ON THIS DATE (46 YEARS AGO)
January 26, 1970 –
Chicago: Chicago II is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4.5/5
# Allmusic 4.5/5
Chicago II is the second album by Chicago, released on January 25,
1970. It reached #4 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, and #6 on the
UK Album chart. While The Chicago Transit Authority was a success,
Chicago is considered by many to be Chicago's breakthrough album,
yielding a number of Top 40 hits, including "Make Me Smile" (#9),
"Colour My World" (#7), and "25 or 6 to 4" (#4).
It was released
on this date in 1970 after the band had shortened its name from The
Chicago Transit Authority after releasing their same-titled debut album
the previous year. Although the official title of the album is Chicago,
it came to be retroactively known as Chicago II, keeping it in line with
the succession of Roman numeral-titled albums that officially began
with Chicago III in 1971.
Chicago II remains a classic album,
encapsulating its time (1969) in all its tumult and glory. The Vietnam
War (and the civil unrest it inspired) was still raging, the
counterculture dream had not yet crashed and burned, and rock music
could be taken seriously as an "art form" while still generating radio
hits. Chicago, with their then-new fusion of jazz, rock, and pop, rose
high on the charts, while taken seriously both in and beyond the
rock-critic establishment.
Their approach had a freshness and
vibrancy--"25 Or 6 To 4" was surging, dramatic, and slightly ominous;
"Fancy Colours" and "Make Me Smile" were full of soulful optimism; a
four-movement suite showed the band had ambition beyond the three- or
four-minute pop song. The centerpiece of the album was the
thirteen-minute song cycle "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon". Guitarist
Terry Kath also participated in an extended classically styled cycle of
four pieces, three of which were co-written by the well-known, arranger,
composer, and pianist Peter Matz. The politically outspoken Robert Lamm
also tackles his qualms with "It Better End Soon", another modular
piece. Peter Cetera, later to play a crucial role in the band's music,
contributed his first song to Chicago and this album, "Where Do We Go
From Here".
___________________________________
FROM THE BOX SET “GROUP PORTRAIT”
The second album also saw the debut of a new songwriter in the band,
although the circumstances under which he became a writer are
unfortunate. During a break in the touring in the summer of 1969, Peter
Cetera was set upon at a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
"Four marines didn't like a long-haired rock 'n' roller in a baseball
park," Cetera recounts, "and of course I was a Cub fan, and I was in
Dodger Stadium, and that didn't do so well. I got in a fight and got a
broken jaw in three places, and I was in intensive care for a couple of
days.”
The incident had two separate effects on Cetera's career.
The first was an impact on his singing style. "The only funny thing I
can think about the whole incident," he says, "is that, with my jaw
wired together - and I had a broken front tooth which allowed me to
shove little bits and pieces of food in there and drink some liquid - I
actually went on the road a lot sooner than I should have, just because
of the economics of everything, and I remember, I believe it was the
Atlanta Pop Festival, although I'm not sure if it was the Atlanta or the
Texas Pop Festival, there were like 300,000 people there, and I was
actually singing through my clenched jaw, singing backgrounds, which, to
this day, is kind of still the way I sing. I have a fairly closed
mouth, just because of that."
The second effect of the incident
was Cetera's first foray into composition. "I came from a band that did
Top 40," he says, "and as far as I was concerned, especially when the
Beatles came along, number one, all melodies had already been taken,
and, number two, certain people were songwriters and certain people were
singers, and I didn't consider myself to be a songwriter."
But
with a broken jaw, the erstwhile singer had some silent time on his
hands. "I had just gotten out of the hospital," Cetera recalls, "and was
lying in my bed convalescing when they landed on the moon, and I
grabbed my bass guitar and started this little progression on the bass,
and started writing 'Where Do We Go From Here.' I think Walter Cronkite
actually had said that, and I thought, 'Wow, where do we go from here?'
So, in a melancholy way, I wrote it about that, and then I wrote it
about myself, and about the world, and about everything in general, and
that was my first writing credit."
In addition to its expanded
musical horizons, the second album also took a more direct look at the
political situation. Chicago had included chants from the demonstrators
outside the 1968 Democratic Convention on its first album, and here one
of the LP's extended suites was entitled, "It Better End Soon," a plea
for the end of the Vietnam War. Though the lyric cautioned, "We gotta do
it right - within the system," the title spoke to the impatience of
young people at the start of 1970.
Similarly, the album's liner
notes (penned by Robert Lamm) dedicated the record, the band members,
their futures, and their energies "to the people of the revolution ...
And the revolution in all of its forms." It is difficult more than two
decades later to describe the multiplicity of meanings the word
"revolution" had for young people at the time, and even harder to
determine whether a "revolution" actually took place. Clearly, something
changed. "I think there was one," says Lamm today. "You may argue with
the term 'revolution,' but I think for those of us who were sweaty kids
in our late teens or early 20s, that sure was a sexy word."
At
the time, however, the band's political commitment was subject to some
misunderstanding. Robert Lamm was actually the chief political exponent
of the band, and he just felt the need as a composer, as an American and
a human being, to talk about these things because they were major
issues in his life, and he felt that we had an incredible platform and a
gift, and we could use it for things other than entertaining," explains
Pankow. "We were even at the point of putting voter registration
information at concerts. Robert figures if 18-year-old kids were old
enough to get their brains blown out in Vietnam, they should be old
enough to vote. Unfortunately, it was misinterpreted by a lot of the nut
cases. The SDS and the Chicago Seven and all kinds of people were
approaching us on the basis of rioting, of, "Hey, let's tear the system
down.' All of a sudden, we were being enlisted to become politically
involved to the hilt. I'm sure that it had a lot to do with our
longevity and people taking us seriously, however, it got to the point
where it almost became a burden in light of the fact that it started to
infringe on the musical goals. We started thinking about this, and we
started realizing, hey, man, people come to a concert or put a record on
to forget about that shit. So, we decided to put our objectives in
perspective and entertain people. That's what we do best, that's what
our niche in life is, and so that's what we decided to do, we put our
politics on the shelf."
In commercial terms, the major change
that came with Chicago II, which was released in January, 1970, was that
it opened the floodgates on Chicago as a singles band. In October,
1969, Columbia had re-tested the waters by releasing "Beginnings" as a
single, but AM radio still wasn't interested, and the record failed to
chart. All of this changed, however, when the label excerpted two songs,
"Make Me Smile" and "Colour My World," from Pankow's ballet, and
released them as the two sides of a single in March, 1970.
"I
was driving in my car down Santa Monica Boulevard in L.A.," Pankow
remembers, "and I turned the radio on KHJ, and 'Make Me Smile' came on. I
almost hit the car in front of me, 'cause it's my song, and I'm hearing
it on the biggest station in L.A. At that point, I realized, hey, we
have a hit single. They don't play you in L.A. unless you're hit-bound.
So, that was one of the more exciting moments in my early career."
The single reached the Top 10, while Chicago II immediately went gold
and got to Number 4 on the LP's chart, joining the first album, which
was still selling well. A second single, Lamm's "25 Or 6 To 4," was an
even bigger hit in the summer of 1970, reaching Number 4.
But
instead of reaching into the second album for a third single, Columbia
and Chicago decided to try to re-stimulate interest in the first album,
and succeeded. The group's next single was "Does Anybody Really Know
What Time It Is?" which became their third Top 10 hit in a row by the
start of 1971. "Up to that time, to be very honest, I don't think people
were really ready to hear horns the way we were using them," says
Parazaider. "But after we established something with horns - '25 Or 6 To
4,' but actually 'Make Me Smile,' which was our first bona fide hit-it
seemed like it broke the ice and it became easier, and they accepted
stuff that was recorded easily a year before."
_______________________________________________
CHICAGO AND THE SINGLE EDIT
In 1968, when Richard Harris and the Beatles enjoyed top-selling hit
singles that ran over seven minutes each, it seemed as though the old
habit of keeping songs down to three minutes - an ancient holdover from
the pre-tape days of the first half of the century when recordings
couldn't physically be longer - was about to be buried. True, radio had
patterned itself after the three-minute limit for its commercial
considerations, but clearly the audiences were willing to accept longer
songs.
Artists may have recognized the change, but record
companies didn't, and so, as tracks got longer and longer, groups got
into fights - in the already politically adversarial days of the late
'60s - over having their songs edited down to something around three
minutes for single release. This was a particular problem for Chicago,
who, as they became a singles force in the early '70s, more and more
faced the razor at Columbia Records.
"The normal problem of that
time for any group was, they would try and take a four-minute and
ten-second song, and try and make it three minutes long," recalls Peter
Cetera, "and we were just against that. There was a big thing at that
time to be totally album-oriented, and anything that smacked of you
doing this to be a single was commercialism, which was terribly frowned
upon. What you really wanted was to be on the big FM [album] oriented
stations, and not the Top 40 twinkie stations."
"It was a
problem," argues Parazaider. "I think it was a problem for the writers,
too, because they were writing whole pieces. It bothered all of us that
some of these things were taken right out of context and chopped up and
put on the radio. And then they became hits, what can you say? How do
you complain? Say, 'Take it off the radio. We're ashamed of that
musically'? We weren't ashamed of it musically. It's just, the people
weren't getting the whole story. The only thing we took comfort in was, a
lot of people were buying the albums, so they would definitely see
these little three-minute ditties in context."
"We considered it
an abortion," says Pankow about the edits. "But we were convinced by
our management company and Jimmy Guercio that, hey, if you guys want to
become establishment, if you want to sell millions of records and become
a true phenomenon, you have to make allowances for the nature of your
music. We realized at that point that it was indeed a necessary evil."
Robert Lamm, who was perhaps the most frequent victim of the edits,
disputes the version of the story told in Clive Davis's autobiography.
Davis says that Guercio understood the situation and helped convince the
band to compromise. Lamm says Guercio's antipathy to the edits was
stronger than his own. "The problems that Chicago had with Clive Davis
were not really problems between the band and Clive Davis," he suggests.
"They were problems between Jimmy Guercio and Clive Davis. The thing
about always being at odds with [Davis] about the singles, I don't think
we ever really cared that much other than we were naive and we were
being programmed by Guercio into thinking that this music that we were
creating was so perfect in its virgin state that nobody had the right to
edit it."
Guercio certainly felt strongly about the issue, but
he insists that, whatever you think of the cuts, he, not Davis, made
them. "Those edits were terrible," he says. "The promotion guys, radio
guys, were yelling at me to give them two to three minutes, that was it,
and I had to cut everything down to so many minutes. But I cut
everyone, as good or bad as they were, I did 'em all, the final ones. I
had a contract: they couldn't couple anything, they couldn't package
anything, they couldn't change the artwork, they couldn't do anything
without my approval, 'cause I didn't take any money up front. So, I had
very strong creative controls. If you want to talk about the strength of
Chicago, that's the one thing that I did negotiate for and that I got,
is, nobody could touch anything."
For the record, here's a list
of Chicago songs that were drastically edited release as Columbia
singles, with their LP and single timings. Actually, the problem
diminished over the '70s, as radio loosened up its length restrictions
and Chicago's song lengths shortened.
__________________________________________________
LP Time 45 Time
Questions 67 And 68 ..................................... 4:59 ...... 3:25
Beginnings ................................................... 7:50 ...... 2:47
Make Me Smile ............................................. 3:16* ..... 2:58
Colour My World ........................................... 3:01* ..... 3:01
25 Or 6 To 4 ................................................ 4:50 ....... 2:52
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? .... 4:34 ...... 3:17**
I’m A Man .................................................... 7:41 ...... 3:27
Dialogue (Part I & II) .................................... 7:09 ...... 4:53
Brand New Love Affair ................................... 4:31 ...... 2:30
*Excerpted from "Ballet For A Girl In Buchannan."
**There is also a 2:53 edit.
Unlike some other Columbia compilations, this set contains only the LP edits.
__________________________________________
REVIEW
by Lindsay Planer, allmusic
The Chicago Transit Authority recorded this double-barreled follow-up
to their eponymously titled 1969 debut effort. The contents of Chicago
II (1970) underscore the solid foundation of complex jazz changes with
heavy electric rock & roll that the band so brazenly forged on the
first set. The septet also continued its ability to blend the seemingly
divergent musical styles into some of the best and most effective pop
music of the era. One thing that had changed was the band's name, which
was shortened to simply Chicago to avoid any potential litigious
situations from the city of Chicago's transportation department -- which
claimed the name as proprietary property. Musically, James Pankow
(trombone) was about to further cross-pollinate the band's sound with
the multifaceted six-song "Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon." The
classically inspired suite also garnered the band two of its most
beloved hits -- the upbeat pop opener "Make Me Smile" as well as the
achingly poignant "Color My World" -- both of which remained at the
center of the group's live sets. Chicago had certainly not abandoned its
active pursuit of blending high-octane electric rockers such as "25 or 6
to 4" to the progressive jazz inflections heard in the breezy
syncopation of "The Road." Adding further depth of field is the darker
"Poem for the People" as well as the politically charged five-song set
titled "It Better End Soon." These selections feature the band driving
home its formidable musicality and uncanny ability to coalesce styles
telepathically and at a moment's notice. The contributions of Terry Kath
(guitar/vocals) stand out as he unleashes some of his most pungent and
sinuous leads, which contrast with the tight brass and woodwind trio of
Lee Loughnane (trumpet/vocals), Walter Parazaider (woodwinds/vocals),
and the aforementioned Pankow. Peter Cetera (bass/vocals) also marks his
songwriting debut -- on the final cut of both the suite and the album
-- with "Where Do We Go from Here." It bookends both with at the very
least the anticipation and projection of a positive and optimistic
future.
TRACKS:
Side one
1 Movin' In (Pankow) - 4:06
2 The Road (Kath) - 3:10
3 Poem for the People (Lamm) - 5:31
4 In the Country (Kath) - 6:34
Side two
1 Wake Up Sunshine (Lamm) - 2:29
2 Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon (Pankow) - 12:55
Make Me Smile
So Much to Say, So Much to Give
Anxiety's Moment
West Virginia Fantasies
Colour My World
To Be Free
Now More Than Ever
Side three
1 Fancy Colours (Lamm) - 5:10
2 25 or 6 to 4 (Lamm) - 4:50
3 Memories of Love (Kath/Matz) - 9:12
Prelude
A.M. Mourning
P.M. Mourning
Memories of Love
Side four
1 It Better End Soon (Lamm/Parazaider) - 10:24
1st Movement
2nd Movement
3rd Movement
4th Movement
2 Where Do We Go from Here (Cetera) - 2:49
