Chicago’s tootin’ its own horns again

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, August 24, 2006

Chicago has had a career of two distinctly different and long-running eras.

There is the period that takes in the first dozen or so albums, from 1969’s “Chicago Transit Authority” through “Chicago XIV,” which established the group as a hard-hitting horn-driven band that also ventured into mid-tempo material such as “Saturday in the Park” and ballads (“Colour My World”).

Then there’s the era that began with the 1982 release, “Chicago XVI,” where the band, after a slip in popularity, began to emphasize romantic ballads and found a home on pop radio. Over the next four CDs, the group reeled off one hit ballad after another (such as “Hard Habit to Break,” “You’re the Inspiration” and “Look Away”) and perhaps even surpassed the popularity the group had enjoyed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Especially for horn players Walt Parazaider, Lee Loughnane and James Pankow, however, the success of the ’80s was tempered by the reduced role of their horns in Chicago’s music.

“The ’80s were a tough time for the horns,” Parazaider said in a recent interview. “… We weren’t happy campers.”

But on the new CD, “Chicago XXX” – the group’s first full-fledged studio record since 1991’s “Twenty 1” – there are signs the original sound of Chicago may be reasserting itself.

To be sure, Chicago, whose tour reaches Woodinville today and Saturday, hasn’t abandoned the ballads, and the first half of “Chicago XXX” trots out the kind of ballads that gave Chicago new life in the 1980s.

But midway through the CD, things come alive in a different way. A song that starts out sounding like another ballad, “90 Degrees and Freezing,” picks up tempo and takes off behind one of Chicago’s most imaginative horn arrangements ever. The rest of “XXX” stays punchy with songs that feature full horn arrangements.

Parazaider said he hopes Chicago will emphasize the horns and uptempo material even further on future CDs.

“I would say this is a good start,” Parazaider said.

Def Leppard: Def Leppard has spent the better part of the past two decades trying to explain in interviews that the band has been miscast as a heavy metal act, and its real roots are more in the pop and glam rock era of rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s been a rather futile experience. But with the release of the new covers CD, “Yeah!,” singer Joe Elliott hopes Def Leppard has finally found a way to set the record straight on exactly the kind of music that shaped the group’s sound.

“We’ve gone through a tedious amount of time trying to explain to people that we’re not strictly a heavy metal band,” Elliott said in a recent phone interview.

Whether “Yeah!” will put Def Leppard’s music into what the band members would consider the proper light remains to be seen. But it is notable that not a single heavy metal act is featured on the new CD.

“The one thing we weren’t going to do was make an album of Sabbath, Zeppelin and Deep Purple covers,” Elliott said. “That’s too easy and wrong.”

Instead, “Yeah!” features Def Leppard’s versions of such songs as David Essex’s “Rock On,” the Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset,” Thin Lizzy’s “Don’t Believe a Word,” Badfinger’s “No Matter What,” and the Faces’ “Stay With Me.”

For the vast majority of the 14 songs on “Yeah!” Def Leppard sticks pretty close to the most famous versions of the songs. Elliott said there was an obvious reason for that approach.

“It’s the old cliche, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” he said.

The only criteria in choosing songs for the CD, he said, was that the songs had to come from British acts and had to have been recorded before the end of the 1970s. That’s when the group from Sheffield, England got signed by Mercury Records.

Fans can expect Def Leppard to play a set filled with hits when this summer’s tour, which features Journey as the opening act, reaches Auburn on Thursday.

Chicago performs this weekend in Woodinville.

Def Leppard performs Thursday in Auburn.