As the new documentary about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame says, Chicago is “The Last Band On-Stage,” marking its 55th anniversary in the city of the same name in 1967. The feature film is the second about the band from Director Peter Curtis Bardini, who also directed 2016’s “Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago,” has caught up with us in the past six years, and the title refers to their 18-month absence due to the pandemic after the final performance on March 14, 2020 in Venice in Vegas Vegas before everything closes.
From the members’ beginnings as part of the Windy City cover bands to their embodiment as the Chicago Transit Authority in their pioneering debut, the band has featured 28 different members over the years, with only vocalist/keyboarder Robert Lamm, trumpeter Lee Low, artist and tromboneer Jimmy Bankoff remaining from that lineup. original. Among their contemporaries is Joe Mantegna, now the star of the TV series Criminal Minds, but then just a member of the Chittown crackle cover group—hence his presence as narrator for the documentary, and director of a panel recently hosted by the Grammy Museum in LA, joining the props The core of the three teams in front of an audience of adoring fans.
With Chicago’s 38th studio album, “Born for This Moment,” released as recently as July on BMG, Lahm, Lognan and Banquo are running a triumphal cycle that began with their late induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (Lam and Banquo with Peter Setera) the following year. Museum board member Jimmy Jam, a longtime fan of “Saturday in the Park,” was present for their presentation, recalling how he played drums alongside Prince in middle school in Minneapolis, with the young guitar phenomenon reproducing Note the late Terry Cat’s single “Make Me Smile”.
Several other audience members testified emotionally during the hour-long presentation at the Grammy Museum, one by one, remembering how the band’s music contained momentous moments in their lives, including a fan who proposed marriage to the tune of “Beginnings.” .
How have they maintained their distinct identity over the years with all the personnel changes, Mantegna wondered?
“When we bring in someone new, they are usually familiar with our music and their idea of how to play it,” Lognan said. “So we let them. We provide the arrangements, we let them put their characters in. And that’s how the band is constantly improving.”
Pankoff agreed: “The current squad is arguably the best support team we’ve ever had.” “You keep things new, you get rid of things that don’t work and you evolve. We’re having more fun now than ever. I look across the stage and see the Cheshire Cats. What makes this music is the people who play it.”
“They all really know the songs when they arrive,” adds Lamm. “They respect the business structure, and are willing to ask questions and learn.”
James Bankoff, Lee Lognan and Robert Lamm talk with Joe Mantegna in conversation with Chicago at the GRAMMY Museum on September 15, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for Recording Academy)
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Along with New York’s Blood, Sweat and Tears, the Chicago Transit Authority were the first rock band to incorporate horns into their sound, beginning with Columbia Records’ first double album in ’67. (Their first three releases were, in fact, all double albums, and the fourth was a live LP quad to capture a week-long series of performances in April 1971 at Carnegie Hall.) Produced by mentor James William Guercio, CTA debut album featured classics such as Top 10 Lam songs “Does anyone know what time it is now?” and “The Beginnings,” as well as the single “Questions 67 and 68” backed by her raised cover of Steve Winwood from the Spencer Davis Collection which was written by “I’m a Man.”
After their names were shortened due to a legal dispute with the actual transportation authority, “Chicago II” featured a seven-part, 13-minute ensemble composed by Pankow, “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon,” which resulted in a pair of Top 10 hits on “Make Me”. Smile” and “Color My World” sung by Cath. Lam’s “25 or 6 to 4”, which describes a writing session in the early hours of the morning, was the band’s first 5 songs, sung by Peter Cetera. Mixing everyday life with the band’s “revolutionary” politics, “Saturday in the Park” helped “Chicago V” reach number one on both the pop and jazz charts, and the band continued to dominate until disco slowed its progression in the late 1970s. Past, marked by the tragic death of Cath in 1978 after being shot with a weapon he did not realize was loaded.
The arrival of producer David Foster in 1981 spurred the group’s transition into a strong poem group, with a new label at Full Moon/Warner Bros., and new keyboardist/vocalist/guitarist on Bill Champlin’s second Hot 100 single, “Hard to Say I’m Sorry/ Get away” (the first was Cetera’s song, “If You Leave Me Now” from “Chicago X” in 1976). By 1984, Cetera was the catalyst for the band’s best-selling album to date, “Chicago 17”, which used regular numbers for the first time and produced four singles, “Stay the Night” (No. 16), “Hard Habit to a Break” (No. 3). ), “You Are the Inspiration” (No. 3) and “Along Comes a Woman” (No. 14), and won three Grammys before Cetera left the group to start a solo career in 1985,
The band’s ever-changing lineup and longevity are themes of the new document that highlights how the members are dealing with COVID, Loughnane has built a studio in his home of Sedona, AZ, (echoing their roots at Guercio’s Caribou Ranch in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado), and shows them recording their eighth album and the thirty and most recent, “Born for This Moment.” The release includes a bittersweet “If This Is Goodbye”, which begins, “Just a bunch of crazy kids/Look at all the things we’ve done/We never thought it would end like this,” and concludes, “If it’s goodbye/Let’s sing another song For Memories” where members face their destinies.
The Chicago trip wasn’t without its tragedies—from the loss of founding member Kat to the Alzheimer’s diagnosis of longtime saxophonist Walter Parazzider, who has been out of the way since 2017, but is still considered a member. “The Last Band On-Stage” shows that they do what they love to do – play live for their fans – as they contemplate an uncertain future.
Lam said of “If it was a goodbye, he was hitting close to home. People have to say goodbye.”
“At some point, we’re going to say goodbye, and this song captures the feeling of that possibility,” Pankoff admits in the document. “This may be the last album…Deaths are real.”
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