Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - Back to Chicago

  Chapter 2 - The JPs

  Chapter 3 - Jimmy Ford and the Executives

  Chapter 4 - The Missing Links

  Chapter 5 - The Big Thing

  Chapter 6 - Hollywood or Bust

  Chapter 7 - Making a Name

  Chapter 8 - CTA

  Chapter 9 - Chicago

  Chapter 10 - Caribou Ranch

  Chapter 11 - New B.Ginnings

  Chapter 12 - Lyrics and the Blonde

  Chapter 13 - Losing Terry

  Chapter 14 - Picking Up the Pieces

  Chapter 15 - Making Headlines

  Chapter 16 - Out of the ’70s

  Chapter 17 - Into the ’80s

  Chapter 18 - Peter Goes Solo

  Chapter 19 - The Hairpiece That Saved My Life

  Chapter 20 - The Beginning of the End

  Chapter 21 - Bad Moves

  Chapter 22 - Evergreen Daze

  Chapter 23 - Full Circle

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  Index

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 2011 by Danny Seraphine. All rights reserved

  Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

  Published simultaneously in Canada

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Seraphine, Daniel, date.

  Street player : my Chicago story / Danny Seraphine with Adam Mitchell. p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-0-470-41683-9 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-470-62534-7 (ebk);

  1. Seraphine, Daniel, 1948− 2. Drummers (Musicians)—United States—Biography. I. Adam X. II. Chicago (Musical group) III. Title.

  ML419.S463A3 2010

  782.42166092'2—dc22

  [B]

  2009045970

  To Rebecca, who led me out of the darkness with all her

  love, trust, and companionship over the past fifteen

  years. I could not have made it without you.

  To my children, Maria, Kris, Danielle, Ashley, J.D.,

  and Taryn, who have always been there for me and

  loved me unconditionally.

  To my grandchildren, Katie, Gabriel, Sofia,

  Kaden, and Sarafina, who give me

  renewed joy and hope that the best

  is still ahead.

  Introduction

  The red and white lights of the ambulance flashed against the trees in the yard, throwing leaf pattern shadows against the face of the house. In each burst of light, I saw the coroner as he exited the front door and carted Terry Kath’s body down the walkway. There were police everywhere by then. One of the officers came up and pointed in my direction. He wanted me to move aside to clear a path.

  Stepping out of the way, I watched as the coroner passed. Suddenly I found myself fighting off the urge to reach out and stop him from taking Terry away. I wiped at the tears welling up in my eyes, but it made no difference. Everything around me remained blurry and distorted. I looked on as the coroner came to a stop at the back of his van and forcefully swung its rear doors open.

  An hour or so after Terry had killed himself, the coroner and paramedics attempted to stuff all six feet and two inches of him into a plastic body bag, only to find out there wasn’t enough room. His giant snakeskin boots (size 12) were left sticking out of the end. I couldn’t stop staring at them. Over the years, along with his bright grin and happy-go-lucky personality, those cowboy boots had become his trademark.

  My mind wandered. I thought back to the first time I had seen Terry’s vibrant smile. It was the day I joined Jimmy Ford and the Executives, a band he and Walt Parazaider were already playing in. Despite the fact that I was a sixteen-year-old drummer and they were both more experienced players, the three of us hit it off and were inseparable from then on. On that day, Terry, Walt, and I set out on the ultimate musical journey. We went on to grind it out in Chicago’s club circuit in the early days as members of groups like the Missing Links and the Big Thing. Together with our bandmates Jimmy Pankow, Lee Loughnane, Robert Lamm, and Peter Cetera, we eventually picked up and moved from our hometown of Chicago to the West Coast to chase after our dream. We were determined to make a name for ourselves.

  And together we did. Our group, Chicago, went on to become one of the best-selling American bands ever.

  I remembered the times Terry and I locked eyes onstage after we broke big and opened for rock legends like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. I recalled watching him blaze through his guitar solos at festival shows in front of a hundred thousand screaming fans. Finally, I thought back to the last time I had seen Terry. It was weeks earlier at my house for a summer cookout. He was alive, but not well, and more strung out than ever. The coke and booze had taken their toll on his body and mind.

  “I’m going to get things under control,” Terry had assured me. “If I don’t, this stuff is going to kill me.”

  His words echoed in my head as I realized I would never lock eyes with him onstage again. I would never catch another glimpse of Terry smiling back at me.

  Our journey was over.

  After they loaded Terry’s body, the coroner shifted the van into gear. It soon inched down the driveway and out onto the street. I shuffled after the truck, staring at its flashing lights as they burned white dots into my field of vision. As much as it hurt my eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to look away.

  I should have done more, I told myself. We all should have done more.

  Terry deserved a better exit from this life.

  There were too many questions and no answers. The only thing certain was that Terry Kath, a guy I had considered my brother and musical soul mate since we were teenagers,
was gone forever. The van continued down the block and disappeared around the corner. As soon as the sound of its engine fell away, there was nothing but silence. I stood alone in the driveway, wondering where it had all gone wrong on that dark Los Angeles night.

  1

  Back to Chicago

  From the time my parents brought me home from Oak Park Hospital in the late summer of 1948, I was a wild child with a constant need for movement. I had a tendency to run toward the flame.

  The sound of a fire engine siren was the first thing to catch my ear. Whenever one of the trucks came screaming through our neighborhood of New Little Italy, I waddled out the front door after it as fast as my short legs would take me. My mother was usually able to catch me before I made it to the street, but occasionally I slipped out without her noticing. One time I was found by a Chicago police officer almost a mile away from our house! Needless to say, my parents were horrified.

  New Little Italy was an overflow of sorts for Chicago’s Little Italy, a twelve-block stretch around Taylor Street. It was a typical Italian neighborhood: the houses were on the small side and packed close together. Families could smell what their neighbors were cooking in the kitchen and hear what they talked about at the dinner table.

  My father, John Seraphine, met my mother, Mary, shortly after he returned home from a stint as an MP in the army during World War II. In the summers, my mom and dad took me and my older sister, Rosemary, on trips to beautiful Cedar Lake about an hour and a half outside of Chicago. We went on Wednesdays because it was my father’s only day off from his job driving a bread delivery truck. Since it was the middle of the week, our family had the camp mostly to ourselves. We spent the scorching summer afternoons at the beach making sand castles and splashing around in the lake. It was our only escape from the sweltering summer heat. There was also a pavilion nearby with a dance floor where music boomed out of a jukebox throughout the day. I remember how the twelve-bar blues of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” echoed up into the trees and carried out over the water. It was a nice family getaway from the bustling city streets.

  My nervous energy drove my parents crazy. I was stubborn as hell. It got so bad they couldn’t sit at the picnic table with their friends playing gin rummy for five minutes without me disappearing. They decided the only option left was to wrap a rope around my waist and tie me to a tree in the lakehouse yard. When I was in my playpen, they slid a section of chicken wire over it to make sure I didn’t climb out. Their methods might have been a little over the top, but it was the only way they could be sure I wouldn’t make a run for it.

  Fortunately, there were more than enough family members to help keep an eye on me around our neighborhood. My mother grew up one of twelve kids, and my father had six brothers and sisters. Most of them lived close by, and we all got together regularly at my grandma Filomena’s house on the corner of Grand and Narragansett to celebrate every holiday and birthday. With the size of my family, there was no shortage of occasions. The women brought over their best dishes for our huge Italian meals—homemade ravioli, spaghetti and meatballs with marinara, and chicken Vesuvio, which was served right on the bone with potatoes, a Chicago specialty. My mother always cooked up a batch of her famous lasagna, which I could never get enough of. There was a running competition to see who was the best cook, but nobody could beat my grandmother’s homemade deep-dish pizza topped with her delicious sausage and peppers. As long as she was around, the title was hers.

  My grandmother didn’t speak much English, but she did the best she could. She was a strong lady who had single-handedly raised twelve children after her husband, my grandfather Michael, died. When I was young, her boisterous personality and heavyset frame sometimes scared me a little. But whenever I’d start crying, she was the first to calm me down. She’d call me by her nickname for me, Danootz. “What’s the matter, Danootz?” she would ask, picking me up into her arms.

  By the time I was eight, I had found the perfect outlet for my never-ending energy: my mom’s cookware. While she fixed dinner, I sat on the faded linoleum in our kitchen banging away on overturned pans, colanders, and saucepots with a set of her wooden mixing spoons. I loved the sound each one made—the high-pitched ting of the frying pan and the low bass thump of the mixing bowl.

  My mother’s pots and pans were the closest thing to having my own drum kit. I came up with the idea from watching my uncle Dominic play drums with his band at family parties. During the set breaks, he sat me on his drum stool to get a better look. My feet didn’t come close to touching the floor, but I still wanted to be exactly like Uncle Dominic one day. I remember my family saying he was only a part-time drummer because making a living playing music back then was simply unheard of. It was considered “pie in the sky,” as they used to say.

  My whole family had a deep love for music, especially my mom. Whenever my father didn’t have a Chicago Cubs game on the radio, she tuned the dial to Lawrence Welk. The songs were truly an escape. They allowed my mother’s mind to wander to a place far from her routine existence as a housewife. Together, we spent the long afternoons listening to her old forty-five records of classic crooners like Vic Damone, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Early on, my mother saw the passion I had for music.

  After her father died, she had led a hard life. She was left to help my grandmother take care of her younger brothers and sisters. I can’t imagine what kind of a struggle it was for my mother. I loved to see her face light up as I drummed on her pans while she fixed dinner. She got such a kick out of it.

  “You sound so good, Danny,” my mother told me as I pounded away. “I just know that one day you’re going to be a famous drummer.” My playing had become her soundtrack as she cooked dinner.

  My father wasn’t as thrilled with the new activity. After returning home one night from a long day of work, he remained in the doorway staring at me. The expression on his face couldn’t have been a clearer cue to stop with my banging. I looked up at him from my setup on the floor.

  “This is what you have Danny doing while I’m out driving the truck all day?” he asked my mother, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. He pulled off his baseball cap and scratched the back of his head. I was already having trouble in school. The nuns were telling my parents I could hardly read. The last thing he wanted to come home to was the sight of me sitting on the floor banging on pots.

  “Have you seen how well he does it?” my mother asked. “At least I can keep an eye on Danny in here, and he’s not out wandering the streets.”

  My father got quiet and ran a finger over his mustache. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew she had a point.

  “I want to enroll Danny in lessons and buy him a real drum set,” she continued. “I saw one down at the music shop.”

  “What? Do you know how much those things cost? Where would we get the money?” my father snapped.

  “I’ll take care of it. I’ve been setting a little something extra aside for the past few months and it might be enough,” she explained.

  “Well, what are you asking me for if you’ve already made up your mind? You always do what you want no matter what I say,” he told her, getting up out of his chair. He grabbed a slice of bread from the counter and made his way into the living room. As soon as he was gone, my mother looked down and gave me a knowing wink. I smiled back up at her and returned to pounding on the pans.

  My mother was a real handful. She was headstrong and opinionated, two traits I inherited from her. She didn’t hold her tongue for anyone and regularly nagged my father. Being the gentleman that he was, my father stayed calm and cool. It was his nature. He had come from a poor immigrant family and also led a hard life. His father, who I was named after, died when he was young and my dad was forced to drop out of school at sixteen to help support the family. Despite the hardships of his childhood, I never once heard my father say a bad thing about anyone. Ever.

  My mother made good on her promise to start me playing drums.
I graduated from my set of pans to a rubber practice pad she bought down at the music shop. The mixing spoons were traded out for my first set of oak drumsticks and I sat in my bedroom for hours practicing until my forearms were sore and my hands ached. I drummed along to my mother’s classics as well as to my sister Rosemary’s hip new forty-fives by Elvis Presley. I couldn’t get enough of songs like “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog.”

  Once I got bored with the practice pad, my mother helped me put together an actual set. I started with a Slingerland snare and then added a bass drum and cymbal. She enrolled me in private drum lessons after school with a teacher named Mr. Spranzo, who walked me through all of the basics, including seating and positioning and hand technique. I rode my Schwinn bicycle down to the local music store where he had a practice room in the back and went through the routines on a practice pad. My left hand was weaker than my right, but he told me that was typical of most beginning drummers. Not long after my lessons began, Mr. Spranzo moved, and I didn’t like the guy who took his place. It was fine with me because I had grown tired of the lessons anyway.

  I set up a space for my drums in our basement and practiced along with Gene Krupa, Sandy Nelson, and Cozy Cole records for hours. Those musicians became my heroes. The albums sounded amazing, especially Cole’s Topsy Part II and the soundtrack for The Gene Krupa Story. There were kids whose parents had to force them to practice their piano or accordion, but I couldn’t wait to get down to the basement after school and get behind my kit. It was the only thing I thought about all day.

  My banging didn’t sit well with my older sister, Rosemary. She hated me drumming in the house. Whenever she reached her boiling point, she would whip open the basement door and shout at me to keep it down. Being the snotty-nosed little brother that I was, her outbursts only made me play harder. Rosemary was a straight-A student and the perfect daughter. I got a real kick out of messing with her.