1975 · Behind the Songs
The trombonist’s nostalgic look back at the band’s club days.
By 1975 Chicago had gone from club band to chart institution, and trombonist James Pankow wrote “Old Days” as a backward glance — a fond, slightly aching tribute to the lean years of small stages and long drives. Peter Cetera sings it with unusual tenderness, and the band plays it straight, letting the memory do the emotional work. It was an unusual move for a group still in its imperial phase: a hit single about missing the time before the hits.
The nostalgia connected. “Old Days” reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming one of Chicago VIII’s standout singles. Decades on, it plays like a time capsule twice over — a seventies band remembering the sixties, now remembered itself as the sound of the seventies.