Like Cocaine, ‘Now More Than Ever: The History Of Chicago’ Is Too Much Of A Good Thing

If you were a kid in the 1970s, somebody in your family, at some point, owned a Chicago record. Maybe it was your older brother, maybe even your parents. You saw that familiar logo, like a tricked out version of the Coca-Cola emblem, and put the needle to the groove, before being shocked by the stab of horns. Then came the rush of recognition, song after song you’d heard before on the AM radio in your family station wagon. To this day, I still can’t hear “Saturday in the Park” without seeing myself as a boy, stuck in traffic on the LIE while my Mom chain-smokes Kent III 100s.

With 20 Top 10 singles, five consecutive number-one albums, and over 100 million records sold worldwide, Chicago are one of the most succesful musical groups of all-time. Despite their numerous pop hits, the had legitimate rock bonafides; cutting their teeth on the road with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, who said the band’s founding guitarist Terry Kath, was “better than me.” Their run of hits stretches from the late ’60s to the mid ’90s, and when they stopped, they cashed in on the classic rock oldies circuit, playing their biggest numbers for adoring audiences to this very day. Their sound may have been polished but they got as down and dirty as any hard rockers, and their story is filled with guns, drugs, bad deals and lingering feuds, all of which are chronicled in 2017 documentary Now More Than Ever: The History Of Chicago, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

Formed in 1967, the original impetus behind Chicago was to bring together the best musicians in their namesake hometown. They included guitarist Terry Kath, keyboardist Robert Lamm, bassist Peter Cetera, drummer Danny Seraphine and the horn section of Walter Parazaider, James Pankow, and Lee Loughnane. Kath, Lamm and Cetera were all excellent and distinct vocalists while nearly everyone wrote, their material ranging from blues rock workouts to finely crafted pop songs and ambitious musical suites. The horns gave them their signature sound and imbued them with a class and authority that helped them transition from pioneering jazz rockers to mainstays of the adult contemporary radio format, for better or worse.

Initially known as Chicago Transit Authority, they signed with Clive Davis at Columbia Records and released their debut, a double album containing the hit singles “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “Beginnings.” They shortened their name to simply Chicago for their second album, also a double, which debuted their ubiquitous logo, and included the top 10 hits “25 or 6 to 4” and “Make Me Smile.” They wouldn’t release a single that didn’t make the Billboard Top 100 singles chart for another 10 years.

Travelling by charter jet, the band was on an endless cycle of touring, recording, drinking, and drugging and things naturally began to go off the rails. Their manager and producer, Jimmy Guercio, built a recording studio outside Denver with profits from the band, who didn’t realize things were amiss until it was too late. When they finally wised up, they found out Guercio had been pocketing 100% of their publishing royalties for nearly 10 years, which, given the band’s success, was literally millions of dollars.

Chicago partied as hard as any band you can think of, with a particular fondness for cocaine. For one tour they included a mock phone booth in their stage set, which the band dubbed “The Snortitorium,” where they could hoover lines mid-performance without leaving the stage. Kath was almost certainly under the influence when he accidentally killed himself, cleaning a handgun in 1978. 40 years later, the members of Chicago still can’t talk about the incident without choking up. Of their first album without him, drummer Seraphine says, “We spent more money on blow and mansions on the Hot Streets album than we did on the recording.” It was their first album not to reach the top 10.

The loss of Terry Kath forever changed the dynamics of Chicago. Peter Cetera began to take center stage as their frontman, a move encouraged by soft rock super producer David Foster, who brought the band many ’80s hits but admits, “I softened their sound past the point of where I should have.” The members of their once vaunted horn section now had to pick up guitars and keyboards in order to stay relevant. Little love seems to have been lost when Cetera finally quit the band for a solo career in 1986, and the bad blood is such that he was not involved in the documentary.

Now More Than Ever: The History Of Chicago ends with the band’s 2016 induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the band members ruminating on where they go from here. Pankow likens the band to the fable of the tortoise and the hare, and like the tortoise who ultimately wins the face, the group is “focused only at the task at hand, which is do music.” While at times funny, informative and engaging, the film has the curious problem of being at once too long and not being thorough enough. There are simply too many fascinating twists and turns in the band’s history and too many interesting characters to do any of them proper justice, yet, at two hours the pace is never quick enough and laborious at times. Much like their voluminous hits, and the cocaine they afforded the band, you really can have too much of a good thing.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

Watch Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago on Netflix