Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

  I let out a pained sigh as all of the air rushed out of my lungs. The tears welled up in my eyes as I looked up at the hazy vision of my brother.

  Donny paced back and forth on the other side of the living room and began rambling. “We were partying for the last few days and came back here to hang out. Terry got some of his guns out of his car and brought them in the house. He picked up that damned revolver and started fucking around! I told him to put it away but he wouldn’t listen and put it to his head like he was playing Russian roulette. When he pulled the trigger, the gun went ‘click’ because the chamber was empty.”

  I glanced over and made eye contact with Donny for the first time. He looked incredibly strung out. His nerves were already fried from all the partying he and Terry had been doing, and now he had to endure a scene like this. I truly felt awful for Donny. He would never be the same. And I guess neither would I.

  “Terry wouldn’t listen and just kept laughing. After that, he grabbed one of his other guns and put it to his head,” Donny continued, stamping out his cigarette in an ashtray and lighting another one. “I pleaded with him, fucking pleaded with him, Danny! But he kept laughing and told me not to worry because it wasn’t loaded. Before I knew it, he put the gun up to his head”—Donny stopped, then fought to push the words out—“and the thing just fucking went off.”

  I could barely comprehend the harsh reality of the scene I had walked into. I almost had the urge to leave, go outside, and come back into the house again, hoping to discover some other outcome. Maybe Terry would still be alive and walking around again. Maybe everything would be different.

  Donny finally stopped pacing and got very quiet. He put his head in his hands. “Christ, Danny,” he whispered. “Christ.”

  I sat down next to Terry on the couch and placed my hand on his. It was still warm to the touch, but all of the life was drained and gone. The hands I had spent countless performances watching dance up and down the fretboard of his guitar, passionately bending strings and sliding up to notes, were still and finally at rest. They would never play again.

  “I know this has been really hard for you,” I whispered to him. “I understand dealing with all the success was difficult, but you are going to be able to rest and find peace now, Terry. I’m really going to miss you, my friend.”

  In that moment, I was somehow convinced Terry was listening to me. I waited a moment for a response I would never get.

  The three of us sat in silence together. My thoughts turned to Terry’s loved ones he had just left behind—his pretty young girlfriend, Camelia, and his beautiful baby girl, Michelle. I thought back to the last time I had seen Terry at my barbecue in Westlake, back to watching him lay down an amazing vocal on my song “Little One” in the studio not long ago, and back to riding in that old Cadillac hearse during that brutal snowstorm with Jimmy Ford and the Executives. I saw Terry’s bright smile beaming at me from the backseat as he strummed his bass.

  Then I heard footsteps coming up the walkway of the house. I opened the front door expecting to find police, but instead was confronted by a few of Terry’s drug buddies he regularly partied with. I glared at them as they filtered into the living room. If looks could kill, they would have been goners. I wanted to tear them apart with my bare hands.

  Moments later, the sound of sirens approached in the distance. Police and paramedics arrived and flooded the house, unpacking equipment and searching every room. As officers questioned Donny and me about what had happened, the coroner came into the living room and strained to fit Terry into a black body bag. When he had given up, I noticed that Terry’s boots were left sticking out of one end. They were his signature pair of snakeskins he had been wearing for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t stop looking at them.

  “Hey buddy,” the coroner said, breaking me out of my distant stare. “Do you think you can help me lift the body?”

  Without acknowledging him, I walked away toward the front door. I had to remove myself from the awful scene. On my way out, I noticed Terry’s black satin tour jacket draped over the back of one of the dining room chairs. I don’t know what came over me, but I took it. I guess I needed to keep some part of Terry.

  Word of his death quickly spread. There was an official statement released to the press. CBS was notified. When the rest of the band heard about what had happened, they were equally devastated. A public funeral was held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, where television news crews and photographers lined the street. There were even some of Terry’s fans who came by to give their condolences. I cried my eyes out during the service. I had lost not only a true brother on that dark night, but also a musical soul mate. How would I ever find the strength to recover?

  After the ceremony, there was a get-together back at Bobby’s gorgeous home in Bel Air. I glared at people making trips to the bathroom over the course of the afternoon. It was no secret what they were doing in there. Who did they think they were fooling? We had just lost one of our dear friends to the darkness of drugs, and here these people were doing blow on the day of Terry’s funeral. It made me sick.

  I wandered around the house in a daze until Doc Severinsen, leader of the Tonight Show band, walked up to me in the hallway.

  “Listen to me, Danny,” Doc told me. “Don’t even think of stopping. You hear me? The world needs musicians like you and bands like Chicago.”

  I halfheartedly assured Doc I wouldn’t and continued into another room.

  Terry’s death shook the band to its core. None of us were convinced we had the ability go on without him. But the thought of Chicago breaking up terrified me. We had come too far to let it slip away. That’s not what Terry would have wanted.

  We put our differences aside with Guercio for the time being and had a final band meeting at my house to talk about everything that had happened. It would be the last conversation I had with Guercio for many years. The band settled with him shortly thereafter and went our separate ways. We were emotionally and physically drained and didn’t want to fight the fight any longer. It wasn’t in our best interest to settle. We could have fought tooth and nail and probably squeezed millions out of Guercio, but we wanted to put everything behind us and continue on with our lives. To Jimmy’s credit, he returned 80 percent of our publishing and significantly increased our royalties across the board. Unfortunately, the damage was already done.

  14

  Picking Up the Pieces

  In the wake of Terry’s death, each member of the band fell into a personal crisis as we tried to regain our bearings. As much as we hated the idea, we had to start the painful process of auditioning guitarists to take his place. It was heartbreaking. How do you replace someone who is irreplaceable?

  I could hardly bring myself to go to the sessions. I sat like a robot behind my drum kit for most of the afternoon, watching guitarist after guitarist file in and out. The more we listened to them come in to play Terry’s parts, the more we understood that a piece of the band’s soul had been lost forever. There wasn’t a musician in the world who had the ability to fill the void.

  Recognizing we were struggling, Walter Yetnikoff, the president of CBS Records at the time, recommended a guitar player named Donnie Dacus. Walter believed Donnie would be a perfect fit for Chicago. He had played with Stephen Stills in the early 1970s and also had recently wrapped shooting the movie Hair. When the band played a handful of songs with him, including “25 or 6 to 4” and “Dialogue,” Donnie knew every note by heart. It was easy to see he had a positive attitude and was confident in his abilities. He was tremendously skilled, so he had every right to be self-assured. The one thing that stood out to me was that Donnie was one of the few musicians we auditioned who could play and sing “Little One” at the same time. He not only was a talented guitarist, songwriter, and singer who seemed to fit in well with the dynamic of the band, but was also adored by the executives at the record label. They loved that Donnie had a young image. Still, the band alone decided what guitarist fit be
st with Chicago.

  Although Donnie had rock-star good looks, I wasn’t sure that was necessarily a good thing. Our band wasn’t about appearance and had never made it a priority. Although Donnie had the entire package, a large part of me was hoping to find someone with a deeper artistic side and a little less of a showman. In the end, despite any concerns we might have had, the band hired Donnie.

  In many ways, the band understood that we were stepping out into the unknown, but we desperately wanted to make sure we reestablished our presence. Despite losing Terry, we believed we were still a formidable group and couldn’t wait to prove it not only to our fans and the music world, but also to ourselves.

  Phil Ramone was first on our list to produce for us in the studio. Over the years, the band had established a solid relationship with Phil and we were impressed with the work he did mixing many of our singles and television specials up at Caribou Ranch. Since then he had gone on to achieve success working with artists like Billy Joel and Paul Simon. Personally, I had the highest respect for Phil’s talent and thought he was one of the most considerate people Chicago ever worked with in the studio. At that point in our career, Chicago needed someone nurturing and kind like Phil. I often referred to him as “the painless dentist” when we were recording because musically he could pry what he needed out of the band without all of the stress and the strain. In the late spring of 1978, the band went to Criteria Studios in Miami to record a new album together.

  I once again collaborated with Hawk and contributed “The Greatest Love on Earth,” a song written about my torrid love affair with Ingrid Peters. I had worked on the lyrics over the years and worked out the music with Hawk. I needed an outlet for my overflowing emotions. Peter ended up doing a soulful vocal for it in the studio.

  It’s a long-distance love affair

  Tender are the moments that they rarely share

  They hope their time will come someday

  When together with the fraulein they’ll steal away

  It’s the greatest love on earth

  He’s come from so far away to see

  When she holds him in her arms he can feel the

  warmth

  Of her gentle ways

  And when she kissed him it was just like making

  music

  That no one else will ever play

  It’s the greatest love on earth.

  Part of the reason Phil suggested that Chicago record in Miami was because the Bee Gees were also in town working on their album Spirits Having Flown. We spent a few days hanging out with them and even got the Gibb brothers to lay down background vocals on the track “Little Miss Lovin’.” The keyboard player in their band, Blue Weaver, also added synthesizer on “Show Me the Way” and “No Tell Lover.” To return the favor, Walt, Jimmy, and Lee played horns on a few tracks on the Bee Gees’ album, including the hit single “Too Much Heaven.” I got to be good friends with Barry and Maurice and we had plenty of time to hang out in the studio together.

  The Miami sessions were a welcome change of pace after years of recording up in the mountains at Caribou Ranch. The band rented mansions and took the time to check out the beauty of the Florida coastline. Phil and I were both divorced, so we became pretty tight. We each understood what the other was going through on a daily basis. When there was a break in recording, he and I even flew our children out for a long weekend and took them on a day trip to Disney World.

  Recording in Miami marked the beginning of a new era. We had a new guitarist, a new producer, and new management. The band also decided to change from our traditional style of naming our records by roman numerals and came up with the proper title Hot Streets. Instead of simply using our logo as the cover art, we featured a photo of the entire band.

  To promote the new record, Jeff Wald devised a unique way to reintroduce Chicago’s new lineup to the world. He hired composer Bill Conti (famous for his theme for the movie Rocky) to compose an overture of all of Chicago’s hits and conduct a full orchestra to play behind us at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Ballet dancers were also brought in to perform choreographed routines along to each song. Standing off to the side that night, everything seemed dreamlike. We were preparing to walk out and perform live for the first time without Terry. I was waiting to wake up and find it really wasn’t happening. I hadn’t been that nervous before a performance since our gigs opening for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and our extended stint at Carnegie Hall. After the overture finished and the dancers left the stage, everything went dark as we moved in behind our instruments. When we finally broke into Jimmy’s song “Alive Again” from our new album, the crowd erupted. The song title said it all. We had risen from the ashes of Terry’s tragic death.

  It turned out to be an incredible performance. Once I got over the stage fright and settled into a groove, it felt incredible to have that orchestra behind us on songs like “Searchin’ So Long,” “If You Leave Me Now,” and “Old Days.” Needless to say, it was a success and a major coming-out party for our new lineup. But there was also an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach having to be up there onstage without Terry.

  Even after the tragedy, cocaine was shockingly still a mainstay in the band. The guys had tried to pull back and regain control of their partying after Terry died, but it didn’t happen. Drugs were the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room nobody wanted to talk about. As long as it wasn’t interfering with the day-to-day operations of what we were doing, there was a sense we had to keep the Chicago machine rolling by any means necessary. Although the partying might have been excessive, it wasn’t my place to step in and make it an issue. It had become part of the band’s accepted secret lifestyle. Howard Kaufman’s brother Lester, who was still the band’s business manager, even hinted that the band had spent more money on the mansions and the cocaine down in Miami than we did on the recording of the album. It was ridiculous.

  By the late 1970s, I had achieved wealth, fame, and power professionally, but my private life had grown dark and depressing. At one point, Rose and I even discussed the possibility of getting back together again. I knew it would mean the world to my daughters, but I would only be going through the motions. Too much time had passed between us. I was too busy leading a bachelor’s existence, throwing wild barbecues at my house in Westlake, hitting the Hollywood club scene, and running around with different women.

  To celebrate my thirtieth birthday, Phil Ramone threw me a big bash at an exclusive nightclub in New York City called Tracks. The room was filled with supermodels, musicians, and record industry executives. Booze. Drugs. You name it, it was there. Although I didn’t usually indulge, that night I cut loose and ended up doing cocaine. A lot of cocaine. I had too much to drink and got caught up in the spirit of the party.

  The rest of the night was a blur. I emerged from my stupor at six in the morning to find myself sitting alone in my hotel room. I could barely breathe because my nose was caked up from the blow, and I started getting cold sweats. My mind raced out of control. I should have been happy with the status of my life, the mind-blowing worldwide success of Chicago, the beautiful homes in Westlake, the cars and the money; but I wasn’t. Because I was in a popular rock band, I never knew if women liked me for who I was or what I was. So I always kept a side of my personality closed off to everyone around me. It was nearly impossible to let anyone completely in.

  There were some unbelievable highs in my career, but personally the pendulum had swung back hard the other way. As a result, I tried to concentrate on the positive aspects of my music, like the fact that our new album Hot Streets had gone platinum. The record proved that even without Terry the band was a force to be reckoned with. Many people had counted us out after Terry’s death, so the success was validating. Chicago had stumbled along the way, but we were still standing strong. People magazine even featured us on its cover with the caption, “Chicago—America’s classiest rock group survives a tragic death in the family.” It was true. We couldn’t wait to get back out o
n tour and show what our new lineup could do. Besides, being out on the open road would be good for all of us.

  During a layover at Chicago’s Hyatt Regency at O’Hare Airport, Jimmy and I hung out in the bar and struck up a conversation with two pretty stewardesses. Once I introduced myself, one of the girls shot me an odd look.

  “Danny Seraphine?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re not Danny Seraphine,” she said.

  “Well, I believe I am,” I answered, smiling. Her behavior was oddly amusing. What was she talking about?

  The stewardess went on to explain that a few months earlier she had met a man named Danny Seraphine while staying at a hotel airport in Cincinnati. The guy told her he was the drummer from the band Chicago and was in town for a few days. They had a few drinks together and everything seemed to be going well until he followed her up to her hotel room at the end of the night and tried to force himself on her.

  “He had a beard and mustache just like you,” she said. “I would never joke about something like this. I swear,” she told me.

  I had seen and heard some crazy things over the years on the road, but this was a new one. Was she saying I had an impostor running around somewhere? I chalked it up to being another random occurrence and the band left town the following day. I hoped to leave the nonsense behind, but unfortunately it wasn’t going to be the last I heard of the other Danny Seraphine.

  When Chicago played the Summit Arena in Houston, I was told that a week before I came into town a man claiming to be me showed up at a party at a local promoter’s house and robbed the place blind. There were a lot of influential people at that party who were steaming mad at me. It even reached the point where Chicago’s management started getting death threats on me! Terrified, I was given police escorts from the hotel to the gig and then back to the hotel after the show. Officers stood guard outside my room when I slept. Can you imagine?