, it seemed like a thousand but I'm sure it was 30, 40, or 50 guitar players. Right toward the end of our tether, Donnie Dacus showed up, and we weren't really in any proper frame of mind - everybody was so fed up with interviewing people and listening to different guitar players try and play our stuff. Donnie had actually had practiced a bit and came and played a couple of song right and with fire, and we thought, 'Why, my God, he's got long hair, let’s go and that's how he was in the group."

"The hardest thing that we've ever done is having new people band," says Lamm. "Donnie Dacus was impossible, which is why he’s history. That kid is good. He's a good singer, a good player. But he never got that he was an equal member of the band, that we were trying to welcome him and his music and his approach into the band."

For the moment, however, Chicago had a new guitarist, and it went to work on a new album. The band went to Miami's Criteria Studio with producer Phil Ramone. "Hot Streets was a scary experience,” says Pankow of the album even band members occasionally slip up and call Chicago XII, "'cause Guercio was no longer in the picture, and neither Terry. But Phil Ramone was a team player, and Phil believed in the band from the beginning. He was very familiar with the band. He was a producer in terms of knowing horns. He was the logical choice. Hot Streets was a credible album. It was a departure. But for what it was, and for where we were, having to keep the career going and being caught with our pants down at the same time, especially recoverlng from an enormous tragedy. I think we did a damn good job on that album." "I think it's one of our best albums," adds Lamm.

Perhaps the album's most notable song is the uptempo 'Alive Again," which was also the first single. "Lyrically, on the surface, it's a relationship," says its author, James Pankow. "I used a relationship as a vehicle. If you read between the lines, it's tribute to Terry Kath's passing, and the fact that we've got the ball. That's the first song we recorded subsequent to Terry's death. It's the band saying that we're alive again and we have a new lease on life, and Terry's looking down on us with a big smile."

Cetera, meanwhile, contributed to the album's second single, "No Tell Lover," along with Lee Loughnane and Danny Seraphine, and wrote the third single, "Gone Long Gone." In discussing the latter song, he uses it as an example of the stylistic difference he had evolved from his band mates, and anticipates his eventual departure from Chicago, which would occur seven years later. "If you look at a 'Gone Long Gone' or a 'Wishing You Were Here' or 'In Terms Of Two,' I think you can see that, musically, I was somewhere else from where the other people were at," he says. "But I could never get the guys to play the songs the way I heard them, let's just say, and I think, in the end, that's what really started driving us farther and farther apart."

It was perhaps inevitable, given the split with Guercio and the perceived need to start over, that Chicago would dispense with the album design and titling sequence conceived by their former manager. But they found that the die had been cast. A small, monochrome photo of the band had been included on the cover of Chicago VI, but Hot Streets marked the first time that a picture of the group was the dominant feature of a Chicago cover. It was also the last time. "We wound up doing a Burkhardt survey," says Pankow, "and 90 percent of the people surveyed [didn't give] a shit about what we looked like, much to our chagrin. They wanted to see the logo. The music has always spoken for itself, and the logo has as well. It's like Coca-Cola: When you see it, you know what it is. So, we had to put our ego in a bag and bury it in the front lawn."

Hot Streets was released in September, 1978. It was certified platinum before the end of October, and produced two top 20 singles in “Alive Again" and "No Tell Lover," while "Gone Long Gone" was also a minor chart entry. "It got us over the hump," Parazaider says, "and we proved to ourselves we could go on and sell records, and things went on. They were never the same, let's face it."

The band went on the road to support the album. "We did a concert tour where, in major cities, we played with a mini-symphonic orchestra conducted by Bill Conti," says Lamm. "It was a very musical, fairly demanding tour, and it was meant to be a real definite, positive statement that Chicago was gonna go on. But I think that it showed us that, however vital the chemistry in terms of music was with Terry Kath, both as a family and as a band, there was no way that we could simulate that, and we were gonna have to make room for another brother, which on a musical level was okay, but on a personality level, that's where Dacus ran into trouble. It was touring where we learned about that, 'cause that's when you are in the trenches."

The personnel problem was compounded by a musical one: As the late '70s wore on, the sophisticated, pop-oriented style of bands like Chicago was being squeezed by disco on one side and punk/new wave on the other, each of them making the band seem (however temporarily) unfashionable. "We really didn't know where to turn," says Cetera. "Once we had Dacus in the group, I think, after a tour or so, we started to realize that it was a terrible mistake, because here we were trying to do something else."

Dacus was still with the band for its next album, Chicago 13, recorded, again with Ramone, at Le Studio in Montreal. "When we hit the thirteenth album, everybody was writing, and I think everybody got a song on that album," Parazaider says. "I'd have to say that album could have been conceptually a little disjointed, although I think the material was good."

"I thought 13 was a pretty decent album," says Pankow. 'Street Player' was our two cents' worth for disco. We wanted to get on the radio, but it didn't really do anything. But I thought it was a relatively intelligent approach to disco."

Chicago 13 was released in August, 1979, along with a single of "Must Have Been Crazy" written by Donnie Dacus. (This record is notable for containing Chicago's only non-LP B-side, "Closer To You," which had actually been recorded at the Hot Streets sessions.) The single barely made the charts, and the LP peaked at Number 21, lasting a mere ten weeks. It was certified gold in December, but, according to Parazaider, "hit the wall at 700,000" copies, a good sale for some, but very disappointing by Chicago's standards. "We realized that we couldn't show up at the studio and belch on record and have hits," is the way Parazaider puts it.

And then there was "Street Player," about which not all the members retain as positive a memory as James Pankow, especially since, when it was released as a 12-inch single, it failed to chart and - horror of horrors - was burned at a "death to disco" rally at the Chicago White Sox' Comiskey Park organized by a local radio station. If they were burning Chicago records in Chicago, where could the band turn? “All of a sudden, we start feeling like, where is our place in the whole scheme of this?" says Parazaider.

Amazingly, one thing that Chicago did at this point was to sign a new, multi-million dollar record contract with Columbia. "We sat in a meeting room at Jeff Wald Productions," Pankow says, naming Chicago's manager of the time, "and the Columbia veeps were on one side of the table, and Wald and us were on the other side of the table, and [Wald] negotiated a deal that was enormously out of proportion. They said okay."

"There was no way that we should have made that deal," says Lamm. "It created a lot of animosity at the company, and it was the wrong time in our career and in the music business at that point. We knew that, and those guys [the Columbia representatives and Wald] knew that, so I think they got into some weird ego thing, which is not unusual."

Chicago also came to a parting of the ways with Donnie Dacus, and hired Chris Pinnick, initially as a sideman, to play guitar. "Chris Pinnick came closest to Terry's rhythmic approach," says Lamm of the guitarist who would work with the group through Chicago 17.

Having apparently settled things for the moment, the band turned to recording Chicago XlV, this time at the Record Plant in Los Angeles with Tom Dowd, who had produced many of the '60s R&B records that inspired the group early on.

"I wrote a song called, '[The] American Dream,' which lyrically was much better than it was musically," recalls Pankow. "It was taking shots at Capitol Hill, and the general mistrust of government that was pervasive in that day and age. Robert wrote a song called, 'Thunder And Lightning,' which I love."

Lamm also wrote the driving "Manipulation" and a song called "Doin' Business" that was cut from the album before it was released. "I had been listening to some punk bands, and I was trying to see where that fit into what Chicago could do," he notes. "Both 'Doin' Business' and 'Manipulation' are Chicago's version of what was going on in 1980."

Cetera also contributed several compositions, among them the lovely "Song For You." "I love 'Song For You,' and I'm actually thinking someday that I'm gonna re-record that," he says. As his comment indicates, he's not satisfied with the version found on Chicago XIV "To be perfectly frank, I think we gave Tom [Dowd] more than he could handle," Cetera says, "'cause we were more than we could handle, definitely, and we just beat everybody into the ground at that point."

Chicago XIV was released in July, 1980. It reached Number 71 in the Billboard chart during a nine-week run, and two singles were released:

"Thunder And Lightning," which peaked at Number 56, and "Song For You," which did not chart. "That album went aluminum, maybe plywood," says Pankow, "and that's all the better for me, because we were not cohesive at all on that album. There was no central theme, there was no focus.

“Everything is cyclical," says Parazaider, "and we had run out of the cycle.” The failure of Chicago XIV, at the end of a long line of personal and business problems, led to profound changes in Chicago that eventually brought the group back to enormous commercial success. But there were still a few bad patches to go through first.

“I think our love affair with Columbia was just about at the final ebb," says Parazaider, which is hardly surprising, given that the label now felt saddled with an enormous contract unjustified by Chicago's modest sales, while the band felt unsupported by the label.

The inevitable happened. "They bought us out of the remainder of the contract," explains Parazaider. "They gave us a settlement. We gave them the fifteenth album, which was a greatest hits. We took that money and bankrolled the sixteenth album, changed managers, and basically said, "Let's make the best record we possibly can, and shop it."

Chicago turned to producer David Foster for help on Chicago 16, and he took as strong a hand as Jim Guercio ever had, co-writing eight of the resulting album's ten songs. "David Foster had wanted to do [ChicagoXIV] with us," Lamm notes, "and we did talk to David Foster, but when he came to meet us and talk about what we could do, he was a little jive, a little too smooth. Something jarred us or turned us away from him, and we thought, 'Let's go with a warhorse like Tom Dowd.' I guess Tom Dowd was coming off a big Rod Stewart album, so we thought this guy might be hot, rather than taking a chance with a new guy like David Foster."

Chicago 16 was turned down by every label that considered it, eventually being issued on Full Moon, the label run by Chicago's managers, Irving Azoff and Howard Kaufman, and distributed by Warner Bros. The result was a million-selling Top 10 album and a chart-topping single in "Hard To Say I'm Sorry."

"Resurrecting the career was one of the happy moments in my life, when 'Hard To Say I'm Sorry' was number one," says Peter Cetera, who remains philosophical about Chicago's temporary decline. "I think that happens with a lot of artists," he notes. "You part your ways with the record company. They want to move on to new talent, and so, you have to get out of it somehow. I have mixed emotions about all the past things. I'm a little sour about the business dealings and being naive guys from Chicago and being taken for granted, and on the other side we had a lot of good years with Columbia, and that's always something I'm proud of." (Cetera left Chicago in 1985 and has since pursued a successful solo career.)

Robert Lamm, still with Chicago (and preparing a second solo album), is also philosophical. "We have the luxury of looking back a decade now," he says, "and we're all real comfortable with where we are as the result of what happened then."

There's every reason why they should be. Chicago has been through more than its share of triumphs and tragedies since the days when a group of young musicians scattered around the Windy City found a shared musical identity and headed West.

They may not have achieved all the goals set for them by their visionary ex-manager, but they did succeed in a number of ways in their first 25 years: they had enough hits to make them one of the most popular acts of their time; they pleased millions at their concerts; they did get at least a little of Stravinsky and Monk and Miller on the radio; and they made a lot of music that continues to stand among the best popular music of its time. Just listen.

Notes by William James Ruhlmann

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