Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 9

“We were comfortable with the idea that you could write something that had movements and sections and solos and ensemble playing. That was something we could do and could do well.” – Robert Lamm working with Seraphine and original guitarist/vocalist Terry Kath (then playing bass) in other bands, including Jimmy Ford & e Executives and the Missing Links, as well as on tour with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. With Seraphine and Kath (on guitar) as the base of the rhythm section, the hunt was on for someone who could play organ and pedal bass. “I was playing with not-very-good bands,” keyboardist and vocalist Robert Lamm told me in , “but I was learn- ing to do my thing, and it was a great laboratory.” Lamm was a composition major at Roosevelt University, across the street from DePaul. At that time, he was billing himself as Bobby Charles with a band called e Wanderers, where, according to Pankow, “he was doing his own material and singing his ass o .” “I was playing with a quartet over on Belmont,” said Lamm, “and Walt called. I think he might have said ‘show band.’ Our template was a band called e Mob and a couple of other Midwest show bands that were very polished, but none of which I was really familiar with. But the idea of playing with a band with horns in it was fascinating to me. I had had one experience auditioning with a would-be band—a female singer and a couple of horn players—but that never happened.” Calling themselves e Big ing and working originally as a sextet in suits, largely as a cover band, the nal personnel element would be the coup of luring bassist and vocalist Peter Cet- era of e Exceptions, the best-known Chicago-area cover band of the day. “We worked a gig with a group called e Big ing,” Cetera told me in , “and they were looking for a singing bass player—that was me, and boom . Not many months later, we moved lock, stock, and barrel to LA to nd our fame and fortune.” e Big ing was re- named Chicago Transit Authority, later shortened to Chicago. “ ey were doing more le - eld songs and doing horn arrangements of Beatles stu ,” Cetera recalled. “Bobby [Lamm], who was play- ing organ pedals before I joined, was a fabulous writer, and he wrote some of the great classic songs of the ’ s and early ’ s. ings like ‘Questions and ’ and ‘ or to .’ ey were fun to sing.” Cetera would write and sing the group’s rst number-one hit, ’s “If You Leave Me Now,” and did the same with a string of hits into the mid-’ s through Chicago —the band’s largest selling album—when he decided to leave the band and pursue a solo career. “It was like a bad marriage, and once the marriage is over, the marriage is over. Maybe you stay together for a while because of the kids, and the kids, in a band, are your songs. But then at a cer- tain point you can’t even stay together for the kids. And that’s kind of what happened.” It was DePaul classmate and com- position major James W. Guercio who would make a pivotal suggestion at that initial stage of the band. (He would go on to produce the band’s rst classic albums.) “Guercio came to hear us play,” said Lamm, “and we were doing covers. He suggested we listen to Vanilla Fudge. ey were basically doing covers, but it was the psychedelic era, and they radically rearranged those songs. It was a bit of genius, I must say. Not just rearranging an acoustic song, but for a larger ensemble of rhythm section and horns. Maybe trading o vocals. Maybe working in instrumental sections. at was really an important step.” As Pan- kow recalled it, “we started taking pop 14 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 29 – AUGUST 11, 2019