chicago (II)

Chicago tried to do some more to color our world and make us smile with memories of love in this breakthrough ballet.  Their double album debut 'Chicago Transit Authority' had sold over a million copies; but after the real Chicago Transit Authority threatened a lawsuit, the band shortened their name to Chicago.  With five songwriters in the band, their second album 'Chicago' was easily expanded to become a double album as well.  It was recorded during August of 1969 at Columbia Recording Studios in New York and Hollywood with producer James William Guercio and engineer Robert Honablue.   The sessions featured Peter Cetera on bass and vocals;  Terry Kath on guitar and vocals;   Robert Lamm on keyboards and vocals;  Lee Loughnane on trumpet and flugelhorn;   James Pankow on trombone;   Walter Parazaider on woodwinds;   and Danny Seraphine on drums and percussion


Kath would relate:   "I just tell the guys what I want, maybe play the different parts, and then they just pick it up from there...I have a pretty good ear, but I think it's starting to go from playing in front of the amp all the time ... I just get all jacked up when we start cooking and don't think about how I'm doing anything ... I'm too busy playing to worry about the movement or the fingerboard.  I just listen to it as it's all happening ... We just didn't have time [to fix our beat up instruments]. It was the same way on the second album. 'Prelude' ( a nearly symphonic piece with strings, woodwinds and brass) was a line I had in my head. We needed another tune so I played it for Peter Matz and he arranged and orchestrated it for some other guys to play."


Cetera considers:    "My primary goal was to be melodic; McCartney was so in my head then that I’d try to think a little out of the box—like picking my spots for the upper-register stuff. Plus, Jamerson and my R&B roots were in my subconscious, so keeping a strong groove went without saying. Coming up with parts varied by who wrote the songs. Bobby’s [keyboardist Robert Lamm] tunes were fun to play; they were melodic, they had meaning, and he wouldn’t give you too much of a parameter—you would just play what you felt and he’d say, “Cool.” Terry [guitarist Kath] was more defined and opinionated as to what he wanted and didn’t want. And Jimmy [trombonist James Pankow] was really specific about what to play. But, as I say, I always tried to be melodic when the time in the track allowed for it. The only song that was given to all of us note-for-note by Jimmy was “Colour My World.” ... I’ve never been the most knowledgeable bass player; I don’t really read music and if you’re talking about chords, I don’t go much past, “Is it major or minor?” On the instrumentals, I would have chord charts to follow, and I’d just feel my way through the odd-time stuff ... I didn’t really put singing and playing together conceptually in Chicago because the bass parts were important and they were constant, so if I had to sing lead on a tune it was something separate. Fortunately, I’d been doing it since my club days ... My first sing-and-play for Chicago was “Questions 67 and 68,” which, like “25 or 6 to 4,” was really high. I remember getting nervous and blowing the top notes one night at the Fillmore East because Leonard Bernstein was in the audience! “Dialogue, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2,” my duet with Terry, was my favorite sing-and-play because it was the most free. Overall, I found the key to singing while playing is to learn both parts separately and then slowly work them together though the tune, section by section. The more you perform the song the more comfortable you’ll become, to the point where you can loosen up and expand on both parts ... We were the greatest live band; we would blow anyone off the stage, but we didn’t have experience in the studio. When we went to Columbia Studios in New York City, the pressure was on. We had limited time, so it was decided to record live. Well, we soon realized we had to do it separately: rhythm section, then horns, and then vocals. And in those days, we couldn’t punch, so if someone made a mistake we’d have to start over. This was especially frustrating for me; I was a live player, with two or three good takes in me. We were doing up to 50 takes! We’d get to the end of take 49 and someone would make a mistake and we’d have to go back and do it all again. It got better, but I never really felt comfortable playing in the studio, where you’re under the microscope."

Lamm looks back:   "I think that the original appeal of Chicago, especially the first half-dozen albums, is that it wasn’t all the same genre, because of the different writers and each of us having different influences. So you weren’t listening to two sides of just blues, you were listening to a lot of different things ... I think that there were some, I think that some of the guys in the band were uncomfortable with being asked about [the political content] in interviews, both here and abroad. My first experiences then with international music journalists were that they were just checking to make sure that you weren’t full of sh-t, about what you were feeling. They were sort of fact checking, if you will. But no, blowback in terms of hurting our career, I don’t think so ... The whole experience and methodology, we were very young and very green and inexperienced, so a lot of it came from sheer intuition and ad libbing the whole process. Because we didn’t really know anything except we knew that we wanted to make music and play together." 


 'Chicago' charted at number twenty in Germany;  six in the UK;  and number four in Canada and the US.   The album is often referred to as 'Chicago II' since most of their subsequent albums would have Roman numerals in the title.  








http://www.chicagotheband.com/








"25 or 6 to 4" became the group's first top five single in the US.   Lamm reveals the genesis of the song's cryptic lyric:      "I was living with a bunch of hippies up above Sunset Strip. One of the advantages of this particular house was that it was in the Hollywood Hills and I could look out over the city late at night. I wanted to try to describe the process of writing the song that I was writing. So, 'waiting for the break of day, searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky' - there was a neon sign across the city. That song came from the fact that it was 25 or 6 to 4 a.m. in the morning when I looked at my watch - I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.   Most songs that were written, especially in the early days, whenever I got them to the band and we started rehearsing them, that's when the songs took shape - once these guys got hold of them. There was definitely a lot of raw material, I thought it was a song when I wrote the words down, I wrote the changes down and I brought the charts to rehearsal, but it wasn't really a song until they all played it."



Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Flashing lights against the sky
Giving up, I close my eyes

Sitting cross-legged on the floor
25 or 6 to 4

Staring blindly into space
Getting up to splash my face
Wanting just to stay awake
Wondering how much I can take

Should I try to do some more
25 or 6 to 4
Oh yeah

Feeling like I ought to sleep
Spinning room is sinking deep
Searching for something to say
Waiting for the break of day

25 or 6 to 4
25 or 6 to 4
Alright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGhQtFXBwWs






The single of "Make Me Smile" combined the opening and closing segments of the thirteen-minute "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" medley composed by James Pankow, The title refers to Buckhannon, West Virginia.   Pankow ponders:    "Relationships, if they're good, put a big smile on our faces. Love songs have always been a powerful ingredient in the song's process - the songwriting process has often taken writers to that place.  If you're a human being, you can relate to this: love is a very powerful thing. It motivates almost everything we do. So we write about it often in one form or another in our music. Not just Chicago, but all songwriters. Nine out of ten songs you listen to have something to do with that emotion, because it connects us to the world that connects us to people, and it connects us to greater things beyond this plane.  "Make Me Smile" is the evidence of the manifestation of love. Because the thought of this relationship puts a smile on my face."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVhDryRskc


Children play in the park
They don't know
I'm alone in the dark
Even though
Time and time again
I see your face smiling inside

I'm so happy
That you love me
Life is lovely
When you're near me
Tell me you will stay
Make me smile

Living life is just a game
So they say
All the games we used to play
Fade away
We may now enjoy
The dreams we shared so long ago

Oh, my darling
Got to have you
Feel the magic
When I hold you
Cry sweet tears of joy
Touch the sky






"Colour My World" was originally the b-side for "Make Me Smile"; but was charted on its own a year later, peaking at number seven on the US pop chart.  The song was written by James Pankow and features lead vocals by Terry Kath  and a flute solo by Walter Parazaider.   Pankow relates:   "I had been enamored with Johann Sebastian Bach. I still think that he is peerless in terms of his mathematical perfection in his music ... Bach constructed chordal music in which the voices never conflicted with one another or were out of sync or rhythm. His music flowed and had a groove. Bach, who created this music over two centuries ago, had just as much energy and rhythmic drive as the popular artists of today. I mean, you take your hip hop, your funk, your jazz, your pop - and that's a colloquial term for exciting, rhythmic content - he cooked just as much as modern artists of today do all those years ago ... I got sucked into this gift of Bach's and wound up experimenting with similar motion. We call this arpeggios, which are a series of notes that happen linearly in a step pattern, and notes of a scale and in sequence going from one G or scale, perhaps, to another, to another, to another. And I put a bunch of these arpeggios, these series of notes together as was inspired by listening to Bach, who did it so amazingly perfectly. And I came up with this little round, which we now call "Colour My World."   I titled it "Colour My World" because it affected a lyric that again mirrors the emotion of love. In this case, I used the emotion of love and description as a technicolor movie that takes places in my heart. It colors, it gives color and vivid definition to my life, like bringing this emotion to it.   And Bach's perfection influenced the music that influenced the expression of the emotion." 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swHjpyrV1e8



As time goes on,
I realize
Just what you mean
To me
And now,
Now that you're near,
Promise your love
That I've waited to share
And dreams
Of our moments together
Color my world with hope of loving you











'Chicago' 
full album:


Side One
1. "Movin' In"   (Pankow) sung by Kath 4:06
2. "The Road"   (Kath) sung by Cetera 3:10
3. "Poem for the People"   (Lamm) sung by Lamm & Cetera 5:31
4. "In the Country"   (Kath) sung by Kath & Cetera 6:34

Side Two
5. "Wake Up Sunshine"   (Lamm) sung by Lamm & Cetera 2:29
6. "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon" (Pankow) sung by Kath& Lamm 12:55
"Make Me Smile" (3:32)
"So Much to Say, So Much to Give" (1:04)
"Anxiety's Moment" (1:00)
"West Virginia Fantasies" (1:34)
"Colour My World" (2:58)
"To Be Free" (1:21)
"Now More Than Ever (1:27) 

Side Three
7. "Fancy Colours"   (Lamm) sung by Cetera 5:10
8. "25 or 6 to 4"   (Lamm) sung by Cetera 4:50
9. "Memories of Love"  (Kath/Matz) sung by Kath 9:12
"Prelude" (1:18)
"A.M. Mourning" (2:05)
"P.M. Mourning" (1:59)
"Memories of Love (4:01) 

Side Four
10. "It Better End Soon" (Lamm/Kath/Parazaider) sung by Kath 10:24
"1st Movement" (2:30)
"2nd Movement" (3:47)
"3rd Movement" (3:19)
"4th Movement (1:15) 
11. "Where Do We Go from Here"   (Cetera) sung by Cetera 2:53

chicago transit authority

Chicago Transit Authority created a moving synthesis of jazz and rock and a serious social statement with the free form sonic experimentation, bluesy jams, and brassy pop of this liberating introduction.  The group started from a group of students at Chicago's DePaul University.  After playing in Chuck Madden's cover band The Missing Links; saxophonist Walter Parazaider, guitarist Terry Kath, and drummer Danny Seraphine left to form their own group The Big Thing with occasional trumpet player Lee Loughnane.  They invited  trombonist James Pankow (who had just transferred to DePaul University from Quincy College) into the fold and then keyboardist Robert Lamm who was leading Bobby Charles and the Wanderers at the time.  Pankow remembers:   "We had a get together in Walter's apartment on the north side of Chicago.  It was Danny, Terry, Robert, Walter, Lee, and myself, and we agreed to devote our lives and our energies to making this project work...We figured that the only people with horn sections that were really making any noise were the soul acts; so we kind of became a soul band doing James Brown and Wilson Pickett stuff."

While touring as a sextet, they met up with Parazaider's friend from DePaul Jimmy Guercio who had become a producer for CBS Records. He was very impressed and told them he would be in touch.   In the meantime, they toured with another group The Exceptions and caught the attention of bass player Peter Cetera:   "I had heard a lot about these guys.  I was just floored 'cause they were doing songs that nobody else was doing, and in different ways. They were doing the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Got To Get You Into My Life" and different versions of rock songs with horns...At the end of the two-week stint, I was out of the Exceptions and into the Big Thing."

According to  Loughnane, it was the final piece of the puzzle:   "We needed a bass player at the time.  Robert was playing the bass pedals on the organ. He did a pretty good job, but there just wasn't enough bottom with the bass pedals. You needed a real bass in the band. And we needed a tenor voice. We had two baritones (Lamm and Kath), so we had midrange and lower notes covered. But we needed a high voice for the same reason that you have three horns. You have trumpet, tenors and trombone. You cover as much range harmonically as you can, and we wanted to do the same thing vocally. When Peter joined the band, that solidified our vocals. You could get more color, musically, and we started building from there."

When Guercio came back again he was blown away by their development and urged them to keep working on their original material.  He agreed to become their manager, had them move out to Los Angeles, and came up with a new name:  Chicago Transit Authority.  Pankow recalls:    "He got a little two-bedroom house near 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 married guys left their wives at home at first because they couldn't afford to bring their families out. We got disturbance calls from the neighbors five times a day because all we did was practice day and night."  

The group spent seven months playing around small venues in L.A., building a following, honing their sound, and scraping by.  They were given two opportunities to play for CBS executives and were turned down both times.  At one point Guercio had to take a job producing another band.  Parazaider reveals:   "Jimmy called me up, and be asked me to ask the other guys, would it be okay if he did the Blood, Sweat & Tears second album.  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. We were basically a band with integrated horns in the band, not as backup horns. I hate to believe him on this because, if you think about it, what the horn section did, from the start, was a lot different from Blood, Sweat & Tears, and the sound was copied many times over after we got the Chicago horn sound. So, I think with Blood, Sweat & 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 different. 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."

Guercio cut a demo and that started a buzz in the industry and led to CBS president Clive Davis making the call to sign them.  They were flown to New York and given only ten days to record their debut album.  Parazaider confesses:    "We actually went in and started making 'Chicago Transit Authority' and found out we knew very little about what we were doing.  I had done commercial jingles in Chicago, but this was a totally different thing for all of us. The first song was 'Does Anybody Really Know What Tine It Is?' We tried to record it as a band, live, all of us in the studio at once. 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, too. 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."

The sessions took place at Columbia Recording Studios with Peter Cetera on bass, vocals, and agogo bells;  Terry Kath on guitar and vocals;  Robert Lamm on keyboard, vocals, and maracas;  Lee Loughnane on trumpet, vocals, and claves;  James Pankow on trombone and cowbell;  Walter Parazaider on woodwinds, vocals, and tambourine;  and Danny Seraphine on drums.  With three songwriters (Kath, Lamm, and Pankow) in their ranks, they had enough material for a double album; but Colombia would only go for it if they would take a cut in their royalties.  It was agreed and 'Chicago Transit Authority' was released in April of 1969.  It took a month for it to chart, with college students embracing the sound on FM album oriented radio stations.  It would peak at number seventeen and spend over one hundred and seventy one weeks on the album chart, eventually going double platinum.   When they went on tour, the group was sued by the actual Chicago Transit Authority over the their name and agreed to shorten it to Chicago.  

Parazaider ponders:  "Your life dream is to have a hit record.  It was amazing because we were close friends, we had gone through all of this upheaval of leaving Chicago, moving to L.A. 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. I don't think there were any of us that sat down around my kitchen table that day in February of '67 and said, 'Hey, our goal is to be famous.' The one good thing that seemed to help us is, we were the faceless band behind that logo."

'Chicago Transit Authority'  went to number nine in the UK.  Lamm says the response from the crowds during their first European tour gave them more confidence:   "Even we were not aware of how edgy and different the first album was.  We were just doing what we were doing, and we were hoping that it was different enough for people to notice it was different. But when international audiences heard the album, it just really stopped them cold. We played in clubs all over Europe, and the audience took to it much more readily than we had experienced anywhere in the States. When we came back, the album had gone gold, and we began headlining a little bit, but still the feeling was that American audiences didn't really get it. They got that the band was becoming popular, but we didn't have the sense that they were hearing the music for what it was. So, I think laying in Europe and being treated to a certain musical and artistic respect was eye-opening and really encouraging to the band. It made us realize that what we were doing was substantial, was artistic, and was respectable rather than just this pop commodity that we always felt like in the States, because of the audience, the press, and the way the record company regarded us. That success in Europe and the feeling that we got from the regard we were given as artists really told us in a way that has lasted to this day that this is more than just kid stuff."






http://www.chicagotheband.com/







"Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" went to number seven in 1970.  





"Beginnings" made it to number seven in 1971.  





"Questions 67 and 68"  
only charted at number seventy-one in 1969; but would peak at number twenty-four when it was re-released two years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qupeVLtXWLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whMZ0Th9-4M




"I'm a Man"  hit number forty-nine in 1971.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYzxErU-UjY








'Chicago Transit Authority' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHRJ5qFPfnQ

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=ALBTKoXRg38BBkSKHx-O09hi5KK4G716vl





Side One
1. "Introduction" Terry Kath  lead vocals:  Kath 6:35
2. "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" Robert Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm 4:35
3. "Beginnings" Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm 7:54
Side Two
4. "Questions 67 and 68" Lamm  lead vocals:  Peter Cetera/Lamm 5:03
5. "Listen" Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm 3:22
6. "Poem 58" Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm 8:35
Side Three
7. "Free Form Guitar" Kath 6:47
8. "South California Purples" Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm 6:11
9. "I'm a Man" Steve Winwood/Jimmy Miller  lead vocals:  Kath/Cetera/Lamm 7:43
Side Four
10. "Prologue, August 29, 1968" James William Guercio 0:58
11. "Someday (August 29, 1968)" James Pankow/Lamm  lead vocals:  Lamm/Cetera 4:11
12. "Liberation" Pankow  lead vocals:  Kath 14:38

if you leave me now

Chicago had their biggest hit with this weepy romantic ballad. 'If You Leave Me Now' was written by bass player Peter Cetera, who also sang lead. As the band was recording their tenth album, producer Jim Guercio wanted to include the bassist's new song, though the rest of the band weren't sure that it fit with the rest of the material with its acoustic guitar solo and use of strings. Guercio insisted on recording and including the song, and released it as a single. It became the band's first number one hit on the US pop chart, and topped the Australian and UK charts as well. While the song was their biggest hit worldwide, the album 'Chicago X' only made it to number three, breaking their streak of five chart topping albums in a row. 'If You Leave Me Now' also won Grammy Awards for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus.







http://www.chicagotheband.com/

If you leave me now

You'll take away the biggest part of me

Ooo oh, no, baby please don't go

And if you leave me now

You'll take away the very heart of me

Ooo oh, no, baby please don't go.

Ooo, oh, girl, I just want you to stay

A love like ours is love that's hard to find

How could we let it slip away?

We've come too far to leave it all behind

How could we end it all this way?

When tomorrow comes and we both regret

The things we said today

Ooh girl, just got to have you by my side

Ooo oh, no, baby please don't go

Ooh my my, I just got to have your love in hand