Now More than Ever: The History of Chicago

I'll be up in a minute.

Feeding back.

The inception of the band was an assembly

of the best musicians I could find in the city of Chicago.

We actually discussed about making the best band

we could possibly make.

That the band would be a musical democracy,

and I said, "When you give me your hand,

that'll be the contract,

and the only way you get out of it is to ask out or you die."

I've always thought of Chicago in terms of a family, rather than eras.

You know, in a span of 40 or 50 years,

there are going to be changes.

And I don't care if it's a family or a band, there are going to be changes.

The realization becomes, you know, we're all replaceable.

We're all replaceable.

Our first pictures were in a foundation of a building.

And we had suits, and we, you know, we picked up shovels.

We were, like, leaning on shovels and stuff.

I enjoyed playing music.

I enjoyed playing in all the groups that I had played in up to then,

which were, like, three or four different combinations.

But I really enjoyed playing with these guys.

You know, it was a whole other animal.

Robert has always been a songwriter, ever since I met him.

When he joined the band, he had a book of 50 songs.

I remember meeting him at DePaul and he had a notebook this thick full of lyrics.

And I just remember he said, "Well, I've got a few songs here."

And I just said, "Well, you know, they might come in handy one day."

In those days there weren't bands, you know. There were singers,

individual singers, and the bands backed up the singers.

While we were playing in the clubs, we were doing what other, other bands do.

We were playing covers.

The club owners wanted us to play stuff that people could dance to,

and then drink,

and they would make money and you know, hopefully fill the club.

We started playing one song called Clouds, and we got fired.

Because we did an original song and he wanted to hear a top 40.

But it was exciting.

Because, really, we had gotten a chance to really hear what the band sounded like.

You know, we wore the suits, and we did the steps.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Club Gigi,

"we're gonna warm it up with a couple of belly rubbers."

It was an entirely different uh, attitude towards playing music.

And then eventually we began to arrange those songs

for the instrumentation of Chicago.

That's when we got into some dispute.

We'd get a call on a Saturday night at, like, 9:00 saying,

"This goddamn band, Chicago Transit Authority...

"They won't play the top 40 shit. The kids hate it!"

"We're getting rid of them after the next break."

Can you come down and finish the night?

And there would be the boys packing up their stuff,

you know, and they're pissed.

And we're thinking to ourselves, why don't they just lighten up?

Why don't they just play the, you know, give them a little Rolling Stones...

Give them a little Temptations if they want it, or whatever.

But we're thinking, "Eh, you know, they gotta go their own way."

Terry came on stage at Barnaby's on State Street in Chicago

and I think it was during the first tune, he just ripped

the shirt, the coat, right off of his back.

And that was it. We went straight to hippie-dom.

Then we started doing original material,

and it was a small group of people that dug it.

Kind of the legend around Illinois was the Chicago Transit Authority

had been formed out of these local super groups.

You know, as we watched them play, we were all like,

"Wow, these guys can really read music."

"These guys really know what they're doing."

[QUESTIONS 67 AND 68 PLAYING]

Playing in a band with horns, with you guys, was extraordinary,

but, but, um, but Terry Kath's talent was just amazing.

Terry and I hung out a lot together.

Terry's the kinda guy that made up his own vocabulary and his own context.

And also the way that Danny played drums.

Danny, he had a feel, an R&B back thing,

I mean, wow.

Terry, Walt, and myself were a band of brothers.

We were... We were inseparable.

We were really, really close and had already been through a lot together.

But Peter, he was a great, great singer.

I mean, When I first heard his voice, I'm like, "Wow!"

Peter Cetera had been in another band called The Exceptions.

That's my earliest recollection of knowing anything about Chicago.

Our first gig, uh, was at the Club Gigi,

an upholstered sewer on the south side of Chicago.

The only people in the audience were my parents.

I mean, it was just, yeah, you know, "Yeah! Yeah!

"This is great!"

Something happened in me that I decided

that this is what I wanted to do for a living.

As soon as I came to that realization, my mom and dad tried to talk me out of it

because they didn't think there was any, uh, any future,

you know, or long-term future anyway.

We're often asked in school, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And, uh... "Uh, I don't... Fireman?"

Uh. all the while we were in contact with Jim Guercio.

I first became involved with the fellas in Chicago in, uh, in college.

Guercio really saw that there was no way for this to be successful

unless there was total commitment.

He had an idea of building a management company,

and he called it his "creative community."

I think that his business tactics

definitely had a hand in our creation, in our success.

He envisioned everything sort of being under one roof.

And when the time was right we brought them to Los Angeles.

The stars were aligned.

We were supposed to do this. We were just meant to be.

We all lived in a little house under the Hollywood Freeway.

And our bedrooms were various rooms, my bedroom was the dining room.

Each guy had a shelf in the medicine cabinet.

Each guy had a shelf in the refrigerator.

God forbid you take somebody's food.

There were a lot of referees.

Whoever had to take the last shower got the cold shower.

So you, you drew straws every day you went to work.

The home front.

We went from clubs to we moved to LA, and more and more people,

you know, starting to become aware of the band, and realizing that we were

starting to become successful.

My dad always told me,

"Dream a big dream, if you shoot for the moon

"and hit a star, it's cool."

When you put it all on the line,

there's a certain intensity and focus,

and we had that.

We were, uh, very confident and, uh, energetic kids.

We liked what we did, and we saw that other people liked what we did,

but we didn't know if we were gonna have more than two records.

We were straight out of playing, you know, bars in Chicago.

And we moved out to southern California,

and here we ran into Janis Joplin at the Fillmore West.

She came in with this big entourage

and she dropped her brush right at my feet.

And she went, "Hey, M-F-er, pick up the F-ing brush."

And I says, "Pick up your own brush,

"and when you get done with that, after you pick it up,

"apologize to me that you talked to me that way."

Well, she picked up the brush and she said, "I'm sorry."

And that was the start of a thing where she hung with us

and she showed us what she did to command on the stage.

How she could really handle people.

And we were on the tour, the last big tour on the west coast.

That was the last tour that Big Brother and The Holding Company

with Janis Joplin did.

We saw their last show.

We played every peace rally that ever happened in California, I think.

And we didn't have any money.

So, they started writing like crazy

and we started doing anything we could to pay the rent.

We just happened to play the Whisky a Go Go and Jimmy had a camera

and we took some pictures of Chicago Transit,

of "CTA" on the marquee at the Whisky,

which when I go by there I always think of Jimmy and I standing

in the middle of Sunset Boulevard going...

I remember we were, I think, opening for B.B. King, or something like that,

um...

Or Albert King. Walter turned around to walk out...

He probably, he might have told you this story.

I get a tap on my shoulder, and I turned around...

I was putting one of my saxophones away. It was Jimi Hendrix.

He called me by name and he said,

"Walt, the horns are like one set of lungs.

"Your guitar player's better than me."

"The horn section, it sounds like one set of lungs,

"and a guitar player that's better than me."

He said that Terry plays better than him.

First you have to realize we were already listening intensely to his music.

You know, we looked up to him.

Terry was already playing stuff that Hendrix had on his records.

Terry could play a rhythm guitar part,

a lead guitar part, and sing a lead vocal simultaneously.

I've never heard anybody that could do that.

And I gotta tell ya, I think in a couple weeks

we were on the road with Hendrix.

We got to see some of the stuff that was, uh, driving them,

because Jimi wasn't happy with the licks he was playing.

Do you have to practice every day, the way a violinist does?

I mean if you're not working, say you're off in England,

and you're just taking off a couple months,

do you have to keep in shape every day?

Yeah, well, I like to, like, play to myself, in like,

in a room or before we go on stage or something like this, or whenever I feel like,

whenever I feel like down or depressed or whatever, you know.

You know, stuff that happens to every musician,

and, you know, especially guys who are in the limelight and are put on pedestals.

And, you know, they have that pressure of having to do something new all the time.

We were on a plane and I said,

"Why are you so unhappy about what you're doing?"

And he says, "Well, you're gonna know this one day,

and you're gonna probably know it more than me.