As one of the longest-running and biggest selling bands in music history, GRAMMY-winners Chicago have staked a claim as the ultimate “rock band with horns” since their debut album was released over a half-century ago.
Since those early days and throughout a run of instantly-recognizable songs from “25 or 6 to 4” to “You’re the Inspiration” and “If You Leave Me Now” (which won the GRAMMY for Best Pop Vocal Performance By A Duo, Group Or Chorus at the 19th Annual Awards Ceremony), vocalist and songwriter Robert Lamm has remained an unchanging frontman in an ever-changing lineup.
It’s an ongoing legacy that continues this holiday season with their latest album Greatest Christmas Hits which extrapolates Lamm and company’s penchant for recording seasonal tunes accented by their unique sound, a creative kick that began in 1998 with Chicago XXV: The Christmas Album.
Along with holiday hallmarks like “Winter Wonderland,” the new album also features guest artists like Dolly Parton who joins in with the band on the Paul McCartney staple "Wonderful Christmas Time.”
Lamm spoke to GRAMMY.com about their long legacy, songwriting and choosing the right seasonal songs to give their personal spin.
You and the band recently performed on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Would that rank up there as one of the more unique places you've performed?
Well, there was a circus venue in Paris, and it was a very fancy night for some reason. I guess Chicago had made an impression in Paris, so one day they called us to play in a big top [tent] there. It was quite beautiful and strange.
Do unique spaces make performing more fun, or are you 'on guard' because you're out of your element?
Actually, it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that. It was curious, but then we got down to business.
I think the tendency is to group all of your songs together. As a result, a chronology is lost on people. They forget that "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is" was the first song you recorded for your debut album. Did that feel like being the first batter of a baseball game scoring a home run?
Well, thank you. Yes, I feel that way. In the early days when we were first recording, a lot of the songs were songs that I had written, and I had no idea what was going to happen with them. We did have a great producer in James William Guercio and most of us had not ever been in a recording studio, so that was the most nervous thing for everybody. It was in a seriously good studio in New York and he had to show us where to stand and what instruments should be put here and there. So it was that kind of thing, all very new.
It was almost like the songs were secondary to figuring out how to do this and record. So thankfully it turned out fine. A number of songs from that first album became popular and for a recent performance, we brought out a lot of songs which were on that first album; we never played most of them for most of our career. We pulled them out to examine them; songs that were very strange rock songs.
When you look back at your peers from the early days, not too many are still touring or recording.
Or still alive.
That must give you a unique perspective on music, success and the industry?
I think we feel mostly very lucky. Obviously 55 years into a career where we really never stopped, the thing that changed was the various people who have come into the band and left for one reason or another.
That was always something we had to figure out how to do, for someone to come in and be a drummer, bass player or singer even. Being open to learning the repertoire, which obviously throughout every year got larger and larger and larger. That was something we had to learn how to do again. We've done a lot of learning over the years [Laughs].
I know you have lectured at NYU and Stanford University about songwriting. Is there one big lesson you'd give to aspiring songwriters?
Wow, I'm making this up now as we speak, but I think that you have to believe in what you're writing. You have to like it, or love it. I've always tried to not repeat myself ever in writing songs, whether it's the lyrics or the musical structure.
I have always said, "Don't repeat what you're doing." I've always thought that writing a song is like learning something completely different than I've ever done. Writing the song, I've learned something. It might be a small thing, or it might be a big thing.
I love writing songs. I didn't know I was going to be a songwriter, I was just a guy in a rock band. For a long time I thought that's what I was. But I'm a songwriter.
So as a songwriter, what are you looking for when you choose to cover a Christmas song? There are millions to choose from, as evidence in your new Greatest Christmas Hits album.
There are millions of bad Christmas songs [Laughs]. I have to like it, the guys in the band have to like it. Like when we did "The Christmas Song," Mel Torme's composition, which is a great song and he's a great musician. But I was living in New York at the time when we had decided to do the first Chrisrtmas album. It's not that we wanted to disguise these songs as something else because these songs are legitimate, popular songs done by many, many people. What we had going for us as a band is that we have a sound. We have a way of arranging things that is us, so the combination of a good song and the arrangement by Chicago, that's the deal.
When it comes to the new Christmas album, the bulk of the songs are remastered. What's the remastering process like for an artist?
As recording technology has blossomed in the digital age, in the beginning it was a little tedious. Between the actual digital equipment on the one hand but also the playback equipment was very different. So the guys who do that for a living are extremely creative and extremely top-drawer. There's a lot of bad recording out there and there always has been.
This Christmas album is one of the only albums you released that isn't numbered. Where did the idea come from to start, and continue numbering?
I have to give credit to our original producer, James William Guercio, who produced probably among the greatest Chicago albums. He suggested, "Let's not get caught up in tricky, phony titles for the albums." So by and large we stayed with the numbering because we want to have people considering collecting the albums, like other collectors of music. We wanted to have it be somewhat more respectable.
What about your inspiration for a song like "Saturday in the Park," which lays out scenes in a park like a little musical?
We were in New York when I think we were recording our third album. It was summer and those were the days when Central Park was open on the weekends to the public and I think that was a fairly new development in the city.
Because we were in New York, I always in those days carried around a Beaulieu Super 8 camera just for the hell of it. I shot a lot of footage of what I was seeing and what I was experiencing on that particular day: the park being open like that and people really enjoying the park experience in Manhattan, which is still really great. I was trying to capture that and when I finally got home and looked at the film, I just described what I was looking at to write the lyrics.
What about writing a lyric like "Saturday in the park, I think it was the Fourth of July." Including "I think" adds a deeper layer to it, because you could have just as easily said that it was the Fourth of July.
Well, yeah. And that's because I actually had two consecutive years where I was filming the park. So it was either the Fourth of July, or it may have been the fifth of July the following year. And I also just liked it lyrically, whether it was accurate or not.
Going back to your debut, it was released in 1970. Does it feel like that was a fortuitous time to come onto the scene? If you came out in the mid-60s, maybe it wouldn't have been received at the time because the industry was dealing with the effect of the Beatles. But if you came out in the mid-70s, you would have gotten lost in disco.
Yeah, we would have been lost in the shuffle in the mid-70s and we virtually were by the end of the 70s. We really had to figure out how to survive. We wanted to keep recording, but it was tricky.
Was there a pressure to have a more disco sound?
For a minute, yeah; for as long as disco lasted. We actually came in during the later end of that trend and it was futile. It was awful. We've done other recordings without trying to be disco or thought of as disco. We had done subsequent recordings for subsequent albums that would have qualified but we were past it, and so was everybody else.
Is there a song in your entire discography that you thought should be a bigger hit?
Well, yeah. As the songwriter or the arranger or even the vocalist or instrumentalist of any particular song, there's a lot of them. They're my babies and I'd like people to be introduced to the babies they have never heard before.
So, is there a song you'd tell people to stream right now?
I can't answer that, there's just too many. I haven't had enough coffee [Laughs.]
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