Down to brass tacks with Chicago
After early success as a horn band, legendary group still going strong nearly 50 years on
Chicago
March 14- 15, 8 p. m. Hard Rock Casino Vancouver ( Coquitlam)
Tickets: $ 89.50 - $ 99.50 at Ticketmaster
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the band Chicago gave a lot of high school trumpet players the hope of a future in music and a shot at being cool.
Songs like Make Me Smile, Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?, 25 or 6 to 4, and I’m a Man were a signal that a horn band could actually crack the top of the charts. Almost 50 years later, Chicago is still going strong.
They performed on the Grammy stage for the first time this year, playing four songs with Robin Thicke. Their first album, The Chicago Transit Authority, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame this year. And late last month, they played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time.
Trumpet player Lee Loughnane has been there the whole time. He’s one of the original members of Chicago, along with Jimmy Pankow ( trombone), Walt Parazaider ( saxophone) and Robert Lamm ( keyboards and vocals).
The guys got together in the mid-’ 60s when they were attending DePaul University, after playing in a short- lived band called The Missing Links.
“The guitar player, his father was the manager, so he was the worst of the lot, but his old man got the gigs so they played with him,” Loughnane recalled.
Loughnane used to sit in from time to time and when The Missing Links fell apart, the lads got together in Parazaider’s kitchen and formed what would become one of the most successful rock ’ n’ roll bands ever. They invited Pankow to sit in and on Feb. 15, 1967, Chicago was formed, Loughnane said.
The guys had all been influenced by show bands that would come into Chicago playing a variety of music. Those bands always had tenor sax, trumpet and trombone, Loughnane said. The members of Chicago thought they could duplicate the success of these show bands and maybe catch on in Las Vegas, where a future of steady work beckoned.
Chicago’s many fans are lucky that fate intervened. The band pretty quickly moved to Los Angeles, Loughnane said, and soon its debut disc, The Chicago Transit Authority, was recorded.
“We moved to California in 1968 and the first album came out in August of 1969,” Loughnane said. “We were playing those songs throughout 1968. By the time we got into the studio, that scared the hell out of us because those microphones picked up every little thing you did.
“Thank God we knew the material well enough that we could play through the songs. We realized over the years that you didn’t have to be perfect in the studio.”
The album was not a hit. It was picking up cult status among those in the know on FM radio, but Top 40 wasn’t paying attention.
That changed with the release of a second album called Chicago. ( It’s also known as Chicago II; all the band’s albums are numbered except the first one). The beginning and end of a long piece called the Ballet for a Girl from Buchannon caught the attention of some music industry leaders and they suggested slamming the two pieces together. The band complied and the hit single Make Me Smile was born, Loughnane says.
More hits came from that album and the first album was revived with several hits coming from it. The band took some criticism from people who accused them of selling out. Loughnane just scoffs.
“When Chicago Transit Authority was struggling, it was really cool and we were iconic and a new thing and cutting edge. When the songs became hits, the exact same people said we had sold out. It was a wakeup call for us. It didn’t have to do with them. It has to do with the music.
“People have written us off many times, but here we are. It is amazing, we have outlived so many different bands, single artists and one- hit wonders, hundreds and hundreds of them.”
Loughnane’s smooth trumpet is one of the signature sounds of Chicago. He says he draws some of that from his early hero, a jazz trumpeter named Clifford Brown, who died too young in a car crash in 1956.
Chicago is touring Canadian cities, and the show they are bringing with them will take the audience from the early days to today.
They have a new album coming, Loughnane says, with four songs available for listening on the website chicagotheband.com.
“We’ve had to deal with change and we have realized that the music has survived. If people still resonate with those tunes, you’re golden,” he said.