Exactly, just imagine type of music they were capable of in the 80's. Especially when they had an Axe like DB on board they could have been every bit as rockin as anyone, but they just kept getting slammed by ballad lust. Not that I didn't enjoy the ballads. I too only felt they were scratching the surface of their potential. Which is pretty amazing when you consider just how good they were at a sub-par level compared to their ability.
Chicago made ballads because that's what sold for them... they would try uptempo tunes and record labels wouldn't release them because "it didn't sound like Chicago".
Chicago (as a band), Guercio and later HK management, Columbia and later Warner Bros., recorded/released ballads because that became the Chicago sound -just as it was increasingly obvious that Peter Cetera was the vocalist who stood the best chance of getting Chicago on the radio.
That is a given, my point was when the went from the style the originally started out with (and even did on 7) with having more than just vocal pop songs, that changed the type of music they were pursuing. So what I was getting at is that maybe if they had not gone to the 10 song all radio hit style and kept pursuing their instrumental side as well (which would have involved more than 1 album per record release and is why it didn't continue, they may have been able to keep the balance they had that allowed the "Colour My World" and "25 or 6 to 4" coexistence to continue. There are lots of band through the decades that could rock and throw in the ballads. Somehow in the usual Chicago shoot yourself in the foot way, they let themselves sacrifice this for that next big hit to the point that there was no return. So my comments were more of a what if they had found a way to be both, by the time the 80's rolled around they could have been the hard rocking with ballad machine, so many others were able to pull off. Which if you think of it, was exactly what they did for the first few years. So it was at least possible. I think. But the blame is really on the band, they could have chose do do both, but they were high and rich and wanted more of both so much that as well all know that machine was tearing them apart. If they had kept their integrity and refused to just convert to a pop band, I think they could have proven themselves capable of making the hits in both rock and pop and maybe the drugs wouldn't have been necessary for them to get through it, and they might have been as happy as they appeared to be early on.
I wonder if it was the unhappiness that make the drugs come in, or the drugs that helped them do the stupid things that made them unhappy. I know Robert said they were trying to be the rock stars they thought they were supposed to be and got into the drugs, but I wonder which came first. It seemed Terry wanted off the drugs and was very unhappy, yet as Camilia said, "he just kept going back". This suggests to me they didn't feel they were what they wanted to be. Maybe they just kept doing their thing hoping someday to be able to get back to what they wanted. Then Terry died and that never happened.
So many what if's, never a way to know. I do fault them though for quitting after SOS. they finally decided to do it their way, and when it didn;t work, they basically gave up again. They always had a way of self defeat. THAT is the biggest thing to me that limited them.
Sorry if I didn't make sense, I'm tired and long past when I should have been asleep. Nite.
