Chicago is a rock band that was formed in 1967 in Chicago, Illinois. Well known for being one of the first (and, indeed, one of the few) rock bands to make extensive use of horns, Chicago started as a politically charged, sometimes experimental rock band and later moved to a softer sound, becoming famous for producing a number of hit ballads. They had a steady stream of hits throughout the 1970s and 1980s.BeginningsThe band was formed when a group of DePaul University music students began playing a series of late-night jams at clubs on and off campus. They added more members, eventually growing to seven players, and went professional as a cover band called The Big Thing. The band featured an unusual and unusually versatile line-up of instrumentalists, including saxophonist Walter Parazaider, trombonist James Pankow, and trumpet player Lee Loughnane, along with more traditional rock instruments, guitarist Terry Kath, keyboardist Robert Lamm, drummer Danny Seraphine, and bassist Peter Cetera (who was the last to join the original group). While gaining some success as a cover band, the group worked on original songs and, in 1968, moved to Los Angeles, California under the guidance of their friend and manager James William Guercio, and signed with Columbia Records. Upon release of their first record in early 1969, the band took a new name, Chicago Transit Authority.
The band’s first album, the eponymous The Chicago Transit Authority, was an audacious debut: a sprawling double album (unheard of for a rookie band) that included jazzy instrumentals, extended jams featuring Latin percussion, and experimental, feedback-laden guitar abstraction. The album began to receive heavy airplay on the newly popular FM radio band; it included a number of pop-rock gems—”Do es Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”, “Beginnings 221;, and “Questions 67 and 68″—whic h would later be edited to a radio-friendly length, released as singles, and eventually become rock radio staples.
Soon after the album’s release, the band’s name was shortened to simply Chicago, when the actual Chicago Transit Authority threatened legal action.
Chicago’s heyday
The band’s popularity exploded with the release of their second album, another double-LP set, which included several top-40 hits. This second album, titled Chicago (also known as Chicago II), was the group’s breakthrough album. The centerpiece track was a thirteen-minute suite composed by James Pankow called “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon” (the structure of this suite was inspired by Pankow’s love for classical music). The suite yielded two top ten hits, the crescendo-filled “Make Me Smile” and prom-ready ballad “Colour My World”, both sung soulfully by Terry Kath. Among the other popular tracks on the album: Robert Lamm’s dynamic but cryptic wah-wah-buttressed “25 Or 6 To 4″ (sung by Peter Cetera), and the lengthy “It Better End Soon”. With that, the pattern had been set: the band, ever prolific, recorded and released music at a rate of more than two LP discs per year (always titled with the band name and a Roman numeral) from their third album in 1971 through the 1970s.
Some fans say a low point of the group’s early career came when they released an ambitious quadruple-album live set, Chicago at Carnegie Hall Volumes I, II, III, and IV, consisting of live performances, mostly of music from their first three albums, from a week-long run at the famous venue. The performances and sound quality were judged sub-par; in fact, one group member went on record to say that “the horn section sounded like kazoos.” The packaging of the album also contained some rather strident political messaging about how “We [youth] can change The System,” including massive wall posters and voter registration information. Nevertheless, Chicago at Carnegie Hall went on to become the best-selling box set by a rock act, and held that distinction for 15 years.
The group bounced back from this misstep in 1972 with their first single-disc release, Chicago V, a diverse set that reached number one on both the Billboard pop and jazz albums charts and yielded the Robert Lamm-composed-and-su ng radio hit and perennial fan favorite “Saturday In the Park”, which mixed everyday life and political yearning in a more subtle way.
In 1973 the group’s manager, Guercio, produced and directed Electra Glide in Blue, a movie about an Arizona motorcycle policeman. The movie starred Robert Blake, and featured Cetera, Kath, Loughnane, and Parazaider in supporting roles. The group also appeared prominently on the movie’s soundtrack.
Other successful albums and singles followed in each of the succeeding years. 1973’s Chicago VI also topped the charts buoyed by hits “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day” and “Just You and Me”. Chicago VII, the band’s double-disc 1974 release, featured the Cetera-composed “Wishing You Were Here”, sung by Terry Kath with background vocals by Cetera and The Beach Boys and some fusion jazz. Chicago VII also provided one of the group’s enduring signature tunes, the anthemic “I’ve Been Searching So Long,” which started with as a soft ballad and culminated in a hard-rock conclusion featuring Terry Kath’s electric guitar soloing against the Chicago horn section. “Happy Man,” another song from Chicago VII, was also a popular favorite on FM radio. The next year Brazilian jazz percussionist Laudir DeOliveira joined the band, and that year’s release, Chicago VIII, featured the political allegory “Harry Truman” and the nostalgic Pankow-composed “Old Days”. That summer also saw a very successful joint tour across America with The Beach Boys, with each act performing some of the other’s material.
But for all their effort, none of their singles went to number one until Chicago X in 1976, when Cetera’s slow, exquisite ballad “If You Leave Me Now” climbed to the top of the charts. The song also won Chicago their only Grammy award, for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group in 1977. Ironically, the tune almost did not make the cut for the album, and was recorded at the very last minute. The huge success of the song would foreshadow a later reliance on ballads that would typecast the group on radio, despite the presence of ballads on all the previous albums. The group’s 1977 release, Chicago XI, was another big success for the band, which included Cetera’s hit ballad, “Baby, What a Big Surprise”. Things (in some cases) went downhill for the group afterwards.
Time of transition
1978 was a tragic and transitional year for the band. The year began with an acrimonious split with long-time manager Guercio. Then, singer/guitarist/gro up founder Terry Kath died of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound, delivering a devastating blow to the band. Kath’s death could have meant the end for the band, but instead the group held fast and later that year recorded and released Hot Streets, their first album without Kath and Guercio and their first album with a title rather than a Roman numeral. (They returned to the old naming scheme immediately afterwards, for the most part). The release also marked a move somewhat away from the jazz-rock direction favored by Kath and towards more pop songs and ballads.
Guitarist/singer/son gwriter Donnie Dacus joined Chicago for Hot Streets, and stayed with the band through the 1979 album Chicago 13. Dacus is also featured on the DVD included in the Rhino Records Chicago box set from 2004.
The second phase of the band’s career took off in 1981 with a new producer (David Foster), a new label (Warner Brothers), and the addition of keyboardist/guitaris t/singer Bill Champlin and guitarist Chris Pinnick; percussionist Laudir DeOliveira also departed at this time.
Foster brought in top studio musicians for some of the tracks on Chicago 16 (including the core members of Toto), and Chicago once again topped the charts with the single “Hard To Say I’m Sorry/Get Away”. The following album, Chicago 17, became the biggest selling album of the band’s history, with two more Top Ten singles, “You’re The Inspiration” and “Hard Habit To Break”.
But a conflict arose as to which direction the band was taking due to Cetera’s increasing focus on slow ballads. That, plus the pressure of launching a solo career while supporting the band’s concert schedule, caused Cetera to leave the band in 1985. Although other band members (including Lamm and Champlin) have released solo material, Cetera has proved the most successful, topping the pop charts with The Karate Kid, Part II theme song “The Glory of Love” and also with a duet with Amy Grant, “Next Time I Fall (In Love)”.
The post-Cetera era
Cetera was replaced by bassist/singer Jason Scheff, who joined the band for the final Foster-produced album Chicago 18. This album was not as commercially successful as the previous two, but still produced the #3 single “Will You Still Love Me?”, and also an updated version of “25 Or 6 To 4″ with a concept video that got a lot of airplay on MTV. Soon after the album was recorded, the band dismissed guitarist Chris Pinnick and hired the talented Dawayne Bailey from Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Bailey and Scheff had previously played in bands together, so Scheff introduced Bailey to the band in time for the Chicago 18 tour (Scheff and Bailey’s first concert with Chicago took place on Friday Oct 17, 1986 in Rockford, Illinois).
Chicago playing in Queenstown, New Zealand.
In 1988, the band replaced producer Foster, and they topped the charts again with the Diane Warren composed single, “Look Away” from the album Chicago 19. The album also yielded three more Top 10 hits. Chicago 19 was followed in short order by Greatest Hits 1982-1989, which included the hit “What Kind of Man Would I Be?,” a remixed tune originally included on 19.
During 1989, Chicago did a reprise joint concert tour with The Beach Boys.
The band continued in the decade of the 1990s, even though their popularity began to decline. There was also another personnel change: Danny Seraphine was fired by the band in 1990 and was replaced by ace session drummer Tris Imboden, who first appeared on the 1991 album Twenty 1. Imboden was well-known in the industry as the longtime drummer for Kenny Loggins. On a happier note, Chicago was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on July 23, 1992.
In 1992 and 1993, Chicago wrote and recorded their 22nd album, Stone Of Sisyphus. Their record company at the time, Warner Bros. Records, was unhappy with the finished result, and thus the album was never released officially, although in succeeding years bootleg recordings of the album have surfaced worldwide, including over the Internet. Selected tracks from the unreleased album have since been officially released on four international compilation greatest hits CDs and the recent Rhino Records box set, and four were rerecorded for band members’ solo albums. One track, “The Pull”, was performed live during their 1992 appearance at the Greek Theatre (taped for PBS, and released on video in 1993).
Starting on their 1994 tour, Chicago attempted to merge their unique sound with Big Band music for the 1995 album Night & Day Big Band, which consisted of covers of songs originally recorded by Sarah Vaughan, Glenn Miller, and Duke Ellington (from whom the album mainly got its inspiration).
Keith Howland joined the band as guitarist in 1995 to replace the departed Dawayne Bailey.
During a Los Angeles concert in 1997, Chicago teamed up with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to perform a James Pankow/Dwight Mikelson orchestral arrangement of Pankow’s rock epic “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon”. Also during this year, the group released The Heart of Chicago 1967-1997, a compliation album which went gold and yielded the #1 Adult Contemporary hit “Here in My Heart.”
In 1998, Chicago released Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album, which mixed traditional holiday favorites with original compositions. It went gold in the US. (The album was re-released with addition
sumber : musicstarx
The band’s first album, the eponymous The Chicago Transit Authority, was an audacious debut: a sprawling double album (unheard of for a rookie band) that included jazzy instrumentals, extended jams featuring Latin percussion, and experimental, feedback-laden guitar abstraction. The album began to receive heavy airplay on the newly popular FM radio band; it included a number of pop-rock gems—”Do es Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”, “Beginnings 221;, and “Questions 67 and 68″—whic h would later be edited to a radio-friendly length, released as singles, and eventually become rock radio staples.
Soon after the album’s release, the band’s name was shortened to simply Chicago, when the actual Chicago Transit Authority threatened legal action.
Chicago’s heyday
The band’s popularity exploded with the release of their second album, another double-LP set, which included several top-40 hits. This second album, titled Chicago (also known as Chicago II), was the group’s breakthrough album. The centerpiece track was a thirteen-minute suite composed by James Pankow called “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon” (the structure of this suite was inspired by Pankow’s love for classical music). The suite yielded two top ten hits, the crescendo-filled “Make Me Smile” and prom-ready ballad “Colour My World”, both sung soulfully by Terry Kath. Among the other popular tracks on the album: Robert Lamm’s dynamic but cryptic wah-wah-buttressed “25 Or 6 To 4″ (sung by Peter Cetera), and the lengthy “It Better End Soon”. With that, the pattern had been set: the band, ever prolific, recorded and released music at a rate of more than two LP discs per year (always titled with the band name and a Roman numeral) from their third album in 1971 through the 1970s.
Some fans say a low point of the group’s early career came when they released an ambitious quadruple-album live set, Chicago at Carnegie Hall Volumes I, II, III, and IV, consisting of live performances, mostly of music from their first three albums, from a week-long run at the famous venue. The performances and sound quality were judged sub-par; in fact, one group member went on record to say that “the horn section sounded like kazoos.” The packaging of the album also contained some rather strident political messaging about how “We [youth] can change The System,” including massive wall posters and voter registration information. Nevertheless, Chicago at Carnegie Hall went on to become the best-selling box set by a rock act, and held that distinction for 15 years.
The group bounced back from this misstep in 1972 with their first single-disc release, Chicago V, a diverse set that reached number one on both the Billboard pop and jazz albums charts and yielded the Robert Lamm-composed-and-su ng radio hit and perennial fan favorite “Saturday In the Park”, which mixed everyday life and political yearning in a more subtle way.
In 1973 the group’s manager, Guercio, produced and directed Electra Glide in Blue, a movie about an Arizona motorcycle policeman. The movie starred Robert Blake, and featured Cetera, Kath, Loughnane, and Parazaider in supporting roles. The group also appeared prominently on the movie’s soundtrack.
Other successful albums and singles followed in each of the succeeding years. 1973’s Chicago VI also topped the charts buoyed by hits “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day” and “Just You and Me”. Chicago VII, the band’s double-disc 1974 release, featured the Cetera-composed “Wishing You Were Here”, sung by Terry Kath with background vocals by Cetera and The Beach Boys and some fusion jazz. Chicago VII also provided one of the group’s enduring signature tunes, the anthemic “I’ve Been Searching So Long,” which started with as a soft ballad and culminated in a hard-rock conclusion featuring Terry Kath’s electric guitar soloing against the Chicago horn section. “Happy Man,” another song from Chicago VII, was also a popular favorite on FM radio. The next year Brazilian jazz percussionist Laudir DeOliveira joined the band, and that year’s release, Chicago VIII, featured the political allegory “Harry Truman” and the nostalgic Pankow-composed “Old Days”. That summer also saw a very successful joint tour across America with The Beach Boys, with each act performing some of the other’s material.
But for all their effort, none of their singles went to number one until Chicago X in 1976, when Cetera’s slow, exquisite ballad “If You Leave Me Now” climbed to the top of the charts. The song also won Chicago their only Grammy award, for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group in 1977. Ironically, the tune almost did not make the cut for the album, and was recorded at the very last minute. The huge success of the song would foreshadow a later reliance on ballads that would typecast the group on radio, despite the presence of ballads on all the previous albums. The group’s 1977 release, Chicago XI, was another big success for the band, which included Cetera’s hit ballad, “Baby, What a Big Surprise”. Things (in some cases) went downhill for the group afterwards.
Time of transition
1978 was a tragic and transitional year for the band. The year began with an acrimonious split with long-time manager Guercio. Then, singer/guitarist/gro up founder Terry Kath died of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound, delivering a devastating blow to the band. Kath’s death could have meant the end for the band, but instead the group held fast and later that year recorded and released Hot Streets, their first album without Kath and Guercio and their first album with a title rather than a Roman numeral. (They returned to the old naming scheme immediately afterwards, for the most part). The release also marked a move somewhat away from the jazz-rock direction favored by Kath and towards more pop songs and ballads.
Guitarist/singer/son gwriter Donnie Dacus joined Chicago for Hot Streets, and stayed with the band through the 1979 album Chicago 13. Dacus is also featured on the DVD included in the Rhino Records Chicago box set from 2004.
The second phase of the band’s career took off in 1981 with a new producer (David Foster), a new label (Warner Brothers), and the addition of keyboardist/guitaris t/singer Bill Champlin and guitarist Chris Pinnick; percussionist Laudir DeOliveira also departed at this time.
Foster brought in top studio musicians for some of the tracks on Chicago 16 (including the core members of Toto), and Chicago once again topped the charts with the single “Hard To Say I’m Sorry/Get Away”. The following album, Chicago 17, became the biggest selling album of the band’s history, with two more Top Ten singles, “You’re The Inspiration” and “Hard Habit To Break”.
But a conflict arose as to which direction the band was taking due to Cetera’s increasing focus on slow ballads. That, plus the pressure of launching a solo career while supporting the band’s concert schedule, caused Cetera to leave the band in 1985. Although other band members (including Lamm and Champlin) have released solo material, Cetera has proved the most successful, topping the pop charts with The Karate Kid, Part II theme song “The Glory of Love” and also with a duet with Amy Grant, “Next Time I Fall (In Love)”.
The post-Cetera era
Cetera was replaced by bassist/singer Jason Scheff, who joined the band for the final Foster-produced album Chicago 18. This album was not as commercially successful as the previous two, but still produced the #3 single “Will You Still Love Me?”, and also an updated version of “25 Or 6 To 4″ with a concept video that got a lot of airplay on MTV. Soon after the album was recorded, the band dismissed guitarist Chris Pinnick and hired the talented Dawayne Bailey from Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. Bailey and Scheff had previously played in bands together, so Scheff introduced Bailey to the band in time for the Chicago 18 tour (Scheff and Bailey’s first concert with Chicago took place on Friday Oct 17, 1986 in Rockford, Illinois).
Chicago playing in Queenstown, New Zealand.
In 1988, the band replaced producer Foster, and they topped the charts again with the Diane Warren composed single, “Look Away” from the album Chicago 19. The album also yielded three more Top 10 hits. Chicago 19 was followed in short order by Greatest Hits 1982-1989, which included the hit “What Kind of Man Would I Be?,” a remixed tune originally included on 19.
During 1989, Chicago did a reprise joint concert tour with The Beach Boys.
The band continued in the decade of the 1990s, even though their popularity began to decline. There was also another personnel change: Danny Seraphine was fired by the band in 1990 and was replaced by ace session drummer Tris Imboden, who first appeared on the 1991 album Twenty 1. Imboden was well-known in the industry as the longtime drummer for Kenny Loggins. On a happier note, Chicago was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on July 23, 1992.
In 1992 and 1993, Chicago wrote and recorded their 22nd album, Stone Of Sisyphus. Their record company at the time, Warner Bros. Records, was unhappy with the finished result, and thus the album was never released officially, although in succeeding years bootleg recordings of the album have surfaced worldwide, including over the Internet. Selected tracks from the unreleased album have since been officially released on four international compilation greatest hits CDs and the recent Rhino Records box set, and four were rerecorded for band members’ solo albums. One track, “The Pull”, was performed live during their 1992 appearance at the Greek Theatre (taped for PBS, and released on video in 1993).
Starting on their 1994 tour, Chicago attempted to merge their unique sound with Big Band music for the 1995 album Night & Day Big Band, which consisted of covers of songs originally recorded by Sarah Vaughan, Glenn Miller, and Duke Ellington (from whom the album mainly got its inspiration).
Keith Howland joined the band as guitarist in 1995 to replace the departed Dawayne Bailey.
During a Los Angeles concert in 1997, Chicago teamed up with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra to perform a James Pankow/Dwight Mikelson orchestral arrangement of Pankow’s rock epic “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon”. Also during this year, the group released The Heart of Chicago 1967-1997, a compliation album which went gold and yielded the #1 Adult Contemporary hit “Here in My Heart.”
In 1998, Chicago released Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album, which mixed traditional holiday favorites with original compositions. It went gold in the US. (The album was re-released with addition
sumber : musicstarx
Comments
Post a Comment