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…

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.