The story of Chicago

Horns in the basement

The story starts with a clarinet player named Walter Parazaider. Born in Maywood, Illinois in 1945, he picked up the clarinet at nine and was being groomed for a classical orchestra career, studying clarinet performance at DePaul University in Chicago. Then he heard the Beatles use horns on Got to Get You Into My Life, and a different idea took hold: a rock and roll band where the horns were full members, not hired help. His teenage friends Terry Kath and Danny Seraphine were already playing with him in a road band called Jimmy Ford and the Executives. When that group merged with another band, the three of them were let go, and together they joined a Chicago cover band called the Missing Links.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Terry Kath was a Chicago kid from the Norwood Park neighborhood, born on the thirty first of January 1946. His brother played drums and his mother played banjo, and Terry tried both before getting a guitar in ninth grade. He was mostly self taught, and in those early bands he actually played bass. Danny Seraphine had a rougher start. He left school at fifteen and ran with a local gang called the JPs before the drums pulled him out. At DePaul, Parazaider met two more horn players. Lee Loughnane, from the suburb of Elmwood Park, played trumpet on the same horn his father had used in the Army Air Force. James Pankow, one of nine children, had come from St. Louis and switched colleges to keep playing trombone in Chicago.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The keyboard player came from further away. Robert Lamm was born in Brooklyn in 1944 and sang as a boy in a church choir that also included a young Harry Chapin. His mother remarried and moved him to Chicago at fifteen, and he studied music at Roosevelt University. The others lured him away from a group called Bobby Charles and the Wanderers. On the fifteenth of February 1967, six young musicians met at Parazaider's family home and agreed to build the best band they could. They called themselves the Big Thing. Like every club band in town they played Top 40 covers, and Parazaider did the hard work of booking gigs in bars around Chicago. Their first show came that March in the suburb of Lyons.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Something was missing. Lamm was covering the bass lines with organ pedals, and the vocal blend needed a high voice to sit above Lamm's baritone and Kath's deeper, soulful sound. The answer was Peter Cetera, a South Side kid who had spent a year at a seminary because his mother hoped he would become a priest. He had started as a polka accordion prodigy, winning a talent contest at twelve, before switching to bass and joining a popular local band called the Exceptions. In December 1967 Cetera turned up early to a gig to watch the Big Thing, loved the horns, and joined within two weeks. Around the same time an old DePaul friend of Parazaider's, a Columbia Records producer named James William Guercio, offered to manage and produce them.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chicago Transit Authority

In June 1968 Guercio moved the band to Los Angeles, signed them to Columbia and renamed them Chicago Transit Authority, after the train system back home. They landed a regular spot at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, and famous faces came to watch. Parazaider always said that after one set Jimi Hendrix tapped him on the shoulder and told him the horns played like one set of lungs, and that his guitar player was better than Hendrix himself. Hendrix then invited them to open shows on his tour, and they also opened for Janis Joplin. Terry Kath, by now fully switched to guitar, was the heart of the live show, a player who could sing lead and play lead and rhythm guitar all at once.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The first album was cut in New York in late January 1969. Columbia was nervous about signing a second horn band, since it already had Blood, Sweat and Tears, whose second album Guercio had produced partly to secure this deal. The label gave the band just five days to lay down basic tracks and five more for overdubs. Because Simon and Garfunkel had the studio booked during the day, Chicago Transit Authority worked from midnight until eight in the morning. It was their first time in a real studio and they were terrified. When they asked to make it a double album, Columbia agreed only if the band took a cut in royalties. Chicago Transit Authority came out on the twenty eighth of April 1969.[1] [2] [3]

It was an unusual debut. Terry Kath's Free Form Guitar was nearly seven minutes of feedback and noise, played in one take with no effects pedals. Another track opened with real recordings from the protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with the crowd chanting that the whole world was watching. Sales were slow and AM radio ignored the long songs, but FM stations and college students spread the word. The record crept to number seventeen and then refused to leave, eventually spending a hundred and seventy one weeks on the chart and breaking a longevity record held by the Beatles' White Album. It earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, which went to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Soon the real Chicago Transit Authority threatened legal action, and the band became simply Chicago.[1] [2] [3]

On the twentieth of May 1969, Peter Cetera went to Dodger Stadium with some bandmates to watch his beloved Chicago Cubs. A group of men, Cetera says they were Marines, did not like a long haired rock musician cheering for the visitors. He was beaten so badly that his jaw was broken in three places. He spent a couple of days in intensive care and had his jaw wired shut for months. Afterwards he was afraid to open his mouth wide when he sang, which helped shape his famously clipped tenor. Recovering in bed, he watched the Moon landing, heard Walter Cronkite wonder aloud what came next, and wrote his first song, Where Do We Go From Here.[1] [2]

That summer Chicago were meant to play Woodstock, but they ended up at the Fillmore West instead, and Santana took the slot that made their name. The second album, called simply Chicago and later known as Chicago II, arrived on the twenty sixth of January 1970. It introduced the script logo inspired by Coca Cola, and it made them stars. Its centerpiece was Pankow's thirteen minute suite Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon, which gave them Make Me Smile, their first top ten hit, and Colour My World, with Parazaider's flute solo. Then there was Lamm's 25 or 6 to 4, a song about trying to write a song at twenty five or twenty six minutes to four in the morning. With Kath's wah wah solo, it reached number four.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Carnegie Hall and five number ones

Chicago spent almost all of 1970 on the road, and the third double album, Chicago III, was made by a tired band in January 1971. It still reached number two. Inside was a poster of the members dressed in the uniforms of America's wars, standing before a field of crosses for the dead of Vietnam. Early Chicago was openly political, and Lamm had dedicated the second album to the people of the revolution. That April they played Carnegie Hall for a week and became the first rock act to sell out a full week there. The shows became a four record box set that October. Pankow hated the sound and said the brass came out like kazoos, but the set went gold within two weeks and sold for years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1972 came Chicago V, their first single album. Lamm wrote eight of its ten songs, and it spent nine weeks at number one, the first of five number one albums in a row. Its big hit was Saturday in the Park, a warm snapshot of a summer day in a city park that reached number three. The following year the band turned up on the big screen. Guercio directed a film called Electra Glide in Blue, about an Arizona motorcycle cop, and gave small parts to Cetera, Kath, Loughnane and Parazaider. Loughnane played a pig farmer on a hippie commune. Also in 1973, Chicago were the only rock musicians invited onto a CBS television tribute to Duke Ellington.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

With the band's money rolling in, Guercio bought a huge ranch in the Rocky Mountains near Nederland, Colorado, and turned a barn into a studio called Caribou Ranch. Chicago recorded five straight albums there, starting with Chicago VI in 1973, and the likes of Elton John and Earth, Wind and Fire followed. Chicago VI brought in a Brazilian percussionist named Laudir de Oliveira, who had played with Sergio Mendes. He began as a sideman and became a full member in 1974. Pankow wrote both of that album's hits, Just You and Me and Feelin' Stronger Every Day, the second with Cetera. Dick Clark filmed two prime time specials at the ranch, and the band even hosted his New Year's Rockin' Eve for the 1975 countdown.[1] [2] [3] [4]

By 1974 the band wanted to stretch out. Chicago VII began as an all jazz project, but Cetera and Guercio worried about the commercial risk, so pop songs were added and it became another double album. Loughnane, who had never written a song and was shy about showing it, brought in Call on Me, and it went top ten. Cetera's Wishing You Were Here featured Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson and Al Jardine of the Beach Boys on backing vocals. Cetera later said that for one night he got to be a Beach Boy. The album reached number one, and that October Billboard reported that Chicago had seven albums, their whole catalog, on the album chart at the same time.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the summer of 1975 Chicago toured stadiums with the Beach Boys, whom Guercio was now also managing. He even played bass with them on the tour. Each band played its own set, then everyone came back together for a long joint finale, with Mike Love singing Saturday in the Park. Loughnane admits he was drunk for much of that tour. He remembers the upper deck at Anaheim Stadium bouncing so hard under the crowd that pipes began coming out of the walls. That year Chicago VIII reached number one with Old Days and Harry Truman, and the compilation Chicago IX, Chicago's Greatest Hits, became their fifth consecutive number one album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

If You Leave Me Now

After a real break, Chicago recorded Chicago X at Caribou in the spring of 1976. It came in a cover painted as a partly unwrapped chocolate bar, which won art director John Berg a Grammy. One of the last songs finished was a Cetera ballad called If You Leave Me Now, and it nearly did not make the album. Guercio played acoustic guitar on the demo and his part was kept, while Terry Kath played bass. Parazaider later said he first heard it on the radio while cleaning his pool and thought it sounded like Paul McCartney, not realizing it was his own band. On the twenty third of October 1976 it went to number one in America. In Britain it held the top spot for three weeks.[1] [2] [3]

If You Leave Me Now won Chicago the only competitive Grammy of their career, for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a group, in February 1977. Chicago X was also the band's first album certified platinum, and Columbia marked it by giving them a solid bar of platinum made by Cartier, weighing about twenty five pounds. Loughnane says the song was number one everywhere, so that in Europe or Australia the word Chicago made people think either of Al Capone or of If You Leave Me Now. The label immediately asked for more songs just like it. Some members felt the hit changed how the public saw them, and it pushed Chicago toward the ballads that would define much of their future.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Behind the scenes, trust in Guercio was collapsing. The band came to resent that he could afford a mountain ranch while they felt shortchanged, and they later said they discovered his contract gave him fifty one percent of the profits, with the other forty nine percent split among eight members. In the band's own documentary they said millions of dollars had gone his way. Chicago XI, released in September 1977, was the last album he produced for them. It gave them Cetera's Baby, What a Big Surprise, a number four hit, and some of Kath's toughest blues. That October, Madison Square Garden honored them for drawing over a hundred and eighty thousand fans across nine sold out nights.[1] [2] [3]

Terry Kath was struggling. He had a long history with drugs and alcohol, and his bandmates noticed he was growing unhappy. Seraphine remembered Kath telling him that he had to get things under control or the drugs would kill him. Loughnane says Kath pulled away from him because he simply could not keep up with Terry's drug use. Kath was also fascinated by guns. He enjoyed target shooting and by 1978 was regularly carrying firearms. Loughnane owned the same model of gun, and Kath had even shown him how to handle it safely. At the same time, Kath was writing songs for a planned solo album, and he still believed his best music was ahead of him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Losing Terry

On the night before he died, Terry Kath visited percussionist Laudir de Oliveira, who made him tea, and the two talked until morning. On Monday the twenty third of January 1978, after a party at the home of band technician Don Johnson in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, Kath began playing with his guns. He put an unloaded revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. Johnson warned him again and again to be careful. Kath then picked up a nine millimeter pistol and showed Johnson that the magazine was empty. He put the magazine back, raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. There was still a round in the chamber, and he died instantly. It was eight days before his thirty second birthday.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kath left his wife Camelia and a daughter, Michelle, who was not yet two. He was buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale, near his parents. Loughnane went to the house and saw his friend's body being carried out. He sold his own identical gun soon afterwards. Parazaider said the news hit him like a sledgehammer. The band seriously thought about ending it. What changed their minds was a mix of fan letters begging them to go on and a visit after the funeral from Doc Severinsen, the Tonight Show bandleader and a friend, who urged them to keep playing. Lamm said years later that he still dreamed about Terry all the time.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chicago auditioned more than thirty guitarists and chose Donnie Dacus, a Texan who had just been filming the movie of the musical Hair. With producer Phil Ramone they recorded in Miami next door to the Bee Gees, who sang backing vocals on one Chicago track while Chicago's horns played on Too Much Heaven. The new album was called Hot Streets, their first with a proper title, and the first with the band's photo on the cover. Its lead single, Pankow's Alive Again, began as a love song and became a tribute to Kath. Hot Streets went platinum but stalled at number twelve, their first album since the debut to miss the top ten.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chicago 13 in 1979 flirted with disco on a track called Street Player, which became the band's first single to miss the Hot 100 entirely. Loughnane has said the album was among the records destroyed at the infamous disco demolition night at Comiskey Park that summer. Dacus was let go after the tour without explanation. With Chris Pinnick on guitar and Tom Dowd producing, Chicago XIV in 1980 reached only number seventy one. The band had signed a rich contract promising a large advance for every album, and Columbia now paid roughly two million dollars to get out of it. Cetera later said the group was running on one or two cylinders, and Seraphine admits several members had serious drug and alcohol problems.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The power ballad years

Danny Seraphine says he was one of the few members still thinking clearly, and he made three moves that rescued the band. He brought in David Foster to produce, Irving Azoff and Howard Kaufman to manage, and the singer and keyboard player Bill Champlin to fill the soulful vocal gap Kath had left. Champlin had actually been asked to audition the day after Kath died and had turned it down, saying he could not fill that role. Percussionist Laudir de Oliveira was dismissed, his Latin sound judged wrong for the new direction. Robert Lamm, going through personal turmoil and a period of drug addiction, came close to leaving and contributed almost nothing to the next record.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chicago 16 came out in June 1982 on Warner Bros. Foster brought in outside writers, synthesizers and members of Toto, and pushed the horns into the background. Seraphine recalled radio stations sending word that they did not want anything with horns on it. The lead single, Hard to Say I'm Sorry, written by Cetera and Foster, went to number one on the eleventh of September 1982. The only members of Chicago who actually played on it were Cetera and Seraphine. Foster later admitted he was like a young rattlesnake, determined to make the record his way, and that the band resented it. Loughnane says Foster admitted he had overproduced them.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chicago 17 in 1984 became the biggest seller of their career, with more than six million copies sold. It had four top twenty hits, all sung by Cetera, including Hard Habit to Break, shared with Champlin, and You're the Inspiration. That second song began as a request from Kenny Rogers. Cetera and Foster sketched the chords in about three hours while Cetera was packing for Italy, and he finished the words there. Rogers never recorded it. In the age of MTV, directors kept asking who the leader was, and the cameras settled on the singer. Suddenly the famously faceless band had a face, and it was Peter Cetera's. Pankow put it bluntly years later, saying Peter hated the horns.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Cetera wanted to make solo records between Chicago projects, the way Phil Collins did with Genesis, and he did not enjoy touring. The band wanted another tour and another album, and in July 1985 he was out. His first solo single, Glory of Love from The Karate Kid Part II, went straight to number one, followed by The Next Time I Fall with Amy Grant. Pankow noted with some irony that Glory of Love had a Chicago style horn section on it. The band replaced Cetera with Jason Scheff, a twenty three year old bassist and tenor whose father Jerry had played bass for Elvis Presley. When Scheff asked Foster how to sing, Foster told him to sing just like Cetera.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chicago 18 opened in 1986 with a high tech remake of 25 or 6 to 4 that flopped at number forty eight, but the ballad Will You Still Love Me reached number three. For Chicago 19 in 1988 the band switched to producers Ron Nevison and Chas Sanford and leaned on outside writers. Diane Warren's Look Away, sung by Bill Champlin, went to number one and was named Billboard's number one song of 1989. Loughnane says many listeners had no idea it was Chicago, because they were used to a tenor, not Champlin's deeper voice. Scheff's What Kind of Man Would I Be reached number five, and a greatest hits collection of the eighties ballads went five times platinum.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The lost album and a new independence

In May 1990 Chicago fired its original drummer, Danny Seraphine, after twenty three years. The official reasons were never spelled out, and the members have told it differently ever since. His replacement was Tris Imboden, who had spent years drumming for Kenny Loggins, including on Footloose. That year Champlin's song Hearts in Trouble, written as a solo track, was released under Chicago's name for the Tom Cruise racing film Days of Thunder. The 1991 album Twenty 1 peaked at number sixty six, and its single Chasin' the Wind became the band's last top forty hit. Grunge was arriving and radio was turning away from bands like Chicago. On the twenty third of July 1992, they received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1993 Chicago made an album in near secrecy with producer Peter Wolf, determined to bring the horns and the old adventurous spirit back. It was called Stone of Sisyphus. One song, Bigger Than Elvis, told of Jason Scheff's childhood watching his father on television with Elvis, and Jerry Scheff played bass on it as a surprise. Wolf says Warner's head of A and R jumped up and down calling it a hit. Within about a month the label rejected the entire album. Pankow said the label expected another If You Leave Me Now and the band refused to start over. Wolf called the decision politics and greed. The album sat on the shelf for fifteen years.[1] [2] [3]

The fallout was real. Guitarist Dawayne Bailey, who had written the title track, objected loudly and his contract was not renewed in late 1994. His replacement, Keith Howland, was a Los Angeles session player and stagehand who showed up uninvited at the auditions, talked his way into a last minute tryout and was hired the same day. Chicago left Warner, made a big band album called Night and Day with guests including Joe Perry and the Gipsy Kings, and bought back the rights to their Columbia recordings to reissue them on their own label. Fans passed around bootleg tapes of the lost album for years, until it finally came out as Chicago XXXII on the seventeenth of June 2008.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2002 the band licensed its catalog to Rhino, whose two disc collection The Very Best of Chicago, Only the Beginning, sold more than two million copies. They toured with Earth, Wind and Fire, the Doobie Brothers and Huey Lewis and the News, and settled into life as one of America's hardest working live bands. Chicago XXX in 2006 was their first album of new songs in fifteen years, produced by Jay DeMarcus of Rascal Flatts, a lifelong fan. In August 2009 the band announced that Bill Champlin was leaving after twenty eight years. Management framed it as a move to focus on his solo career, but Champlin later said the decision surprised him. Keyboard player Lou Pardini took his place.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Hall of Fame and the last man standing

Chicago kept working in the 2010s, playing roughly a hundred shows a year. Lamm, Loughnane, Pankow and Parazaider appeared as themselves in the HBO comedy Clear History. The 2014 album Chicago XXXVI, Now, was recorded entirely on the road in a traveling studio Loughnane built with engineer Tim Jessup, and a copy of Loughnane's song America was sent to every member of Congress. That year their debut album entered the Grammy Hall of Fame, and they made their first ever appearance on the Grammy Awards show, performing a medley with Robin Thicke. Back in 2010, Laudir de Oliveira had joined them on stage in Rio de Janeiro, the first former member ever to play with the later lineup.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After twenty five years of eligibility, Chicago were voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, topping the fan vote, and were inducted on the eighth of April 2016 in Brooklyn. Rob Thomas introduced them, joking that if Chicago was your mom's band, he wanted to party with your mom. Danny Seraphine rejoined his old bandmates on stage for the first time in over twenty five years, and Terry Kath's daughter Michelle accepted her father's award. Peter Cetera did not come. He had asked to play 25 or 6 to 4 in a much lower key, the band refused to change it for a one night show, and he withdrew, saying he was frustrated and tired of dealing with it.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The lineup kept changing. Jason Scheff took leave in May 2016 and left that October after thirty one years. Parazaider stepped back from touring because of a heart condition, and saxophonist Ray Herrmann took over. On New Year's Day 2017 CNN aired the documentary Now More Than Ever, and the Washington Post questioned why the network did not make clear up front that the film was produced by the band itself. That summer Cetera, Lamm and Pankow were elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. On the seventeenth of September 2017, Laudir de Oliveira died of a heart attack while performing on stage in Rio de Janeiro. He was seventy seven. In 2018 Imboden left, and Canadian singer Neil Donell joined from a Chicago tribute band.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In March 2020 the pandemic stopped the band in Las Vegas, and they did not play again for fifteen months. That October Chicago received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In April 2021 Walter Parazaider revealed that he had Alzheimer's disease. Keith Howland broke his arm just before a show in Louisville in November 2021 and soon retired after twenty six years. In the summer of 2022 Chicago co headlined with Brian Wilson, and those shows turned out to be the last time Wilson toured. That July they released Chicago XXXVIII, Born for This Moment. Lamm explained that three founding partners, himself, Pankow and Loughnane, now made the decisions, with everyone else a contracted player.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2025 the Library of Congress added Chicago Transit Authority to the National Recording Registry. That summer Robert Lamm and James Pankow stopped touring for health reasons, leaving Lee Loughnane as the only original member on stage. As of 2026 Loughnane says they remain members of the band. In 2026 Chicago toured with Styx for the first time, on a run called the Windy Cities Tour. Then, on the seventeenth of June 2026, Walter Parazaider died after a six year battle with Alzheimer's, at eighty one, with his wife JacLynn at his side. The band said a rock and roll band with horns had been Walt's idea from the start. After more than a hundred million records, the idea still tours.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

The people around Chicago

Walter Parazaider and Terry Kath. They were teenage friends who played side by side in the Executives and the Missing Links before Chicago existed, often joined by Danny Seraphine. Parazaider had the idea of a rock band with horns, and Kath became its musical engine. When Kath died in 1978, Parazaider said the news nearly brought him to his knees, and decades later he admitted there are some things you never get over.[1] [2] [3]

Peter Cetera and David Foster. Foster arrived as a hungry young producer in 1981 and found an ally in Cetera. Together they wrote Hard to Say I'm Sorry, You're the Inspiration and Glory of Love. Foster called Cetera the best writing partner he ever had. Other members felt the partnership drove a wedge into the band, pushing the horns aside and turning Chicago into a vehicle for Cetera's voice.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Peter Cetera and James Pankow. The singer and the horn arranger represented two ideas of Chicago. Pankow built the band's signature brass sound, while Cetera's ballads carried it to the top of the charts. Pankow later said Peter hated the horns and never saw eye to eye with the section. He added that Cetera's first solo hit still used a Chicago style horn arrangement, which he found ironic.[1] [2] [3]

James William Guercio and Chicago. Guercio was a DePaul friend of Parazaider who became the band's manager and producer, named them, moved them to Los Angeles and produced their first eleven albums. He built Caribou Ranch, where they made five records, and directed the film they appeared in. The relationship ended in 1977 amid bitterness over money, with the band accusing him of taking more than his share.[1] [2] [3]

Robert Lamm and Peter Cetera. The two founding singers were once so close they married sisters, Julie and Diane Nini. After Cetera left in 1985 the relationship cooled. In 2016 Lamm spoke too soon about Cetera playing the Hall of Fame, apologized, then watched him withdraw. Lamm said that even if Cetera did not want to sing, he could at least have stood with them. He still calls Cetera an amazing vocalist.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Terry Kath and Laudir de Oliveira. Kath pushed for a percussionist to steady the band's grooves, and the Brazilian Laudir de Oliveira became his close friend. De Oliveira was the last band member to see Kath alive, sharing tea and talking through the night before the fatal accident in January 1978. De Oliveira was let go in 1981 and died on stage in Rio de Janeiro in 2017.[1] [2] [3]

Chicago and The Beach Boys. The bands were linked through Guercio, who managed the Beach Boys in the mid seventies and played bass with them. Three Beach Boys sang on Wishing You Were Here, and in 1975 the two groups toured stadiums together with a joint finale. Decades later Chicago shared the road with Brian Wilson in 2022, the last tour Wilson ever played.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Robert Lamm and Karen Lamm. Robert Lamm met Karen Perk at the Whisky a Go Go, and they were married from 1970 to 1971. She later married Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys twice, co wrote the Beach Boys song Baby Blue, became an actress and producer, and died of heart failure in 2001 at the age of forty nine.[1] [2] [3]

Danny Seraphine and Bill Champlin. Seraphine campaigned to bring Champlin into the band in 1981 after the two wrote songs together, and Champlin in turn suggested David Foster as producer. Both men later left under unhappy circumstances, Seraphine in 1990 and Champlin in 2009. Champlin has since guested with Seraphine's band California Transit Authority, and his son Will later sang with it.[1] [2] [3]

Jason Scheff and Jerry Scheff. Jason Scheff, who replaced Cetera in 1985, grew up watching his father Jerry play bass for Elvis Presley on television. He turned those memories into Bigger Than Elvis on the lost album Stone of Sisyphus, secretly recorded his father's bass part for it, and presented him with the finished song as a gift.[1] [2]

Chicago and Earth, Wind and Fire. The two horn driven bands became regular touring partners, sharing bills in 2004, 2005 and 2009, again in 2015 and 2016, and on the Heart and Soul tour of 2024. Earth, Wind and Fire had even recorded two albums at Guercio's Caribou Ranch in the seventies. The joint shows ended with both bands on stage together.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Chicago

• Chicago's debut was recorded between midnight and eight in the morning because Simon and Garfunkel had the studio during the day. Columbia gave the band only ten days of studio time in New York in early 1969. Simon and Garfunkel had the room booked in daylight, so Chicago Transit Authority worked the overnight shift.[1] [2]
• Terry Kath's guitar on Free Form Guitar had its neck held together with a radiator hose clamp. The nearly seven minute track was recorded live in one take with no pedals, straight through a Fender amp boosted by a public address amplifier. The liner notes mention the hose clamp.[1] [2]
• Kath strung his guitar with a tenor guitar string on top and shifted every other string down one place. He explained the trick to Guitar Player magazine. The top E came from a tenor guitar set, the old E became his B string, the B became his G, and so on.[1]
• Kath was an early investor in the Pignose amplifier company and plastered his Telecaster with twenty five Pignose stickers. The heavily modified guitar also carried a motorcycle decal and a Chicago Blackhawks logo. It went missing for years until his daughter found it at her step grandmother's home.[1]
• Terry Kath once tried to build a machine that would pick the guitar strings for him, out of a cocktail mixer. Robert Lamm recalled Kath, who loved gadgets and wanted to play without a pick, attempting an automatic picking device using a modified electric drink mixer.[1]
• Both 25 or 6 to 4 and Beginnings were written on a twelve string guitar that was missing two strings. Robert Lamm said the guitar lacked its two low E strings. He wrote the lyrics to 25 or 6 to 4 in a single day, and the band first rehearsed it at the Whisky a Go Go.[1] [2]
• The Chicago logo was inspired by the Coca Cola script. Columbia art director John Berg sketched it and Nick Fasciano drew it. The cover of the second album is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[1] [2]
• Columbia gave Chicago a bar of pure platinum made by Cartier. It celebrated Chicago X becoming the band's first platinum album in 1976. The bar weighed about twenty five pounds, though Billboard reported it as thirty.[1] [2]
• Peter Cetera spent a year in a seminary because his mother wanted him to become a priest. He attended Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary before transferring to another Catholic high school. By eighteen, he said, he was earning more from music than his machinist father.[1]
• Before the bass, Peter Cetera was a polka accordion prodigy. His parents bought him an accordion instead of the guitar he wanted. He won a local talent contest at twelve, but his family missed his radio debut because they had no FM receiver.[1]
• You're the Inspiration was written for Kenny Rogers, who never recorded it. Rogers asked for a song through David Foster. Cetera and Foster sketched the music in about three hours, and Cetera wrote the words in Italy.[1]
• Peter Cetera said Glory of Love was originally written for Rocky IV. It became the theme of The Karate Kid Part II instead, reached number one in 1986 and was nominated for an Academy Award.[1]
• Hard Habit to Break became the slogan of a Chicago hot dog stand. Demon Dogs, near DePaul University, was owned by the band's manager Peter Schivarelli, and used the song title as its motto.[1]
• Robert Lamm sang in a Brooklyn church choir alongside a young Harry Chapin. Lamm credits the Grace Episcopal Church choir in Brooklyn Heights with his first musical training, from medieval sacred music through Bach.[1]
• James Pankow's younger brother is actor John Pankow of Mad About You. The Pankows were one of nine siblings. The family moved from St. Louis to Park Ridge, Illinois when James was eight.[1]
• Robert Lamm and Peter Cetera married sisters. Lamm married Julie Nini in 1976, and Cetera married Diane Nini in 1982. Diane co wrote Glory of Love with Cetera and David Foster.[1] [2]
• A copy of Lee Loughnane's song America was sent to every member of Congress. The song appeared on Chicago XXXVI, Now, released on the fourth of July 2014, an album recorded entirely on the road.[1]
• Danny Seraphine is a credited co writer of Pitbull's hit I Know You Want Me. The hit sampled a track that itself sampled Chicago's Street Player, which Seraphine co wrote. ASCAP recognized him as a co writer.[1] [2]
• Chicago's horns played on the Bee Gees' Too Much Heaven, and the Gibb brothers sang on a Chicago song in return. Both bands were recording at Criteria Studios in Miami in 1978. The Gibbs sang backing vocals on Little Miss Lovin' from Hot Streets.[1] [2]
• Chicago's horn section also played on Three Dog Night's 1969 hit Celebrate. Pankow, Loughnane and Parazaider are featured on the song, which reached number fifteen. Pankow also later played on albums by Toto, including Toto IV.[1]
• Lee Loughnane played a pig farmer in the 1973 film Electra Glide in Blue. The film was directed by the band's own producer, James William Guercio, and also featured Cetera, Kath and Parazaider in small roles.[1] [2]
• In 1974 Chicago hosted Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. The ABC special for the 1975 countdown featured the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers, Olivia Newton John and Herbie Hancock as guests.[1]
• Producer James William Guercio co owned a pro soccer team named after his Caribou Ranch. The Colorado Caribous played one season in 1978, finished last and were mocked for brown and tan uniforms with fringe across the chest.[1] [2]
• A chainsaw damaged Chicago's gold records during the 1985 Caribou Ranch fire. Firefighters cutting through the studio wall to make sure the blaze was out damaged several of the band's gold record plaques hanging there.[1]
• Chicago's debut stayed on the Billboard album chart for a hundred and seventy one weeks. That run broke the rock album longevity record of a hundred and fifty five weeks set by the Beatles' White Album.[1]
• Keith Howland got the Chicago guitar job by turning up to auditions uninvited. He met Jason Scheff by chance, talked his way into a last minute tryout in 1995 and was hired the same day. He stayed about twenty six years.[1] [2]
• Laudir de Oliveira played on Joe Cocker's Feelin' Alright before joining Chicago. He was credited simply as Laudir on Cocker's 1969 debut, having come from Sergio Mendes. He also played on the Jacksons' album Destiny.[1]
• Street Player was Chicago's first single to miss the Hot 100 completely. The disco track from Chicago 13 flopped in 1979, but decades later it became a hit in sampled form, and the band now performs it again.[1] [2]
• After Terry Kath died, Lee Loughnane sold his own gun, the same model Kath had. Loughnane said Kath had ironically taught him how to handle it safely.[1]
• Cetera wanted 25 or 6 to 4 dropped by a fourth for the Hall of Fame, and the band said no. Loughnane said they had played it in A minor since the day they recorded it, and a lower key would make it sound like a ballad.[1] [2]
• Chicago's Carnegie Hall box was perhaps the best selling rock box set for about fifteen years. Biographer William James Ruhlmann says it held that record until Bruce Springsteen's five record live box in 1986. The complete run was reissued on sixteen CDs in 2021.[1]
• Stan Kenton's jazz orchestra recorded a suite of Chicago songs. In 1974 Kenton added pieces from Chicago III to his band's repertoire and released them on Stan Kenton Plays Chicago.[1]
• After Hot Streets, a marketing survey brought the Chicago logo back to the cover. Buyers expected to see the logo, so Chicago 13 showed it as a high rise building.[1]
• Kath's song Tell Me, from Electra Glide in Blue, was used in the final episode of Miami Vice. Kath sang and played lead guitar on the song, which closed the 1973 film.[1]
• Bill Champlin was asked to audition to replace Terry Kath the day after Kath died, and declined. He said he could not fill that role. Three years later he joined anyway and stayed twenty eight years.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.