Street Player

by Danny Seraphine

  As the five-year term on Chicago’s contract with Guercio came to a close, management approached the band about renewing the agreement. Everyone knew I was going to be the most difficult to persuade out of the group, so they handled me carefully during that time. I asked for a copy of the new contract and had Jay Cooper, a renowned entertainment attorney, scrutinize every line and clause of it. As expected, he said it would not be in the band’s best interest to sign the deal. Not that it was a surprise. We had heard basically the same thing five years earlier.

  There was far too much conflict of interest in the management. It didn’t seem wise to have a business manager, a band manager, and a production company under the same umbrella. There was nobody to answer to because outside counsel wasn’t involved in any of our business transactions. The band was left unprotected. If we weren’t skeptical of the business deals and arrangements, who would be?

  In a way, I was a man without a country, because I had no backing from the rest of the group. Everybody was satisfied musically and financially and didn’t feel there was any reason to disrupt the balance of the business. I, on the other hand, wore my heart on my sleeve. In questioning the fine print of the new contract, I was like a general going into battle without any troops. As everyone knows, you can’t win a war without an army. I was torn because Chicago was riding a massive wave of success. How far was I prepared to push it? The band was more popular than ever and I didn’t mind the checks coming in. What was the alternative? Ultimately, I backed down and once again Chicago signed a five-year contract with Guercio under similar terms. None of us at that point, myself included, was strong enough to challenge anything.

  When the band went back to Caribou Ranch to record our next album, I decided to invite my old friend Pete Schivarelli out to Colorado for a few days. I needed to shake things up a bit and keep the management off balance. Pete and I had reconnected and every now and then spent time out at my house in California. Over the years, he had become an important figure back home in Chicago and had been appointed commissioner of streets and sanitation. He was also still friendly with the likes of Michael and Tony Spilotro and some of the other Colony House crew.

  Whenever I walked into a room with Pete at my side, I felt more confident. The band all knew him from back in Chicago, but I got a kick out of watching the expressions on our management’s faces when they met him. My intention was to stir the pot, and it worked—maybe too well. Howard pulled me aside one afternoon up at Caribou. I was surprised to see he had a genuinely fearful expression.

  “What’s the deal with this guy, Danny?” Howard asked. “We thought you were just kidding around with that talk about the Outfit and the mob. Is this guy for real?”

  “Oh come on, Howard,” I told him.

  To be honest, I knew little about Pete’s situation. I didn’t ask and he didn’t say. So I didn’t have answers to anyone’s questions. All I understood was that nobody ever messed with me when I was with Pete. Nobody. It worked for me when I was a fiery young kid and I figured it might work now. Having him up at Caribou gave me a newfound sense of confidence, and I regained my swagger. The band may have re-signed, but that didn’t mean we needed to feel intimidated in any way and let everything happen around us without giving our input.

  Not only was the band reestablishing our boundaries with management, but we were also reclaiming some of our musical integrity as well. The new album we recorded at Caribou, Chicago VII, turned out to be a welcome return to Chicago’s jazz and R&B roots. The pendulum now swung back after we had concentrated on writing shorter and more focused singles on Chicago V and VI, and we used the opportunity to let our music breathe and stretch out. In the process, I incorporated some of the brush playing I had been studying with legendary jazz drummer Jo Jones, especially on the track “Devil’s Sweet.” Jo had a great influence on my playing over the years; he taught me how to swing. I learned so much about discipline and technique from Jo—for example, to look at the audience and sit up straight when I played. I tried to layer his teachings into our music wherever possible.

  At the same time, Laudir and I created a unique blend of jazz-rock and Brazilian rhythm. It laid a perfect foundation for songs like “Call on Me,” “Mongonucleosis,” and “Happy Man.” Laudir was also the perfect foil for me to solo off of in our live performances. We fit together like hand and glove. With my help, he had become a full-fledged member of the band.

  Peter channeled his inner Beach Boy and contributed his song “Wishing You Were Here” to the record. Guercio had taken over management of the Beach Boys and even arranged to have Al Jardine and Carl and Dennis Wilson sing backup harmonies on the tune.

  The engineer who mixed the album was a talented guy named Phil Ramone, whom the band had previously worked with on recording our CBS television special at Caribou Ranch. The first thing that struck me about Phil was his talent for achieving natural drum sounds. I was setting up my kit early in the recording sessions when he came into the studio.

  “What do you want me to do with my drums?” I asked him. Typically, we would tape napkins to the heads of each drum to deaden the sound.

  “Leave them the way they are,” Phil told me without a second’s pause. “They sound great.”

  It was refreshing to hear, because engineers always had specific ideas about dampening my drums. Phil went for the natural tone.

  Once again, Dick Clark Productions came to Caribou over the course of recording to shoot a CBS television special called Meanwhile Back at the Ranch. As the band tore through hits like “25 or 6 to 4” and “Just You ’N’ Me,” the TV crew edited in cutaway footage of us hanging out at the ranch: Terry speeding across a field on a motorcycle, Laudir and his son fishing by a stream, and Lee standing next to a horse eating a whole watermelon, for some reason. We definitely hammed it up for the camera. There was even a long sequence of me riding a horse in slow motion across the property (to get that over-the-top dramatic effect). What they never showed on television was me falling off my horse at breakneck speed. He got spooked because of the production crew’s lighting reflector, and he bucked me right off. Everybody held their breath to see if I would get up, and Guercio’s father, Jim Sr., came running up and helped me to my feet. Even though every bone in my body hurt, I still reshot the scene. After that nasty spill, Jim Sr. gave me the nickname of “Paisano cowboy.” That was our riff together every time we saw each other.

  After our stint at the ranch, Chicago set out on a national tour with the Beach Boys, who were reviving their career in a major way with Guercio’s help. In the summer of 1974, the guys released a double album of all their early hits. The record, Endless Summer, ended up going to No. 1 on the Billboard chart. It was the Beach Boys’ first gold record since Good Vibrations.

  I spent a good amount of time hanging out with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson on the road. The ladies absolutely loved him. He behaved like a teenager trapped in a forty-year-old body—crazy and unpredictable. I couldn’t believe the circus atmosphere that surrounded the Beach Boys. They made Chicago look like the Brady Bunch.

  Just when we thought it couldn’t get any bigger, we started playing baseball parks and football stadiums. The Beach Boys killed onstage every night. They did all their hits—“Good Vibrations,” “California Girls,” “Surfin’ USA”—and every now and then I even joined them onstage to play on “Darlin’ ” and “Sail On, Sailor.”

  After our show at Chicago Stadium, I invited my sister Rosemary backstage and introduced her to the Beach Boys. In the years since I had left Chicago, Rosemary had gotten married and moved to the beautiful suburb of North Barrington, Illinois. She had always been a huge fan of their music, so her face was absolutely beaming when she met the band. As I watched my sister talking with the Beach Boys, I felt so blessed that I had the ability to give her such a great gift.

  11

  New B.Ginnings

  As the money continued to pour in for Chicago, Howard tried to keep a watch over the band to ens
ure that we didn’t fall into making poor business decisions. We worked hard for our money, and he didn’t want to see us piss it all away. Bobby had opened a high-end boutique with his wife off of Melrose Avenue called Zazou. It was directly across the street from Chicago’s management office, so it became a regular hangout for everyone. Terry had started a company called Pignose Amplifiers, which he got the rest of us to invest in as well.

  Even with Howard’s supervision, we still managed to make a few mistakes. The band invested in an oil well that turned out to be nothing more than a dry hole in the middle of a field. I loaned money to people who I never saw again. At one point, I invested in my childhood friend Rick Bracamontes’s retail clothing store, Peabody’s Rock & Roll Boutique, which carried wild and flashy clothing. Unfortunately, once the fashion trends started to change the store struggled to adjust and went under.

  That being said, not all of my ventures were busts. In late 1974, Rick put me in touch with his brother, John, who had an idea to open a nightclub called B.Ginnings in the suburbs of Chicago. John came up with the name, which was a throwback to Bobby’s song “Beginnings” off the first CTA album. I was interested in the concept from the start and couldn’t wait to invest in the twelve-hundred-seat nightclub out in Schaumburg, Illinois. Howard wasn’t thrilled with my $150,000 contribution, but I wasn’t going to let any doubts he had change my mind. I was dead set on opening a musical showcase nightclub where bands would be excited to play. If we were going to do the project, we were going to make sure it was done right. It was important to separate B.Ginnings from the dive bars and dead-end clubs the Missing Links and the Big Thing played while coming up on the Chicago music scene. I wanted it to be seen as the gold standard of rock clubs in the area.

  John and I had specific ideas on the interior design of the place and thought it should resemble the Chicago streets we spent so much of my youth hanging out on. We hired set builders who brought in actual street signs, stoplights, and even train tracks to create a three-dimensional mural along the wall of the dance floor. The decor gave the main ballroom an authentic feel and a unique identity. We installed an oversized stage with state-of-the-art monitors and lights and also outfitted the place with the best sound system money could buy.

  I was grateful for the success Chicago had achieved and wanted to return the favor. It was only right to give something back to the new generation of musicians paying their dues. As I thought back on my years gigging in run-down bars, one thing that stood out in my mind was how much I hated the tiny backstage areas and dingy dressing rooms. Most of the time, bands were forced to change in dirty men’s bathrooms and musty coat closets. I wasn’t going to let that be the case in my club. I designed an enormous backstage area and deluxe dressing rooms with all the amenities a band could want, like showers and vanity mirrors. Hell, there was even cold beer on tap.

  Two weeks before the club was set to open, I flew back to Chicago from Los Angeles to check on the status of the construction. From the second I laid eyes on the place, I was in awe of what the builders had managed to pull off. The scenic artists we brought in to work on the Chicago-themed skyline wall had gone above and beyond what we envisioned. I couldn’t wait for people to see it. But it was a different story when I went backstage to check out the dressing rooms. They were half the size the builder and I had agreed upon. This was the one element of the club that had to be exactly the way I wanted. When I asked what had happened, John told me they had decided to make the other half of the dressing room area into a space for more liquor storage. Well, there was no way I was going along with that. I had them immediately change it back to the original plans. There was going to be nothing less than complete comfort for the musicians in my club. There were plenty of other places to store booze.

  Without giving it a second thought, my bandmates agreed to perform on back-to-back nights for the grand opening of B.Ginnings. For business reasons, the band got paid a dollar a night. It was the lowest-paying gig we ever had, but nobody cared about that. The guys playing at the club was the definition of what our brotherhood was all about. I don’t think they knew how much the gesture deeply touched me. Where I come from, loyalty ran deeper than anything—when somebody did something good for you, you never forgot it. Conversely, when someone did something bad to you, you never forgot it either. The Italians called it a debt of honor, and it was serious stuff. If you didn’t have loyalty, you didn’t have anything. The guys understood how much effort I had invested in the club and they came through big time. From that point on, there was no question that their friends became my friends and their enemies became my enemies.

  The club went above and beyond my expectations on so many different levels, but there was one thing working against it: location. The suburb of Schaumburg was nearly an hour’s drive out of downtown Chicago and there wasn’t access to any public transportation. From the start, the club relied on the draw of the nightly talent to bring in a crowd. We turned the booking duties over to a company called Jam Productions, run by a couple of guys named Arny Granite and Jerry Mickelson. They did a wonderful job bringing in up-and-coming acts like AC/DC, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Billy Joel. Besides the headliners, other regional bands were also booked in support. In all, the plan seemed to be working, because people were showing up.

  The club quickly became popular, but it didn’t turn out to be an immediate financial success. Despite the packed house night after night, I wasn’t seeing any return on my investment. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I decided to bring in Pete to check out the club on a busy Friday night. If anyone was familiar with Chicago nightlife and running a cash business, it was Pete. He would give me an honest opinion of the place. As I gave him a full tour of the offices, backstage, and bar areas, he nodded in appreciation of the work that had been done. It felt reassuring to see he was pleased with how B.Ginnings had turned out. At the end of the night, we walked into the back parking lot to get some fresh air.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked him, smiling. “Pretty nice joint, huh?”

  “Yeah, you’ve done good, Danny,” Pete told me. “But guess what? You got about fifty partners in there.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I wasn’t sure where his train of thought was going.

  “Every bartender and waitress in the place is stealing from you,” he said, gesturing back toward the building. “The whole joint.”

  I didn’t want to believe it, but Pete was giving it to me straight. As a street guy, he knew the ins and outs of every scam in the book. If he thought he spotted something going on, I was in no position to doubt him. Pete made it sound so obvious that I was embarrassed I hadn’t picked up on it myself. My other partners had been either too incompetent to see what had been going on since the opening of the club or were somehow in on it.

  It might have been a little drastic, but I forced every one of the club’s employees to take a lie detector test. Man, were they pissed! In the end, only two people out of the entire staff passed and we had to bring in a new crew of bartenders and waitresses. But I made my point. Everyone knew the free-for-all was over.

  I bought my partners out of their shares of the club and took over complete control of B.Ginnings. Although the move put an enormous strain on my longtime friendship with Rick, it was also an essential business decision that had to be made in order for the club to survive. I brought Pete in to manage the club, and lo and behold, we immediately started turning a profit. With Pete on-site, the days of employees skimming cash from the registers were a thing of the past. He kept me updated on the status of the club and also hired a friend of ours from the old neighborhood named Dino Coletis to manage the place on a daily basis. (Ironically, Dino was from the rival Bell Park gang that beat up Tom Padula and me back on that front lawn by Lindy’s Coffee Shop.) Within the next year, there was a full return on my initial investment. I couldn’t have been more thrilled, and even Howard, who was skeptical from the beginning, was impressed with the success of the
club.

  Although they did a great job running the place, I gave Pete and the promoters from Jam Productions a lot of flack because I wasn’t into many of the rock acts they booked. I had always been more of a jazz-fusion guy and Jam Productions brought in up-and-coming performers I had never heard of. When I caught wind that they had booked a group named Cheap Trick to be B.Ginnings’s house band, I wasn’t thrilled.

  “Who the hell is this Cheap Trick band?” I asked Pete. I was constantly breaking his balls. “We should be booking Buddy Rich in the place, not Cheap Trick,” I told him. Since I had the final say, everyone humored me, but my tastes weren’t exactly in tune with what the audiences wanted to see. It was a good thing Jam Productions worked with us, because if I had had my way with booking, the joint would have gone under in six months!

  After Pete and I reconnected out at Caribou Ranch and he started running the nightclub for me, there was a dramatic change in my life. I felt a newfound respect and sense of power. Back in Hollywood, word spread fast about the guys we had grown up with in the old neighborhood like the Spilotro brothers, Jimmy Leonetti, and Joey Lombardo. All of my business contacts knew where I came from and the people I had connections with. Just the suggestion of underworld pull did the trick.

  Power attracts power. Entertainment executives want to be gangsters and gangsters want to be entertainment executives. It was nothing new. Show business has operated like that since the beginning. The Italian Mafia and the Outfit had another name—the Cosa Nostra. Well, the guys and I thought the mostly Jewish entertainment executives in Hollywood had their own type of crime syndicate behind the scenes—we called it the Kosher Nostra.