I chuckled to myself. A second later, I guffawed again. Then uncontrollable laughter gripped me until tears began running down my cheeks. The outburst frightened the elk and they trotted back up over the hill.
“What a life!” I cried out into the treetops overhead.
That ridiculous moment alone out in the woods marked a turning point for me. If I didn’t begin the long road back to recovery I would remain up on that mountain and wither away until there was nothing left. After a great deal of soul-searching, I was ready to take the first step, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
I thought back to the lyrics I had written for the song “Birthday Boy” that lonely night in my hotel room in New York City. They perfectly fit the situation: “Good days are coming, Once you stop running.”
It was clear the time had come to stop running.
Besides, the weather had gotten too cold for me to keep living in such a way. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. After eight months of sleeping in my pop-top trailer, I decided to go ahead with the construction of a house on the land. I rented an A-frame home on nearby Blue Creek Road and threw myself into my music studio in hopes of once again trying to develop local talent.
I may not have had the desire to play, but I found that my interest in the creative process of making records was still strong. During my career, I had collaborated with some of the most talented music producers in the business: Jimmy Guercio, Phil Ramone, Tom Dowd, and David Foster. I had learned something from each and every one of them and felt I had a great deal of knowledge to offer up-and-coming artists.
Although I might have taken a step in the right direction by coming down off of the mountain and getting back into producing, I still wasn’t out of the woods. My identity was so closely tied to Chicago that it was difficult to find myself. Who are you? I thought. I was always proud of my legacy with the band, but now it haunted me wherever I went. Every time I turned on a radio one of our songs was playing. Whether I was in my car, in a restaurant, or at a shopping mall, Chicago’s music was everywhere.
People often came up to me and explained how my style of drumming inspired them to learn to play, but I never knew how to answer. Their praise was flattering, but at the same time the comments served as a painful reminder of my past—of who I used to be.
The months of living in Colorado eventually turned into years. I reveled in the peace and tranquillity of life in Evergreen. It’s as if nature was a drug I took every day to ease my pain and suffering. Over time, I began to open myself back up, and eventually I met a beautiful young girl named Rebecca. We hit it off and soon began dating. It had been six long years, but I was finally able to open my heart back up and have a meaningful relationship again. Rebecca is the most beautiful woman, both inside and out, that I have ever been with. She is a true gift from God, because I believed it was his way of letting me know the best was still to come. For years, I had been convinced my best days had passed me by. Suddenly there was a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
With Rebecca’s love, I came out of the darkness a much better person. The scars were still there, but I was able to start dealing with my intense feelings of resentment for the band. I didn’t want it to consume me any longer. No matter what, my heart was and always will be with Chicago. Whenever Pete called me from Los Angeles for advice, I helped in whatever way possible. As much as I tried to stay tight-lipped, I couldn’t help myself. Part of me didn’t have anything to say to Pete, but another part desperately needed to know how the band was doing. The vindictive side wanted to see them fail on every level, but deep in my heart I hoped they would continue to succeed. It would have been like rooting against one of my children, and there was no way to bring myself to do it.
I desperately wanted to put the past with the band to rest, so I decided to call Pete in the hope that he could arrange a meeting with the guys. It was time to clear the air between us and let them know there were no more hard feelings on my end. Pete said he would check with the band and get back to me.
It didn’t sound too promising, but I accomplished something by at least offering to meet and mend the fences. When Pete finally called back, he told me the band had an upcoming show booked in Denver and it would be the best opportunity to get together with the guys. Unfortunately, he also told me he wouldn’t be able to fly in for the show. Pete’s not being able to be there wasn’t too reassuring, because he was the middleman in the whole line of communication. But I decided to go through with the trip anyway. I had no intention of holding on to my resentment any longer.
I was a ball of nerves as Rebecca and I drove down to the show at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Denver. Half of me wanted to turn around and retreat back to the safety of Evergreen, and the other half couldn’t wait to get to the place. For the most part, I was looking forward to reconnecting with Walt, Robert, Jimmy, and Lee. It had been years since we had seen each other and I hoped it would turn out to be a cathartic experience.
Rebecca and I arrived at the venue and the band was kind enough to leave tickets to the show at the will-call area out front. As we settled into our seats, I put in a call to the road manager, Steve Braumbauch, to let him know I was in the audience.
“So we’ll meet up backstage after the show?” I asked him.
Steve paused before answering. “I don’t think the band is comfortable with that, Danny,” he said.
It was laughable. Was this some type of cruel joke? After I realized I wouldn’t be meeting with the guys, I wanted to do nothing but leave. But I ended up going against my better judgment and stayed to watch the set. When Chicago took the stage, I was stunned. I couldn’t believe some of the changes they had made to the songs. When the band played “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” they cut out the 5/4 section of the song altogether. In my mind, it was the unique part that gave the tune its identity. Then the guys transitioned into a medley of the band’s greatest hits. A medley? Since the beginning, we had always insisted we would never do a medley of our songs. Now here I was watching them tear through one with my own two eyes. It was an all-time low in terms of the band’s performance, and it wasn’t because I wasn’t up onstage with them. The bottom line was that the band had become unrecognizable.
The group’s refusal to meet with me was a real letdown. What was it going to take to put this whole ordeal behind us? I’m not sure whether they feared I would flip out on them or that they simply had no interest in seeing me. I guess I’ll never know. I went into the situation with the best of intentions and instead old wounds had been reopened.
My trip to Denver might have been a bust, but in a way the negative experience motivated me to reach out and write to Peter Cetera. In the years since he had left the band, he had tried to contact me on more than a few occasions, but I could never put my anger aside long enough to have a conversation with him. After the failed attempt to mend the fences with Robert, Jimmy, Lee, and Walt, my interest in reconnecting with Peter increased. I tracked down his e-mail address and sent him a message explaining that I was interested in meeting. Fortunately, Peter replied back a few days later and we agreed to get together. It was a genuine relief.
We decided I’d drive out to Sun Valley, Idaho, to meet him. Over the course of the weekend, Peter and I played a few rounds of golf and had dinner. We reminisced about all the good and bad times we had been through. I apologized to him for the way I had acted over the years, but explained that I was very angry that he had never said goodbye to me when he left. Peter accepted what I had to say, but he had a different take on what happened. He said that in his mind he had been forced out of the group. I and the rest of the guys were always under the impression that he had elected to leave Chicago to pursue his solo career. In that moment of sitting with Peter at dinner, I realized that all it would have taken was a simple phone call on my part. Instead, we had allowed other people on the business side of things to interfere with our relationship. It was too bad all those years had to go by with each of us not knowing
what the other had been thinking. We could never pick up where we left off years earlier, but at least in the end Peter and I were able to clear the air.
During our conversations, Peter could tell I still had a great deal of resentment toward the guys in the band. He offered his support and provided me with some helpful insight.
“You just need to move on and not let the situation bother you any longer,” he told me.
“Yeah, I know, man,” I said. “I need to move on.”
Although I agreed with Peter, saying it and actually doing it were two very different things.
My career might have been long over, but at least some of the music I had written continued to remain relevant. A few of my songs turned out to have tremendous staying power, especially “Street Player.” In late 1995, a band called the Bucketheads had sampled the song in a dance track called “The Bomb!” that was tearing up the dance charts in Europe. The Bomb? I asked myself. And then it dawned on me—“Street Player” had turned out to be the biggest bomb of Chicago’s career. Very funny. I was surprised when I got a call from the Bucketheads’ manager in London, who said he had been trying to track me down for months. He explained that he had already spoken with Hawk, who had agreed to license the rights to the song for fifteen hundred dollars. He wanted me to agree to the same terms. There was no way in hell I was going to accept an offer like that.
The Bucketheads had gone ahead and released the song without checking with either Hawk or me and now they were scrambling to tie up the loose ends. In the end, we negotiated a third for them, a third for Hawk, and a third for myself. Everyone ended up making a ton of money on the track.
A few months later, I got word that “The Bomb!” had been nominated for an ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Award for Dance Track of the Year. “Street Player” had gotten killed when it was released, and now all of a sudden it was proving to be the most successful single of my career. Talk about poetic justice. In the end, it turned out to be the dance hit I always wanted it to be, just not in the form I’d originally written it in. Go figure.
I flew to New York City with my buddy Bill Denton to attend the awards ceremony, but received some terrible news shortly after we checked into our hotel—my father had suffered a stroke and had been rushed to the hospital back in Chicago. I left Bill in New York and hopped the next flight out of the city. Rebecca flew from Colorado to meet me.
My dad hung on for about another month or so. Fortunately, it was enough time for all of us to say our goodbyes. On July 4, 1997, we got a call that he was close to dying and that we had better come right away. We rushed down to the hospital, only to find he had passed literally seconds before we got to his room. As I walked up to the bed, a single tear still glistened on his cheek like a diamond. I dabbed his face with a tissue and put it in my pocket for safekeeping. My dad was the sweetest and most beautiful man I had ever known. He had a smile that captured your heart and he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. It was heartbreaking to see him go, but I knew he would be in a better place.
I gave my mother the tissue with his last teardrop on it. I actually wrote “Dad’s last tear” on it. I felt like he left it for her as a gift.
With my father gone, it seemed in many ways like my mother was only waiting for her time to come. She had lost her soul mate and life would never be the same. When her health started to decline, the prognosis wasn’t good. They admitted her into the hospital back in Chicago and found she was suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes, and leukemia. I constantly flew back and forth to Chicago to be with her. I begged God to take away her pain, because it was too much for either of us. I wanted to be able to do something, but felt powerless over the situation. Day after day, I felt as if a large part of me was dying with her. She was the strongest person I ever knew and fought to the end. In a way, it was a relief when she passed away, because I couldn’t stand to see her suffer any longer. But in my heart I understood she was finally at peace and together again with my dad.
It was difficult to see my parents go. They had given me so much over the years. I would not have been able to do the things I did without their love, support, and guidance. I wished they were still around to talk to about the ongoing identity crisis I was going through in my life day to day. But I guess God was letting me know the time had come for me to continue on my own path.
23
Full Circle
My new life in Colorado with Rebecca was amazing. I was living off what was supposed to be my Chicago retirement money and enjoying everything the outdoors had to offer. The transition into a “normal” way of living wasn’t easy, but at least I was making an effort to try to enjoy myself. My days were spent skiing with my kids, mountain biking, and fly-fishing. I also became the defensive coordinator for J.D.’s football team so we could have more time together.
I realized I was getting older. It was hard not to. I became a grandfather when my daughter Danielle gave birth to my first grandchild, a girl she named Katie. I was more at peace than I thought I would be to assume my role as a grandfather. It didn’t mean I had to feel old. If anything, it gave me a renewed sense of excitement about life.
The time had come to take the next step and ask Rebecca to marry me. She said yes and we were married in a small ceremony in Denver on August 26, 2000. My kids were all able to fly in for our special day. Even Maria came in from Chicago. It was nice to have all my family and friends in the same place because it didn’t happen as much as it used to.
A couple of days before the ceremony, my friend Bill Denton called me late one night.
“Listen, Danny,” he said. “You told me never to let you get married again.”
“I changed my mind,” I told him. “Never say never, right?”
We both had a good laugh over the whole thing. Bill had spent enough time with Rebecca to know she was the one for me.
A year into married life, Rebecca and I decided the time had come to get out of Evergreen. She was tired of seeing me wasting my effort and money trying to make it in the music business long-distance from Colorado. Over the years, I had had a string of near misses trying to get some very talented artists signed to major labels, but it just wasn’t happening.
“It’s now or never, Danny,” Rebecca told me. “You have to be in Los Angeles.”
Rebecca was right, but I hated to leave the new life I had found so much comfort in. At the time, I was trying to develop a talented local singer named Shilah Phillips, and we both needed to be in the Hollywood mix if there was going to be a chance to bring her to the next level. In my eyes, Shilah was like a young Whitney Houston and had the talent to get signed. She only needed a legitimate opportunity at exposure. Her mother entrusted Shilah’s career to me and allowed her to move out to the West Coast with Rebecca and me. It was an honor to have someone put so much faith in me, but also a ton of pressure to deliver a record contract.
I broke my forty-acre plot of land overlooking the Continental Divide into three separate pieces and sold them off at a sizable profit. As bittersweet as it was to say goodbye to the land that had brought me so much solace and tranquillity, the sale of the property saved my ass. It gave me the cash necessary to make the move to the West Coast. Eventually we relocated to a nice home in Northridge, California, and I went to work trying to get Shilah a deal.
Initially, many of the major labels were interested, but the buzz around Shilah eventually cooled off. She was a smart and sophisticated young girl and the labels didn’t think she was “street” enough. Despite my contacts within the record industry, a record deal didn’t come together. Regretfully, I had to send Shilah back to her mother in Texas. It was tough for me to accept that we hadn’t achieved what we set out to do. I added the experience to the growing list of near misses. It was time to look for another avenue.
As I tried to figure out my next move, an old friend from Chicago’s early CBS Records days, Ron Alexenburg, called me and suggested I take a meeting with
his son-in-law, a guy named Scott Prisand. Scott was helping finance the Broadway theater business in Denver and Ron thought I might be able to use some of my past business contacts in Colorado to help him out. We arranged a meeting and Scott told me he was helping develop a play called Brooklyn, which the producers wanted to test in a theater in the Denver area. They asked if I might be interested in helping raise money for the production. Shortly after we got together, Scott sent me a videotape of the workshop, and it was amazing. From my time living in Colorado, I was well connected and knew many wealthy people. Why not give fund-raising a try?
I delved into my book of contacts and called everyone I thought might be interested in investing in the production. Once I was able to put together a decent-sized group, I flew to Denver to make the necessary introductions between the producers and potential investors. Many of the people I contacted ended up putting money into the development of the play. For my part in the deal, I was given an associate producer’s title. The work was rewarding because I was helping find funding for a project I truly believed in.
Suddenly I found myself with a new career and started fielding calls from other productions looking for financial backing. It wasn’t long before Anita Waxman and Elizabeth Williams contacted me and gave me an opportunity to help raise money for an Andrew Lloyd Webber play called Bombay Dreams. They told me one of their main investors had pulled out of the production at the last minute and they were scrambling to find more money to finance it. Scott and I saw this as a great opportunity, as Waxman/ Williams were very successful producers; Elizabeth Williams helped produce some of the biggest hits ever on Broadway, such as The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, and Miss Saigon.
Street Player Page 24
