Chicago Transit Authority – "Beginnings" (1969)

I’m with you

That’s all that matters

Did you know that Chicago has released THIRTY-SEVEN albums?  (That actually understates the band’s fecundity – the first three studio albums were all double albums, and the fourth album – Chicago at Carnegie Hall – consisted of four LPs.)

As for the most recent one – Chicago XXXVII: Chicago Christmas, which was released in 2019 – the less said, the better.

But Chicago’s first two albums were pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

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Chicago doesn’t get much respect because their music eventually got very . . . hmmmm, how shall I put it . . . soft?  (Remember “Wishing You Were Here”?  “If You Leave Me Now”?  “Hard to Say I’m Sorry”?  “Look Away”?  They were big hits for Chicago in 1974, 1976, 1982, respectively.)

But the first two albums were anything but soft.  

I played my Chicago II album half to death my freshman year of college.  I never owned their debut album – the eponymous Chicago Transit Authority – which in retrospect is clearly their best.  (For some reason, the Chicago mass-transit agency of the same name sued the band to force them to change that moniker to simply “Chicago” after it was released.)

That first album did OK – it peaked at #17 on the Billboard album chart – but none of the singles from it did much of anything.

After the second album was released and “Make Me Smile” and “25 or 6 to 4” (a real stick of dynamite) were top-ten hits, the group re-released three of the first album’s tracks as singles.  “Questions 67 and 68” and “I’m a Man” (which had been a hit for the Spencer Davis Group) had middling success, but the very truncated single edit of today’s featured song – “Beginnings” – climbed all the way to #7 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in July 1971.

That was more than two years after the Chicago Transit Authority album was released.

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I thought about choosing “I’m a Man” for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME – it is an outstanding track – but I ended up going with “Beginnings” instead.  

That song was written by Chicago’s keyboard player, Robert Lamm, who is also the lead vocalist on “Beginnings.”  Lamm – who wrote most of Chicago’s most well-known songs – shared lead vocalist duties with the band’s bassist, Peter Cetera, and its shockingly good lead guitarist, Terry Kath.  (Jimi Hendrix once told one of Chicago’s horn players that “Your guitar player is better than me.”) 

“Beginnings” fools you – there’s a lot going on in the first part of the song, but there’s no drama, no sturm und drang.  Lamm’s vocals are smooth and effortless, but also quietly ecstatic – I challenge you to name a song from this era whose singer sounds happier and more contented with his current lot in life.

Chicago when they were
still Chicago Transit Authority

Things change about three minutes in, after a brief bass-and-drums break.

Lamm cuts loose, the horns cut loose – Lee Loughnane (trumpet) and James Pankow (trombone) have an instrumental duel that is a wonder to behold – and the percussion gets thicker and deeper.

Critic Charlie Ricci wrote that the middle three minutes of “Beginnings” was one of Chicago’s greatest moments, but I would take things a bit farther and say that it’s the epitome of the band’s recorded work.

The song ends with a percussion-only coda that lasts about a minute and a half.  I think that’s about twice as long as it should have been – had I been sitting in the producer’s chair, I would have started fading the song out quite a bit earlier.  But that’s a very small complaint about a beautifully conceived and executed album track.

As for the three-minute single edit – which cuts out almost all of the wonderful middle section – ay caramba!

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Click here to listen to “Beginnings.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: