Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

We met up with Hendrix and the rest of his band and boarded a Piedmont Airlines flight bound for our first gig at the Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Not long after we lifted off the ground, turbulence kicked in and our small prop plane started getting tossed around like a little toy. A few minutes into the flight, I leaned forward in my window seat and tried to get ahold of myself. My stomach was doing somersaults. Before I knew it, I vomited into one of the barf bags. I happened to be sitting behind Jimi, who I absolutely idolized, so I couldn’t have been more embarrassed. All I wanted to do was find a place to hide. Jimi, an ex-army paratrooper, wasn’t the least bit affected by the rocky flight. He stayed relaxed while the rest of us kept white-knuckled grips on our armrests. When Jimi noticed that I was a complete wreck, he came back to comfort me.

  “It’s okay, kid,” he told me, patting me on the back. “You’re gonna be all right.”

  Like Janis, Jimi had a kind and sensitive side the public never got to see. He was supposed to be a larger-than-life drugged-out rock star, but that was just a character he portrayed to the outside world. It was a true privilege to get to know a different side of him that not everyone had access to.

  We played amazingly on the tour, but Hendrix blew the doors off the places. His use of loud feedback, overdriven amplifiers, and effects pedals simply amazed me as he confidently grooved across the stage and showed everyone what was possible on electric guitar. It was obvious to everyone that Jimi was a guitar god and an instant rock legend. The dates we opened for Hendrix took the promotion of our first album to a whole new level. Word of our band was spreading.

  After the shows opening for Jimi, CTA returned to California for some much-needed rest and relaxation. Everything was happening fast for us and we needed to stop and regain our bearings. Walt, Terry, Peter, and I found out the Chicago Cubs were coming into town to play the Los Angeles Dodgers, so we took our wives out to a game one Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful summer day at Dodger Stadium and free of distractions. Around the seventh-inning stretch, I went inside to the concessions stand to get a few Dodger Dogs and drinks for everyone. As I got back toward our seats, a group of Marines started hassling Peter. They didn’t like that there were “longhairs” in their row, and on top of that, we were all Chicago Cubs fans.

  “Fuck you, hippie,” one of the guys told Peter. He got up from his seat and pushed Peter down the aisle. When Peter regained his balance and started back up the stairs, another guy from the crowd hauled off with a right hook and hit him square in the face.

  Not only did I have my hands full, but the row was too packed with people for me to get any closer. When I finally made my way back to our seats, I wanted a piece of one of the Marines. Nobody messes with part of my group, my gang. It was always an eye for an eye.

  “Why would you do that?” I yelled at them. “You’re a bunch of assholes!”

  I was about to make a move when a guy sitting across the row grabbed my shoulder and stepped in front of me.

  “Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to get into it with those guys. They’re only looking for trouble.”

  He was right. Alone, I had no chance against a group of combat-trained Marines. Besides, we were with our wives. It wasn’t the time or place to try to be a tough guy.

  Needless to say, our baseball game was cut short and we had to drive Peter to the hospital. His jaw was badly broken in multiple places and he had to stay in the hospital for three days. The doctors even had to wire his mouth closed.

  It was an awful situation, but Peter’s injury didn’t prevent CTA from performing. He showed the band his mettle as a true professional and continued to sing and play live with his jaw clamped shut. (The funny thing is that Peter still sings with his jaw clenched in the same style.)

  The band continued promoting our album all over for audiences in Indianapolis; Boston and Framingham, Massachusetts; the Fillmore East in New York City; Asbury Park and Lambertville, New Jersey; Wallingford, Connecticut; San Francisco; and Vancouver, British Columbia. In between the dates of our touring schedule, we somehow found the opportunity to jump into CBS Studios in Los Angeles and record a second album in August 1969. Whereas the first record was a compilation of raw energy, we took a more controlled approach to our new effort.

  Following Bobby’s lead, Terry and Jimmy started to come into their own as songwriters. During our previous tour, Jimmy had crafted a beautiful thirteen-minute classical-influenced song he called “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” (the word was he had written it for his old girlfriend Chickey Sweets). Structured like a classical piece with several movements, each with a different title, it had everyone excited. We could immediately tell how special it was; the music challenged every one of us to our core. The band rehearsed it for hours on end while we were out on the road and came up with our own parts.

  We went into the studio in New York and recorded the song in sections. Afterward, Guercio and the studio engineer, Don Puluse, spliced it all together. The last element remaining was the lead vocal. Initially, Jimmy had written it for Bobby’s voice. After all, Bobby had sung lead on the singles like “Beginnings” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” When it came time to lay down the lead vocal, Bobby began running down the song. Immediately an eerie silence came over us as we stood watching him from the control room. It was obvious to everyone that Bobby’s voice simply did not fit. His track just sat there with no life or magic. Everyone traded a few worried glances. Here Jimmy had written this masterpiece, but Bobby’s vocal wasn’t cutting it.

  Guercio turned to Peter and Terry. “Does either one of you want to take a crack at this?” he asked them.

  Peter knew that the two sections called “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World” were too low for him. So Terry went in the booth and took his best shot. From the moment he sang the first line, everyone’s faces lit up, especially both Jimmys (Pankow and Guercio). You would have thought they had discovered gold, and you could say they did. Terry hit it out of the park.

  During recording, Bobby also brought in a wonderfully catchy song he was calling “25 or 6 to 4.” Like everyone else, I asked him what the track’s title meant.

  “It’s a song about the frustration of writing a song. And me wondering whether it is twenty-five minutes or twenty-six minutes until four o’clock in the morning,” Bobby explained.

  The overwhelming excitement of our new material didn’t erase the fact that the band as a whole was run-down. We were burning the candle at both ends with our nonstop partying. Walt’s behavior in particular on the road had grown more and more bizarre. He stopped making any sense in conversations and I was the only one willing to share a room with him. He had taken to putting his hair in pigtails, wearing an old Chicago Cubs baseball jersey, and carrying a baseball glove around. He also walked around carrying a rubber duck in his briefcase, which he called “Grandpa Duck.” The psychedelics had caught up with him and Walt was losing his mind. He buckled under the pressure of becoming a rock star and regressed into acting like a teenager.

  We were in the process of recording “25 or 6 to 4” in the studio one afternoon when Walt walked in smacking a ball into his baseball glove. Out on tour was one thing, but in the studio his weird antics were getting to be too much to handle. It was a real distraction and had begun to get in the way of our work.

  “Hey, you guys want to play catch?” Walt asked, making his way around the control room.

  My frustration finally boiled over. “Walt, what exactly is your deal?” I asked him. “You’re freaking everybody out and you need to pull it together. You should go home and cool out.”

  Without another word, Walt shuffled out of the studio. It was the last we saw of him for the day. Later on that evening, he called to tell me how what I had said hurt his feelings. I apologized, but explained that the band had lost its tolerance for his nonsense. In a way, I held myself responsible for the difficulty Walt was experiencing. I had persuaded him to pass up his opportunity with the Chicago Sym
phony and set off on this outrageous musical path in the first place. Toward the end of recording, word came back to the band that Walt had been admitted to a mental hospital. His wife, Jackie, had reached her breaking point and could no longer deal with his mood swings and wild behavior.

  At one point, we held a band meeting to discuss how to handle the situation. The other guys had the nerve to bring up the possibility of firing him. I couldn’t believe it. Fire Walt? Had the rest of the band already forgotten about the pact we made?

  “If Walt goes, then I go,” I emphatically told the rest of the band.

  My firm position put an abrupt end to the discussions and the topic was never brought up again.

  We kept in close contact with Jackie and she kept us updated on Walt’s condition. Because he wasn’t able to go out on tour, we were forced to hire a substitute horn player named Bobby Roberts for a few shows. When fans and media asked about Walt, we explained that he was sick with the flu and would be back soon.

  It was scary because none of us knew whether we’d see the old Walt again. We hoped he would be able to get the well-deserved rest he needed and rejoin the band when he felt healthy enough. It was hard to set out on the road knowing the trouble he was having back in Los Angeles. I wanted to be there to support him as much as possible, but Chicago had performances to honor.

  Fortunately, when we returned to Los Angeles from our gigs, we found that Walt had completely regained his health. Whatever he had been dealing with was long gone and he was back to his old self. His recovery was nothing short of a miracle. Once Walt rejoined us, our band was once again intact and ready to pick up where we had left off.

  From the afternoon when we held our first rehearsal in Walt’s mother’s basement, I had had supreme confidence in our talents as a group. However, I was still shocked at how far we’d come since then. After just a few short years, we were routinely sharing stages with the best bands in the world and playing to larger audiences than I could ever have imagined. CTA performed at the Atlantic City Pop Festival in the middle of the summer in front of a crowd of more than one hundred thousand! When I looked out from behind my drum kit over the sea of fans, I thought I must be dreaming. Only a couple of years earlier, the band had struggled to draw crowds in small Chicago nightclubs.

  When we heard the initial rumblings about the promoters putting on Woodstock, the band wanted desperately to perform at the festival. Word was that it was going to be the most sensational event of the era. But there was a problem. CTA was under contract with Bill Graham to perform at the Fillmore West during the same span of dates and Graham wouldn’t let us out of it. I had a suspicion the reason was because he also managed Santana and may have thought of CTA as a threat. He didn’t want us to overshadow his top act—the less competition for Santana at Woodstock, the better. We pleaded with Larry Fitzgerald, but he insisted that his hands were tied and there was nothing he could do. CTA’s only option was to honor the contract and do the Fillmore West dates.

  “Besides,” Larry told us, “this Woodstock gig’s going to be a logistical nightmare and a total mess. You don’t even want to be anywhere near that place.” (I still razz him about that statement to this day.)

  Shortly after we had finished recording our second album, CTA played the Texas International Pop Festival at the Dallas International Motor Speedway on Labor Day weekend. As at the Atlantic City festival, there were amazing performers on the bill: Led Zeppelin, Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Grand Funk Railroad, Santana, and Sly and the Family Stone. Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and I acted almost like rival gunslingers backstage. For some reason, we kept a distance from one another and neither of us wanted to make the first move. In retrospect, I should have taken the time to get to know him. We both came from similar backgrounds, and we probably would have become fast friends. I consider it a real missed opportunity. There was no reason for either of us to act aloof. After all, one of the elements I enjoyed most about touring was the opportunity our group had to mingle and bond with other talented artists.

  After performing at the festival in Dallas, CTA’s tour continued across the country. Even though there were a few previous offers, up until that point we had purposely chosen not to return home to play Chicago. The band had agreed to go back only once we had made something of ourselves. Well, everyone agreed that the time had finally come. We returned to the Windy City around Thanksgiving of 1969 to perform in front of a sold-out crowd at the Auditorium Theater. As we expected, the town was alive and buzzing. All of the band’s family and friends came to see us play and partied backstage after the show. My parents, my sister Rosemary, and even my old buddy Rick Bracamontes from the neighborhood made it out. It was a glorious evening and a rewarding return to our old stomping grounds. The future of the band was brighter than ever.

  In the wake of our group’s newfound notoriety, the local government back home also took notice of us. Our namesake, the actual Chicago Transit Authority in Illinois, threatened legal action against us unless we agreed to change our band name. So we did; from that point on, we were simply known as Chicago. I always liked the name CTA and was sorry to see it go, but there was nothing we could do about it.

  Not only was our name evolving, but our career was changing as well. We carried our momentum overseas, where the band’s popularity was at an all-time high. On our first European tour stop, we played to a capacity crowd at London’s Albert Hall. We were doing well in the States, but it was surprising to see how big we were overseas. Each of us was introduced individually in Albert Hall under a spotlight and got raucous applause from the audience. We were suddenly the darlings of the English press, who gave glowing reviews of our albums and live shows.

  From the outset, I noticed that audiences reacted much differently to our music in Europe. At the Palais D’Hiver in Lyon, France, the audience sang along to every word of our songs. We never saw that in the United States. The international crowd showed us a certain amount of intellectual respect we hadn’t seen with American audiences. We felt like we were true artists and not just another pop music commodity. It was during that time in Europe that I began to understand that our musical achievement was substantial.

  We were on a very tight schedule during that particular tour, so we didn’t have much time for ourselves. The exhausting pace turned out to be a real grind. I got up early in the morning, ate breakfast, went to the venue for soundcheck with the band, came back for a nap at the hotel, and then went back to play the show. After the gig, the European promoters took us out for a ridiculously late dinner around ten or eleven at night. It wasn’t the easiest routine to settle into.

  Luckily, our tour manager, Jack Goudie, was a hard-ass and kept us in line. He was like our personal drill instructor and made sure we always made it to where we needed to be every step of the way—meet-and-greets, photo shoots, soundcheck, you name it. It was a tough job and he put up with a lot of nonsense, but Jack had the strong personality for it. After our shows, getting backstage to meet us was like trying to get back to meet the Beatles. Jack always ran a tight ship and we were fortunate to have him on tour.

  Out on the road was like living in a fantasy world. Sex with groupies became a constant. Girls were everywhere and more than willing to do anyone or everyone to get to our band. The rock-star party lifestyle was a free-for-all. Excess, excess, and more excess. I didn’t think about whether something was good for me before I did it. I was carefree and reckless. The entire band felt invincible.

  Being on tour overseas really opened my eyes to the thriving European groupie subculture. The girls loved American bands. In Switzerland, I awoke to find a gorgeous blond Scandinavian girl standing at my bedside. She had come home with one of our roadies, who had let her into my hotel room.

  “Are you the drummer?” she asked, taking off her sweater.

  I couldn’t do anything but blankly stare up at her. At first I wasn’t sure if I was in the middle of a dream or not. Overall, I was somewhere in between.

  �
�Yes, I’m the drummer,” I answered, still a bit hazy.

  At that moment, I would have been anyone she wanted me to be. She could have asked me if I was the bassist, keyboardist, manager, whatever . . . the answer was yes.

  I was stunned at the things some of the groupies were into doing. Many of them wouldn’t think twice about doing our entire road crew in order to gain access to the band. And once they did that, the girls had no problem sleeping with the whole band, individually or at once. They were sexually available to us and for the taking. And I certainly took.

  When we returned to the United States from our wild tour overseas, the band found that our second record, Chicago (also known as Chicago II), had gone certified gold—500,000 copies! All of us felt a great sense of achievement in hearing the news. We had moved from our homes, left our families, and dedicated ourselves to a common goal. Our group took the leap into the unknown and came out the other side. All the miles logged on the road in buses and planes and the long hours spent in the recording studio were well worth it. Our intention was never to be famous, but suddenly we were.

  Not that the success didn’t have a downside. Walt wasn’t the only one who experienced the negative effects of nonstop touring. After performing one evening in front of a packed house in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Lee and I got ahold of some LSD and I experienced the worst acid trip of my life. Aside from dealing with the intense paranoia, I began spitting up blood. It scared the hell out of me. Deep down in my gut, I knew something was seriously wrong.

  Upon arriving back in Los Angeles, I wasted no time in getting a blood test and chest X-rays done. When the results came back, the doctor stunned me with the news that I had contracted tuberculosis. Luckily, they had detected the disease in its early stages and prescribed me a new experimental drug.

  My illness seemed like the direct result of the abuse I had inflicted on myself over the previous few years. My body and mind had been pushed to the absolute limit and now they were pushing back. Rose helped nurse me back to health and I stayed in bed for two weeks at a guesthouse we were now renting in Studio City, California. With the help of rest and medication, I made a full recovery. My bout with tuberculosis served as an important wake-up call for me to improve my lifestyle. I quit smoking (for a while anyway), changed my diet, and started exercising. At the rate our band was going, I was going to have to be in much better shape to make it out there on the road. There was much more to come for Chicago.