Or: Does anybody really know what band it is? Does anybody really care?

Chicago – Fireworks Finale – 14 September 2025, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA

I literally started writing this four weeks before I saw this show, because I knew what I was setting myself up for, and I just wanted to get the heading and central remarks in place, so it might not be so painful when I came to write about the absolute final time I ever saw Chicago in concert.

That was last night, so I am finishing this piece today.

Before last night, my most recent Chicago concert had been in March 2023, a frustrating one, as I missed the first 30 minutes because the person I was with got the start time wrong and I was foolish enough to trust someone for whom that did not matter. I spent the intermission running around to see if anyone could fill me in on the songs I had missed, because I had hoped they might play songs off their newish album. Most people I asked admitted they didn’t even know the names of the songs, new or old. Incredulous, I wanted to ask, WTF were they even doing there?

But I just swallowed and accepted that so many people are so clueless these days, and that, sadly, is what a band like Chicago and its management are counting on. The cluelessness of ticket-buyers who believe that if the official Chicago logo is projected on the back screen, then they are watching the Chicago that can officially play the songs the band is known for.

It’s a con, but it’s how things have been for some time and it brings me to last night’s performance. They are basically now a tribute band, but they are completely sanctioned by Chicago Inc. to do it, and whether there are just one, or maybe two original Chicago members on any stage Chicago plays on, charging high prices for a less than diluted version of an iconic band is misrepresentation. They are not the only band to do it, but they are doing it somewhat disingenuously.

This is not the Eagles with co-founder and lead singer Don Henley alongside two classic-era members (Walsh, Schmit), who were intrinsic in the 1970s and still are. Or Queen with Brian May and Roger Taylor and a magnificent, charismatic singer (Lambert) who talks about Freddie Mercury and pays homage to him constantly. No, what we have with Chicago is a band that has insisted that no one is irreplaceable and then duly replaced members without any explanation, time and time again, constantly testing their fans’ loyalty. Chicago was, a long time ago, a 7-piece lineup, then added percussion, then extra keyboards, and now there are 11 featured members on their website, three of whom are founding members, only one of whom is reliably on stage at each concert. Lee Loughnane, superb trumpet player, sweet guy, heart always on his sleeve, better off not singing a lead vocal, has waited a long, long time to become the leader of this band. He’s done it through being the last man standing, being passionately invested in taking on the task of band archivist, building a studio for them to record in, and by being willing to show up and pretend everything is business as usual. So it’s well earned. I guess.

But does his presence alone justify still presenting this band authentically as Chicago?

Back at that March 2023 show I took my standard run of many photos. Robert Lamm was doing his best up there, still a looker even if his voice was failing, and Jimmy Pankow and his trombone, my favourite musician and instrument to photograph, were as always a treat for my lens. I didn’t post the photos then, but I have now put up a page, post-dated, to include them in this blog for posterity. Just click on this photo below:

And that is the last you’ll see of Lamm or Pankow live in concert from me. Because they were not on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last night. And when I decided, earlier this year, I definitely wanted to see at least one of the three shows Chicago were performing at the Bowl for the 2025 end-of-summer Fireworks Spectacular weekend, I optimistically believed that even if Pankow and Lamm were absent from a lot of live shows this year, surely they would be there for the Hollywood Bowl. Surely, surely they would appear for the LA home crowds.

But no. Not last night, or Saturday night, or Friday night. Just not there.

It is not and never will be enough for me to see this band putting only one original member on stage with an assemblage of people whose names I can’t remember and don’t feel any need to. So to answer my earlier (rhetorical) question, no this is not an authentic presentation of Chicago. And to present this inauthentic Chicago on the sacred stage of the Hollywood Bowl is shameful.

I don’t know why Jimmy Pankow is absent so often from the live shows now. I am actually getting worried. If he or they told us, maybe it would help, but it’s never addressed. I do know that Robert Lamm, for so many years the musical anchor of Chicago, has had a series of health issues, including marked cognitive decline, which has been progressing for some time, with reports of him struggling to play the keyboards and disorientation on stage. It’s sad and it’s a particularly sad demise for a thinker such as he, a literate, erudite person, early on outspoken on politics and civil rights, an adventurous and sometimes underrated songwriter, and rather debonair as well. Of course he would not want to stand up there feeling humiliated and appearing helpless.

(Personal note: my mother died from an aggressive brain tumour, and to watch someone beautiful, smart, conversational and highly expressive wither away unable to communicate in the last months of her life was harrowing, heartbreaking and horribly unfair. I would not wish any kind of brain disease on anyone, least of all a musician I have admired one way or another for nearly 50 years. If that is what this is.)

Of the many hits Chicago plays on stage, whatever version of Chicago it might be, Robert Lamm’s compositions are fundamental. To name a few: “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It is?”, “25 or 6 to 4”, “Saturday in the Park”, “Questions 67 and 68”, “Dialogue”, “Beginnings”. How on earth do they get away with playing “Beginnings” without Robert Lamm? It’s such a personal song to him, going all the way back to that first album, to profound early love, maybe his first marriage (there have been five). He used the opening guitar chords of the song on an entirely new song, “Our New York Time”, on Chicago’s most recent album of original material, the 2022 record Born For This Moment. For all his years behind the keys, Lamm’s concert showpiece was always when he stood centre stage singing and playing acoustic guitar on “Beginnings”.

But this is now about endings.

I get the feeling Lamm knew things were close to ending – at least I romantically have that notion that he had that notion – when he was putting his stamp all over Born For This Moment, a disparate album that works in spite of its multiple personalities. For a late-career album it is astoundingly good, a collection of songs with sumptuous horn parts and exceptional vocals from their Ceteraesque lead singer, Neil Donell, who is infinitely more palatable on record than on stage. Only two songs are sappy enough to annoy me, the rest are in fact great. Robert Lamm’s songs in particular, standing out from the other tracks, are smooth and wistful and lyrically nostalgic with nicely produced lead vocals that bring Lamm’s weary voice to life once more. They are songs that seem to fit somewhere in his solo career between the exquisite collaboration with Gerry Beckley and Carl Wilson on Like A Brother (2000) and his best solo records Subtlety & Passion (2003) and The Bossa Project (2008). They don’t sound at all like Chicago; they sound like songs for a solo album Lamm felt he didn’t have time/energy/resources to record and release. Two songs especially, “For The Love” and “House on the Hill”, shimmer and shine as older Lamm, reminiscing Lamm, dreamy Lamm, hanging-on-to-his-subtle-passions Lamm. Ending the album with “House on the Hill” seems strange, jarring and, most of all, prescient to me. If these are the final lyrics ever sung on a Chicago album of new material, that bears some thought.

Helpless through the moment
Helpless through the time
Endless destinations
Endlessly divine

And then there is “For The Love”, possibly the most beautiful solo song Lamm ever recorded, except it is on a Chicago album. He wrote it with Bruce Gaitsch but as far as I am concerned it is all Lamm. It is perfect. If I could have heard that song live, once, just once, what a gift that would have been.

He got those songs on record, kept showing up on tour for another year or two, and then it could be that his health deteriorated to the point where just standing on a stage became too hard. And so he has not been seen performing since early this year. And because the set list at a Chicago concert is not comprised of new songs, but is a full show of greatest hits, pretty much any well-trained musician can step in and play and sound okay. Even on “Beginnings”, but that does not mean it has heart.

While the greatest hits format has worked well for them, there was the time they performed the second album in its almost entirety, a concert I witnessed in 2018 that enraged me so much I wrote more than 10,000 words about it that I never published. There was so much I wrote in anger, frustration and despair that I believed in and still do, but ultimately I had decided it was not the right time to put those thoughts out in the public domain. But towards the end of that 10,000-word opus I wrote this and it has been haunting me lately:

“…I witnessed a concert by the best Chicago tribute band around, that happens to feature a few of the original members of Chicago. ‘We’re all replaceable,’ Robert had said in the documentary [Chicago – Now More Than Ever on CNN in 2017], and there it was in front of me. I felt like he was fading away on that stage, begging to finally be replaced. I’ve wondered for years now why he has remained in the band, touring for most of the year, keeping him away from the wife he loves and the solo work he says he far prefers to do. I wonder if he just cannot bring himself to take that leap of faith, so he is allowing himself to fade away so that he can just be replaced without anyone noticing.”

The thing is, the fans are noticing, they are complaining and lamenting. Social media is full of comments like “I went last night and Robert Lamm was not there.” “Without Lamm, it is not Chicago.” “I spent a lot of money on a tribute band.” “Has he retired? Why don’t they just tell us?”

Co-founding member and woodwind player Walter Parazaider first cut back on live performing due to a heart condition and then in April 2021 he openly admitted his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease so that fans could come to terms with his formal departure from Chicago. His last appearance on stage that I saw was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in April 2016. Walt’s decline is a whole other sad story; it is heartbreaking, and yes, it is private, but still, the family is open about it so they retain control of the narrative. Truth – what a concept.

But in Lamm’s case, neither he nor management nor bandmates have said anything. They have barely even acknowledged his absence from the stage. Lamm still appears in all promotional photography of the band, and on the band website. They don’t let you know, before you buy tickets, that Chicago now can offer only one, maybe two original members, but none of the original lead vocalists. I don’t buy the argument from some true believers that the guys have toured consistently for 57+ years so they deserve a break. No, if you want a break, then take the band off the road for a while.

I also do not subscribe to the theory that it is private and none of our business. Seriously? These artists have bought houses, educated children and paid alimony on our dime for decades. Fans deserve transparency. We don’t need copies of medical records, but don’t mask an inability to perform with any false narratives or, worse, avoidance of any comment at all. Tell it like it is, make the announcement before the tour, or at the very least before the show, and allow fans to seek a refund if original member/s will not be performing.

If the Rolling Stones went out on tour without Keith Richards, replaced with a generic guitarist that had no history with the band, and nobody ever explained it, and this went on and on for a year, would Stones fans be okay with that? Or the media? Or the world? Would Barry Gibb tour with stand-in brothers as the Bee Gees? Never. Some things are sacred – at least in my authenticity-focused world. Chicago is not the Rolling Stones, nor the Bee Gees, not that monumental, to the world or to themselves, apparently. But when there is an elephant in the room, it’s going to get messy, and smelly. And this situation with Chicago stinks.

We were warned about this years ago, of course. In 2018 Lamm’s answer to a question in a Billboard interview certainly riled me:

Lamm said on the CNN documentary, to my amazement, that when the group is over – or when he is over being in the group – he doubts he would see his fellow members. “Logically, once it’s over, I don’t expect we would spend much time together. We’ve spent enough time together to last a lifetime.”

There was a follow-up documentary called Chicago: The Last Band On Stage which was also peppered with comments from Lamm about time running out and how much he enjoyed being at home during the forced 15 months off touring due to the pandemic. How he and his wife “broached subjects” they had not discussed before.

And so that must be what this is. He has been facing his mortality. He cannot perform, he doesn’t want to perform, he is done performing. Quite possibly he always had an exit plan and that entailed silently walking out of the room just as he has done.

Mostly I’m silent
Mm, silent …

And believe me, I feel sad and concerned for him. As much as Robert Lamm has driven me crazy over many years, particularly when he has been less than kind and even obstreperous, to me or to others, I have adored him. I repeat, I have adored him. I am thinking of the heart-wrenching, emotionally soaring line that Shirley Bassey wails in that 1973 hit “Never Never Never” – I love you, hate you, love you, hate you, love you, but I’ll want you ’til the world stops turning. Yes, that is you for me, Robert Lamm.

So, OK, this is the reality now. No Lamm on stage, and no Pankow either. And what of Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl? Given I had seen them at the Bowl in 2016 at a performing peak in their later career, with Jeff Coffey on lead vocal (brilliant) and Tris Imboden and Keith Howland still in the band (“new guys” with considerable longevity), how did this 2025 edition compare? Was there any of it to enjoy? Other than being in my favourite music venue in the universe, did I feel I got my money’s worth?

Sadly no.

I love the Hollywood Bowl, it is my absolute musical happy place, and almost any opportunity to be there, especially in a fabulous box up front, I will grab.

I took a bottle of Moet to share with my friends to make it as much of a celebration as possible, rather than a lamentation, and to numb the pain. Such was my determination to see this ending through fully, maybe even give the band the benefit of the doubt just in case the first night offered a Lamm sighting, I hovered over the Hollywood Bowl’s ticket site all last week considering buying a Friday ticket. I could have sat right up front, such are the ways of last-minute ticket releases.

Thankfully I did not spend that extra cash.

Because as much as I expected it to be difficult to watch, it was so very difficult to watch, far worse than I imagined it could be, and so sad for me, and actually kind of ludicrous. Last night exceeded my worst expectations. I was truly shocked at how low Chicago had sunk. A “Chicago Little Symphony” would have been divine compared to what we got.

I thought they would at least sound fine, but actually they did not. And they definitely did not look fine. Who are they? What is this? It hurts, it just hurts, to watch this charade. I am sorry Lee Loughnane, you are a sweetheart, you work hard, you play that trumpet as if your life depended on it – which we know it does – but you are not being fair. Be fair.

Yes, I am a purist. As such, I am a devoted Chicago fan who has made more than enough concessions. I first saw them live and met them in January 1979, almost to the day of the one-year anniversary of Terry Kath’s death. I fully embraced that era, the picking-up-the-pieces-of-our-broken-hearts era. Chicago has since spent 45 years hiring and firing replacement players and the bad blood from every one of those firings (or voluntary departures under duress) seems like the prom scene in the movie Carrie, splattered over everything and everyone, including many long-time loyal fans.

They do have a great drummer, Walfredo de los Reyes Jr, whose dad was a total legend, and Chicago has always had top-notch drummers and percussionists. The other musicians are also good at what they do. That is a given. The trombone stand-in, Nick Lane, who has subbed for Jimmy Pankow now and then for many years, is a fine player in his own right, and he even could look somewhat like Jimmy Pankow from a distance. His moves are the same. The entire band choreography is set in a template and the musicians just need to step in and follow the direction. And so they do.

But as talented as they all might be individually, they do not make a cohesive whole. It really did not add up to Chicago. This band thinks it’s Chicago, says it’s “America’s Band”. No amount of images of the band logo, the founding members of this band, or American iconography, will convince me that this is Chicago or that this is America’s band.

At the Bowl, when they do fireworks, it pays to be much farther back than I was. I believe that seeing Chicago at the Bowl, or anywhere now, proffers the same theory. Sit farther back. It might be better and you won’t be able to tell that it is not Jimmy Pankow or Robert Lamm or even Peter Cetera.

They offer no explanations, no apologies. Some fans literally cannot tell the difference. “Jimmy was on stage in San Diego” one insisted. Uh, no, he was not. Some genuinely think they are seeing and listening to Cetera (who left the band in 1985). That’s beyond confounding, but here’s the truth: most other people are not me, and they actually don’t care, and don’t mind, and that’s why this band can go on and on as they are. Or are not. I am not calling for the band to retire so much as I am calling for them to be honest about who and what they are.

Tribute band? Legacy band? It’s their legacy; they can do what they want with it. They can audaciously charge fans for a meet and greet photo opp with a lineup of contract players. They can keep kowtowing to their surly burly manager who never wants to lose his cash cow or his self-styled fame. The obsequious thankyous that the surviving original band members made to their manager on the stage at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction (except Danny Seraphine, honest, unfiltered, unapologetic, passionate) were something akin to what Trump gets from his sycophantic Cabinet every time they sit around the conference table with cameras rolling. Yeah, that cloying.

If Robert Lamm, who vocally foreshadowed this kind of ending, repeatedly, is willing and content to let other people play and sing his songs, on the basis that he is most likely getting a bigger share of the performing fee than the people on stage are, and he prefers that option to having a hologram of himself on stage a la ABBA Voyage, and he thinks any of this unaccountable disappearing act is okay, then okay.

But that’s the end for me.

Mostly I’m silent
Mm, silent …
Never think of bad words to say

Sorry. Not silent. Not sorry. These are my words.

And here are some thoughts I wrote down during the show:

Terry Kath would roll in his grave.

Lee Loughnane must be chewing or smoking a lot of peyote in Sedona to believe this is even vaguely acceptable.

Neil Donell has come full circle, originally plucked from obscurity singing impersonations of Cetera in a cover band, and now singing with a bunch of impersonators in a cover band.

They’re doing a Jackie Wilson cover but why?

The stand-ins have to know this is tenuous at best.

What are they thinking???

Without Lamm or Pankow on stage Neil thinks he is king.

Lee will never be king.

Peter Cetera has to be laughing 40 years after leaving.

Terry is still rolling.

This is something like Trump fucking Satan on South Park.

I cannot see Jimmy returning to this.

I feel really sorry for the stand-ins.

I feel really sad.

There are a lot of ways to project the Chicago logo on a screen but none that can ever justify the travesty taking place in front of it in 2025.

And Terry is still rolling.

The happiest concert experience of my life was seeing Chicago for the first time on 20 January 1979. The saddest concert experience of my life was seeing Chicago on 14 September 2025.

I screamed then and I screamed now. Then it was in ecstasy. This time it was like Edvard Munch’s painting.

It’s sad.

I’m glad I drank my bottle of Moet.

There are nine previous posts on Chicago on this music blog with many, many great photos from the past decade or so of my 46 years of Chicago concerts. Have a look through; most of those were happier experiences. Chicago at The Forum, the Hollywood Bowl, the Whisky A Go Go, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and that sterile theatre up in Thousand Oaks. I’ve written about Terry Kath and about the brilliant, audacious first CTA album. There is also plenty of my earlier Chicago writing from my journalism work on the Debsite.

And then there is this one. The camera struggled last night, along with my mind, but I managed enough photos to chronicle this last-ever time seeing Chicago. Click on through.