When it was released in January 1970, the second album, instead of featuring a picture of the band on the cover and a title drawn from one of the songs, had the band's distinctive logo on the cover and was called Chicago II. From the start, Chicago took a conceptual approach to the way it was presented to the public. The album covers were overseen by John Berg, the head of the art department at Columbia Records, and Nick Fasciano designed the logo, which has adorned every album cover in the group catalog. "Guercio was insistent upon the logo being the dominant factor in the artwork," says Pankow, even though the artwork varied greatly from cover to cover. Thus, the logo might appear carved into a rough wooden panel, as on Chicago V, or tooled into an elaborate leatherwork design, like Chicago VII, or become a mouth-watering chocolate bar, for the Chicago X cover, which was a Grammy Award winner.

And then there were those sequential album titles. "People always asked why we were numbering our albums," jokes Cetera, "and the reason is, because we always argued about what to call it. 'All right, III, all right, IV!", Actually, the band never attempted to title the albums, feeling that the music spoke for itself.

In commercial terms, the major change that came with Chicago II was that it opened the floodgates on Chicago as a singles band. In October 1969, Columbia had re-tested the waters by releasing "Beginnings" as a single, but AM radio still wasn't interested, and the record failed to chart. All of this changed, however, when the label excerpted two songs, "Make Me Smile" and "Colour My World," from Pankow's ballet and released them as the two sides of a single in March 1970.

"I was driving in my car down Santa Monica Boulevard in L.A.," Pankow remembers, "and I turned the radio on KHJ and 'Make Me Smile' came on. I almost hit the car in front of me, 'cause it's my song, and I'm hearing it on the biggest station in L.A. At that point, I realized, hey, we have a hit single. They don't play you in L.A. unless you're hit-bound. So, that was one of the more exciting moments in my early career."

The single reached the Top 10, while Chicago II immediately went gold and got to Number 4 on the LP's chart, joining the first album, which was still selling well. A second single, Lamm's "25 Or 6 To 4," was an even bigger hit in the summer of '70, peaking at Number 4.

But instead of reaching into the second album for a third single, Columbia and Chicago decided to try to re-stimulate interest in the first album, and succeeded. The group's next single was "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" which became their third Top 10 hit in a row by the start of 1971. "Up to that time, to be very honest, I don't think people were really ready to hear horns the way we were using them," says Parazaider. "But after we established something with horns '25 Or 6 To 4,' but actually 'Make Me Smile,' which was our first bona fide hit it seemed like it broke the ice and it became easier, and they accepted stuff that was recorded easily a year before."

Ironically, Chicago's belated singles success cost the group its "underground" imprimatur. "All of a sudden," Loughnane recalls," people started saying we sold out. The same music! Exactly the same songs!"

As January 1971 rolled around, once again Chicago had found time to record a new double album. "That third album scared us," says Parazaider, "because we basically had run out of the surplus of material that we had, and we were still working a lot on the road. We were afraid that we were getting ready to record a little under the gun. But I don't think it shows." "That whole album was more adventurous in terms of instrumental exploration than the first two albums," says Pankow. "Robert wrote a lot of in-depth stuff."

Cetera also was flexing his muscles as a writer again. "Danny and I had got together one night, and I said, 'I got this little thing that I've been working on,'" he recalls. The result was "Lowdown," which became the second single from Chicago III. (The first was Lamm's "Free.") "I'm still proud of it," Cetera says.

After the singles from Chicago III had run their course, helping the album to its chart peak at Number 2 and its gold record award, Columbia turned back to the first and second albums which were still in the charts, re-releasing as a single "Beginnings" backed by "Colour My World," and then "Questions 67 and 68." "They all become hits," notes Loughnane, "to the point where radio said, 'If you release something off that first album again, we'll never play another one of your records.'"

All of this meant that, with its first three albums, Chicago had reached astonishing popular success. All three double albums were still on the charts throughout 1971, and hits came from each one. But how to top that? In October, Columbia released a lavish four-record box set chronicling the group's week-long stand at Carnegie Hall, the previous April 5-10.

Chicago At Carnegie Hall holds mixed memories for the band members. Cetera feels that all the extra sound equipment inhibited the band's performance. "Within the first two or three songs of the opening night, I'm singing and playing, and all of a sudden the level on my bass drops considerably," Cetera remembers. "I turn around, and there's a roadie out there messing with my knobs. I'm wondering, 'What the hell are you doing?' He goes, 'Well, the sound truck told me to tell you to turn down, and since I couldn't tell you, they told me to go out here and turn you down.' That's kind of what happened all the way along with everybody."

"I hate it," Pankow says. "The acoustics of Carnegie Hall were never meant for amplified music, and the sound of the brass after being miked came out sounding like kazoos." Parazaider, however, notes with pride that the album marks a milestone for the group, that they were the first rock group to sell out Carnegie Hall for a week. "That was an exciting week," adds Lamm, "to actually play in Carnegie Hall."

Lamm got the chance to premiere "A Song For Richard And His Friends," which was to have appeared on Chicago V. April 1971 was a long time before Watergate, and the resignation of a U.S. president was inconceivable, but that didn't stop Lamm from offering a helpful suggestion to Richard M. Nixon. "I love that song," Lamm says, "and later on I did a version of it for my first solo album, Skinny Boy though I didn't end up including it where, in the tag chorus I add the line, 'Thank you, John Dean.' (Dean was the presidential assistant who blew the whistle on Nixon.) I've been told by one of the foremost psychics in Los Angeles that I'm psychic, I just don't know it."

Manager/producer Guercio had to fight Columbia to get the label to release the album, due to its manufacturing cost. He agreed to assume the extra expense if the album didn't sell a million units. The bill never arrived. Chicago At Carnegie Hall went gold out of the box and has since been certified for sales of two million copies. (In fact, according to the current policy of the Record Industry Association of America, that each in a multi-disk set is counted individually, the three-CD album ought to be certified at six million copies.)

"When I listen to some of the Carnegie Hall album, it is really good," says Loughnane. "There's a lot of good material but there's a lot of stuff that I was unhappy with and I didn't think should be released, but that's what it was. There was a history behind that record. The story, the marketing, all of that stuff went into it. The program, the pictures of the building, the diagrams, all of that was part of the charisma, and it worked. But I think we could do great live albums today. I would love to do that"

Though Chicago had made previous visits to Europe and the Far East, it embarked on its first full-scale world tour in February 1972. "We played 16 countries in 20 days," recalls Walt Parazaider. "It's that old movie: If it's Tuesday, it's Belgium. People said, "You went around the world, you played in all those countries." I said, 'Yeah, I remember some of the ceilings in some of the nicest hotels in Europe." But we became an international success, and that was great, because people all over the world really enjoyed our music. And there's nothing more flattering to people who create music than to have somebody singing your song when you're in Germany or Australia or Japan. We marveled at it. We had to pinch ourselves that we were having all the success we were having."

The high point of the tour was in Japan, where Chicago recorded another live album that was so superior to the Carnegie Hall album, there's really no comparison. "The Japanese hooked up two eight-track machines together to make 16 tracks," notes Parazaider. "The quality of the sound was excellent. "The LP was released only in Japan at the time, but it is now available soon on Chicago Records."