Champlin exits Chicago

I’m a big fan of the band Chicago and have been since the late 1980′s, with “19″ being the first album of theirs that I bought. Eventually I would continue buying the new ones and slowing filling in the gap of previous records. My fandom of the band was a direct result of hearing songs like “Look Away” and “You’re Not Alone” on the radio and seeing the videos (awful in retrospect) in heavy rotation on MTV and VH1. As such I became a huge fan not only of the band in general – all the “eras” and sounds have upsides and downsides – but of Bill Champlin in particular.

Champlin joined the group in 1982 with “16″ and helped push the band back into popularity with his multi-instrumental capabilities and gruff, soulful voice that contrasted but blended with first Peter Cetera and then Jason Scheff’s high tenor vocals.

Which is why I’m bummed to hear that Champlin is leaving the band. Not only that, he’s doing so abruptly, in the middle of a tour with Earth, Wind and Fire. It’s hard not to have seen this coming, though.

While Champlin has been a prominent presence on the band’s limited album output since 1991 there are probably (and this is just fan speculation) a number of things that went into this.

First is the stated reason: He has a new solo album coming out and is feeling a renewed call to make that sort of music and then launch limited, intimate tours in support of them.

Second is that limited Chicago output. Since 1991′s “Twenty-1″ the band has put out a big-band cover disc, an album of Christmas music and only two original albums: “XXX” in 2006 and, finally, “Stone of Sisyphus,” which was originally recorded in 1992 and shelved until if eventually got an official release in 2008.

Third has to be the fact that, despite the fact that he was already a respected musician and arranger before he joined the band and was then with the band for 27 years he was still considered “the new guy.” He was rarely, if ever, the “voice” of the band in the press and got little to no screen time in appearances on TV shows and such. The camera rarely wandered back to the guy, who was plugging away on his B-3 and making the music better.

Fourth, I have to believe the grind of the same music on the same tour year after year finally caught up to him. He looked, as the years wore on, like the moments he was enjoying most were the smaller things he was doing in the music, the little flourishes he added with his organ or guitar.

Whatever the case, it’s hard to imagine this isn’t the beginning of the end for the band. They announced a replacement for Champlin that will finish the tour in his stead but…what’s the long term thinking here? How do they replace him going forward, or do they? More importantly, how is his re-dedication to his own music going to influence Scheff and Howland, both of whom are still younger and who might want to get going on more records of their own, all of which comes at the expense of Chicago.

Advertisement