A Hard Habit to Break: '80s Chicago
by Don Pizarro

Chuck Klosterman's article "Ship of Dreams" in the March, 2005 issue of SPIN described a Caribbean cruise whose main attraction was a triple-bill of Styx (Go on, sing it.), REO Speedwagon, and Journey. Klosterman explored the reasons people from different demographics, some in their early-to-mid twenties, would pay upwards of $3,000 to see them in this day and age. One possible answer was virtuosity. Klosterman hinted at a perception that these bands can still do one thing that a lot of today's bands have trouble doing, sans the aid of digital post-production: play. The band Chicago shared the 80s limelight with these others. And like some of these other bands, their success in the 80s came after the point at which their music was the exclusive province of snobs "in the know." But, they can still play.

"Eighties Chicago" was a band very different from the one on the Chicago Transit Authority album. They lost guitar god Terry Kath in 1978. Songs that would switch time from three/four to seven/nine with lyrics by keyboardist Robert Lamm, (hailed by his peers as "one of the great American songwriters"), were now David Foster power ballads in four/four. Their legendary horn section, accustomed to seven-minute instrumental jams, was nested beneath synthesizers and drum machine tracks when they were present at all. The group that once prided itself on being both faceless (and looking at the cover of Chicago VI, you can't blame them) and leaderless was starring in videos placing crew-cut, toned-up, rolled-up-suit-sleeve-wearing bassist Peter Cetera squarely at the front of the band.

Fans of "Ballet For a Girl in Buchannon" tended not to appreciate this period. They called the band sellouts and their music soulless and bland. I remember a time when you were forced to distinguish: Do you like "Old Chicago" or "Eighties Chicago?" But I never succumbed.

Like many people in the MTV demographic at the time, my first exposure to Chicago was their hit album Chicago 17. I, too, thought the band's first album was Chicago 16. It was the silhouette of trumpeter Lee Loughnane in the video for "Hard Habit to Break" that was partly to blame for me taking up the trumpet in high school, and playing it off and on for the next fifteen years. It was the music that was playing through those formative years of my life, music that I connected with for reasons I didn't quite understand at the time.

Like the other band geeks, I learned to worship Chicago's horn section for the gods they were. That meant being introduced to the early stuff – the Chicago Transit Authority album and the next three or four or fifteen after that. Every high school band has, somewhere in its vaults, at least one arrangement of "25 or 6 to 4." When I got to college, not only did I continue worshiping at the altar of dissonant three-part chords, I started dissecting all the political Vietnam-era "We can make it happen" stuff in their music (see "Dialogue, Parts I and II"). And that's usually where you're first asked to choose: "Questions 67 & 68" or "You're the Inspiration?"

This subject often comes up when members of Chicago get interviewed. They usually put the change in their music in the context of adaptation. After all, tastes did change between decades. Despite its success, or maybe because of it, they talk about their adaptation like someone having to justify working as a stripper to pay for grad school. Maybe they were hoist with their own petard, forced by A&R people to crank out ballad after ballad of the sort that propelled their comeback. Still, I don't think the actual music is anything to be ashamed of.

I might have been inspired to be a musician by one of their videos, but I wouldn't have watched them if I didn't like their music to begin with. For an alleged pop group, Chicago still made some of the most stylistically sophisticated music of the 1980s. All that 70s jazz-rock musicianship was still there underneath the electronics. And, if that wasn't enough, having half of Toto backing them up on these albums didn't hurt them, either. It was that musicianship that set them apart from most everything else around them on the Top 40. But, perhaps the best way to explain their musicianship is by walking through it.

The arrangement of a song is all that stuff you hear underneath the vocals, which is Chicago's case was never some looped dance track. It wasn't simply the drummer riding high-hat and hitting the snare at two and four while the bassist played eighth notes, usually the base of every chord (when there more than three chords to begin with). Despite the drum machines and synth basses, Chicago's arrangements in the 80s were mostly what you would have expected from seasoned musicians with different musical backgrounds with help from other seasoned musicians.

One of Chicago's biggest songs from the 80s, the aforementioned "Hard Habit to Break," provides a good example. I'm sure you've heard it at least once in the past month if you've been listening to the music playing in an elevator or your local grocery store. Find a copy and listen to it once. Now, after you've moaned about how cheesy their music is compared to, say, Wilco, listen to it again. Note what's going on underneath, and you'll hear some interesting things. First off, you'll hear more than one person singing over those muted keyboards. Peter Cetera was not Chicago's only singer. That second voice you hear is Grammy-winning blue-eyed soul master Bill Champlin. Contrary to popular belief, no law requires a Top 40 band to have one, and only one, lead vocalist. They in fact have three. Four, if you count their current guitarist who sings lead on some of the old songs. Six, if you count the trumpet and trombone players who've occasionally chipped in. No, you may not use a "boy band" as a counterexample; if they were a band, they'd have some damn instruments in their hands.

Don't be confused as you listen to Bill singing a section when Pete chimes seemingly out of nowhere. And then Bill retakes the lead. Then they'll both sing together. It's called vocal arranging. Go a little further into the chorus, and you'll notice that under the singing, those muted background keyboards are now replaced by a huge wall of sound – guitars and drums, mostly. Check out the bass line. It's not the same two notes over and over. The second verse follows and, lo and behold, it's almost as quiet as before. Almost. There's a little more going on underneath, but it'll keep to the same general pattern through the next round of chorus.

At the end of the second chorus, we come to the instrumental break. Where most bands would've been content with a guitar solo, Chicago throws in a couple of industrial-sized kitchen sinks. Together with the guitar, the trumpet and a saxophone are playing a little melody of their own that leads right into the bridge. In this case, the bridge isn't just different words in a different key signature. Incidentally, there's another, completely different horn melody line underneath Peter's singing, and it actually continues
through the last chorus.

And, now we're at the last bit of the song. It's a little difficult to explain this part. It's akin to what, in some old jazz big band `arrangements (Do not say "Glen Miller?"), was called the shout chorus. It's when the band would play something that followed the same general theme of the original song, but that would sound almost completely different. Here, the band throws the lot at you-- tight vocal harmonies, a wall of guitar and drum sound, and a full string section (of actual musicians)-– until the song eventually fades.

There's more virtuosity in that one four-minute and forty-four second song than was found in most of the fare of the mid-80s, which is why I'm fond of it. I've always liked complexity in my music, even before I was old enough to understand what complexity was. I also like complexity that can be replicated live without a canned track. You should hear them do this song today. Better yet, compare the medley "Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away" from their sixteenth album to any live concert version, and listen to the last minute and a half. They may not have a string complement with them anymore, or Peter Cetera, for that matter. (Poor Jason Scheff. He's been "Peter Cetera's replacement" for the past twenty years.) But the eight people on stage, instruments in hand, can still belt these songs out with the same intensity and level of skill as they did on "Introduction" from their first album. And, that's what makes them essentially the same band as "Old Chicago."

No, "Hard Habit" wasn't the same type of music Chicago played fifteen years prior. But, unless you're the type of person who still wears the same clothes you did in 1990, you know what it's like to adapt. You probably don't peg your pants or walk around in a
pirate shirt buttoned all the way to the top. If, however, you really miss your old Flock of Seagulls haircut, imagine wearing it to work tomorrow. You change. You adapt. So did Chicago, and with style. And that's why their sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth albums sit in my CD rack alongside the rest of them.