CHICAGO At Carnegie Hall 1971

Daniel Seraphine - Drums
Produced by James William Guercio
Engineered by Don Puluse, Bud Graham, Hank Altman, Aaron Baron & Larry Dalkstrom
Mixed at COLUMBIA RECORDING STUDIOS, New York, NY
Art Direction - VIRGINIA TEAM & John Berg
CHICAGO Logo - Nick Fasciano
Handwriting - Beverly Scott
Photos - Fred Lombardi & Allen Goldblatt
CARNEGIE HALL Drawing - Fuding Cheng
CARNEGIE HALL Photo - BROWN BROTHERS
Poster Design - Ron Coro
Poster Photo - Frank Laffitte
All Selections AURELIUS MUSIC (BMI) or AURELIA MUSIC (ASCAP)*
except "I'm A Man" - IRVING MUSIC, INC (BMI)

This album was originally issued as COLUMBIA #C4X-30865 (10/71): LP's #3 (Pick position attained by this album on the TOP LP's chart - courtesy BPI COMMUNICATIONS and JOEL WITBURN's RECORD RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS).

This Reissue:

/ Project Supervision: Lee Loughnane, Jeff Magid, David McLees & Mike Engstrom
Bonus Selections Mixed by David Donnelly & Jeff Magid at

, Studio City, CA
Remastering: David Donnelly at

, Studio City, CA
Editorial Supervision: Cory FRYE
Art Direction: Hugh Brown & Maria Villar
Design: Maria Villar
Project Assistance: Steve Woolard, Karen LeBlank, David McLees & Gary Peterson

Special Thanks:

Howard Kaufman, Irving Azoff, Tom Cuddy, Steve Brumbuch, Lynda Lou Bouch, Debbie Aronofsky, Laurie Gorman, David Millman, Howard Rose, Steve Smith & Bruce Kapp

Representation:

HK MANAGEMENT - Peter Schivarelli

Fan Information:

www.chicagotheband.com

Chicago Fan Club, СТА, P.O. Box 195, Landing, NJ 07850

CHICAGO and are Marks owned by CHICAGO MUSIC, Inc.

These Marks are Registered in the U.S. PATENT OFFICE, and in foreign countries, and licensed for use to WARNER STRATEGIC MARKETING, Inc.

If you enjoyed these tracks, you'll be "Feeling Stronger Every Day" with these other CHICAGO titles:

Chicago Transit Authority

Chicago II

Chicago III

Chicago V

Chicago VI

Chicago VII

Chicago VIII

Chicago X

Chicago XI

Hot Streets

Chicago 13

Chicago XIV

The Very Best Of Chicago:
Only The Beginning

The Box
(5-CD / l-DVD boxed set)

Christmas:
What's It Gonna Be, Santa ?

Love Songs

Chicago V (DVD-Audio)
A&E Network: Live By Request (DVD)
If you really want to know what time it is, log on to RHINO RECORDS
©2005 WARNER STRATEGIC MARKETING Inc.
A WARNER MUSIC GROUP COMPANY
ARCHIVIST's NOTE
On my 16th birthday, in February 1972, a consortium of true friends pitched in and bought me Chicago At Carnegie Hall. Back then if you walked into a record shop (or EJ Korvette's, for that matter), there it was, in all its thick-box glory, under a sticker that read: "4-Record Set / Very Special Low Price ... Also Included / 2 Giant Wall Posters / 1 Colossal Wall Poster / 1 Full Color 20-Page Photo Album". "The Complete Works", it said. How could any CHICAGO fan (especially one living in Chicago) not want this ? It had just about every song from the band's first three records, played live no overdubs. Pius, you got to hear the guys talk between numbers! It was eight sides of bliss to last for years to come !
Almost 30 years after CHICAGO Recorded that week's worth of shows, I was hired as the band's tape archivist. And over these last few years I've had the opportunity to discover hidden gems from the group's long and distinguished career. As a fan, the original 16-track Carnegie Hail tapes held the most allure for me, because it brought me right back to those many teenaged hours spent listening to the music and reinspecting all the posters and booklets from the original set.
When I began researching this project, I initially looked for songs performed that week that hadn't made the original release. So, appearing in this package for the first time anywhere are "Listen" (from April 6, 1971) and "Loneliness Is Just A Word" and "An Hour In The Shower" {both April 8). These tracks make it even more of 'The Complete Works"! As I listened to more and more tapes, however, several alternate versions of songs that did appear on Carnegie Hall jumped out at me. One was Robert Lamm's "Free Form Intro" (here from April 9, with the Naseltones title on the tape box), written that afternoon at sound check, according to Terry Kath. The others were takes on "Introduction" (April 6), "South California Purples", (April 5), "Sing A Mean Tune Kid" (April 8), and "25 Or 6 To 4" (April 6].
What struck me about those last four tracks were Terry's incredible solos. I couldn't catch my breath after the first one on "25 Or 6 To 4" and knew immediately that these performances would further promote Kath's legacy as one of rock's most distinguished guitarists. Under Lee Loughnane's supervision, these selections, which haven't seen the light of day since their initial recording, were then painstakingly and lovingly mixed and mastered by veteran engineer Dave Donnelly.
So enjoy these unearthed treasures while you're looking at all the cool stuff that comes with the box. Now you've got three CDs that represent those original eight sides of bliss, plus almost an hour's worth of new bliss to last for years to come!
- Jeff Magid

It's a famous musician's line with many variations, one of which goes like this:
Question: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall ?"
Answer: "Practice, practice, practice." Well, sure. But there was a time when all the practice in the world couldn't have gotten a rock musician onstage at the venerable New York City shrine to classical music. And even before that, there was a time when jazz artists could only get inside by doing what everybody else did: buy a ticket.
But this attitude toward jazz changed in 1938, when the Benny Goodman Orchestra held the legendary Spirituals To Swing concert at the prestigious venue. And the relatively staid audiences of the period came face-to-face (and ear-to-music) with the realization that something was happening outside their classical world, even if they didn't know what it was. And they obviously wanted more of it; Carnegie appearances by Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and others soon followed.
It took a bit longer for rock music to make a similar breakthrough. But it happened, most spectacularly with a pair of performances by The Beatles in 1964. (These were actually taped, but with so much shouting and screaming from the ecstatic crowd that it was impossible to release an album.)
In 1971, however, CHICAGO inscribed a major new entry into the Carnegie Hall chronicles with a full week of concerts, all of which were recorded, with the best selections gathered into the massive four-LP set Chicago At Carnegie Hall (often referred to by the group's fans by the more characteristic title Chicago IV).
It was, on many counts, an audacious project.
Start with the decision to do a week's worth of appearances. Few bands and certainly not one that, despite its successes, had only been in the pop music spotlight for less than two years would have even contemplated making such a potentially risky career move.
Next, consider that the group had planned to record amplified, high-decibel rock with horns in a hall renowned for its purely acoustical qualities. Until CHICAGO actually set up onstage and began to play, no one really knew exactly how to tailor the sound for live reproduction, much less how to record it for an album.
And finally, imagine the reaction in Columbia Records' executive boardroom when the suits were told that the band hoped to double its usual disc count for Carnegie Hall, from the usual (and somewhat controversial in itself) two LPs to four eight whole sides of music.
"COLUMBIA was a little at a loss probably more than a little as to why we wanted to do a four-record set," says trombonist-arranger-composer James Pankow. "Such an endeavor represented a major expense as far as packaging and marketing. But we felt that, since this was the first time that a pop act had performed a whole week of shows at such a prestigious, historical venue as Carnegie Hall, it should be preserved in a recording. And it just seemed that four records were necessary to capture the whole experience."
Woodwind player Walt Parazaider agrees.
"COLAMBIA didn't want to put it out at all," he says, "the same way they didn't want to put out the first double album. I think they figured, 'Who the hell do these young guys think they are, The Beatles?' Because they were the only ones who had a double album out before us that White Album. But we cut back on the royalties [and] put our money where our mouths were, because we believed so much in the Carnegie Hall project, with all the packaging, the booklet, and everything."
Then, with a laugh, Parazaider adds, "But when it sold as well as it did, of course, they thought they were real geniuses."
"Sold as well as it did" is an understatement. Chicago At Carnegie Hall was a gold album practically out of the box, eventually selling more than two million copies.
Parazaider has a particularly poignant memory of the event, a memory that connected his youthful days as a student player with his high-voltage life as a member of CHICAGO. "I had a great time making that album," he says, "and a funny thing happened. I had studied with one of the clarinetists in the Chicago Symphony, and they'd played a night or two before us at Carnegie. So he left a note for me that said, 'Kiddo, you finally made it. You see, practice does get you to Carnegie Hall.'"
But that was only a part of the special vibe surrounding the entire run for Parazaider.
"I was just sort of set up for an emotional week there," he continues. "Doc Severinsen brought the whole Tonight Show band by one night, and all of a sudden there were 'Snooky' Young and Arnie Lawrence, out there listening. I had a ball."
Robert Lamm tends to agree, on all counts, recalling the very special circumstances surrounding a week-long run by a rock band at such a hallowed classical venue.
"I've always viewed the album as a document of the event," he says. "We were nervous; we were very aware of a kind of discerning New York audience and what it represented as an event. But we had fun, regardless."
In retrospect, there's another aspect of the Carnegie Hall programs (and the recording) worth considering. CHICAGO was a rock band with horns, a rock band seasoned in gritty one-nighters and gigs at places like Bamaby's in Chicago and the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles. And rock bands at least those that emerged in the '60s were less interested in the well-tooled instrumental perfection associated with Carnegie Hall than they were in emotion and passion and interaction and communication.
The first three CHICAGO albums revealed many of those qualities, heightened by the opportunities to deliver stretched-out tunes invested with the spirit and energy of live gigs.
"I think we were lucky to have the early hits", Lamm says, "Make Me Smile", "25 Or 6 To 4", "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is ?" because they kind of justified Columbia's willingness to allow us to write some things that weren't songs I'm not sure what some of them were and to experiment and to feel that I could write anything I wanted, and the guys could play it".
And play it they did at Carnegie Hall, an engagement that resulted in the first on-the-spot, in-action vinyl representation of what the band was like in the sweat, the swing, and the spontaneity of live performance.
More than any of the previous releases, Chicago At Carnegie Hall displays the fascinating linkage between CHICAGO, the hit-record-making ensemble, and CHICAGO, the rough-and-tumble, horn-fueled rock 'n' roll band. That linkage is especially potent here, displayed in the fiery improvised sections of such pieces as "It Better End Soon", in the expanded instrumental passages of "South California Purples" and "Sing A Mean Tune Kid", and in the irresistibly body-moving riffs behind the vocals of Peter Cetera and the guitar of Terry Kath. It's equally compelling in the energy and passion of "Free", in the irresistible feeling of a group of simpatico players deeply captivated by the sheer joy of musicianship present in the "Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon" suite, as well as in such songs as "Introduction" and "In The Country".
Chicago At Carnegie Hall includes other rare nuggets too. There is, for example, the first appearance of Lamm's "A Song For Richard And His Friends." Aimed directly at the Nixon Administration and written years before his resignation, its pointed lines ("Hey now, will you go away, we're so tired of things that you say") have an almost eerily prescient impact. There's also the "preach" version of It Better End Soon, which perhaps calls even more directly for an end to the Vietnam War than the original studio recording on CHICAGO.
Most important of all, Carnegie Hall finds a young group of artists beginning to deal with their maturity. Success had come so quickly, with its corresponding financial rewards, fame, and plain old ego gratification, that CHICAGO barely had time to fully grasp what had happened to these seven guys from the Midwest whose initial goal had simply been to play their own kind of music.
"It almost seemed", says Pankow, "as though we had the Midas touch gold albums, platinum albums as though we could sell a ton of anything we chose to play".
Which may well have been true. But appearing at Carnegie Hall for a full week's worth of performances something no rock band had ever done before was a whole different deal. And when Lamm refers to the "discerning New York audience," he's right on target about what the programs meant to CHICAGO. Road-hardened though they may have been, successful at selling albums by the truckload, they still had to face the inherent skepticism of that "discerning" audience. That they were able to do so with such confidence and enthusiasm says something about where the band had come from and where they'd go over the next few decades.
As well as the full eight-sided album, this reissue includes eight previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded during the band's five-night hometown stand. Debuting here are Lamm's "Loneliness Is Just A Word", complete with a spoken intro from the composer, as well as "Listen", Terry Kath's "An Hour In The Shower" suite, and Lamm's "Naseltones" piano jam, "written in Carnegie Hall, at approximately one o'clock," according to Kath. Also featured are alternate-night takes on "Introduction", "Sing A Mean Tune Kid", "South California Purples" and "25 Or 6 To 4".
Looking back, Lamm sees the Carnegie Hall concerts, with all their ramifications, as an illustration of his view that "the combination and the chemistry of the individuals in the band created an atmosphere where we always felt like there was something even greater or better ahead that our best work wasn't behind us, that there was something ahead that we needed to accomplish".
- Don Heckman

Chart Information:

Nov. '71 - Live At Carnegie Hall - Chart Position 3

12. It Better End Soon - 4th Movement (Preach)

Oh yeah
You know what we've been saying
You know what we've been praying
You know what's going down

Oh come on
Let's spread it around
We got to stop it
We got to make it right - got to
We got to end all fighting - gotta
We got to end it tonight

It can't be done just because I'm gonna sing a song
Everybody must have love and peace just flow

It's got to grow from a little spark
It's got to burn higher
But it must start
If we want to have the whole world right
We got to put up a fight
But a peaceful fight
Can't go around killing - and contradicting ourselves
We gotta do it right - within the system

Please understand what I say
Everybody understand what I say
End this war as fast as we can
End this war, end this war, end all wars
Forever more, c'mon, c'mon, please, please
We gotta do it so that the world will live
You know all you gotta do is give - of yourself
Give of your heart - give of your soul
Please let's go! Do it, do it, do it
Please

Reprinted with permission Aurelia Music (ASCAP) © 1971
30. A Song For Richard And His Friends

If you will think now, then you will see
How you can change things

People are waiting, turning away
Tired of killing

Hey now
Will you go away
We're so tired
Of things that you say

Even though you never said word that would help anyone but yourself
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Oh, bad dream

If you stay now,
It will only get worse
Let us pray now
'Cause the truth really hurts

Have to be a man so today with your brothers and sisters lay dying
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Yeah, Such a bad dream

Listen
Please be gone
Go away and leave us alone
Bring police
Go away and leave us in peace
Yeah

Please be gone
Go away and leave us alone
Bring police
Go away and leave us in peace
Will you go now
Will you take all your friends
Woah now, If you'd stood like a man
Even though I know that you cannot be blamed all alone for all the sadness
you've caused
Tomorrow is such a bad dream
Yeah, such a bad dream
Oh yeah, such a bad dream
Dig it

If you will think now you will then you will see
How we can change things
People are waiting, turning away
Tired of killing

12. It Better End Soon - 4th Movement (Preach)

30. A Song For Richard And His Friends

CHICAGO

At Carnegie Hall
(Recorded in New York (by LOCATION RECORDERS) during the week of April 5th - 10th, 1971)
(4 CD Remastered)

(1971 / 2005)

(1971 / 2005)

Disc 1

1. In The Country ^10'35
2. Fancy Colors ^5'15
3. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is ? (Free Form Intro)* ^6'21
4. Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is ? ^3'26
5. South California Purples ^15'35
6. Questions 67 and 68 ^5'35
7. Sing A Mean Tune Kid ^12'54
8. Beginnings ^6'27
Disc 2

Disc 2

Disc 3

Disc 4

Bonus Selections:
(All Previously Unissued)