On one level, “Caroline” represents everything that’s wrong with 2006’s Chicago XXX, as the band brings in another outside songwriter to try to right its flagging creative ship.
Gone were the days when Chicago worked as its own hermetically sealed musical unit, composing and playing their way to jazz-rock brilliance. This wasn’t, however, exactly big news anymore.
Credit (or blame) producer Jay DeMarcus, who professed superfandom for the group but clearly understood their current limitations. He dotted the album with composing ringers and well-heeled sidemen, including Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots and two former Toto singers.
Along the way, a dormant group finally found their way back to music. “Caroline” co-writer Jason Scheff admitted that Chicago might otherwise have never returned to the studio.
“My growing relationship with the band Rascal Flatts, and particularly Jay DeMarcus, provided the spark to light the flame to get us back into the studio after what, 16 years?” Scheff later remembered. “Another thing I’m incredibly proud of: That unproven kid they took a chance on had grown and developed relationships to set the table for a project like this.”
One of those relationships was with Chas Sandford, who’d had huge earlier successes with John Waite’s “Missing You” and Stevie Nicks’ “Talk to Me.” “Caroline” was the first of four Sandford co-writes on Chicago XXX, but it wasn’t his first intersection with Jason Scheff. Sandford produced a portion of 1988’s Chicago 19 and co-wrote “What Kind of Man Would I Be?” – their most recent Top 5 Billboard hit single.
“Caroline” also marked the belated arrival of co-vocalist Bill Champlin, a critical voice – both creatively and as a performer – that hadn’t been featured on this album’s first two tracks. He couldn’t push “Caroline” to the heights once reached on 1982’s Chicago 16, or even 1986’s Chicago 18, but he added a bit of badly needed grit to the proceedings – and the vocal blend with Scheff simply soars.
Champlin’s signature original contributions to Chicago XXX – four co-written songs, including the succeeding “Why Can’t We” – were still to come. Unfortunately, they’d be his last, as Champlin and Chicago would part ways in 2009. Scheff followed him out the door in 2016.
By then Scheff had come to think of Bill Champlin’s shared vocal performances with the band’s resident tenor vocalists – first Peter Cetera and then Scheff himself – as a defining element of their modern sound. “Caroline,” no matter who wrote it, makes the point all over again.
“When you think of it, the sound of Chicago in the ’70s was an incredible mixture of Robert Lamm, Peter Cetera and Terry Kath vocally – those were the sound of those records. They did the background vocals together and it was absolutely amazing!” Scheff argued. “But for me? There’s one guy. If you hear me on the radio, if you know what I do as a singer, as an artist – it’s with one guy and one guy only. Bill Champlin.”
Scheff hoped to ride the creative high created by Chicago XXX directly into a companion solo project with Jay DeMarcus, but the album sat on the shelf for more than a decade. That is, until Champlin stopped by and everything came full circle once more. Suddenly, Here I Am was completed.
“I’ve had an incredible part of my life spent with Bill Champlin,” Scheff said. “We’ve not only contributed to the most successful part of Chicago’s hit-making history, but pop music in general. If that’s our only time together, that’s good enough. I can look at that period with pride and love for an incredible season. But I realized it’s not over.”
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