Chicago II- Robert Lamm

“Who are these guys?” was still the admiring rhetorical question floating about the music world when Chicago II  came out January 10, 1970, only a year after the non-notorious “Chicago Seven” had stunned the rock world in 1969 with the most popular double album debut in history, Chicago Transit Authority. Like the first, Chicago II  was so full of talented lead singers (three) and songwriters (four) that they needed four vinyl sides to accommodate all of that music. Chicago placed no less than three songs from  II  into the Top 10, including “Make Me Smile”,”25 or 6 to 4″, and “Colour My World”, but the hooky melodies and truly bold arrangements extended to “Poem for the  People”,”Movin’ In”,”In the Country”, and “Where Do We Go From Here?”.

Chicago II   climbed to #4 sales in America, #6  in the UK, a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year and  sales of over a million, igniting a legacy of thirty-six releases in  fifty years together. Chicago co-founder Robert Lamm tells the insider tale of the birth of America’s second-biggest selling band, second only to The Beach Boys, but he is too much of a class act to acknowledge the fact that 120,000,000 units sold apparently did mean something to the gatekeepers of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, who until recently refused to even consider Chicago with a nomination.  But with that long-overdue honor, that all changed. – Redbeard