In the fall of 1981, Chicago asked Bill Champlin, a noted Los Angeles session singer and musician, to join them. "They needed a little bit of guitar work," says Champlin, "and they needed somebody to sing Terry's stuff." "Bill might come the closest to Terry's gutsy lead vocals," says Parazaider.

Champlin had had a long career already. Born on May 21, 1947, in Oakland, he grew up in various California cities, settling in Marin County north of San Francisco when he was l2. Champlin's mother played the piano and wrote songs, and he took piano lessons between the ages of three and five. "I was reading music before I was reading English," he recalls. But it wasn't until the advent of Elvis Presley and early rock 'n' roll that he took up the guitar and began to think of music as a future profession. "I'd had enough early training with piano that it wasn't really hard for me to get back into it," he notes, "and then I took a million music classes in high school. I was trying to learn as many instruments as I could because I wanted to get a masters in music."

While in high school, Champlin was part of the Opposite Six, a band with two horns that played James Brown-style R&B. "We were the house band at this one community center," be says, "so we backed up a lot of the acts that they brought in, like Jan and Dean and the Righteous Brothers."

The Opposite Six evolved into the Sons of Champlin, which released a single on Verve in 1965. Champlin was attending the College of Marin in pursuit of a music degree at the same time, when he got some good advice. "My theory teacher, Larry Snyder, suggested that I drop out because he said I was doing better music with my band than I was ever going to do in school," Champlin recalls.

The Sons of Champlin became one of the original San Francisco rock groups of the 1960's, releasing seven albums, though they never became a major commercial success. Champlin quit the band and moved to Los Angeles in 1977, where he began doing session work. Also a songwriter, he co-wrote "After The Love Has Gone," which was a hit for Earth, Wind & Fire and a Grammy R&B Song of the Year. He would win a second R&B Song of the Year Grammy for co-writing "Turn Your Love Around," which became a hit for George Benson just after be joined Chicago.

Champlin had worked closely with Canadian producer and songwriter David Foster, whose other clients had included Hall and Oates and the Average White Band. "A lot of people think Foster brought me into Chicago," Champlin notes, "and it's the other way around, I actually brought Foster into Chicago." Champlin knew Danny Seraphine, and Seraphine went to him for advice about Foster, who had been considered as a possible producer for the 14th album before the job went to Tom Dowd and was now being considered for the 16th album. "Danny called me and said, 'What do you think of David Foster as a producer?'," Champlin recalls. "I said, 'You'll probably end up rewriting a lot, but I think Foster would be great for you guys."

As Champlin had predicted, David Foster took a strong hand in the making of Chicago l6, co-writing eight of the album's ten songs, including "Hard To Say I'm Sorry," which became a worldwide Number 1 single when the album was released by Full Moon/Warner Bros. Records in June 1982. The album went into the Top Ten and sold a million copies.

"We had a resurgence then," remembers Parazaider. "I had a kid come up to me and say, 'I have your first record, would you mind signing it?' This was somewhere in North Carolina. We were going on-stage, and I told her I would sign it after the show. And what she had was the Chicago l6 album. She had no idea about the others that came before it. The reality hit, we had gained another generation."

"It was a new career for us again," says Loughnane, "and I think also Warner Bros. liked being able to sell something that Columbia said wasn't going to be able to go. That kind of competition could only benefit us because they would work harder to make their company look better than the other company."

The next Chicago-Foster project, Chicago 17, released in May 1984, became the band's greatest seller. Such hits as "Stay The Night," "Hard Habit To Break," "You're The Inspiration," and "Along Comes A Woman" propelled the album past the six million mark and reaffirmed Chicago's status as one of America's top bands. They once again played sold-out concerts in North America and Asia. "We had a great time playing the big time again," says Loughnane. "It was the second big wave. People would give their eye teeth for the first amount of success that we had in the '70s, and to be able to do it for the second time is a major milestone in the history of rock 'n' roll as well as our history. Not too many people have had this opportunity, and we had a lot of fun with it."

But Chicago's renewed success presaged a new challenge when Peter Cetera, whose singing and songwriting on a series of romantic ballads had fueled that popularity, decided to leave the group and launch a solo career after the summer 1985 tour. In an ironic twist, however, the beginning of his new solo act would lead to the successor who helped Chicago maintain and extend its success. "When Peter left, he stayed with Warner Bros.," explains Jason Scheff. "I had just signed a song publishing deal, and Michael Ostin at Warner Bros. called over to my publisher and said, "Do you have any songs for Peter's solo album and/or someone to collaborate with him for the album?' They said, 'Yeah, we just signed this new kid.' So, they sent the demos of the first three songs that I'd brought in, and the story that I have always heard is that Michael heard the voice and said, 'Wait a minute, this could be the guy we're looking for to replace Peter in Chicago.' I didn't know this was going on. I just got a phone call one day saying, 'We have heard your tape, and we think that you could be the guy to replace Cetera in Chicago.' It was a pretty amazing phone call to get, at 23 years old."

Scheff was being asked to join the band on the basis of his tenor singing voice. Though he is the son of the legendary bass player Jerry Scheff, who backed Elvis Presley and has played with countless other musicians, nobody seems to have made the connection to the instrumental hole that Cetera's departure also left. Howard Kaufman, the manager, asked me, 'What instrument do you play?' I said, 'I'm a bass player,' and he freaked out," Scheff recalls. "He said, 'Oh, my God! This sounds like a match made in heaven."

Growing up in San Diego, Scheff didn't see much of his father, since his parents had divorced when he was young. But when he picked up an instrument, he could feel the connection. "Playing the base was very natural for me, so I knew that it was a gift that he had given me genetically," he says. Scheff's mother is also a musician, and the two had a bond together when he was 14. As he went through his teens, Scheff played in local Top 40 bands, and his first break came when he was 19 and Peter Wolf (the record producer, not the ex-J. Geils Band singer), who would later produce Chicago, hired him for his band, which opened for the Rolling Stones in Vienna in 1982. Back in L.A., he continued to write songs and perform on recording sessions. But being asked to join Chicago was the biggest break of his short career. It was also, he says, "the last thing that I would have imagined." With Scheff in place, Chicago went into the studio with David Foster to make Chicago 18. The album emerged at the end of September 1986 as the band took to the road for a fall tour to introduce the new member.

Chicago 18 proved to be a gold-selling success, and Scheff's acceptance by fans was cemented with the Top Ten status of the single "Will You Still Love Me?," on which he sang lead. It was the hit that finally convinced him that he belonged. "When I first joined the band, they put all of their confidence in me and never looked back," he says. "They invested in me as the future of the franchise. There were a lot of people who were skeptical. 'Will You Still Love Me?' was a big hit, and then I finally felt comfortable that I was in."

The next hurdle, Scheff notes, was to keep that success going. Working with producers Chas Sandford and Ron Nevison, Chicago recorded 19, released in June 1988. The album yielded three Top 10 hits, with "Look Away" becoming the fastest rising single in the band's history and hitting Number 1. It was, Loughnane notes, the first Chicago hit single in a long time not to be a ballad sung in a tenor voice; Bill Champlin sang lead. That should have broken the radio demand for ballads and allowed the band greater musical flexibility. Instead, says Loughnane, "People still didn't understand that that was Chicago! We would play that song live in concert, and you could see people going, 'what are they doing that song for? I didn't know they did this song. My God, that is them!' It didn't really translate to Chicago because of what had been."

"We had come to the tail end of this long great run that was really dominated by pop ballad songs," notes Scheff, "and coupled with that was the fact that two of the singles on 19 ("Look Away" and "I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love") were not even written by us . "The songs were written by Diane Warren, perhaps the most successful pop songwriter of the day. "Granted, we had two big hit singles that were really good for us because they helped give us a platinum album again and establish Bill Champlin more as a focal point. That was very good for us," Scheff acknowledges, but he notes that the songs did not have Chicago's individual signature.

In the summer of 1989, the Beach Boys and Chicago joined forces once again for a memorable tour. Also, two greatest hits albums were released simultaneously in the U.S., Greatest Hits 1982-89 (counted as the 20th album), and in Europe, The Heart of Chicago, which contained hits from both the Columbia and Warner years. The band entered the current decade with another hit single, Jason Scheff's "What Kind Of Man Would I Be," originally released on 19 and included on the new hits collection. This gave Chicago hit records in four consecutive decades.