Chicago

00:00:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: When Chicago released their debut album in nineteen sixty nine, they, along with bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears, Sligne, The Family Stone, and also James Brown and the JB's, We defined what a band could be, blending brass, jaz sophistication, and rock power into something completely unique. Over the next half century, the band became one of the most commercially successful acts in American music history, with a string of hits that remained staples of classic rock radio even today. By nineteen seventy five, when Chicago nine Chicago's Greatest Hits, arrived, the band had already amassed an extraordinary catalog of songs that captured both the experimental spirit of the late sixties with the pop sensibility of the seventies. That compilation became one of the best selling albums of the decade. Now Chicago is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of that landmark release with an expanded edition that offers fans a deeper look at this pivotal moment in the band's history. On today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Lee Locknane and Jimmy Panco of Chicago about recording their early albums. They also discussed what inspired them to incorporate a horn section into a rock band, and they explained why after decades of been on the road since the late seventies, they don't even bother to unpack those suitcases anymore. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam with Lee Locknane and Jimmy Panco of Chicago.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: We have Lee Locknane and Jimmy Panco. Hello, two of the original members of the Great band Chicago to composers, arrangers, but I think most importantly two members of the brass section, because that is what really drove so much of that horns with the horns.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: Actually hid one of the greatest guitar players away from being top.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Ten recognized as a great guitar player.

00:02:17
Speaker 3: I think people recognize, well, they recognize him, but it was really he came in second to the brass when we were really up there popularity wise.

00:02:27
Speaker 1: And I do want to mention the third member of the National Brass Yes, Walter oh Walt Perizader. I feel he's here in spirit, yes, so we talk about all.

00:02:40
Speaker 4: You know, he was a big part of this. He actually came up with the idea you know that wound up becoming Chicago. We were students at Deepaul University and Walt and Danny Sarafin and Terry Cath were members of a club act that we're working at Chicago, which we're kind of.

00:03:00
Speaker 5: On the way out.

00:03:01
Speaker 4: And Walt knew Lee and I at Deepaul University and he approached us with this, Hey, you guys, what do you think about this idea? Because we used to go to the Pussycat and sit in with them. They were called the Missing Links, and Lee and I would go show up.

00:03:17
Speaker 5: I played every now and then. Yeah, what kinds where they play Top forty? Yeah?

00:03:23
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody that played We played Top forty when we were We were a club act before we left to go to California to make records. But he approached us with this idea, what do you guys think about a rock and roll group with a horn section that's like a main character?

00:03:42
Speaker 5: You know?

00:03:42
Speaker 3: How can we We were thinking of going to Vegas and playing those like side clubs rather than the big rooms.

00:03:50
Speaker 1: And somebody told me that he got that idea from a Beatles song, Got to get You into My life? Is that true?

00:03:56
Speaker 5: Well? I don't know I don't know.

00:03:59
Speaker 4: We did a cover of Got to Get You Into My Life and the clubs as well as Magical Mystery Tour Little Help from My Friends, and I kind.

00:04:09
Speaker 3: Of recorded it me because I played bass on Little Help From As You did boo boom.

00:04:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was it true. He said from the beginning, it'll be a democracy.

00:04:21
Speaker 3: Yes, well, we all thought the same thing. We just shook hands and let's do this.

00:04:26
Speaker 4: We met wals apartment and agreed to devote all our energy and time to this idea.

00:04:31
Speaker 5: And you know we should.

00:04:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he said you can only leave two ways, you ask out or you die.

00:04:38
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, A little final for me.

00:04:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well I'll want a decision by the end of the podcast for both of you. Guys.

00:04:49
Speaker 5: What are you going to do next?

00:04:50
Speaker 1: Yeah? So you are in New York. Your Chicago band you you Mad you Bones in LA. But New York is where you recorded I think your first two albums. Yeah, you have fond memories of New York. I was a fifty second What kind of studio is that?

00:05:05
Speaker 4: It was a multi story office building and they had several studios on several floors and uh we.

00:05:13
Speaker 3: Food aid shift and Simon and Garfunkel had it at the day.

00:05:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were We were the new guys, so they gave us the graveyard shift. Simon and garfunk recorded all day and then we started recording at midnight and wound up going back to the hotel.

00:05:32
Speaker 5: The only people on the street were the garbage drugs.

00:05:35
Speaker 3: Go back to the hotel with a triple decker sandwich and you never good to go.

00:05:40
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, the stage deli.

00:05:41
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And did you meet with Simon and Garfunkel while you were there? Did you?

00:05:45
Speaker 5: Actually? I never saw. I'm met Art in the elevator. Really yeah. I was coming to work and he was leaving. Yeah.

00:05:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just had kind of two ships in the night, you know, but we did.

00:05:58
Speaker 5: You know, Jimmy.

00:06:01
Speaker 4: Gercio was producing us, and he got close to Roy Hallie who was producing Simon and Garfriend and they traded notes and Roy actually came down and assisted in some of the recording techniques.

00:06:16
Speaker 1: No, no kidding.

00:06:17
Speaker 4: Yeah, he added some of his expertise, and he also knew the board at CBS very well.

00:06:23
Speaker 3: Well, he knew the board, but he wasn't ready for rookies to come in. He left the project pretty quickly because we were learning how to record. We knew how to play these songs backwards and forwards because we'd been working with them in the various clubs that we played, but we had to learn how to record, how far to stand away from them, you know, being worried about Oh my god, I can't make a mistake because this microphone, the thing is in my way here.

00:06:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was quite intimidating, you know. And I say this, you know, in performance, knowing that this was going on tape forever.

00:07:02
Speaker 5: We better do this right.

00:07:04
Speaker 1: But you had producers to set up the room. Oh sure, but still it took a lot of figuring out.

00:07:09
Speaker 3: It's just a matter of the actual playing the instrument to that thing and then going into the control room and listening to it backing on. Oh so I have to step back a little bit on this to do a better blend, a natural blend. I mean, they can do it electronically and with the with the everything inside the control room, but it's better if we control ourselves.

00:07:34
Speaker 4: We had, Yeah, we kind of had to mix ourselves in the room, you know, to get the right blend in the section, especially when you do an overdub.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: Now, when you recorded back then would you do the the rhythm tracks first? Would you do the piano and then add the horns?

00:07:50
Speaker 4: Well, it was a progressive process. We actually started recording with the whole band in the room, you know, you know, we live track because we would realize that we needed to isolate things because if somebody were to stay it was audible on every instrument.

00:08:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were doing We.

00:08:09
Speaker 3: Were doing isolation already, we had stuff in between us, so it would lessen that problem. But we were able to record with the brass because we were going to play the same notes on the song, so when we did it on our own, the bleed through wasn't going to matter.

00:08:26
Speaker 4: But you know, interestingly enough, you know, the technology wasn't available in those days. We recorded on eight tracks, and they only had so much they could do with so little room, so we utilized various rooms. We actually recorded does anybody really time it as an introduction in the church. They used a cathedral downtown, I don't know which one with a high ceiling and it created a natural room echo that we couldn't get on the board because we didn't have the technology, So we used the church to That's how you get it. That's why those cuts on Chicago Transit Authority had that big room sound because of the the nature of the room that we recorded in.

00:09:18
Speaker 1: How many of those tracks did you record at the church?

00:09:21
Speaker 5: I know we did those two.

00:09:22
Speaker 4: We might have done questions there too, I think we did.

00:09:27
Speaker 5: We did.

00:09:28
Speaker 4: But Simon and garfunk Cal, you know, got busy and busy and busier, and we went to a smaller room on the second floor with Studio B and we had to, you know, kind of reapproach everything all over again. It was a different parameter in terms of acoustics. I remember on Make Me Smile, Gercio had me go in the bathroom. They ran a mike cable into the bathroom and I was whacking the toilet seat with a newspaper to fatten the snare.

00:10:04
Speaker 5: I mean, we you know, we used tricks like what you had.

00:10:08
Speaker 3: You can get away a lot of stuff, and it's just you know, creative.

00:10:12
Speaker 1: We should do business first before we talk.

00:10:16
Speaker 5: The business is.

00:10:17
Speaker 1: The business is you put out one of the best selling greatest hits collections of all time, which was Chicago nine. All right, and if you like the songs on it are just all these incredible classics. You're re releasing a new version.

00:10:33
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the fiftieth anniversary.

00:10:35
Speaker 1: Fiftieth anniversary.

00:10:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a re release of the greatest Hits with twenty one tracks.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: The original was eleven, I think.

00:10:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, And we threw a bunch more songs on the re release, including the first eight albums and then even some cuts from Chicago ten which follows.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you listen to the remixes? Do you like what you hear?

00:11:00
Speaker 5: Sure? You know.

00:11:01
Speaker 3: The thing is that we've heard them so many times, and when we play them live now, when we go back, I can listen to at least when I go back and listen to the original recordings, I realize how much we have developed the songs even further through the years. It's amazing to me that it's not quite exactly the same as what it was when we recorded. We're doing a little some different harmonies, we're doing a little different breaks, you know.

00:11:33
Speaker 5: It's just is that interesting? It was organic?

00:11:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also want to mention this is your fifty eighth consecutive year of touring, Yes, which is staggered. You've toured every year, every year, every year, even through COVID, well, even through.

00:11:51
Speaker 3: COVID well we worked the first two months of COVID up until we were working in Las Vegas.

00:11:57
Speaker 5: Vegas. We were the last stand on the strip.

00:11:59
Speaker 1: Oh really, Yeah, it's great.

00:12:01
Speaker 4: Rod start was at the Coliseum and we were at the Venetian and it was Saturday night, March.

00:12:10
Speaker 5: Seventeen, I think it was the sixteenth.

00:12:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I got in the car to fly home the next Sunday morning. The driver turn around, looked at me and say, good thing, you're leaving. Vegas is going down to five percent occupancy tomorrow. It's going to be a ghost town.

00:12:26
Speaker 1: So wow, we got the heck out of town.

00:12:29
Speaker 5: But it was pretty wild.

00:12:30
Speaker 4: It was very weird, and we actually thought we were going to go back to work real quick, that it was going to be everybody two or three weeks and may we're back.

00:12:38
Speaker 1: Do you remember was there something odd about that last show was where people already talking and thinking about COVID.

00:12:44
Speaker 4: For us, it was business as usual, the same thing we just do. That was yeah, and then next thing you know, we were off the road. Everybody was off the road. Yeah, it was a complete shutdown, but we were one of the first people to go back with June of twenty.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: June of twenty one, we were off for a whole fifteen months.

00:13:09
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, right, right, okay.

00:13:11
Speaker 3: So we worked each year. We worked the beginning of the year in twenty twenty, and then the world shut down, and then we came back as soon as we possibly could. We kept trying to go back on the road, but nobody was over up their buildings.

00:13:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, yeah, I'm being home that long was strange because we were never home that long.

00:13:32
Speaker 1: Other than COVID. What is the longest time you took away from the road as manned.

00:13:37
Speaker 5: Probably six months?

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Really really, it just never gets tired.

00:13:41
Speaker 5: I stopped unpecking. Yeah, I'm always backed. Yeah too.

00:13:45
Speaker 3: I take the dirty clothes out, clean them, put them back in the bag, exactly, wait to leave from the environment.

00:13:51
Speaker 4: You know, we're always ready to go to the next fire.

00:13:55
Speaker 1: Slide down the pole, when the when the Chicago signal goes off in the sky.

00:14:00
Speaker 4: Exactly, and they're still coming. You know, they were sold out every night. It's it's a it's a phenomenon we never ever expect, did you know? You see four generations in the audience and they're all they're all grooving on their own level.

00:14:16
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Okay, I'm gonna do something that I never do, because you were just mentioning that first.

00:14:22
Speaker 4: Album and I'm I'm.

00:14:25
Speaker 1: Not gonna I've never done that, but no, I'm just gonna play. I wanted to play till to that last little becomes a horn fill throughout the whole song, just because that to me, if if you could just play that five seconds to someone, they would just go, that's that is to me, that's Chicagoe.

00:14:53
Speaker 5: I can name that too.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: You can name that tone, name that band. So, now, this was not a song you guys wrote.

00:15:01
Speaker 5: Robert wrote it, Robert Liam wrote that.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Yes, and so because you had multiple composers, what was the what was the process for introducing songs to the band? Did you have something formal? Do you all sit down?

00:15:14
Speaker 5: We just brought songs in.

00:15:16
Speaker 4: You know, you do a demo and you know you sing a rough guide lead into the tape machine with the piano part. As you're saying it, that was a demo. Now it's a record. You know, people were making records for demos, and I remember bringing you know, I wrote just you and me and I brought it in. We were at Caribou Ranch and the guys were all there, and I brought the song in and you know, again it was the cassette with You and My Love and my Life with acoustic piano, and you know, we put it in the machine in the booth and everybody listened to it. I said, is this any good? And Robert looked at me. He said, Jimmy, that's a hit song. I went, really yeah, And so you know, I didn't know. It was a personal experience at the piano, just like when Lee writes his song.

00:16:14
Speaker 5: We and we just we would bring what we had into the room.

00:16:18
Speaker 4: And everybody kind of voted on it, you know, and the song really didn't come alive until everybody in the band added their special magic to it individually.

00:16:31
Speaker 1: Well, this is what I'm interested in this song in particular because to me, it's it's such a great encapsulation of your music. Then you god, chord changes, key changes, tempo changes, I mean, everything is constantly moving. For example, the brass stuff, those brass, the stabs off the start, that great rift towards the end. Like was that part of what Robert brought in or was that something you guys added? How did that work?

00:17:00
Speaker 5: Robert actually arranged his own horns back. Is that right? Anybody really? Time it is?

00:17:07
Speaker 4: Beginnings, students, those are no. I did questions, but he did. He did beginnings. He did does anybody real any time?

00:17:15
Speaker 5: It is?

00:17:15
Speaker 4: He did dialogue and quite a few others, and I kept in current, Man, Robert, you arrange some great stuff. Man, you should keep going with this. But he realized how difficult it was.

00:17:27
Speaker 5: He had Jimmy just killing me.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So those were his those were his ideas. That's amazing.

00:17:35
Speaker 5: Beginning.

00:17:37
Speaker 4: There were there were occasions that I had to come in and revoice things because he wasn't particularly adept at voicing because it wasn't his thing. So he'd write the charts, which are his arrangements, and I just revoice him to, uh, capture the essence of the section.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: So tell me what that means revoicing it in terms of the well.

00:18:03
Speaker 4: You know, typically, you know, I kind of inherited the chair for or creating this approach to the horns. And uh maybe because you know, I played trombone. What I was hearing was a trombone lead. Yeah, so you know the trombone because it's a baritone instrument, and the trumpet and the sacks are above it.

00:18:32
Speaker 5: If I voiced it.

00:18:34
Speaker 4: By nature of the instrument, the disparity and the voices would not be cool. It wouldn't be the equanimity of the voicing would not happen, you know. So I had to I.

00:18:46
Speaker 5: Had to play up an active basically. Yeah.

00:18:48
Speaker 4: So you know, Yeah, is basically in the upper register for a lot of the charts, and the trumpet is in the middle, and then the sacks is right there in the middle between the trumpet and the trombone, so it tightens the voicing.

00:19:07
Speaker 1: Was the was the trumpet amos always on top?

00:19:10
Speaker 4: Well, there's there are times of times the trumpet, Yeah, it leaves upstairs too.

00:19:14
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it isn't always like that.

00:19:16
Speaker 4: But in terms of just the typical accompaniment with the vocals, right, yeah, the section is more tight. The voicing is tight, so it has more of a punch, you know. And then we overdob and we put the trumpet upstairs on the on the double, and we put the bone, I do the pedals on the bone, and we might.

00:19:40
Speaker 3: Play a wide triad, but then let the rhythm section play the color notes, the sevens extensions.

00:19:53
Speaker 4: That's the conundrum when we're playing live, you have to pick there's only three of us, Okay, in live performance. In the studio we had the luxury of overdobing of multi so we could we could add all those extensions in the second take or even the third take. Sometimes we tripled if we wanted really a big sound. But live there's only three of us, So it's very important to be economically precise. You have to pick just the right three voices to express the nature of the chord. If it's a seven chord or a nine chord, you're not going to just play the root and the third and the fifth. You need to play those extensions to paint the right colors of that extended chord.

00:20:43
Speaker 1: And you'd hope that the base or somebody else was filled.

00:20:47
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, yeah, you'll leave yeah, you leave the guts to the rhythm section.

00:20:51
Speaker 1: But you're saying sometimes you guys would play chord tones and leave the color notes to sure the rest of the band. To me, that famous riff phil at the end of what I just played, it's got the it's the Is that the trumpet on top doing hitting the single note? Yes, and then there's the trombone in the sacks.

00:21:14
Speaker 5: Are oh bo.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, are they playing the same note orre they playing different notes?

00:21:21
Speaker 5: Different notes? Different notes?

00:21:23
Speaker 1: Okay, were they in maybe thirds or something?

00:21:25
Speaker 3: They're playing thirds. I'm playing at the top note b b b B.

00:21:33
Speaker 5: Chord.

00:21:34
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, But this is the way Robert wanted it.

00:21:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I got a kick out of his A lot of his voicing.

00:21:43
Speaker 5: I left alone because it was really great.

00:21:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just simple to the point.

00:21:48
Speaker 5: I mean, I have to be at beginnings. Be let it live, let it.

00:21:56
Speaker 4: I mean the alto trumpet line in the beginning, it's still I get chills when I hear it.

00:22:02
Speaker 5: I love it. I mean, Robert wrote some great stuff.

00:22:05
Speaker 1: And then for you guys for playing, I mean, I know different groups. You know, string quartets. People are always looking at each other. There's a lot of body language to signal when you're coming in. How did you guys learn to play so precisely together?

00:22:19
Speaker 5: We guessed, and we guessed write a lot.

00:22:23
Speaker 4: You know what, man, I gotta tell you a lot of times Jimmy would say, Okay, this next time, we're gonna go boah.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: We're gonna like we called it the grease, right, We're gonna put the grease on the second note, and I would go, he's not gonna put the grease on the second note, He's gonna do it on a third note.

00:22:41
Speaker 5: So I'd do it on the third and I would make it too well, and he was I knew he wasn't gonna do it.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: How do you know he wasn't going to do it?

00:22:49
Speaker 5: I didn't for sure, but I just guessed right.

00:22:53
Speaker 4: But you know the old adage, you know, the horn section is like one set of lungs. You know, we feel each other by its asmosis or something. And you know when I'll never forget it. When we assembled for the first time, and we'll to parents basement in Maywell, Illinois, and we were playing James Brown Stuff.

00:23:15
Speaker 5: I heard it. Papa's got a brand new band. Papa's got I heard it immediately. I said, this is magic.

00:23:24
Speaker 1: You just knew this is you. Three guys were locked in.

00:23:27
Speaker 4: I'm yeah, I was, I mean blown away. It was magic. I said, this is unbelievable.

00:23:36
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Lee, Lock Nane and Jimmy Panco after the break.

00:23:43
Speaker 1: I want to take you back just a little bit further before you met what and I'll start with you Lee. What were how did music come into your life? What was We were playing with different bands, but but even before that year a band.

00:23:55
Speaker 3: Called Ross and Majestics and Andow Band, and we played the Irish clubs in Chicago. We played like R and B, well not R and B, country and western songs, Irish dances and all kinds of stuff, you know.

00:24:15
Speaker 1: And was your family musical? Is that how you?

00:24:18
Speaker 3: My father was a trumpet player.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: Oh was that right? Okay?

00:24:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was. He was a band leader and he never actually left the States. He was a chief warrant officer in the Army Air Force when it was combined at the time, and he'd have all these players come through.

00:24:37
Speaker 5: And then go to the front vides. Right.

00:24:40
Speaker 1: Did he play with a lot of military.

00:24:43
Speaker 3: I think he had stopped playing by that time. He was just the band leader and these cats would come through and then go. He would let him go a well on the weekend.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: So you sorry, no, absolutely, of course, I'm.

00:24:59
Speaker 5: The cry baby of the band, by the way. Okay, sentimental irishman. That's well.

00:25:05
Speaker 1: If you can't be sentimental with your father, I don't see what you can't, Candy.

00:25:09
Speaker 3: Absolutely, he was good to them and they then they'd go over and fight the war and hopefully come back. But they were some of the greatest players out of the big bands, you know, Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, all those bands. When they got drafted, they'd come through his band.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: Is that right? Did he have stories about them?

00:25:30
Speaker 3: He didn't like to tell the stories. He wanted to get away from it when he came home.

00:25:35
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, And did you play in school? Did you do play school school?

00:25:39
Speaker 5: And I started in grade school? Yeah, eleven years old.

00:25:43
Speaker 1: Wow, And that was back when in grade school they walked you into a big room full of brass and said pick an instrument. Yep, there was a lot of that in schools.

00:25:52
Speaker 3: Well, he had played the trumpet, so that was the first choice.

00:25:57
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:25:57
Speaker 3: And they just checked my teeth to make sure I wasn't going to harm myself. You know, my lips were gonna be bloody mess by the time I got done. And it seemed to work out, so I never stopped since.

00:26:10
Speaker 1: And then you went to college for music, Yes.

00:26:13
Speaker 3: The Paul University and which where we met.

00:26:15
Speaker 1: And were your parents happy about that?

00:26:17
Speaker 3: They weren't too happy when I decided to do this for a living. They were trying to talk me out of doing it, and because you know how many people make it, I was one of the lucky ones. We were a couple of the lucky ones.

00:26:31
Speaker 1: Did when did they finally accept that you'd made it?

00:26:34
Speaker 3: I'm not exactly sure, but when they started coming to shows and.

00:26:37
Speaker 1: Going that's pretty good any day now.

00:26:40
Speaker 3: I mean like when you mentioned does anybody know what time it is? That was sort of a crossover from the big bands to modern rock and roll?

00:26:48
Speaker 1: And then what were your Were you influenced by big bands growing up?

00:26:52
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:26:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, because my dad had all those records. I used to to play along with them.

00:26:59
Speaker 1: You guys aren't unique. Their their blood, sweat and tears. Other bands would have bigger horn. James Brown I think had a trombone, but not a lot of bands had your sound. Slim the Family, stonehead a trumpet.

00:27:13
Speaker 3: Well, the brass was always uh a background instrument and all the other bands. We were a lead voice. We became a lead band.

00:27:22
Speaker 4: Our approach is melodic, whereas a typical horn section is harmonic and frosting on the cake. Because we are a lead voice, we are a melodic horn section that interplays in and around what the lead vocal is doing, so it becomes intrinsic in the song. If you take the brass out, there's empty spaces.

00:27:47
Speaker 1: Were there models for that that you listened to?

00:27:50
Speaker 5: No, I just I arranged what I heard. I wanted.

00:27:53
Speaker 4: I wanted the section to be a lead voice, and that wasn't just.

00:28:00
Speaker 5: Not shots. You know, do you Emma seeless, right?

00:28:10
Speaker 4: And that's kind of the approach we do, because if you take it away, you know there's something missing. Maybe subconsciously it was job security, but you know, you know, we just felt it out.

00:28:25
Speaker 3: Interesting that you say job security, because there are people now who, for whatever reasons, they have decided that they are not going to listen to what is popular, and then twenty years later they're grown up and they decide to listen to Chicago Transit Authority for the first time and then give a reaction reaction videos, and they inevitably ask if the horn players are part of the band, you know, thinking that it's too big.

00:28:58
Speaker 1: Or they are they even real horns?

00:28:59
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:29:00
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they had to have been real horns because there was no electronic instruments to be able to play them back then, you.

00:29:06
Speaker 4: Know, and again there was no competit narrative. We invented this, you know, this approach became our signature.

00:29:15
Speaker 1: It does remind me of times a little bit of he didn't have a vocalist, but like the Mingas band sometimes, were you guys influenced at all by Oh?

00:29:24
Speaker 5: Absolutely?

00:29:25
Speaker 4: I was a jazz guy, you know, and I brought that to the table, and Lee was in his his bands.

00:29:32
Speaker 5: I had my own quintet.

00:29:35
Speaker 4: It was modeled after the Crusaders, if you will, canniball. Atterly, we were doing jazz covers, you know, milestones, give Samba about better Me and uh, our repertoire kind of evolved into jazz rock funk. I started, uh, you know, experimenting with more contemporary motifs. So when I when I became part of the our thing, I started there and then now a way, Uh, I have a vocal group to work with, I have a rhythm section that is rock and roll to work with.

00:30:16
Speaker 5: I mean Terry kaz blew me away.

00:30:19
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, he was brilliant and Terry couldn't read music, so he helped me help him and vice versa. I sat with him for hours because Introduction, which is the first cut on Chicago. Transmittory is an incredibly intricate piece. I mean there's every time signature and key change, and I mean Terry was going for the throat, but he didn't know how to put it on paper. He didn't you know, he heard it, but he didn't write. He couldn't write it, he couldn't read it. Yeah, so I had to sit with him and Okay, this is a B minor, this is an F sharp major, this is a flat and fifth.

00:31:02
Speaker 5: You know, I had to create a chord chart.

00:31:05
Speaker 4: Only then could I arrange the song for the because I needed a roadmap. And Terry, in sitting with me, learned eventually how to read charts. And I learned how to embrace rock and roll because I had been a jazz guy. So working with Terry opened my brain up to you know, guitar man, you know rock and roll.

00:31:31
Speaker 5: This is awesome. I can put horns with this, this is cool.

00:31:36
Speaker 1: So do you remember meeting Terry for the first time?

00:31:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was he Walt asked him to come over to school to Paul to talk about their gig or some shit. I don't I don't remember, but yeah, he and Danny Canea de Paul and I met Terry.

00:31:53
Speaker 1: To Paul, what was your first impression?

00:31:57
Speaker 5: He was wild. He was wild.

00:31:59
Speaker 4: You know. He had this kind of kangaroo jacket and long blonde hair, and he was a big guy, big sturdy Norwegian, and he was gruff, you know. And there is something, you know, very cave man Terry, and you know, I was immediately taken aback by it. You know, it was like, oh, this guy is very interesting. Yeah. And I heard him play.

00:32:32
Speaker 5: It was like, holy shit, he was playing bass. Well, he was playing bass.

00:32:37
Speaker 4: I think it was before we were in Walt's basement that I heard him playing guitar. Somewhere. I don't know, maybe he was just horsing around. It might have been the apartment he used to sit between custom speakers, you know, those were his headphones.

00:32:54
Speaker 5: It was and man.

00:32:57
Speaker 4: But then when we first got together Walt's parents, I really heard Terry.

00:33:05
Speaker 5: My jaw dropped.

00:33:06
Speaker 4: I mean, this guy was like, yeah, God, feel his feel I mean he felt it in every inch of his body.

00:33:16
Speaker 5: And you know, you couldn't help but be.

00:33:22
Speaker 1: But he's also a great rhythm player too.

00:33:24
Speaker 5: Great rhythm player and single lead vocals sing the book. Yeah, he did it all.

00:33:31
Speaker 3: He did it all. I've never seen or heard anybody who can do that.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: And then what was your impression of Robert when you met him? Do you remember meeting him for the first time.

00:33:41
Speaker 3: I think Walt actually met Robert first. He went he was he went to a club where was it Bobby Charles?

00:33:49
Speaker 5: Bobby Charles and the Wanderers. The Wanderers.

00:33:52
Speaker 4: It was at sub dive on the South Side, and Robert was playing acoustic piano and Walt. Walt asked him if you knew if he played B three Oregon because we didn't have a bass player, and Walt was interested pedals. To save money, man, maybe we could find an organ player that could play the bass pedals on the organ and we wouldn't have to pay a bass player.

00:34:18
Speaker 5: And Roberts said, oh yeah, man, I play organ. Never done in his life.

00:34:25
Speaker 4: He immediately went out and bought I used them three organ and started woodshedding at home, so when when we got together, he could at least I.

00:34:36
Speaker 3: Think we did that for about six months or so before we.

00:34:40
Speaker 1: Before we met Peter, and then you hired Peter. Do you remember meeting Was he like a highre like you went looking for a bass player?

00:34:47
Speaker 3: He was leaving. He was in the process of leaving. The exceptions that were that were like the drinking and Cuddy was sort of They were a Top forty band. They were everybody played forty five minutes, fifteen off. They would take their fifteen minutes off and go backstage and learn another song, another song, and then come out and try it on the next set. Hell did they get But they would sound exactly like the record.

00:35:17
Speaker 5: Yeah. And they had.

00:35:19
Speaker 4: Two amazing vocalists, Jimmy Vincent and Peter and they were really they were like the thing, you know. They appeared on local TV and they were probably one of the most popular club acts in the Midwest at that time. We were at that time, we were beginning to get fired from these clubs because we started discovering our own voice, particularly particularly Robert Lamb, who started bringing original material into the band, and we'd start trying those songs out at clubs, and no sooner we do that, the club owners would would come to us and say, hey, you play that stuff, You're out of here. I want Top forty. That's what my customers want to come to hear. And so we either had to dick to the Top forty or get fired and we started fired.

00:36:14
Speaker 1: This sort of set a pattern for the rest of your career.

00:36:17
Speaker 3: Not only that, we set a pattern for the type of stuff that we were doing, and the and the way we were feeling about life, and some of the illegal things that we were doing on our fifteen minute breaks. As opposed to having a drink with the boys, we were going out and yeeling smoking a joint instead.

00:36:35
Speaker 1: You weren't learning a song, so we were, but we.

00:36:37
Speaker 3: Were taking that drinking audience we weren't doing in a new song, and we would take that drinking new audience away to come and listen to us. And that's what became interesting for Setara to come and hear us.

00:36:50
Speaker 5: Well here's the deal man. Yeah, there were, you know, no scenery.

00:36:53
Speaker 4: We started getting fired from these typical nightclubs. A club opened on Rush Street called Barnaby's that actually encouraged new stuff.

00:37:05
Speaker 5: You know. They it was wow, Okay, this is what we've been looking for.

00:37:10
Speaker 4: And we got a gig at Barnaby's and we could do they they loved it. We could do our thing. We were doing expanded arrangements of hit songs. There was a group called Vanilla Fudge. They inspired that as well. They do you know, extended versions with alternate chord changes, and you know, so we started doing that and then and then that evolved into completely original material, which we were able to do at Barnaby's. One engagement at Barnabys, we were an opening act for The Exceptions. Peter se Tera and the Exceptions were the headliner. And he heard us doing these beetle covers. He was a huge Beatles fan. He heard us doing Magical Mystery tour and got to get you in my life and it blew him away.

00:38:06
Speaker 5: Next thing, you know, he was in the band.

00:38:08
Speaker 1: And then how soon after that did you leave for Los Angeles?

00:38:13
Speaker 4: All of it started in February of sixty eight and in June sixty seven, I'm sorry, And in June of sixty eight we headed to California, So a year and a half.

00:38:26
Speaker 1: And you also did you tour with Janis Choplin? Why have that rank?

00:38:30
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, we met her at the Fillmore West and along we also we opened for Jimmy Hendrix. We were at the Whiskey a Go Go It' Sunset Strip. We were opening for Albert King and we were in the dressing room waiting to go back on and there was a knock on the door and we opened the door and Hendrix is standing there and we're going, whoa is.

00:38:54
Speaker 5: That Jimmy Hendricks?

00:38:55
Speaker 1: You know, and you knew his stuff?

00:38:57
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, oh he was.

00:39:00
Speaker 3: I was playing like Jimmy Hendrix before we heard Jimmy Hendrix.

00:39:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were. In fact, we were doing his cover.

00:39:06
Speaker 4: We were in Fox the Lady in Purple Heads, in our in our set, and Hendricks heard him. And before we went back, I say, he came to the dressing room he said, you guys have a guitar player that's better than me and a horn section that sounds like one set of lungs.

00:39:21
Speaker 5: Do you guys want to go on the road? Fuck? Yeah.

00:39:26
Speaker 4: And next thing you know, we opened for his summer tour. We were the opening acting for him.

00:39:33
Speaker 3: It was at the end of his career and the end of Genesis, but it was our foot in the door to the business. We never took our foot out of the door.

00:39:41
Speaker 1: What was he like to tour with?

00:39:44
Speaker 4: He was very introspective, very shy, quiet, And it was funny because you know, we traveled together. Terry was nervous around him, and he was nervous around Terry. You know, he didn't know how to approach each other. Eventually they got comfortable and they started trading ideas.

00:40:03
Speaker 3: And you know, Terry would love to have played with him. He would have joined Jimmy. Hendry expand in a flash and left us.

00:40:12
Speaker 4: See you guys, well we were there was actually some chatter amongst us about maybe doing a project together with him with Jimmy, and of course he left us too early, and then Terry left us too early.

00:40:28
Speaker 1: He also and maybe it was Walt who told the story that he was telling you how he felt tremendous pressure to have another hit and that he was finding Hendrick. Yeah, he was finding it very hard to probably.

00:40:42
Speaker 3: I mean that's that sort of goes along with the business itself. You know, it's always what have you done lately?

00:40:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just don't think that would apply to Jimmy Hendrix.

00:40:52
Speaker 3: It applies to everyone who's ever picked up an instrument.

00:40:58
Speaker 4: I forget which artist it was. I think Joni Mitchell, You're only as good as your last hit. How quickly did they forget? Almost infinitely. That's another reason that this Journey of ours is such a phenomenon, because these songs broke that mold. These songs have become timeless, these songs we are along for the ride. We're just blessed with this ride that this music has given us.

00:41:27
Speaker 1: Do you think it's the songs those yeah, Oh.

00:41:30
Speaker 4: My gosh, yes, I mean these songs and we hear it every night. These songs have become fabrics of lives, soundtracks. These people are in there, they're singing louder in the band. It's like it's a communion. Little did we know. I mean, we are so blessed to have this phenomenon occur that never would have occurred to us.

00:41:53
Speaker 1: But now the music business as opposed to the fans. You know, you found out at some point you didn't have publishing. Wasn't that right, You didn't have publishing rights.

00:42:04
Speaker 3: Oh no, Gercil took the publisher rights. So I mean, I prefer not to talk about him anymore. Yeah, he enough already, so he discovered us, thank you.

00:42:16
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:42:17
Speaker 1: But then, but then Columbia dropped you after you made them just a gigantic stack of money.

00:42:25
Speaker 4: Well, we made him a stack of money. But at the time they dropped us, we were managed by a guy that made a deal that they couldn't refuse.

00:42:37
Speaker 5: And Walter yet Nikoff.

00:42:40
Speaker 4: Agreed to the deal, and they realized after they went back to New York that they had just screwed themselves because they offered us way more than they thought we were worth.

00:42:51
Speaker 5: They were never going to come up and they were never going to recover.

00:42:55
Speaker 4: So they, you know, they let us go, and they released everything they had over and over, repackage, repackaged.

00:43:02
Speaker 3: And started saying that we were done. Yeah, you know, we weren't done, but you know, so Irving Azoff picked us up and put us on Full Moon Records, and not a bad guy to pick you up. Another historical thing, just going.

00:43:16
Speaker 1: Back to that first album, how how long after you'd been in LA did you record your Chicrgo Transit Authority?

00:43:23
Speaker 4: Six months we got to LA and June sixty eight. We were in New York in January sixty nine beginning the recording of Chicago Transit Authority.

00:43:32
Speaker 1: And now that was your first record deal. Columbia was a little nervous, but you insisted on a double album. I'm fascinated by that.

00:43:38
Speaker 4: Well, we we as a band realized that these cuts were longer cuts if we had done and Gercio completely agreed and supported our vision here. We couldn't have captured full picture this music with one disc, and he tried to convince Clive Davis of that, and Class said, you know budget before you know, our budget doesn't allow that for a new artist. Of course, it was the right decision, Yeah, and every The next two albums were also double albums because Columbia realized that it was necessary.

00:44:22
Speaker 2: One last break and were back with Lee, Lock Nane and Jimmy Panko. My introduction to you was from my brother David, who was a trumpet player, and he brought home the Carnegie Hall record.

00:44:40
Speaker 1: Now, I know you don't like the sound the fourth album. That was the fourth album.

00:44:44
Speaker 3: That was the best they could do at the time, And I didn't realize that until fifty years later when I did it.

00:44:50
Speaker 4: When I Lee did a remaster that is brilliant. Really Yeah, He and an engineer took it into his studio and gave it the digital.

00:45:01
Speaker 3: Ten months later. But we had to take away all of the noise and electronics and everything just to get down to the instruments. And then we edited that to get as much of the sound of Carnegie Hall out of it, so we would delete everything up to the whatever horn or voice it was, and then fade into that note, let the note play finish, and then fade out of it. And we did that for each instrument, every drum, every well. Actually the drums were easier because you can put gates on those, but also to build up the sound of the drums, Tim Jessup, the engineer, put together a drum sound, probably like ten tracks of drums, but anyway, yeah, he built he built a drum sound. So by the time we finished, we were able to move the music forward as though you were sitting.

00:46:11
Speaker 5: In the audience.

00:46:12
Speaker 4: And for me it being the arranger, it was a blessing me because my beef with Carnegie Hall, and again it was lack of technology. That's what we had. Oh yeah, and the horns. I couldn't listen to. The horns sounded like kazoos. It wasn't our sound. It wasn't our big sound. And Lee brought that back.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: But now most people the Carnegie Hall is considered it the greatest acoustics at least in the world. What was the issue, just the way it was, Mike, No, no, no, it's.

00:46:42
Speaker 5: Rock and roll.

00:46:43
Speaker 3: It's a Cardigie Hall is built for acoustic music. That's the difference. And if you put amplema, it's just you can probably still hear some of the notes now towards the building I here Chicago.

00:46:58
Speaker 4: That.

00:46:59
Speaker 5: Nineteen seventy one.

00:47:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still when when I sit in my chair, I screened a little of the sound out. So but tell me about it's such a an amazing piece of music. The ballet. It's got seven it's got seven parts make Me Smile. I think it as at least two key changes in it. And I'm not going to talk about make Me Smile because I will encourage people listening to go to YouTube to you know. Rick Biatto did a wonderful did a wonderful breakdown of that song.

00:47:34
Speaker 5: He's amazing.

00:47:35
Speaker 1: He's got yeah, no, he's.

00:47:38
Speaker 5: I try to catch all his breakdowns. He does a lot of it.

00:47:41
Speaker 1: He's done. He's done great ones, but I think yours is one of the best.

00:47:44
Speaker 5: He's an amazing musicologist.

00:47:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he really is. And he does a fabulous breakdown of make Me Smile, and you can hear all the parts, and it's it's just a blast. But then there's so much to say anxiety's moments, and then there's the West Virginia Fantasies, which features you Lee on trumpet beautiful beautiful trumpet line.

00:48:09
Speaker 3: I never learned what any of those names, because.

00:48:14
Speaker 1: Well, you know the part where you're playing beautiful trumpet parts, that's what it's called.

00:48:20
Speaker 5: I love that.

00:48:21
Speaker 4: I mean, I come from it the other night because I had a clip for a performance and when we're when we're on stage, gig it, I can't hear a lot of the nuances because there's so much going on in my ears.

00:48:33
Speaker 5: And I heard that piece very.

00:48:35
Speaker 4: Clearly, and your tone on that thing is so nice because I had never heard it on stage.

00:48:44
Speaker 1: And then there's the beautiful counterpart where Walter would come in on that was was that all written out? Was any of this written over?

00:48:52
Speaker 5: Every note was written out?

00:48:53
Speaker 4: When I wrote the ballet, I just approached it as a multi movement piece.

00:48:59
Speaker 5: You know, you're still writing it. When we were recording in.

00:49:02
Speaker 1: The Chicago, did you did you have a like a classical piece of music you had in mind as a model.

00:49:08
Speaker 4: Not necessarily, but I wanted to create as a peon perhaps to the great classic composers.

00:49:17
Speaker 5: Hey, why can't we do this? And you know rock and roll?

00:49:19
Speaker 4: You know, so I just wrote an extended piece and one movement evolved into another, into another. But I didn't have anything titled in movements. That was Gercio's idea, said Jimmy, let's title each one of those departures, each one of those segues. So we have actual titles on these movements, and we wind up with a almost a mini symphony kind of approach.

00:49:50
Speaker 5: Well.

00:49:50
Speaker 3: Also, the business, the studios and record companies were allowing unlimited copyrights at that time, and within a few years after that they cut it down to just ten copyrights on a record completely changed writers in the record business because they didn't want to share. Once you had ten songs on a record, you wrote the eleven song, that the writers would have to start sharing their royalties. They didn't want to be doing that, so it completely changed their writing.

00:50:27
Speaker 4: And I could get nasty here, but I'm not going to. I'm Christian.

00:50:32
Speaker 5: Hey, more titles, more publishing.

00:50:35
Speaker 3: Well that's what that's where I was leading. But so anyway, the greed changes everything. So we were just playing music and writing music, and that's what we loved. Still to this day.

00:50:48
Speaker 5: I had been listening to Bach.

00:50:51
Speaker 4: I am totally a fan of Johann Bach, I mean, arguably the most perfect voicer in the history of music. I mean his voicing and his intervals were perfect. He was the template in music theory. Bach was a perfectionist, but Bach also cooked. Bach grooved. So here's this perfectionist that had an amazing feel as well. And I was listening to the Brandenburg Concertos. I got absorbed in how did he do this?

00:51:29
Speaker 5: How did he do this? It totally drew me in. Well.

00:51:33
Speaker 4: That inspired me to sit at a piano and start fooling around with our peggios. Do do do do Do Do Do Do Do do a La Bach and Color of My World was directly inspired by the Brandenburg Concertos. It's a twelve bar turnaround of major sevens and minor sevens. It's around and I put a vocal over it and then a flute so over it.

00:52:03
Speaker 1: Wow, it's just amazing. But the changes in it are very, very interesting. They're not they're all relative.

00:52:12
Speaker 4: There's a note in each major seven chord that that sets up the next major seven or minor seven chord, so they're they're.

00:52:22
Speaker 1: Always using common notes to create the.

00:52:25
Speaker 4: Yeah do do do do do do do do do do do do do Do.

00:52:29
Speaker 5: I only changed the F T an A to.

00:52:31
Speaker 4: Make it an A minor seven from an F major to an A writer, so they're relative.

00:52:37
Speaker 5: All the chords are relative, but they.

00:52:38
Speaker 1: Flow, They flow beautiful, so it's not diatonic. It's not no, but it's but it has that you use the common tones to keep it exactly well. The whole thing is just amazing.

00:52:52
Speaker 5: Thank you now.

00:52:53
Speaker 1: But Lee, it took you a little longer to become a writer.

00:52:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these guys were already writers. I came in with call on Me, you want to listen to my song? So I had my little cassette put it in and had.

00:53:07
Speaker 1: You presented a lot of songs before call on Me.

00:53:09
Speaker 3: This was my first song wow, that I presented, and I had to say though, you came out with a bang. Came out with a bang, and Sata decided to sing it and became a hit. It did come in still hit today. It's going to be on this fiftieth anniversary album, so.

00:53:29
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool as it should be.

00:53:31
Speaker 3: And it was on the Chicago seven and then The Greatest Hits, which we initially thought was going to be our last album, because once you do the Greatest hits. Historically, most bands are history after that.

00:53:46
Speaker 1: And did you think that was And it was that around the time that Terry died.

00:53:49
Speaker 3: Or Terry died shortly after that, but it was something that was going on, so it did enter our hits. But we just kept playing music. We just kept playing our shows.

00:54:00
Speaker 1: So there wasn't a There wasn't a point you thought it's been a ten year run.

00:54:05
Speaker 3: No, because we kept working. We were interested in playing. He was four audiences. We loved playing for live audiences. Yeah, and you still do today.

00:54:14
Speaker 1: But even after Terry died, did you feel was there a moment you felt like we can't do this? He was such a he was such a huge force.

00:54:23
Speaker 3: Not a matter I can't but he was the leader at the time, and we had to decide that we are still together. He would want us to keep going, So let's do that.

00:54:34
Speaker 5: Yep.

00:54:34
Speaker 1: I'm only halfway through my questions and we're out of time, So you're gonna You're gonna come back at some point. We're gonna keep going. Yeah, man, this has been.

00:54:43
Speaker 5: There won't be sixty more years though, right planning?

00:54:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll be you'll be talking to uh if my brain's in a jar. That's all you'll be talking to. It's been a huge honor. Thank you so much.

00:54:56
Speaker 5: Honor.

00:54:59
Speaker 2: An episode description, you'll find a link to our favorite Chicago tracks, as well as the fiftieth anniversary re release of Chicago nine Chicago's Greatest hits. Be sure to check out YouTube Die Slash Broken Record podcast to see all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries.

00:55:28
Speaker 1: If you love this show and others.

00:55:30
Speaker 2: From Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.