Chapter IX: Tragedy

Chicago began work on its next album August 1, 1974, at Caribou Ranch, and the results started to emerge in February 1975, with the release of the single "Harry Truman," Lamm's tribute to a president America could trust and a reference to the recently concluded Watergate scandal. Pankow wrote the sentimental "Old Days." "It's a memorabilia song, it's about my childhood," he says. "It touches on key phrases that, although they date me, are pretty right-on in terms of images of my childhood. 'The Howdy Doody Show' on television and collecting baseball cards and comic books." "Old Days" was a Top 5 hit when it was released as the second single from Chicago VIII, which appeared in March 1975.

The year 1975 marked an early commercial peak in Chicago's career, a year during which the band scored its fourth straight Number 1 album, a year when all its previous albums were back in the charts. Chicago's worldwide record sales for this single year were a staggering 20 million copies. The group returned with an all-new album in June 1976, when it released Chicago X. (Chicago IX had been a greatest hits collection.) The big hit from the album was a song that just barely made the final cut, Peter Cetera's "If You Leave Me Now." "That was one of those magical 'We need one more song (situations),'" Cetera recalls.

Three months later, Parazaider remembers, "I'm sitting around a pool, and a song comes on, I'm going, 'That's a catchy tune. Where have I heard this before?' The next thing, they go, 'That's Chicago's latest release, "If You Leave Me Now." The main point of the story, outside of me being a dummy, is that often songs that just made the album end up being some of the biggest hits."

"If You Leave Me Now" streaked to Number 1, Chicago's first Billboard singles chart topper. It also topped charts around the world. Chicago X won the band its first platinum record (the awards had only just been inaugurated that year), selling a million copies in three months. Afterward, the ballad style of "If You Leave Me Now" increasingly seemed to become the preferred style of Chicago's audience and radio listeners. "That drove me crazy," says Lamm. "I know it drove Terry crazy, because that isn't what we set out to be and it isn't how we heard ourselves."

By 1977, after eight relentless years of touring and recording, strain was beginning to show. "We'd cut down the touring from 300 dates to 250, down to 200, which is still a lot of days on the road," says Parazaider. "But let's face it, we were booming." In January, Chicago undertook another world tour, and the band was in Europe when they won a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus for "If You Leave Me Now." They also took Grammys for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocals and Best Album Cover.

In September, Chicago XI was released, its most notable song being "Take Me Back To Chicago," written by drummer Danny Seraphine and David "Hawk" Wolinski. It has a darker theme than may be immediately apparent. "'Take Me Back To Chicago' is about Freddy Page, the drummer in the Illinois Speed Press who died tragically," says Guercio. Like Chicago, the Speed Press had been brought to L.A. from the Midwest by Guercio in 1968. "Illinois Speed Press had the best shot, had the biggest budget, had the first record, and totally could not get along," he recalls.

The mounting tensions between Chicago and Guercio finally erupted. The split between group and manager had been a long time coming. Guercio had exerted a powerful control over the members of Chicago, especially in the early days, and as they became stars, it probably was inevitable that they would begin to chafe under his harsh leadership. "It started happening with the tenth record," says Parazaider. "He didn't want us to learn any of the production techniques. He'd go to sleep at nine o'clock, and we'd start producing the records ourselves. Or trying to. I think if you're the producer of your album, you have a fool for a client. You can't be that objective about what you're doing on both sides of the glass."

"As I look back, I was much too hard on these guys," Guercio admits. "I felt a thoroughbred by committee is a goddamn mule. I totally manipulated them for my own ends as well as theirs, whether they understood them or not."

In the short term, little seemed changed. "Baby, What A Big Surprise" sailed into the Top 5, and Chicago XI was certified platinum the month after its release. But only a few months later, the band would be devastated by a terrible loss. On January 23, l978, Chicago guitarist and singer Terry Kath died from an accidental gunshot wound. "Terry Kath was a great talent" says Jim Guercio, who worked with him on a solo album that was never completed. "Hendrix idolized him. He was just totally committed to this band, and he could have been a monster (as a solo artist)."

Kath's death devastated Chicago, and the band considered breaking up. "Right about there was probably what I felt was the end of the group," says Peter Cetera. "I think we were a bit scared about going our separate ways, and we decided to give it a go again." A short time after Kath's death, "Take Me Back To Chicago," which by now seemed as much about Kath as about Freddy Page, was released as a single.

If the band was going to continue, it would need a new guitarist, and auditions began in earnest in the spring of 1978. "We felt that we were being left behind by the new music," says Cetera, "and we thought we needed a young guitar player with long hair. We sat through I don't know how many guitar players, but I'm sure it was 30, 40, or 50 guitar players. Toward the end, Donnie Dacus showed up. He played a couple of songs right and with fire, and that's how he was in the group."

Chapter X: New Era

The band went to Miami's Criteria Studios with producer Phil Ramone, who had mixed many of their singles and television specials. "Hot Streets was a scary experience," says Pankow of the album even band members occasionally slip and called Chicago XII. "Guercio was no longer in the picture, and neither was Terry. But Phil Ramone believed in the band from the beginning. After recovering from the enormous tragedy of losing Terry, I think we did a damn good job."

Perhaps the album's most notable song is the up tempo "Alive Again," which was also the first single. "If you read between the lines, it's a tribute to Terry Kath's passing," says Pankow. "That's the first song we recorded subsequent to Terry's death. It's the band saying we're alive again, and Terry's looking down on us with a big smile."

To mark the new era, Chicago changed their album design. Hot Streets, released in September 1978, was the first Chicago album on which a picture of the group was the dominant feature of the cover. "After the album came out, the record company did a survey," says Pankow, "and 90 percent of the people surveyed didn't give a shit about what we looked like, much to our chagrin. They wanted to see the logo. The music has always spoken for itself, and the logo has as well. It's like Coca-Cola: When you see it, you know what it is," Hot Streets was certified platinum before the end of October, and produced two top 20 Singles in "Alive Again" and "No Tell Lover." "It got us over the letup," Parazaider says, "and we proved to ourselves we could go on and sell records."

The band went on the road to support the album and did a concert tour with a small orchestra conducted by Bill Conti, who had risen to fame as the Oscar-winning composer of the soundtrack to Sly Stallone's Rocky. Ultimately, Donnie Dacus didn't work out and left the band, though he remained through the 13th album. The personnel problem was compounded by a musical one: As the late '70s wore on, the sophisticated, jazz-rock, pop-oriented style of Chicago was being squeezed by disco on one side and punk/new wave on the other, each of them making the band seem unfashionable.

Responding to pressure to change the sound, Chicago 13 , which was released in August 1979, contained the song "Street Player," which has a disco flavor. According to Parazaider, the album "hit the wall at 700,000 copies, a good sale for some, but very disappointing by Chicago's standards.

At this time, Chicago signed a new, multi-million dollar record contract with Columbia. "There was no way either party should have made that deal," says Lamm. "It created a lot of animosity at the company." After Chicago XIV suffered disappointing sales, Columbia bought the group out of the remainder of the contract and released Greatest Hits, Volume II, counted as the 15th album.

To replace Donnie Dacus, Chicago had hired guitarist Chris Pinnick as a sideman. "Chris came closest to Terry's rhythmic approach," says Lamm. Laudir De Oliveira also departed the group at this point.

Chapter XI: The Next Hurdle

In the fall of 1981, Chicago asked Bill Champlin, a noted Los Angeles session singer and musician, to join them. "They needed a little bit of guitar work," says Champlin, "and they needed somebody to sing Terry's stuff." "Bill might come the closest to Terry's gutsy lead vocals," says Parazaider.

Champlin had had a long career already. Born on May 21, 1947, in Oakland, he grew up in various California cities, settling in Marin County north of San Francisco when he was l2. Champlin's mother played the piano and wrote songs, and he took piano lessons between the ages of three and five. "I was reading music before I was reading English," he recalls. But it wasn't until the advent of Elvis Presley and early rock 'n' roll that he took up the guitar and began to think of music as a future profession. "I'd had enough early training with piano that it wasn't really hard for me to get back into it," he notes, "and then I took a million music classes in high school. I was trying to learn as many instruments as I could because I wanted to get a masters in music."

While in high school, Champlin was part of the Opposite Six, a band with two horns that played James Brown-style R&B. "We were the house band at this one community center," be says, "so we backed up a lot of the acts that they brought in, like Jan and Dean and the Righteous Brothers."

The Opposite Six evolved into the Sons of Champlin, which released a single on Verve in 1965. Champlin was attending the College of Marin in pursuit of a music degree at the same time, when he got some good advice. "My theory teacher, Larry Snyder, suggested that I drop out because he said I was doing better music with my band than I was ever going to do in school," Champlin recalls.

The Sons of Champlin became one of the original San Francisco rock groups of the 1960's, releasing seven albums, though they never became a major commercial success. Champlin quit the band and moved to Los Angeles in 1977, where he began doing session work. Also a songwriter, he co-wrote "After The Love Has Gone," which was a hit for Earth, Wind & Fire and a Grammy R&B Song of the Year. He would win a second R&B Song of the Year Grammy for co-writing "Turn Your Love Around," which became a hit for George Benson just after be joined Chicago.

Champlin had worked closely with Canadian producer and songwriter David Foster, whose other clients had included Hall and Oates and the Average White Band. "A lot of people think Foster brought me into Chicago," Champlin notes, "and it's the other way around, I actually brought Foster into Chicago." Champlin knew Danny Seraphine, and Seraphine went to him for advice about Foster, who had been considered as a possible producer for the 14th album before the job went to Tom Dowd and was now being considered for the 16th album. "Danny called me and said, 'What do you think of David Foster as a producer?'," Champlin recalls. "I said, 'You'll probably end up rewriting a lot, but I think Foster would be great for you guys."

As Champlin had predicted, David Foster took a strong hand in the making of Chicago l6, co-writing eight of the album's ten songs, including "Hard To Say I'm Sorry," which became a worldwide Number 1 single when the album was released by Full Moon/Warner Bros. Records in June 1982. The album went into the Top Ten and sold a million copies.

"We had a resurgence then," remembers Parazaider. "I had a kid come up to me and say, 'I have your first record, would you mind signing it?' This was somewhere in North Carolina. We were going on-stage, and I told her I would sign it after the show. And what she had was the Chicago l6 album. She had no idea about the others that came before it. The reality hit, we had gained another generation."

"It was a new career for us again," says Loughnane, "and I think also Warner Bros. liked being able to sell something that Columbia said wasn't going to be able to go. That kind of competition could only benefit us because they would work harder to make their company look better than the other company."

The next Chicago-Foster project, Chicago 17, released in May 1984, became the band's greatest seller. Such hits as "Stay The Night," "Hard Habit To Break," "You're The Inspiration," and "Along Comes A Woman" propelled the album past the six million mark and reaffirmed Chicago's status as one of America's top bands. They once again played sold-out concerts in North America and Asia. "We had a great time playing the big time again," says Loughnane. "It was the second big wave. People would give their eye teeth for the first amount of success that we had in the '70s, and to be able to do it for the second time is a major milestone in the history of rock 'n' roll as well as our history. Not too many people have had this opportunity, and we had a lot of fun with it."

But Chicago's renewed success presaged a new challenge when Peter Cetera, whose singing and songwriting on a series of romantic ballads had fueled that popularity, decided to leave the group and launch a solo career after the summer 1985 tour. In an ironic twist, however, the beginning of his new solo act would lead to the successor who helped Chicago maintain and extend its success. "When Peter left, he stayed with Warner Bros.," explains Jason Scheff. "I had just signed a song publishing deal, and Michael Ostin at Warner Bros. called over to my publisher and said, "Do you have any songs for Peter's solo album and/or someone to collaborate with him for the album?' They said, 'Yeah, we just signed this new kid.' So, they sent the demos of the first three songs that I'd brought in, and the story that I have always heard is that Michael heard the voice and said, 'Wait a minute, this could be the guy we're looking for to replace Peter in Chicago.' I didn't know this was going on. I just got a phone call one day saying, 'We have heard your tape, and we think that you could be the guy to replace Cetera in Chicago.' It was a pretty amazing phone call to get, at 23 years old."

Scheff was being asked to join the band on the basis of his tenor singing voice. Though he is the son of the legendary bass player Jerry Scheff, who backed Elvis Presley and has played with countless other musicians, nobody seems to have made the connection to the instrumental hole that Cetera's departure also left. Howard Kaufman, the manager, asked me, 'What instrument do you play?' I said, 'I'm a bass player,' and he freaked out," Scheff recalls. "He said, 'Oh, my God! This sounds like a match made in heaven."

Growing up in San Diego, Scheff didn't see much of his father, since his parents had divorced when he was young. But when he picked up an instrument, he could feel the connection. "Playing the base was very natural for me, so I knew that it was a gift that he had given me genetically," he says. Scheff's mother is also a musician, and the two had a bond together when he was 14. As he went through his teens, Scheff played in local Top 40 bands, and his first break came when he was 19 and Peter Wolf (the record producer, not the ex-J. Geils Band singer), who would later produce Chicago, hired him for his band, which opened for the Rolling Stones in Vienna in 1982. Back in L.A., he continued to write songs and perform on recording sessions. But being asked to join Chicago was the biggest break of his short career. It was also, he says, "the last thing that I would have imagined." With Scheff in place, Chicago went into the studio with David Foster to make Chicago 18. The album emerged at the end of September 1986 as the band took to the road for a fall tour to introduce the new member.

Chicago 18 proved to be a gold-selling success, and Scheff's acceptance by fans was cemented with the Top Ten status of the single "Will You Still Love Me?," on which he sang lead. It was the hit that finally convinced him that he belonged. "When I first joined the band, they put all of their confidence in me and never looked back," he says. "They invested in me as the future of the franchise. There were a lot of people who were skeptical. 'Will You Still Love Me?' was a big hit, and then I finally felt comfortable that I was in."

The next hurdle, Scheff notes, was to keep that success going. Working with producers Chas Sandford and Ron Nevison, Chicago recorded 19, released in June 1988. The album yielded three Top 10 hits, with "Look Away" becoming the fastest rising single in the band's history and hitting Number 1. It was, Loughnane notes, the first Chicago hit single in a long time not to be a ballad sung in a tenor voice; Bill Champlin sang lead. That should have broken the radio demand for ballads and allowed the band greater musical flexibility. Instead, says Loughnane, "People still didn't understand that that was Chicago! We would play that song live in concert, and you could see people going, 'what are they doing that song for? I didn't know they did this song. My God, that is them!' It didn't really translate to Chicago because of what had been."

"We had come to the tail end of this long great run that was really dominated by pop ballad songs," notes Scheff, "and coupled with that was the fact that two of the singles on 19 ("Look Away" and "I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love") were not even written by us . "The songs were written by Diane Warren, perhaps the most successful pop songwriter of the day. "Granted, we had two big hit singles that were really good for us because they helped give us a platinum album again and establish Bill Champlin more as a focal point. That was very good for us," Scheff acknowledges, but he notes that the songs did not have Chicago's individual signature.

In the summer of 1989, the Beach Boys and Chicago joined forces once again for a memorable tour. Also, two greatest hits albums were released simultaneously in the U.S., Greatest Hits 1982-89 (counted as the 20th album), and in Europe, The Heart of Chicago, which contained hits from both the Columbia and Warner years. The band entered the current decade with another hit single, Jason Scheff's "What Kind Of Man Would I Be," originally released on 19 and included on the new hits collection. This gave Chicago hit records in four consecutive decades.

Chapter XII: The Next Duke Ellingtons

The group faced another personnel change in 1990, when they parted ways with drummer Danny Seraphine. To replace him, they turned to that surfing drummer who had become a fan of theirs 22 years earlier at the Shrine Auditorium. "I was really taken by surprise when I got the phone call, and they said, 'Would you like to join Chicago?'" says Tris Imboden. I said, 'Letmethinkaboutit.Yes!.'"

Of course, much had changed for Imboden in the intervening decades. Growing up in the beach cities of Orange County, south of Los Angeles, he had experienced an earlier defining moment as a child that determined his career path. "This sounds kind of corny," he admits, "but I'll never forget it. When I was five years old, my dad took me to a Fourth of July parade in Huntington Beach, California. This marching band came marching by, and the drum section was just smoking. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, I was so deeply moved. But I knew at that moment that was what I was going to have to do."

Imboden's parents encouraged him, at least until it began to look like he was going to be a professional. "My folks had very eclectic taste," he says, "so I was exposed to a lot of jazz in my home, as well as rock 'n' roll and R&B and everything, and I'm grateful for that."

Imboden's first paying gigs came in high school, playing in surf bands. Fresh out of high school, he was invited to join a newly forming band called Honk. Although the group made three albums and attracted critical attention and a cult following, Imboden acknowledges, "We didn't meet with national success or a hit record." They did, however, attract attention from other musicians and producers, and then they broke up. Imboden moved to Los Angeles and began to get session work.

He also got steady jobs as a backup musician, first for ex-Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort founder Ian Matthews. Then, he auditioned for Kenny Loggins. Chosen over 187 other applicants, Imboden became Loggins' drummer for the next several years, playing on his records and tours. It was, he recalls, "a lot of hits and a lot of great music."

By the mid-1980's, Loggins, like much of the industry, had begun to use drum machines more and his tours and records came less frequently. Imboden continued to work on the road, playing with Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau.

But in 1990 he was facing his first summer ever without a tour when the call came from Chicago. "The timing was exquisite," he says, "and gratefully the chemistry amongst the band and myself was immediate. It was just really, really a great thing, musically and personality-wise, too."

Chicago Twenty 1 was released in January 1991. Again, the group drew on Diane Warren for two songs, "Explain It To My Heart" and "Chasin' The Wind," and they were released as singles. But this time they did not become big hits. "Those first two singles were really nice songs," says Scheff, "but you're releasing something that you're going to try and top songs like 'Hard Habit To Break' and 'What Kind Of Man Would I Be?" Ironically, Chicago's long-term success made radio resistant to the new music: They were competing with themselves, while their recent hits continued to be played as recurrents."

Especially in the case of "Explain It To My Heart," that meant radio missed out. "I thought that was the best Diane Warren song that I'd ever heard up to that time," says Loughnane. (He thinks Warren finally bettered it with "Because You Loved Me," the 1996 Celine Dion hit.) "It was gorgeous, and it was in our style. I thought, and I still think to this day, that that's a Number 1 record." But "Explain It To My Heart" was not typical of the album as a whole, since it was one of only three songs in 12 not written by members of the group. Chicago Twenty 1 marked the beginning of a resurgence of the Chicago horns as a driving force and a return to the composers within the band as the principal source. In a sense, through the album, Chicago was rediscovering where its heart lay, and that effort transcended commercial considerations. As Lamm says, "We considered the possibility that perhaps it was better to succeed or fall on our own merits." The same year, Chicago was honored with its own star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

In 1993, Chicago began to work on a new album with producer Peter Wolf, who insisted the band prepare all the material themselves and work in a manner similar to the way they worked in their early years. Parazaider recalls: "Peter Wolf said to me, 'I want you to bring over your bass clarinet, your clarinet, all your saxes all your flutes, everything. We're going to use everything the way you used to use it in the old days,' and that was a very exciting thing for us."

The result was the still unreleased album The Stone of Sisyphus. "That was a record that had to be made," says Parazaider. "Especially after all the prodding by Warner Bros., with the success of all of the ballads that we had, this band had to go back into doing a band approach, band concept album, where the band lives with the music from the get-go, we're all involved in it, from the writing to throwing in our suggestions to rehearsing the stuff or whatever, and that's what we did with Sisyphus."

Parazaider is unequivocal about the importance of the album to Chicago. "I think at that point, if that record wasn't done, the band wouldn't be together in the form that we see it," he says, "because we were frustrated that we weren't doing what we wanted to do, cranking out things that Warner Bros., wanted us to do that sold. You can't look a gift horse in the mouth, a hit is a hit is a hit. But there was other stuff for us to say, and that's where Sisyphus comes in."

Band members felt strongly that this was one of their finest albums, but their enthusiasm was not shared by their record label. "Warner Bros. didn't get the record," says Parazaider. "In fact, they disliked it so much, they figured maybe we should part ways, which we did. But the master tapes weren't burnt, because we believed in it, and I know you'll see that somewhere along the way. This thing will get released." Some of the songs from the album are already beginning to show up on international greatest hits albums such as The Very Best Of Chicago in Europe.

Chicago moved on to a new project, embracing an idea put forward by record executive John Kalodner, and recording Night & Day (Big Band), released in May 1995 on Giant Records. The album features standards associated with Glenn Miller ("In The Mood") and Duke Ellington ("Don't Get Around Much Anymore," Sophisticated Lady," and "Take The A Train"), among others.

The association with Ellington helped convince band members to try the project, since it seemed to pay back a musical debt to the Duke. Back in the early '70's, Ellington had asked to have Chicago appear on his TV special, Duke Ellington: We Love You Madly, along with such august company as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, and Count Basie. After the show, Parazaider and Pankow went to meet Ellington, who was near the end of his illustrious career. "I said, "Mr. Ellington, it really was an honor to be asked to be on your show," Parazaider recalls, "and he looked at Jimmy and me, and he said, 'On the contrary young men, the honor is all mine because you're the next Duke Ellingtons.' Jimmy and I were gassed to meet him and that he said that. We were going away, and I said, 'Yeah, right, now if we can make another hit record to pay the rent we'll be happy,' not thinking about the long haul. When the idea for the big band album presented itself, at first it got a lukewarm reaction by the band. Then Jimmy and I remembered this, and I thought, maybe this is what we were supposed to do in the scheme of our musical life. So, that was one of the reasons that we warmed up to the idea of it."

"The approach that we wanted to take on Night & Day - and I think were successful in doing - was to contemporize," says Imboden. "We didn't do anything traditional, at least in the rhythm section." At the same time, however, the album continued the effort Chicago has always made to bring horns back to a primary place in popular music. "Horns were the vocals of the time," says big band enthusiast Lee Loughnane of the Swing Era. "They did all the playing, and then halfway through the song the vocalist would come in with a couple of choruses, and then he'd sit down again. Then rock 'n' roll comes out, and what was the rhythm section, the guitar, became the lead voice for a long time. And then Chicago comes, and we try to make the horns the lead voice again, and we've been pretty successful at it."

Says Robert Lamm, "When we embarked on this project, we weren't trying to say, well, this is what Chicago has always been about. Rather, we wanted to see where we could take it by staying within what we do, which is rock-pop with horns." Bill Champlin agrees. "For me, the challenge was to arrange the vocals so they would sound like traditional Chicago without taking away from the original feel of the songs," he says.

Joining Chicago on Night & Day (Big Band) were such diverse guest artists as world music favorites the Gipsy Kings, the hip hop R&B trio Jade, Aerosmith's Joe Perry, and David Letterman's bandleader Paul Shaffer, who also wrote the liner notes. Bruce Fairbairn, known for his projects with such hard-rock acts as Van Halen, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Bon Jovi, among others, handled the production chores at the Armoury Studios in Vancouver.

"It was a great musical experience, and that's what it's all about, in my mind," Loughnane concludes. "I think it should have been more popular than it has become, but it's still a great piece of music as far as I'm concerned, and I'll take that to the grave with me. I know we put everything we had into it, and it came out sounding great."

Chapter XIII: Call Them Chicago

In 1995 Chicago once again faced the task of finding a new guitarist. The band scheduled two days of auditions to hear a select group of prospects. As it turned out, however, the new group member would be one who crashed the party.

"They had a pretty firm list of guys that they were going to listen to," recalls Keith Howland. "I actually heard that Chicago was looking for a guitar player on the first day of the auditions through a friend of mine who happened to be working in the building where they were being held." Howland contacted the band's management only to be told that the audition was closed. "As a last ditch effort, I just went ahead and drove down there, and I sat in the parking lot and waited for the band to show up," he says. Howland had had a brief contact with Jason Scheff, who had once stopped in to listen to a band he'd been in, and when Scheff drove up, he reintroduced himself to the bass player. "I said, 'Any chance I could get an audition?,' and he told me to go on home because they were full that day, but that he'd talk to the guys," Howland says .

They must not have heard anybody who satisfied them, because Howland got a call from Scheff that night saying they had extended a third day just to hear him." I went down, and I was the only guy to play that day," he recalls. "I was so nervous it was ridiculous, I played through a bunch of tunes with them, did some a cappella background vocals with Bill, Jason, and Robert. We finished up, I was packing up my gear. They all went into the hallway and were talking. Bill came walking back in and said , 'Hey, you want a gig?'

Howland's persistence is explained by his longtime interest in Chicago. Born on August 14, 1964, in Silver Spring, Maryland, Howland and his whole family have been Chicago fans since the group's first national success. "My older brother was the first one that turned me on to the band, actually," he noted. Howland began playing guitar at the age of seven, and Terry Kath was one of his earliest influences. Howland headed for Los Angeles after graduating from college in 1988. He found gigs with Patty Smyth and Rick Springfield, but landing a place in Chicago, one he says he will keep "for the duration, as long as they'll have me," is the biggest break in his career.

What gave Howland the edge over the other guitarists the band listened to? It was a sound the members of Chicago had not heard in a long time. "When Keith made the audition, be played so much of the inside stuff and the rhythm stuff like Terry did that he was the guy," says Parazaider. "You just knew he was the guy to do this."

Howland's return to Terry Kath's rhythmic style of playing could not be more deliberate, and it has contributed to his fast acceptance from Chicago's fans. "The reason I did it was because I grew up listening to the music," he says. "It didn't seem right for me to come in and play it any other way because that was the way I had always heard it." Using Kath's work as a basis, Howland has developed his own guitar sound within Chicago.

In 1995, Chicago secured rights to its catalog of recordings originally made for Columbia between 1969 and 1980. That catalog has now been reissued on the group's Chicago Records label, which also has released sole efforts by the band members as well as other projects. "We are Chicago Records, which means we can look for talent, we can look for other catalogs to put out on our record company," says Parazaider. "We've got some interesting things coming up."

Among the other interesting things that came up for Chicago was a new approach to concerts and a new record. On July 7, 1996, the band played at the Hollywood Bowl backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The show featured newly written orchestral charts, including the complete "Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon" from Chicago II. "When I saw the score that Dwight Mikkelson wrote for the orchestra for 'Ballet For A Girl In Bachannon,' I just got goose bumps," Parazaider says. "'Labor of love' isn't even the right words. I was just ecstatic."

Parazaider credits the Moody Blues, with whom Chicago toured, for inspiring the idea. "Then we started thinking that a lot of our music would really be suited to an orchestra," says the man who gave up a seat in the Chicago Symphony to play rock 'n' roll. "We've done little things, bits and pieces of stuff like that here and there. But this is a major undertaking. We were investing quite a bit of time, talent, and money to this thing to get all of these things written up, but if it does go over, this might be something we could sit in and do with different orchestras. Maybe, we'll just say maybe, it'll be shades of things to come. If I sound excited about it, I am!"

The likely next Chicago recording to be released will be its Ultimate Greatest Hits. Over the years, various hits compilations have come out, but none of the American ones has contained the band's hits from the '60's to the '90's. The Ultimate Greatest Hits will rectify that and also bring Chicago's story up to date. "It's something that I think we'll start working on come the fall after we get done with our summer touring," says Parazaider. "We're excited to put a greatest hits compilation together that's never been done before and also to go in and put a couple of new tunes down, which will be a statement of where we are now. We're talking about a Christmas release, or maybe the beginning of next year."

In 1997, Chicago released the 30th Anniversary celebration record, The Heart of Chicago 1967-1997. It was here that the opportunities to work with Glen Ballard and celebrated composer James Newton Howard, as well as Lenny Kravitz presented themselves. The album was quickly certified gold, and featured the #1 AC hit, "Here In My Heart."

In 1998, the band followed up with The Heart of Chicago 1967 - 1998 Volume II, which represented another fresh collaboration, in this case with Roy Bittan of the E Street Band. That Fall, Chicago again worked with Roy to create Chicago 25, the band’s first ever holiday album. Released on their own Chicago Records, Chicago was certified gold in 1999.

In 1999, Chicago released Chicago 26, the group’s first live record since the epic Chicago At Carnegie Hall Volumes I-IV. The reasoning behind the Chicago 26 was simple: Chicago’s current line-up deserves to be captured live. In 1999, Chicago also added a unique twist to that year’s live show: working with VH1’s Save The Music Foundation, the band invited young musicians to come up onstage and perform alongside Chicago on one of their classic cuts. In city after city, fans gave standing ovations to the kids who participated. In November of that year, the group even brought a high school trumpet player to perform with them on NBC’s "Today Show" – a once in a lifetime thrill that the youngster will never forget.

In 2002, Chicago signed an impressive pact with Rhino Entertainment, which unified their early catalog with the later Warner Bros. work. Since then, Rhino has remastered and repackaged all of the band’s early works on CD, giving fans the very best sound and packaging. Rhino has also released an acclaimed 39-song collection called Only The Beginning: the Very Best Of Chicago, which has been certified platinum, a comprehensive 5-CD box set featuring a special archival DVD, and a live performance DVD culled from the band’s appearance on the popular TV show, A&E Live By Request.

In 2004 and 2005, Chicago created headlines by partnering with their friends Earth, Wind & Fire for one of the most inspired co-headlining runs in recent concert business memory. Fans were enthralled by the 3 hours of music, featuring solo sets and full-band collaborations that must be seen. A DVD of the tour, “Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fire: Live At the Greek Theatre” was certified platinum less than two months after release.

In 2006, Chicago released its 30th album, Chicago XXX. Produced by Jay DeMarcus of the superstar country group Rascal Flatts, Chicago XXX found a large audience of music fans disenchanted by much of today’s music. Chicago XXX was welcomed as a tour de force studio album, with inventive melodies, great lead vocals and harmonies, the trademark horn sound, and superb all around musicianship.

Another 2006 highlight, was the University of Notre Dame’s invitation to perform with its marching band during halftime at the Notre Dame vs. North Carolina football game – the first such invitation in Notre Dame history. Heroes to generations of marching bands, the members of Chicago participated in a weekend full of activities, culminating in a spectacular half-time concert in front of 80,000 people. The entire celebration was filmed and plans are in the works now for a late Summer DVD release via Rhino Entertainment/Warner Bros.

The Chicago-Notre Dame connection is well known: Chicago’s manager, Peter Schivarelli, played football for Notre Dame Football under coaching legend Ara Parseghian. Since 1995, because of the strong personal tie, Chicago has donated a portion of each ticket sold to the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, which seeks a cure to the fatal children’s disease, Neimann-Pick Type C. Recently, band members Robert Lamm, Jimmy Pankow, Walt Parazaider and Lee Loughnane found out from Schivarelli that current Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis had started the Hannah & Friends Foundation to improve the quality of life for children and adults with special needs. They readily agreed to donate an additional portion of ticket sales to help raise money for Coach Weis’ foundation. For Chicago, the concept of “giving back” is literal, active and daily.

Other highlights of the last few years includes the frequent use of the band’s songs and music in TV shows such as HBO’s “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” as well as movies such as “My Girl 2,” “Summer Lovers,” “Happy Feet,” “Three Kings,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Little Nicky,” and “A Lot Like Love.”

Today, decades after they gathered at Parazaider's apartment, the members of Chicago continue the legacy of music they inherited from their parents and their teachers and that they have brought to millions of fans. "My dad, he must be playing now 65 years professionally, something like that, off and on," Parazaider notes. "I sat down with him, and he was practicing. He looked at me, and he held the trumpet in his hand, and he said, 'You know, Walt, one day I'm going to learn this thing.' That's when I had a moment of clarity, and I realized that what we've been doing all these years is not measured in a time limit, that it's a way of life, the way my father has pursued it and enjoyed it his whole life. So, later on in life, I learned what I want to be when I grow up. I'm in the pursuit of my life's work, and I finally realized it."

2007 was a milestone year for Chicago, the legendary rock ’n’ roll band with horns. Well known for extraordinary creativity, influential musicianship and staggering commercial success, Chicago now celebrates its 42rd Anniversary – a show of longevity rarely achieved in most careers, let alone the music business.

In September, 2008, Rhino Records released Stone of Sisyphus, the great, long-awaited and unreleased album that has been an underground fan favorite for more than 15 years. The release featured bonus tracks and new liner notes. Rhino also issued the Best of Chicago: 40th Anniversary Edition, a top-selling hits package, and has reissued Chicago's landmark first two albums, Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago II, as special 180 gram vinyl releases, complete with exceptional packaging. Additionally, Rhino is readying a limited edition box set of 7 inch singles, a cool nod to the band's history, both as hit makers and as champions of innovative album packaging.

This past summer, Chicago reunited with Earth, Wind & Fire for an epic third co-headlining US summer tour. The two bands last teamed up in 2005 and their reunion has been a fan request ever since. Meanwhile, in the last past 12 months, Chicago has sold out extensive domestic and international tours across Japan, Europe, Canada, Mexico and of course, the USA.

Most recently, Chicago welcomed new member Lou Pardini, a Grammy-nominated keyboardist who replaces Bill Champlin. Champlin left Chicago in August 2009 after a remarkable 29 years with the band, and the band wishes him all the best as he embarks on his new solo project.

Through it all, Chicago continues to be true ambassadors for their beloved hometown, carrying the city's name with pride and dignity around the world.