Bill Champlin leaves Chicago, goes solo with music
Not the city. The band.
After 28 years with the classic jazz-rock ensemble, the singer-keyboardist-guitarist simply tired of playing other people’s songs every night. Tunes such as "Saturday in the Park” and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” just weren’t his cup of cool.
The soulful, Hammond organ-driven funk of "Total Control” and the bluesy jamming of "Tuggin’ on Your Sleeve,” from his new solo album "No Place Left to Fall,” reveal a decidedly different musical sensibility.
When Champlin called from Santa Barbara, Calif., recently, the first question one had to ask was why so long since his last solo outing, "He Started to Sing” (1995)?
"I really just got busy with pretty much a slew of Chicago gigs and haven’t really had a chance to do my own music for a long time,” said Champlin, 62, who announced his departure from the band Aug. 17, less than a week before Chicago played a scheduled show with Earth, Wind and Fire at Oklahoma City’s Zoo Amphitheatre.
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"You don’t get a chance to do much but pretty much the same thing over and over again with any band like Chicago for the most part,” he said, although his contributions to that band have been anything but negligible.
He was featured singing several songs on "Chicago 16,” including "Bad Advice” and "Follow Me.” 1984’s "Chicago 17” had the Champlin compositions "Please Hold On” and "Remember the Feeling,” and he sang with Peter Cetera on the hit single "Hard Habit to Break.”
In 1988, Champlin sang on the hit singles "Look Away,” "I Don’t Wanna Live Without Your Love” and "You’re Not Alone” from "Chicago 19.” He wrote, produced and sang lead on "Hearts in Trouble,” a Chicago song for the film "Days of Thunder.”
And most recently, he co-wrote four tracks on the band’s 2006 album "Chicago XXX.”
"I’ve sung four or five tunes for ’em,” the Oakland, Calif., native said modestly.
Champlin began work on "No Place Left to Fall” during a break in touring two years ago, gathering a band of friends and family including guitarist Bruce Gaitsch (Madonna), bassist George Hawkins Jr. (John Fogerty), drummer Billy Ward (B.B. King), wife and sometime co-writer Tamara Champlin on vocals and son Will Champlin on vocals and Wurlitzer electric piano.
Recording was done at the Barber Shop Studios, an old converted church building in Hopatcong, N.J., and Champlin had to choose from about four dozen songs he had accumulated over the past decade.
"Yeah, we had to kind of listen to all the stuff I had,” he said. "Originally I wanted to do a kind of a real offshoot bluesy album. And the guys at Dreammakers Music (Champlin’s label) just went, ‘Dude, you’ve got all kinds of music. Why don’t you record it, do a lot of different kinds of stuff, and go in a lot of different directions.’”
That was the kind of meandering stylistic path Champlin followed when he first rose to prominence as the leader of the Sons of Champlin in the latter days of San Francisco’s late-’60s psychedelic scene. What set that band apart from other Bay Area acts of the day was a prominent horn section and complex song structures.
Then, as now, Champlin’s soul influences were very much in evidence.
"When I was a kid, I think Lou Rawls, maybe, obviously Ray Charles,” Champlin said. "You listen to Ray or Aretha (Franklin) or something, and you just go, ‘Wow, this is not even music. This is a primal force.’ And somewhere along the line, I really discovered Lou Rawls, and I was kind of able to sort of break his vocals down into a style. He’s so good at back-phrasing things. Just the phrasing, I’ve always thought Lou was one of the best, one of the best singers ever.
"I used to come home from school and just play those ‘Black & Blue’ and ‘Tobacco Road’ albums just over and over again and just really study him, you know?”
Judging from the consistently high quality of Champlin’s work — in and out of Chicago and the Sons of Champlin — he obviously learned his lessons well.
