Janis huddled up next to me and gently touched my arm. “Listen, man,” she said. “I’m really sorry about that scene backstage earlier. I don’t usually talk to people like that.”
Her words were kind and soft, in contrast to the shouting earlier. I paused for a moment to process what she was saying, because I wanted to be sure she was being sincere. Janis flashed me a friendly smile, and with that any tension between us fell away.
“No problem, Janis,” I told her. “I understand. I’m sorry too.”
Janis went on to explain how impressed she was with the high level of musicianship of our band, especially by our horn section. When the rest of the guys weren’t around, I even heard her telling her manager, “I want a band like these cats, man.” I witnessed a different side of Janis’s personality that night. Sure, she could be abrasive, but underneath that hardened rock-star exterior was a sweet and vulnerable little girl. She even talked like a young girl sometimes in conversations.
Later on, the guys in Janis’s band passed around a bottle of orange juice for everyone to drink. Jimmy Pankow and I each had a swig and were then told it was dosed with LSD. Not that I was surprised. I suspected something was up. In a way, part of me hoped it was laced with acid. I had heard about the drug, but never tried it.
Before long, the backstage area turned into a loony bin. Everyone was red-faced and almost incoherent. The colors in the room were so vibrant they looked like they were pulsating. My senses were heightened and it was as if I could see and hear everything going on in the dressing room at once. Everything became surreal as I developed a strong awareness of my surroundings. People had a mad gleam in their eyes, especially Jimmy. We kept exchanging sideways glances with one another. The more mentally unstable we felt, the harder we laughed.
After what felt like an eternity of standing in the dressing room, Jimmy and I shared the need to explore. We left the Fillmore West and spilled out onto the streets of San Francisco. The evening breeze coming off the bay felt so refreshing on my face, and we eventually stumbled onto a giant ground-level lighted sign in front of a Holiday Inn. In our abstract state of mind, we both climbed into the giant flashing letter “D” of the sign. Jimmy and I must have lounged in there for hours banging against the metal wall with our hands.
Boooooom. Piiiiiiiiing. Booooom.
We tapped in time to the lights flashing and could hear the ticking of each light going off. The whole letter reverberated around us with each thump. We created a mystical rhythm together—an otherworldly experience.
On our way crawling out of the sign, we were spotted by a San Francisco police squad car. It pulled up alongside of us as we shuffled out of the parking lot.
“You guys all right?” one of the officers asked, poking his head out the passenger-side window.
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy answered. “Everything is wonderful.” Somehow he managed to keep a straight face.
I thought they might hassle us, but San Francisco cops were used to seeing stoned hippies roaming the streets at all hours. They left us alone and drove back into the night.
Walking the streets of San Francisco that night, there was an air that anything was possible. The LSD had opened my mind to a new perspective. I always felt like we had a bright future ahead of us. Now I was convinced of it.
A few weeks later, we found another opportunity to drop acid when we performed a gig at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle and had the following day off. Everyone, with the exception of Peter, took some LSD and went out to a popular rock club in the downtown area. Peter pounded cocktails to try to keep up with us, but it was no use. The more frantic we became, the slower he got. As soon as we arrived at the club, a hush came over the place. CTA’s reputation had preceded us. Word of our live performances had spread through the underground scene and people took notice.
Although we were twisted on LSD, the band made the decision to take the stage to treat the crowd to a blazing CTA jam session. I stared out from behind the drum kit with distorted vision as the rest of the guys picked up their instruments. Terry looked back and flashed me a smile, but it was hard to focus on his face. Suddenly we launched into an ominous musical interlude. Bobby’s organ hummed deeply, Terry’s guitar wailed, and Peter’s bass walked underneath, building in intensity. We were locked in—to what I have no idea. The music was moody, classical, and extremely bizarre.
I played with my unique manic syncopation and pulled back every so often to allow the other guys room to solo. I didn’t pick my head up once during our inspired jam. When I finally did glance up, there wasn’t a soul left in the place. What we were hearing and what we were playing were two different things. We had cleared the club out!
We laughed our way back to our hotel and piled into our rooms. Despite our chilly reception at the club, we were still inspired. At the time, John Lennon and Yoko Ono had just posed nude for photos together. Still being high, somebody came up with the bright idea to pose for a naked group photo of our own. We got undressed and mooned the camera. Peter was the smart one; he stayed behind the lens to snap the picture. It was all in good fun.
Later we met up with Janis Joplin and her band again to open for them during a few northwestern gigs. Playing with Janis was a big break for us and helped add to the powerful buzz building around our band. The people who were showing up to see Janis perform every night were coming away fans of CTA as well.
When we all met up at a bar one night after a gig in Vancouver, Janis showed up in a stunning dress and one of her signature scarves. She had a sexy and seductive way about her, and I thought she looked absolutely gorgeous. Our whole band did. It was a magical night and Janis made us all feel special, like she was interested in every one of us. And of course, we all wanted to be with her. But one of my bandmates was the only one to get up the nerve to make a move, and they later disappeared together at the end of the night. The next day, when he showed up in the dressing room for our gig, he had long scratches up and down his back. It looked like he had gone at it with a mountain lion! I didn’t bother to come right out and ask what had happened, and he didn’t offer us anything. None of us could believe it. I have to admit I was jealous, but there wasn’t much time to dwell on any lost opportunities.
By then Walt, Peter, and I had brought our wives out to Hollywood. In the six months since the band had left Chicago, Rose had become close friends with Walt’s wife, Jackie, and Peter’s wife, Janice. We all moved into one-bedroom apartments in a complex right around the corner from our band house on Holly Drive. Our wives were excited to finally make the move west. They had been hearing stories about what was going on in our careers and wanted to see everything firsthand. Of course, we didn’t let them in on everything that had been going on.
Although things were starting to pop for the band, money was still tight. Rose and I were on a strict budget. Almost every other meal we ate was hot dogs and beans because it was all we could afford. When the holidays rolled around, Peter and I didn’t have enough extra money to get Christmas trees for our apartments. So we put our heads together and hatched a devious plan.
Late one night, we drove in Peter’s Volkswagen convertible down to the Mayfair, a local supermarket on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. After cutting down a side street, Peter pulled up at the darkest corner and turned off the car’s headlights. The Christmas trees were lined up all the way to the curb. As soon as I was able to get a firm grip on a good-sized trunk, Peter floored it around the corner. It took all my strength to drag the thing alongside of the car until we were out of sight and Peter could pull over. I jumped out and hoisted the tree into the backseat.
“All right,” Peter said, checking the rearview mirror to make sure nobody had followed us. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“No way, man,” I told him. “I need one for my place too.”
Peter rolled his eyes and shifted the car into gear. We made another run by the lot and I leaned out the window and snagged another Christmas tree.
“Go, go, g
o!” I yelled.
It was a cheap thrill, but neither of us could stop howling with laughter.
To celebrate New Year’s Eve, CTA played to a packed house at the Whisky in front of our wives and close friends. During our set, our crew put a light show up on a large movie screen that hung over the stage. Toward the end of the night, the nude photo the band had taken back on our LSD-soaked night in Seattle flashed on the screen. Our asses were larger than life as we mooned the camera. Everyone erupted with laughter and I turned to see our road manager, Jack Goudie, standing up behind the projector with a smirk on his face. We had a little explaining to do to our wives. The joke was on us.
Guercio had been shopping us around town, trying to secure CTA a record deal, but it was proving to be more difficult than he thought. Columbia didn’t want to sign CTA initially because they already had the band Blood, Sweat and Tears on their label. When Columbia approached Guercio to produce their album, Guercio made them a proposition: he would do the record if in return the label would sign CTA to a recording contract. It was a delicate situation, because Blood, Sweat and Tears had in some way become our rivals in the same genre of music. We had moved out west first, but they had hit the street before we did because they were out of New York City where Columbia’s headquarters were at the time. Before he even brought it up to Columbia, Guercio checked with us to make sure we were okay with the situation. He didn’t want us to feel betrayed. We reluctantly agreed that Guercio should produce the album if that was what it was going to take for CTA to get a record contract.
Guercio went ahead with the deal. After he had completed the Blood, Sweat and Tears album, the head of the label, Clive Davis, stepped up to the plate and signed CTA.
“Looks like you’re going to New York to record an album, guys,” Larry announced at our next band meeting.
I took the first plane ride of my life back to Chicago and stopped in to see my parents. They were curious to learn about everything that was happening with the band. Of course, I left out the details of the rock-and-roll lifestyle I had been leading prior to Rose moving out west. My mother wasn’t too thrilled when she found a small jar of pot in my suitcase. It took some convincing to make her believe I wasn’t on my way to becoming a full-blown drug addict.
Two days later, I continued on to New York City, where the record company put the band up at the City Squire Hotel in Times Square. Every morning, we made the trip to CBS Studios on 42nd Street to lay down the songs we had road-tested over the previous two years. It was the first time I had ever been in a recording studio, so the experience was overwhelming. The tracking process was unfamiliar to all of us. We were used to performing live and tried to apply the same formula in the studio, but it didn’t work. One of us made a mistake on each run-through. It was close to impossible to capture a clean take of all seven members nailing our parts. We made the decision to record drums, bass, keyboard, and guitars first, and then the horns and vocals.
When we wanted to stretch out our version of the Spencer Davis Group’s song “I’m a Man,” we inserted a drum solo in the middle of the track. The band played the entire section off the cuff in the studio with Jimmy on cowbell, Walt on tambourine, and Lee on claves. The final mix turned out amazing.
While we were recording Bobby’s song “Beginnings,” Al Kooper, formerly of Blood, Sweat and Tears dropped in to the studio. Al had gotten his hands on one of the early versions of the video camera and walked around with it as we recorded. Guercio stood in the control room playing air drums along with me and nodding, which was his way of letting me know he wanted to stretch out the end of the song and insert as many fills as possible. He wanted the song to end with an extended outro à la the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” It was a truly magical moment. Unfortunately, Al later ended up taping over the footage he captured of us. What I wouldn’t give to have it back today!
Being an accomplished musician himself, Guercio knew what he was doing. He had been around CTA long enough to know our strengths and weaknesses as a group and as individuals. He pointed us in the right direction and left us to our own abilities. If he wasn’t thrilled with something, he wouldn’t try to strong-arm anyone. He would say something like, “Are you sure you like what you are doing in that section of the song?”
At the end of each long day in the studio, we headed back to our hotel in Times Square for some much-needed relaxation. We were surprised to find that the famous comedian Redd Foxx was also a guest and got to know him well during our downtime. Redd connected with the jazz element in CTA’s music and made it a point to tell me how much he liked our sound. He was hysterically funny and always up for hanging out.
“You guys got any weed?” he always asked us, giving his signature sideways grin. “You’re hippies, right? Man, I like the hippies . . . especially hippies with weed.”
In between recording sessions, the band went to Philly to play a few gigs at a place called the Electric Factory. The crowd went wild for our music. After we had finished our set, they called us up for an encore, and then another, and then another. The City of Brotherly Love certainly loved Chicago.
When our band clicked onstage and became one, it was an otherworldly experience. Nothing beat the feeling. It was the thread that kept our brotherhood intact. A lot of times, performing in front of packed houses felt too good to be true. Had we really come this far together? Backstage after our gigs, we routinely asked each other, “Can you believe we get paid for doing this?” In fact, we were so amped up from playing live that we sang it like it was the chorus to a funk song: “We get paid for doin’ this, we get paid for doin’ this . . .”
Ten days after arriving in New York City, we put the final touches on our debut effort, The Chicago Transit Authority.
Remarkably, the self-titled album Guercio produced for Blood, Sweat and Tears went on to win a Grammy for Album of the Year in 1969. The record ended up featuring three hit singles: David Clayton-Thomas’s “Spinning Wheel,” Brenda Holloway’s “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” and a cut of Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die.” It seemed Guercio could do no wrong and was on a major hot streak. CTA hoped the success would carry over to our new album as well.
Paisano cowboy in the old neighborhood
With my first set of Slingerlands at twelve years old
Walt and I take on our pseudonyms
As a working musician in the Missing Links
The Big Thing: (left to right) Lee Loughnane, Terry Kath, Walt Parazaider, Bobby Lamm, Jimmy Pankow, and me
Early CTA days in Los Angeles after getting a perm—what a mistake
CTA performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970
Peter and I playing in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1970
Recording “Motorboat to Mars” from Chicago III
Chicago in full swing in 1971
Coming of age behind my set of Slingerlands
The flyer for a 1971 drum clinic I did with my mentor, Grady Tate
Terry and me with Walt Parazaider, Jimmy Pankow, and Lee Loughnane (in the back, left to right) and Peter Cetera (on bass) in 1972
Practicing in the Santa Monica mountains in 1972
Back at the ranch in 1972: Peter, Jimmy, Robert, and Marty
Tearing through “Feelin’ Stronger Every Day”: Chicago and the Doobie Brothers at Balboa Stadium, San Diego, on July 15, 1973
Playing congas at Balboa Stadium
Terry working his magic
Rebel with a cause
Terry and Peter at my daughter Danielle’s christening party in 1974
Songwriting session in my garage in Encino for “Aire” from Chicago VII
The gunslingers at Caribou Ranch: (left to right) Jimmy, me, Peter, Walt, Terry, Lee, and Bobby
Rehearsing a song for the Chicago in the Rockies television special
8
CTA
Our first album, The Chicago Transit Authority, was released in the late spring of 1969. Although it received some favorable reviews, sales were sluggish and
the record had trouble gaining traction. We couldn’t break into popular AM radio because our songs were too long for the format of the stations. Still, the newly developed FM format embraced CTA and helped push the record along. Once college audiences hooked into us, our popularity grew nationwide on school campuses.
From a business standpoint, Guercio knew it was going to be more of a gradual climb for our band and understood that he would have to reach out to his connections in the smaller markets to get us airplay. CBS’s main marketing focus centered on Blood, Sweat and Tears because they were the fair-haired boys of the company. CTA had to rely on the help of others, especially dedicated promotion guys at the label like Steve Popovich, Terry Powell, Sal Ingemi, and Ron Alexenburg. They went the extra mile to spread the word on a grassroots level about our band.
Knowing we needed to promote ourselves as much as possible, CTA set out on the road in support of our debut album. After warming up with a few gigs in the Hollywood area with the likes of Iron Butterfly, Three Dog Night, and the Animals, we got some mind-boggling news—Jimi Hendrix wanted CTA to open a few shows for him on a southern tour. Of course, we instantly jumped at the chance. Since his groundbreaking performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, Jimi was the talk of the national music scene, and being associated with anything he did was the gold standard. He was one of the biggest draws in the world, so it would be unbelievable exposure for CTA.
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