Chicago Chicago's heyday
 The band's popularity exploded with the release of their second album, another double-LP set, which included several top-40 hits. This second album, titled Chicago (also known as Chicago II), was the group's breakthrough album. The centerpiece track was a thirteen-minute suite composed by James Pankow called Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon (the structure of this suite was inspired by Pankow's love for classical music). The suite yielded two top ten hits, the crescendo-filled Make Me Smile and prom-ready ballad Colour My World, both sung soulfully by Terry Kath. Among the other popular tracks on the album: Robert Lamm's dynamic but cryptic wah-wah-buttressed 25 or 6 to 4 (sung by Peter Cetera), and the lengthy war protest song It Better End Soon. With that, the pattern had been set: the band, ever prolific, recorded and released music at a rate of more than two LP discs per year from their third album in 1971 through the 1970s. During this period, the group's album titles invariably consisted of the band's name followed by a Roman numeral indicating the the album's sequence in the group's canon, a naming pattern that lent an encyclopedic aura to the band's work. (The two exceptions to this scheme were the band's fourth album, a live boxed set entitled Chicago at Carnegie Hall and their twelfth album Hot Streets. While the live album, itself, did not bear a number, each of the four discs within the set was numbered Volumes I through IV.)
In 1971, Chicago released the ambitious quadruple-album live set, Chicago at Carnegie Hall Volumes I, II, III, and IV, consisting of live performances, mostly of music from their first three albums, from a week-long run at the famous venue (along with the James Gang in 1969, one of the few rock bands to play the historic concert hall since the Beatles performed there on February 12, 1964). The performances and sound quality were judged sub-par; in fact, one group member went on record to say that the horn section sounded like kazoos. The packaging of the album also contained some rather strident political messaging about how We [youth] can change The System, including massive wall posters and voter registration information. Nevertheless, Chicago at Carnegie Hall went on to become the best-selling box set by a rock act, and held that distinction for 15 years.
The group bounced back in 1972 with their first single-disc release, Chicago V, a diverse set that reached number one on both the Billboard pop and jazz albums charts and yielded the Robert Lamm-composed-and-sung radio hit and perennial fan favorite Saturday in the Park, which mixed everyday life and political yearning in a more subtle way. Chicago would long open their concerts with the hit song.
In 1973 the group's manager, Guercio, produced and directed Electra Glide in Blue, a movie about an Arizona motorcycle policeman. The movie starred Robert Blake, and featured Cetera, Kath, Loughnane, and Parazaider in supporting roles. The group also appeared prominently on the movie's soundtrack.
Percussionist Guille Garcia, (Captain Beyond, Rolling Stones, Manassas, etc.) also appears in Electra Glide in Blue in addition to playing congas on the song Byblos from the Chicago VII album.
Other successful albums and singles followed in each of the succeeding years. 1973's Chicago VI topped the charts buoyed by hits Feelin' Stronger Every Day and Just You 'N' Me; it was also the first of several albums to include Brazilian jazz percussionist Laudir DeOliveira. Chicago VII, the band's double-disc 1974 release, featured the Cetera-composed Wishing You Were Here, sung by Terry Kath with background vocals by Cetera and The Beach Boys and some fusion jazz. Chicago VII also provided one of the group's enduring signature tunes, the anthemic (I've Been) Searchin' So Long, which started with as a soft ballad and culminated in a hard-rock conclusion featuring Terry Kath's electric guitar soloing against the Chicago horn section. Happy Man, another song from Chicago VII, was also a popular favorite on FM radio. Their 1975 release, Chicago VIII, featured the political allegory Harry Truman and the nostalgic Pankow-composed Old Days. That summer also saw a very successful joint tour across America with The Beach Boys, with each act performing some of the other's material. The concert at the time was considered one of the highest grossing of all time.
Chicago gave a concert in M?xico City in 1975 at the Auditorio Nacional highly appreciated by the attendants in spite of the fact that the Mexican press later reviewed it not as one of the band’s best concerts ever presumably for not being 'in good shape'. The tickets for the concert sold so fast that thousands of people were not able to get in, so Terry Kath asked those inside to applaud for those standing outside. Carmen Romano de L?pez Portillo, the wife of M?xico's then-President Jos? L?pez Portillo, is said to have been among the attendants, on the first row. [citation needed]
But for all their effort, none of their singles went to number one until Chicago X in 1976, when Cetera's slow, exquisite ballad If You Leave Me Now climbed to the top of the charts. The song also won Chicago their only Grammy award, for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group in 1977. Ironically, the tune almost did not make the cut for the album; If You Leave Me Now was recorded at the very last minute. The huge success of the song would foreshadow a later reliance on ballads that would typecast the group on radio, despite the presence of ballads on all the previous albums. The group's 1977 release, Chicago XI, was another big success for the band; it included Cetera's hit ballad Baby, What a Big Surprise which became one of the group's last big hits of the decade.
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