Still such a going concern that they’re playing three nights at the Hollywood Bowl in September this year, Chicago claim to have sold 100 million records, including five million of 1975’s Chicago IX: Greatest Hits, their fifth successive US chart topper. Half a century on, the band’s biggest seller has been expanded from 11 to 21 tracks, which advances the story to 1980, although there are three Steven Wilson remixes from 2017.
They were so much of their time that 1971’s Chicago IV: At Carnegie Hall was a three-hour, four-LP live set. Even so they swiftly evolved from their inchoate jazz, soul, psychedelic, brassy, hippy melange into accomplished balladeers. They had neither a frontman (most members seemed to have a bash at lead vocals) nor a dominant songwriter, and they were as promotion-resistant as Pink Floyd or Daft Punk, defining themselves by their distinctive logo and titling albums with Roman numerals (2022’s XXXVIII being the most recent).
