Song of the Day 2/18: Chicago, “25 or 6 to 4”

In the late ’60s and into the ’70s, Mt. Pleasant High School would annually book a national-level band for a concert. Fifty years ago tonight the school played host to Chicago, back when the group was still a rock band with horns. The band’s second album, the first to use its truncated name (the real Chicago Transit Authority threatened a lawsuit after their first album), had come out a month earlier, and would be certified gold by April, so they had plenty of material, but I could not find any record of what they played. So if anyone remembers the concert, leave it in the comments. This tune, released later that year as a single that reached No. 4, was surely on the set list.

The song’s title, long the subject of rumors about drugs and coded messages, is actually literal. Chicago’s producer, James William Guercio, was a real piece of work. Not only did he keep 50% of the band’s earnings for many years, leaving the nine musicians to split the other half, he worked his charges like rented mules, demanding they record double LPs on each of their first three albums. Robert Lamm supposedly composed this one because they needed one more song to fill out the album. He couldn’t think of anything to write, so he wrote about sitting awake with writer’s block in the middle of the night. It’s all right there in the lyrics, yet the tune was banned in Singapore for decades for its supposed drug references.