Chicago: Chicago Transit Authority

CHICAGO: CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY (1969)

1) Introduction; 2) Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?; 3) Beginnings; 4) Questions 67 & 68; 5) Listen; 6) Poem 58; 7) Free Form Guitar; 8) South California Purples; 9) I'm A Man; 10) Prologue (August 29, 1968); 11) Someday (August 29, 1968); 12) Liberation.

Chicago (or, rather, Chicago Transit Authority, as they were called until the silly mass transit operator without a sense of collective humor threatened to sue) cannot lay claim to inventing «jazz rock» as such — even if one separates «jazz rock» from «fusion» and defines the former as «white guy rock'n'roll with a brass section», Blood, Sweat & Tears came well before them and laid down all the necessary blueprints. But for a few years, when it came to defining the quintes­sential spirit of this musical style, nobody did this better than Chicago: in terms of ambition, diversity, playing technique, and even that old elusive restless rock and roll spirit, Chicago Transit Authority blows everything that BS&T ever did out of the water. (With the possible exception of those BS&T tracks that were completely dominated by the artistic personality of Al Kooper, but we are talking collective spirit here, not individual).

Naturally, that legendary gap between «classic Chicago» and «horrible Chicago» that typically serves as a classic example of artistic greatness mutating into corny embarrassment was prede­termined from the start: Chicago Transit Authority positioned themselves from the very outset as a good-time band, more bent on generating happy vibes and giving the good people a cause for optimism — rather than a band that was specifically bent on exploration and tapping into the mysterious and the unknown. The major, if not the only, innovation of their debut LP was an attempt to cross Cream and Jimi Hendrix with Duke Ellington: an attempt that succeeded admi­rably, but nothing about it was particularly challenging or innovative. Even Terry Kath's ʽFree Form Guitarʼ, a seven-minute long investigation of guitar tones and feedback, comes across more as a polite and almost mainstreamish tribute to Hendrix than a daring statement; and, of course, not a single of these Hendrix-inspired tunes shares the breakthrough vision of their inspirer.

But — blame it on a Sixties bias if you wish — such was the musical magic of 1969 that even such a whitebread-bourgeois-conformist-you-name-it outfit as Chicago, when swept into the general maelstrom, was capable of producing large chunks of inspired and inspiring music. From the opening notes of ʽIntroductionʼ, with the rhythm section of Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine grimly counterbalancing the lively brass riffs of the trumpet / trombone / saxophone section, you know you are going to be entertained. "This is what we do / Sit back and let us groove / And let us work on you", Terry Kath addresses his audience, and who could resist these grooves? The first half of ʽIntroductionʼ does indeed sound somewhat like late Duke Ellington transposed to a rockier setting; then, once the guitar properly settles in, the rhythm section becomes a reincarna­tion of Cream, and the guitar player assumes a middle-ground stand between Clapton and Hen­drix. In these six minutes, you get a perfect understanding of what «classic Chicago» is all about, so you could just as well dump the rest of this behemoth altogether...

...joking, of course, because at this point Chicago (or, more accurately, Chicago's keyboard player Robert Lamm, to whom most of the original tunes are credited) were also quite accomplished songwriters. On the whole, Chicago Transit Authority is more about the grooves than the hooks, and the album did not even generate any hit singles at first; but ʽDoes Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?ʼ, for instance, seems to me like a transparent attempt to write an uplifting pop song that echoes McCartney's ʽGood Day Sunshineʼ and ʽGot To Get You Into My Lifeʼ at the same time — it does not rise to the same levels of catchiness and sharpness, but it is reasonably nice (and has a very pretty piano intro that might actually be the best part of the song). Same with ʽQuestions 67 & 68ʼ, which sounds more like a folk-pop ballad, fattened up with a brass section, and with ʽSomedayʼ, the fastest of the three that almost screams for a disco rearrangement (for­tunately, it never got one — not to my knowledge, at least). All of these are good pop songs that one could never find on a Cream, Hendrix, or Duke Ellington record, and all of them benefit greatly from the tightness of the rhythm section and the versatility of the brass section, because the hooks on their own are rather flat, and neither Lamm nor Peter Cetera can rank among the great pop singers; they have more of an R&B color to their voices, and even in that respect they could hardly compete with most of the R&B greats.

As I said, though, the heart of this album lies in its grooves, not its hooks, and even out of all the songs credited to Lamm, I would always take ʽListenʼ, ʽPoem 58ʼ, and ʽSouth California Purplesʼ over the pop stuff. ʽPoem 58ʼ, in particular, starts out as quite a beastly groove, with Kath and Cetera battling each other in a fashion that would make Bruce and Clapton proud, before slowing down and settling into a bluesy-hallucinatory-sunny-psychedelic pattern à la ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ, «woman tone» and all. Again, that riff is nowhere near as deep and disturbing as the ʽSunshineʼ riff, just like Lamm's pop hooks are nowhere near as sweet and touching as Paul McCartney's — but on the other hand, Cream did not have a brass section, now did they? And the slow, heavy riff of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ is no Black Sabbath when it comes to slowness and heaviness, but it is the contrast between the gruffness of the riff and the cockiness of the brass fanfare that matters (and while we're at it, I'm pretty sure Black Sabbath nicked the riff for ʽBe­hind The Wall Of Sleepʼ from the mid-section of ʽSouth California Purplesʼ, so there). All in all, it's just wicked fun to hear a song that predicts both Sabbath and Deep Purple ("since I lost my baby, I been losing my mind") while at the same time quoting from ʽI Am The Walrusʼ — pro­bably for no reason other than somebody thinking, "hey, we have been carried by the current into ʽI Am The Walrusʼ territory, why don't we just acknowledge that?".

Sometimes the band's feel of a good groove betrays them, most notably at the end of the other­wise very uplifting and HeyJudean ʽBeginningsʼ — with two minutes of a forcedly enthusiastic percussion-only Latin jam that should have much rather been left to the likes of Santana (a.k.a. people who really have that in their blood). But more often, it works, and I can even endorse the nearly side-long jam, ʽLiberationʼ, which ends the album: this is where the brass section largely fades out, and the rest of the band simply becomes a four-headed jam monster, with Terry Kath leading the way. Jimi Hendrix was being modest and polite when he spoke of Kath as being a better guitarist than himself (provided he even said that at all: there's at least half a dozen urban legends about Jimi endorsing various guitarists), but that does not mean we should not give credit where it is due: if you get blues-rock jamming at all, it is hard to admit that Terry is not genuinely possessed during the first lengthy wah-wah solo, and on the wildness scale he should be rated higher than Clapton, though Eric himself might have already written that style off as too flashy and self-indulgent. To me, though, it's fun.

Which gets us to our last question: should this — or, in fact, any other — Chicago album not have been trimmed to the length of a single LP? With so many tracks running over 6-7-8 minutes, it is clear that there is a lot of pure sprawl. Yet the band did not record a double album simply because they thought that double albums were all the rage: they recorded it because they did not want to condense the songs to three-minute hit single lengths, and because they instinctively understood that their major power was the power of their collective groove, that the songs had to play out for as long as they played out, and not a minute less — an ideology that I understand perfectly, though with some reservations as to drum solos (I'd rather hear more Terry Kath goodness on their extended cut of Steve Winwood's ʽI'm A Manʼ than another percussion groove: apparently, though, if you're really a man, drum solos are obligatory). In terms of sheer numbers, Chicago Transit Authority is actually pretty short — just eleven compositions in all, it's just that they do not really work as songs, they work as those slightly bombastic guitar-brass extra­vaganzas. As it is, the album is one of the many unique artefacts of 1969 — and, unquestionably, the best record that this band ever produced, though in light of their future discography this comes off as an almost abysmal conclusion. But for now, just steer clear of dark thoughts for the future ahead and join me in my thumbs up rating.