Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

  9

  Chicago

  At the end of our grueling year of touring and recording, Walt and I went to a meeting at Howard’s office on Sunset Boulevard. The band’s popularity had been growing exponentially. We had done something like 250 dates during the year, and I was looking forward to reaping the benefits of our hard work.

  “It’s been a good year, guys,” Howard told Walt and me, pulling his chair in closer to his desk. He flipped through a stack of spreadsheets until he found the one he was looking for. “But as it stands now, with the tremendous production costs being what they are, each of you owes Guercio seven grand.”

  I nearly lost my mind. “What?” I shot back. “Is this some kind of a joke, Howard?” I leapt out of my seat and began pacing his office.

  “What do you want me to tell you, Danny?” Howard answered with upturned palms.

  “We owe Guercio money?” I asked. “How on earth is that possible?”

  “Now calm down,” he told me. “There’s no need to overreact.” Howard paused and then added, “Don’t forget. You and Walt would be the easiest to replace.”

  Who did this guy think he was? Replace us? It took all my self-control not to lunge across the desk and grab him by his collar. Walt was usually easygoing, but he was just as upset. I flew out of the room, slamming the door shut behind me, and marched down the hall to Larry Fitzgerald’s office to see what he had to say. Larry managed to calm me down and smoothed everything out between Howard and me that afternoon, but it was the beginning of a long-running good cop/bad cop routine the two of them would perfect in the coming years. One would light the fires and the other would put them out. What I didn’t understand was that I was obligated to repay Guercio my share of all the money he had fronted the band early on. Until I was able to do that, I wasn’t making a profit.

  Even though the band was becoming well-known, there was an underlying sense that it could end at any time. As a musician and an artist, there was always self-doubt lurking in the back of my mind. I was constantly insecure about how long the band would last. None of us had any idea. There was a feeling somebody would step in one day and say, “Okay guys, that’s it. You’re done.” And Chicago’s crazy trip would be over.

  Executives in the record industry and entertainment business use the artists’ sense of insecurity against them from time to time to get their way. They don’t think twice about leveraging fear to control the decision-making process. Even if I wasn’t worried about something, there were always other people there from the record company or Chicago’s own management to plant the seeds of doubt in order to keep us on edge. They’d use anything and start making off-the-cuff remarks.

  “Well, you never know if you’re going to be around that long.”

  “Maybe the next record won’t sell, guys.”

  “What if we don’t get a good fan turnout to the show?”

  I understood the game, but it didn’t change the fact that the continuous doubting deeply affected me. The band worked at a breakneck pace and a tight schedule. There were always new gigs to play, promotions to do, songs to record in the studio, and magazine interviews to sit down for. It was never-ending. We thought we needed to stay in constant motion or we would suddenly lose momentum and give up everything we had worked so hard to achieve.

  Most of the guys in the band didn’t understand the anger and frustration I was experiencing over our business arrangement with Guercio. Bobby, Jimmy, and Terry had no reason to bitch, because they were earning big songwriting royalties. Howard and Guercio were not going to hear any complaints from them. Having grown up a corner guy, I was sensitive to people trying to screw me over. The rest of us didn’t have any piece of the publishing and were making our living off of touring. It was a hard pill to swallow. I was driving around in an old Volkswagen Bug that had just turned over 150,000 miles while the other guys were buying brand-new cars. I should have been more understanding, because Bobby, Terry, and Jimmy were Guercio’s go-to guys at the time. The focus was on Bobby’s songwriting, Terry’s skilled guitar playing, and Jimmy’s groundbreaking horn arrangements. Peter may have been the most talented singer in the band, but he found himself third in line behind Bobby and Terry. He started understanding that he was going to have to write his own material in order for his vocals to be featured.

  The money issues ate away at me. The band had been recording, selling albums, and touring tirelessly for more than an entire year straight and it wasn’t making any difference. Forget making money; I owed money. I was paying to be a part of the group.

  The bottom line was Jimmy Guercio controlled it all. The publishing, album sales, ticket sales . . . you name it. He had a stranglehold on every facet of Chicago’s business. We had made the decision as a band to sign his five-year agreement and now I was feeling the sting of its consequences. The way it was structured, the band paid for everything. I was appreciative of everything Guercio did for our group, and I never forgot that without him we wouldn’t have had a record deal in the first place, but I didn’t completely understand general overhead, production, and recording costs. I couldn’t process how much of his own money Guercio was investing in the band in order to launch our career. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time to dwell on the inner workings of the business arrangement. I had to force myself to put up with it in order to focus on the music. After all, that is what mattered most.

  Our second album, Chicago, was released in January 1970 and featured the band’s new striking and distinctive logo on its cover. Guercio had very definite ideas on how he wanted our image presented to the public and insisted that the logo remain dominant in all of our artwork from that time forward. We had always let the music do the talking and now we had a trademark logo to complement our distinct sound.

  Not long after the record came out, I was driving along the 405 freeway in Los Angeles when a familiar piece of music came over the AM radio. For the first ten or fifteen seconds, I didn’t recognize it as ours. Something was wrong with the arrangement. It had been cut down from Jimmy’s thirteen-minute “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon” and spliced together into a radio-friendly three-minute tune. Enraged, I nearly swerved off of the highway and crashed my car into a guardrail. After regaining control, I found a pay phone at a gas station and called Larry to find out what the hell was going on. Nobody had told us the song was going to be chopped up and released as a single.

  “I thought you knew,” Larry explained. “Jimmy finally gave in to Clive Davis. He’s the head of the company and can pretty much do what he wants. But it’s been doing great and climbing the charts. It’s looking like a big hit, man.”

  And Larry was right. “Make Me Smile” broke it wide open for the band and launched us big. Our popularity skyrocketed and our second album pushed into the mainstream. “Make Me Smile” and “Colour My World,” both sung by Terry, became Top 10 hits. Bobby’s “25 or 6 to 4,” sung by Peter, got constant airplay. The band continued touring and exceeded everyone’s expectations.

  The unbelievable success of “Make Me Smile” changed everything. It opened up a whole new world of luxury and excess. The band went from underground scene artists to bona fide rock stars. We stayed in the most luxurious hotels, dined in exclusive restaurants, and chartered a private plane instead of flying commercial. Our first plane, a weathered Martin propeller model, was flown by a World War II veteran pilot we called Captain Bob. He reminded me of John Wayne’s hard-nosed character in the movie The High and the Mighty. Every once in a while, Captain Bob got on our case for being too rowdy while we were in flight.

  “Hey, some of you guys need to sit down. You’re throwing off the balance of the plane!” he’d shout back to us from the cockpit.

  Any time spent aboard the plane was party central. The drugs and the booze flowed freely and we stocked the cabin with the most stunning groupies imaginable. The more the band toured the country, the more I indulged in affairs. Women were everywhere—backstage after the show, on the tour bus, and at th
e hotel. Being out on the road for me was like giving a kid the keys to the candy store. Women had become a destructive vice and I could not overcome the temptation. I tried to justify my behavior in my mind, but I was only lying to myself.

  Despite Guercio’s sizable commission, every member of the band began to see big earnings, even the nonwriters like Walt, Lee, Peter, and me. Because of the new spike in income, Rose, Krissy and I moved from our tiny guesthouse in Studio City to a modest place in Encino. Instead of moving to upscale locations such as Malibu like Jimmy and Peter or inland to Beverly Hills like Bobby, I followed Walt into the San Fernando Valley, which was a little more sensible to me. Cash may have been plentiful for the first time, but I was always practical when it came to finances. Coming from the streets, I’m more interested in getting proper value for my money. That being said, the days of living on hot dogs and beans were behind us forever.

  The band was entering yet another phase in our brotherhood. In the beginning, we struggled through the early days together in Chicago and then made it through the time of living on top of each other in the same house in Hollywood. Now each of us was moving out on his own to concentrate on family. Times were changing. We could now focus on giving back to those who had supported us over the years.

  When my dad called me up one night and told me the convenience store was having problems making ends meet, I didn’t hesitate in lending him $14,000 to help ease the strain. Nothing made me happier than being able to do that for my mom and dad. Over the years, they had done everything they could to help me through the rough times. I got a great sense of satisfaction out of being able to repay them.

  After the early friction between us, Howard and I smoothed things over. Not only did he help me negotiate the purchase of the Encino house, but he even offered to help me buy my first new car down at the Mercedes dealership in Sherman Oaks. Howard had always been partial to driving around in big Cadillacs and couldn’t understand why I would want to buy a foreign car. But nothing he said was going to change my mind. I wanted a Benz.

  In the end, bringing Howard down to the dealership paid off. I got a great deal and couldn’t have been happier to drive that vintage Mercedes coupe off of the lot. The new air suspension was a welcome change from the hard ride of my old Volkswagen beater.

  Although the quality of my life was steadily improving as money started rolling in, I remained a fly in the ointment about our business arrangement. My anger flared up once in a while, but there was always someone there from our management team to placate me. There is an old adage among managers and talent agents in the entertainment industry: pay your acts just enough money so they don’t start asking questions. And that is precisely what our management did. They kept us content and we continued to work without skipping a beat. There was always another tour to set out on and another album to put out.

  In late 1970, the band went into the studio in New York City fatigued and road-weary. We had hit a point where we had used our excess material on the previous two albums and the guys had to work nonstop to write new songs. We took the opportunity to experiment with instrumentals and showcase our skills as musicians. I contributed “Motorboat to Mars,” a drum arrangement, and also collaborated with Peter on a tune he had come up with called “Lowdown.” Peter was incredibly supportive during the writing process and knew how much it meant to finally notch my first cowriting credit on one of Chicago’s songs.

  During the recording of Chicago III, I was introduced to cocaine for the first time. A few of the other guys in the band had begun experimenting with it, so I figured I would give it a try. After the initial high wore off, I came down with one of the worst cases of the flu I’ve ever had in my life—the Hong Kong flu, they called it. The band was forced to cancel an important promotional photo shoot the next day because I was incapacitated in my hotel room. While the rest of the band set off for Los Angeles, I spent the entire following week sprawled out in a New York City hotel room. Guercio lived in the city and stopped by to check up on me. He and his wife, Lucy, even invited me to stay at their apartment with them, but I didn’t want to impose because of my condition. The entire experience turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it cemented my attitude toward cocaine. I had no interest in trying it again anytime soon.

  At this point in our career, the band was operating at a breakneck pace. Although it felt like we were rushing the recording process, it didn’t come through in the finished product when Chicago III was released two months later. With our first three double albums in as many years, the band had secured itself among the premier acts in the world. Because of the momentum we had built up, Columbia Records was able to rerelease the singles “Beginnings,” “Questions 67 and 68,” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” from our first album. They all went on to become hits.

  We continued to tour, but the road was starting to wear on us. Exhausted, we made another pass through England and found that the British press had changed their opinion of our band. They were particularly harsh in their reviews of Chicago III, maybe because we had become successful and were no longer the darlings of the underground music scene.

  Not long after our arrival in London, we held a press conference and were confronted by a group of hostile journalists. When Terry had had enough of their attitude, he decided to vent his frustration. During the post-interview photo shoot, he had something he wanted to share with the British press.

  “Fuck all of you. Eric Clapton sucks,” he told them as the cameras flashed.

  Oh Christ, I thought to myself. That will go over smashingly with these British journalists. They were already looking for reasons to bash the band, and Terry had given them a juicy sound bite. As expected, his Clapton quote was all over the papers the following morning. Terry didn’t mean what he said, but it was his way of lashing out and venting his frustration for the way the band was treated during the press conference. He certainly knew how to make headlines.

  In April 1971, Chicago played an entire week of shows at Carnegie Hall and recorded them for a live box set. Although it was a remarkable venue, we had serious sound difficulties. The acoustics in Carnegie Hall weren’t what we expected, and despite the best efforts of our engineers, nothing sounded right. The horns came across thin and tinny like kazoos. As soon as we got the proper levels on the stage, someone from the production truck came in and started adjusting them again.

  The beginning of the record never sounded right to my ears, but in the middle of “South California Purples,” Terry kicked out an amazing guitar jam and everything almost magically fell into place. The band connected in that moment and the rest of the set took off from there. In all, the shows turned out great. I was at the top of my game.

  Our Carnegie Hall shows marked a historic event in our career and were later released as a gigantic live four-LP collection. Not only were we the first rock group to sell the place out for an entire week, but the albums also went on to break records as the top-selling rock-and-roll box set. Chicago had set sales marks that would stand for years.

  We graduated from playing two-thousand-seat clubs such as the Fillmore East and West to packing giant twenty-thousand-seat venues like the Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, and the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles. Those buildings were built for major sporting events, not music concerts. I felt like the luckiest corner guy on the planet.

  Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any better, Rose got pregnant again and we had a beautiful baby daughter we named Danielle. I almost missed the birth altogether and had to rush back from a gig the band was about to play in New Orleans. I arrived just in the nick of time to see my new baby girl come into the world. Even though my family was growing, I didn’t break stride. Chicago was an unrelenting force that could not be stopped. We were already in the middle of preproduction for Chicago V. So, a day after Danielle’s birth, I went back to work while Rose stayed at home with our young ones.

  During our production meetings for the album, our band made
a conscious decision to shy away from writing long pieces of music that would be edited down for radio airplay. The new focus was going to be on singles. Bobby wrote new three- and four-minute songs as opposed to the extended pieces the band had been doing for most of our career. We also decided to put out our first single full-length release instead of our typical double album.

  Our new direction marked a critical turning point, because we started to gravitate away from what we were all about. In changing our format, we lost some of our die-hard fans, but the move also opened our music to a mainstream audience that was previously untapped. It felt like we weren’t being true to ourselves and were allowing record sales and revenues to influence our decisions, but we felt the obligation to feed the big machine we had created to satisfy the needs of the radio stations and our millions of fans across the globe. Although Chicago V turned out amazing, the new direction of the band alarmed me because we were altering the DNA of our music. After we made the choice to write more commercial songs, like “Just You ’N ’ Me” and “Old Days,” I continually tried to crowbar in my jazz licks. My role had altered within the band and it took me a while to adjust. Eventually, I gave in to what the songwriters wanted me to play in place of what I thought should be played.

  In support on the new album, Chicago set out on our first full-fledged world tour, playing in sixteen countries in twenty days. We were already larger than life in the States, and our sold-out performances cemented our status as international stars. Like on our earlier European tour, the audiences sang along with every lyric. It was a rewarding experience, but also very grueling. The trip didn’t go without incident. Bobby and Terry had gotten married and decided our tour across the globe would be the perfect opportunity to bring their wives out with the band.