Lee Loughnane: Celebs Rumors

Chicago — the soft-rock gods who ruled the ’70s airwaves — almost left one of their definitive hits behind.The year was 1976, the band was working on “Chicago X,” and then-lead singer and bassist Peter Cetera had this one track — “If You Leave Me Now” — he really believed in, even if everybody else needed convincing.“[He] had a hard time getting that song on the album,” founding Chicago member Robert Lamm, 78, told The Post about the Cetera-penned tune that took the troupe of musicians in a radically different direction.“We were rocking and jazzing, and then that song was the softest, most beautiful ballad that you could think of. It went No.

Roy Trakin As the new documentary on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group puts it, Chicago is “The Last Band On-Stage,” marking its 55th anniversary since its founding in the city of the same name in 1967. The feature film is the second about the band from director Peter Curtis Pardini, who also helmed 2016’s “Now More Than Ever: The History of Chicago,” and catches us up on the last six years, the title referring to their 18-month absence due to the pandemic after a final performance on March 14, 2020 at Las Vegas’ Venetian before everything shut down. From the members’ beginnings as part of Windy City cover bands to their incarnation as Chicago Transit Authority on their groundbreaking debut, the band has had 28 different members over the years, with only vocalist/keyboardist Robert Lamm, trumpet player Lee Loughnane and trombonist Jimmy Pankow remaining from that original lineup. Their contemporaries include Joe Mantegna, now the star of TV’s “Criminal Minds,” but then just a member of fellow Chitown cover group the Apocryphals — hence his presence as narrator of the documentary, and moderator of a recent panel hosted by the Grammy Museum in L.A., joining the three band mainstays in front of an audience of adoring fans.