Chicago XI, released on September 12, 1977, is best remembered today for its Grammy-winning No. 4 smash “Baby, What a Big Surprise” — or, for those who followed Chicago more closely, as the final album to feature the late guitarist Terry Kath.
For those willing to dig more deeply, however, there is “Take Me Back to Chicago,” one of this studio effort’s too-often-overlooked gems. Co-written by drummer Danny Seraphine with Hawk Wolinski of Rufus fame, and sung with such burgeoning emotion by Chicago’s Robert Lamm, the track was inspired by a late friend of Seraphine’s named Fred Pappalardo.
Pappalardo, who used the stage name Fred Page as a drummer with the band Illinois Speed Press, shared Chicago connections in manager James William Guercio and label Columbia. That only deepened his friendship with Danny Seraphine. Unfortunately, Pappalardo later became gravely ill. What happened next put everything in perspective for Seraphine.
“This was after we had made it; we were selling out arenas,” Danny Seraphine tells us in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “A dear friend of mine called me and said: ‘Danny, Fred is pretty sick. He’d like to see you.’ I was just about to go on a tour; we were leaving in two days. I said, ‘I’ll come by after I get back.’ He said: ‘Danny, he might not be here when you get back.’ I said: ‘OK, I’ll be right over.’ He was in a ward, and we talked. It was tearful, very tearful. I knew I was saying goodbye to him, basically. I thanked him for being such a friend.”
Then, it was time to go and, in that moment, Danny Seraphine found the inspiration for a song that would eventually become a long-ago No. 63 charter for Chicago.
“A nurse came in and said she was going to put him on a bed pan, and he asked me to leave because he didn’t want me to remember me like that,” Seraphine tells us. “That’s where the line ‘remember me at my best’ comes from. That really stuck with me; it really haunted me. One night, I woke up and I just wrote down these lyrics. That became ‘Take Me Back to Chicago.'”
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During a period of time when many looked upon the original band to be in a state of decline (including me) this whole album was an unexpected and excellent return to form. Chicago hadn’t done anything this original in a long time. What starts out as a conventional pop-rock, adult-contemporary song with Lamm’s pseudo-lounge lizard vocals enjoys a whole new dimension when Chaka Khan takes over and owns the song. It’s one of the great all time Chicago moments. There is not a wasted note on this song. If it was Danny’s idea all I can say is BRAVO!
I absolutely love this song – I agree its an overlooked and underrated gem in Chicago’s library.