June 14 – X Led To Chicago’s Biggest Hit, ‘Bar’ None

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Ultimate Classic Rock had it right. “There aren’t many things we can really count on in life,” they pondered, “but during the ’70s you could pretty much bank on a new Chicago record every year, and expect to see it near the top of the charts.” Indeed you could, and they did their part for the Bicentennial Year, releasing Chicago X on this day in 1976. By then they were famous for numbering their albums (this was indeed the tenth, although that included one live one and their Greatest Hits) and for having their stylized logo somewhere on the album cover. In this case, it’s etched into a big chocolate bar being opened, hence its nickname among some fans as “the chocolate bar record.”

In some ways, it was pretty much the same as before for them. They had a reasonably consistent eight member lineup, they used producer James Guercio as always and recorded it at the Caribou Ranch they so loved in Colorado. But there were noticeable changes too. For instance, none of the 11 songs roll past four minutes – a stark contrast to their early days of often long, meandering almost jam-session like works. It also seemed like Peter Cetera was taking the spotlight more and more, although at this point Chicago was still a basic democracy and most of the members got to contribute to the writing and singing. UCR note that Robert Lamm had done a whole lot of the writing not long before that but was wearying of it a little and “other members of the band stepped up.” Lamm still wrote four, but several others, notably Cetera started to take more of an active role in that. And it paid off in a big way with the single “If You Leave Me Now”, which he wrote and sang (oddly Guercio played most of the guitars on it, not regular six-stringer Terry Kath.) That would win them a Grammy, top the charts… but possibly put them squarely in the “easy listening soft rock” room of the music world from thereon in.

After “If You Leave Me Now”, the album’s most noted song was another single, “Another Rainy Day in New York City”, also sung by Cetera but written by Lamm.

The album was good, but different than say their first six or so, with less horns, less rock, more tightly-cropped pop songs. As Ultimate Classic Rock said, “they entered the studio on a creative upswing” and they were “still more than the sum of (their) parts” but… it “lacked the compositional depth and musical muscle they’d shown earlier”. Still, outside of the “lyrically dunder-headed ‘Skin Tight‘ and ‘You Get It Up’” they figured it to be a very good pop album. Allmusic later concurred, giving it 3-stars, singling out the hit single, and also noting that while they “effectively abandoned their extended free-form jazz leanings for more succinct pop” they “could (rock) as evidenced by the Terry Kath, full-tilt rave up ‘Once or Twice.’”

How did the public feel about the shift? Well, it’s hard to say. “Another Rainy Day in New York City” wasn’t a big hit, reaching #32 at home and #37 in Canada and “You Are On My Mind”, a rare Chicago song with James Pankow singing missed the top 40 altogether. But “If You Leave Me Now” was close to the anthem of the Bicentennial summer, being their first #1 single, and topping charts in Canada and Britain (which had been lukewarm to them until then) and earning them their one and only platinum single. The album on the other hand was their first since 1971 not to go to #1 domestically, hitting #3 (and the same mark in Canada and Australia as well) and #21 in the UK, where their previous four hadn’t even hit the charts). It also is now double-platinum in the States, where it was actually the first one of theirs to be recognized at platinum status. To mark that occasion, Columbia Records gave them a 25 pound, platinum chocolate bar to look like the one on the album cover! Whoever’s sitting on that these days has a pricey little knick-knack… it would be worth about $350 000.

Grammy voters liked the “new” Chicago too; they won their first of the awards for the album, for Best Pop Performance by a Group or Duo (on “If You Leave Me Now”), Best Vocal Arrangements for the same song and for the creative cover, which won Best Album Packaging. By the way… if you are interested in album covers and packaging, you’ll want to be sure to check in here next week…

April 28 – Chicago Were In Transit To Stardom

A big band, in every sense of the phrase, had its “Beginnings” on this day in 1969. Chicago‘s debut album, which was using the band’s original name “Chicago Transit Authority” hit the shelves 55 years ago.

Chicago (or CTA) had formed two years prior in the Windy City and much like Blood, Sweat and Tears, incorporated a liberal use of horns in their jazz-rock music. They signed to Columbia Records, home to BS&T, thanks largely to their producer James Guercio, who had also done the work with the other band. He lobbied hard for Chicago, and eventually Clive Davis agreed saying later it was an obvious fit for the label who enjoyed the “blending elements of jazz, pop and rock (which was) ground-breaking.” Others suggest he hesitated, thinking them too similar to his other horn band. Either way, they went with Columbia and had a rocky relationship with Davis who liked their music but not their demands for things like double-albums and posters included inside the LP.

Chicago Transit Authority (later nicknamed “Chicago I”) was audacious as a debut. It was indeed a double-LP, with nearly 78 minutes of music over 12 songs, only two of which were under 4” in length. The final track, “Liberation” ran over 14 minutes. While the band boasted several singers, several writers and an unusual (for rock) trio of horn players – Walter Parazaider, James Pankow (who also handled the cowbell) and Lee Loughlane – at this point in time, Robert Lamm, the keyboardist, was clearly in charge. He wrote most of the tracks and sang lead on over half of the songs including the appropriate for a debut “Beginnings.” Peter Cetera, later to take a more prominent role, shared vocal duties on “Questions 67 & 68” and did a bit of the writing.

Remarkably the seven-man outfit recorded the entire body of work in five days in New York City, with the final mixing taking another five. The six-minute plus “Free Form Guitar”, guitarist Terry Kath’s homage to his friend Jimi Hendrix, was recorded all in one take. The album however, sounded anything but raw or unplanned.

While it contains a trio of songs now considered not only among the band’s best but among Oldies Radio’s mainstays, it wasn’t an overnight success. The first single, “Questions 67 & 68” barely charted at first, and “Beginnings” didn’t at all. And the album languished in the low parts of the Billboard charts. However, their fanbase grew and the release of their second album made them popular, at which point this record rose up the charts, eventually to #17 in the U.S. and #10 in Canada. It stayed on the charts for 171 weeks, setting a record for longevity in 1974 (although at the time there was another album on there which would eclipse that soon – Dark side of The Moon.) After being sued by the commuter transportation company and having to lose the “transit authority” off their name, and having success with Chicago II, Columbia wisely re-released singles off the debut in 1971… to much better reception. “Beginnings” would rise to #7 and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” did as well, and hit #2 in Canada in 1971. The album eventually earned them a double-platinum award and a nomination for the Best New Group at the Grammys. They lost that one to Crosby, Stills & Nash… as did Led Zeppelin.

Allmusic rate the record as a 4-star effort, saying “few debut albums can boast as consistently solid an effort.” Classic Rock Reviews agrees, saying that they “fused brass, jazz, soul and blues-based rock & roll, and with three lead vocalists and composers, the group’s sound was as diverse as their influences” and thinking that on some of the songs, especially “Does Anybody…”, the entire group brought along their “A-game.”

Apparently we agreed, as the record began a streak of 12-straight albums from them which hit the American top 20.

November 8 – Chicago, Elton Bought Into The Rocky Mountain Way

In our previous post today, we mentioned Elton John’s Caribou album, among others. Some might wonder where he got the idea for the title. It wasn’t a nod to the big northern moose-lookalikes. Instead it was named after the recording studio he made the record at – Caribou Ranch. He was far from the only star who would call it temporary home from time to time. So, let’s have a look at one of the country’s most popular studios in its day.

True to its name, Caribou was indeed a ranch. Although synonymous in the music world with “Chicago”, it’s located in the Rocky Mountains, not far from Boulder, Colorado and, being less than 50 miles outside of Denver, close enough to a major airport to allow easy access for stars to drop by from pretty much anywhere. In the 1960s, the Western Stage Coach was filmed on its 4000 acres.

Fast forward to the ’70s and Columbia’s top producer was James William Guercio. He’d done records for the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears and others but had become closely associated with the band Chicago, being their normal producer. He didn’t like working in the big city, nor the restrictions he felt unions placed on him in the big studios. So he decided to take matters into his own hands and bought the ranch. He converted a barn there into a state-of-the-art (for the times) studio and upgraded some of the cabins for artists to stay in. It was ready to use by 1972, and by way of happy coincidence, Joe Walsh was living nearby and working on a record. He had troubles in his own studio, so he popped by Caribou to finish recording his Barnstorm album. While there, he wrote his first hit, “Rocky Mountain Way.” “The Rocky Mountain way is better than the way I had,” he’d later say, “because the music is way better.”

He told his friend Rick Derringer about the place, and he went and recorded his hit “Rock & Roll Hootchie Coo” there. Soon Guercio had his own band in and Chicago recorded albums VI through XI there. The film about Terry Kath’s life showed how much the band loved the place. It was Party Central when they were around, and with all that open space, Kath could go out and play with guns, a hobby of his which eventually led to his unfortunate demise.

Word of the place’s appeal and sound quality soon spread, and Elton booked it for his follow-up to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – what would be Caribou. He loved it… even though making music there wasn’t as easy as some studios due to its physical location. It’s about 8000 feet above sea level, and the air is thin. “It could be really hard to sing at such a high altitude,” he would write in his memoir. He threw tantrums at times due to that but all-in-all “it was great up at Caribou. The studio was much more plush than the Chateau (d’Herouville, the French studio he’d recorded at several times) . You stayed in beautiful log cabins filled with antiques… there was a screening room for movies…” And while recording there, friends would stop by including Stevie Wonder “who turned up one day and took a snowmobile out and insisted on driving it himself”. Elton marveled that Wonder didn’t kill himself or anybody else, John Lennon also popped by, helped him do his cover of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” there and was doing a good job of staying anonymous in Colorado… until Elton joined him to do a little shopping and eating in the town nearby… dressed in a pink fur coat and being chauffeured in a huge limo. On the negative, Elton also remembers it being the place where he first encountered cocaine. “the first line I snorted made me wretch… talk about God’s way to tell you leave it right there.” Of course, he didn’t follow that advice for years.

Elton would record three albums there, and the star factor, combined with the scenery and yes, the sound made the studio famous. The thin air seemed to give the music a bit more of a resonant, fuller quality somehow than sea level studios and the second half of the decade, it was a busy locale for stars making hits. No surprise John Denver made use of it – though ironically his song “Rocky Mountain High” was done in New York – but it was also utilized by artists including Rod Stewart, Steely Dan (briefly), Supertramp, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, Peter Frampton… even Michael Jackson who for a time had interest in buying it off Guercio. In time, 45 top 10 albums would be recorded at Caribou and 18 Grammy Winning ones.

However, times, tastes and technologies change. Demand for the studio decreased in the ’80s. State of the Art for 1971 was no longer state of the art in 1981. It came to a crashing end in 1985, while Christian crossover artist Amy Grant was on her way in from Nashville. A faulty space heater caused the barn to catch fire and much of the structure burned to the ground. About $3 million in damage was done; it’s noted that even some gold records on the walls were destroyed by firemen’s chainsaws working their way through to the blaze.

Guercio decided not to rebuild. By then digital technology was taking over and he wasn’t as fond of that as his old standby analog equipment. As well, the once young, single guy not averse to partying was now a family man and he didn’t like having his children exposed to so much of the rock & roll lifestyle. It was one of his kids who apparently first discovered the fire. He salvaged and restored the main console though, and sold it to a studio in Europe.

It would seem that he and his family lived there for years to come, but in the late-’90s he began to sell off Caribou. About half – 2000 acres – were picked up by the county for conservation use, while he’s apparently also overseen some housing on the rest. In 2015, he held an auction for some of its artifacts, including a baby grand piano Elton had used there (it got over $50 000) and an old Corvette which had been sort of a “staff car” to run people into town when needed.

So, like Elton John and Chicago, Caribou was a big and beloved part of the ’70s music world, though unlike them, it’s now merely a memory.

June 25 – Second City Band’s Sixth Shifted Direction

One of the most iconic American bands of the ’70s continued producing and morphing on this day in 1973, with their sixth album coming out. Fittingly it was called Chicago VI. It continued to ease Chicago from their jazz-rock, horn-bedazzled beginnings to a smooth, easy-listening pop outfit tailor-made for AM Radio of the day. Much of that may have stemmed from an apparent power shift in the band from some form of even democracy and perhaps viewing guitarist Terry Kath as a “leader” towards it being steered by the familiar voice of bassist Peter Cetera.

It wasn’t a glaring change mind you; by and large the lineup stayed the same (although they did add in percussionist Laudir De Oliviera on this one), they used their regular producer James Guercio and the horn section was still in place. Something different was that they recorded at Guercio’s own studio, Caribou Ranch in Colorado for the first time. A documentary about Kath showed that the band loved it there…but it may have been the worst thing for them. They ramped up their hard-partying, drugs-aplenty lifestyle at the Ranch and, being that it was a Western ranch, there were guns too which they loved playing around with. That would end up leading to Kath’s demise a few years down the road.

For all that the ten-song album sounded pretty good. Well-written, well-played. While they shared songwriting duties, keyboardist Robert Lamm was arguably still the main writer, coming up with three of them all by himself, but that was a change from their previous one, where he’d come up with eight out of the ten songs, including the hit “Saturday in the Park.” Trombonist James Pankow seemed to be stepping up a bit more and wrote most of the two singles off this album, “Feeling Stronger Every Day” ( a bit of a throwback to their early sound) and the romantic “Just You and Me.” Perhaps those were indicative of the album, which seemed a mixture of songs about the state of the world (“Something in this City Changes People”, “What’s the World Coming To?”) and love songs (“Darlin Dear”, “In Terms of Two”). Interestingly, future star-producer Phil Ramone helped Geurcio and did the final mix. A shift towards radio-friendly tunes was evident in that the long, meandering pieces that marked their first couple of records were gone and nothing on this one ran over five minutes.

At the time, critics seemed lukewarm towards it, and the band. The fact that there was a scolding song called “Critic’s Choice” on it didn’t win the band any extra favors in the press; it had lyrics like “you parasite, you’re dynamite, an oversight – misunderstanding what you hear!”. Rolling Stone suggested “it should now be clear that Chicago has become the prisoner of its own image” a band with “overbearing allegiance to the freak flag of hippiedom”. However, they did approve of the singles (“more or less outstanding commercial ditties”) and admitting Terry Kath’s “’Jenny’ is a real treat…an ethereal ballad about the love between a man and a dog.” Years later, allmusic gave it a solid 4-stars, about normal for the band’s ’70s output, pointing out it had a “decidedly more middle-of-the-road sound” than previous Chicago works but that worked well in its “succinct pop and light rock efforts.” It compared “Darlin’ Dear” to one of Little Feat’s better efforts.

The album was released in both stereo and quadrophonic editions, and if you get a later CD reissue, it contains a nice bonus track of them doing “Tired of Being Alone” with the one and only Al Green.

They might not have been the critics’ choice, but they were a lot of the public’s. “Just You and Me” made the top 5 in the U.S. and Canada and earned them their second gold single. “Stronger Every Day” was an American top 10 as well. Outside of North America, the appeal was much more muted – it didn’t even hit the charts in the UK! But at home, it spent five weeks at #1, and went double-platinum.

They called it “Second City”, but at the time 50 years back, Chicago might have been the “First City” of AM radio.