Rock · Soft Rock · Jazz-Rock
The brass-powered engine of seventies rock — a horn section with a rock band attached, and a ballad machine for the eighties.
The band that brought horns back to rock
Formed in Chicago in 1967, Chicago did something nobody else in rock had the nerve to do: they built a rock band around a full horn section. Trumpet, trombone, and saxophone weren’t decoration — they were the engine. The early double albums, starting with Chicago Transit Authority (1969), fused rock, jazz, and classical ambition into something genuinely new, and the hits followed: “25 or 6 to 4,” “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”, and the song that made a park feel like a parade.
The mid-seventies brought a turn toward ballads, carried by Peter Cetera’s soaring tenor. “If You Leave Me Now” (1976) became the band’s first American number one and won a Grammy — and then, in 1978, the band suffered an unthinkable loss when guitarist Terry Kath died. Most bands wouldn’t have survived. Chicago regrouped, kept the horns, and kept going.
The eighties brought producer David Foster and a second life as ballad royalty. “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” “You’re the Inspiration,” and “Look Away” were enormous hits, glossier than anything the band had done before — but listen closely and the horns are still there, the same brass that powered the seventies, dressed in eighties clothes. Few bands have reinvented themselves so completely while changing so little at the core.
Below are five listening stories from the Chicago songbook — a Saturday afternoon, two of the great make-up ballads, and the eighties sheen that carried them to a new generation.