6. Saturday in the Park
Album: Chicago V (1972)
Writer: Robert Lamm
Lead vocals: Robert Lamm with Peter Cetera
Released as a single? Yes (US #3)
If you associate Chicago's 1970s material with summer, this song is probably a big reason why. It doesn't get much more evocative of summer than "Saturday/In the park/Think it was the Fourth of July" set to a bouncy piano melody. That is exactly what Robert Lamm was going for. Walter Parazaider in the Group Portrait box set liner notes: "I was rooming with him, and we were in Manhattan on the Fourth July. He came in from Fourth of July in Central Park, and wrote down these lyrics, and he says, 'What do you think of these? Man, it was great out there. There were steel players, singer dancers, jugglers.' I said, 'Man, it's time to put music to this.'"
Until Peter Cetera balladry became the expectation, Saturday in the Park, which in 1972 became their biggest hit to date at #3 (and first gold single), was the template against which subsequent Chicago singles were compared in the industry press. But all that started a year later. The album it comes from, Chicago V, has nothing else like it, and in fact was arguably their most experimental record since the debut. Lamm said in the same liner notes: "'Saturday In The Park' is definitely a short song, and it's a very poppy song, but I think probably was doing that just to see if I could do it, just like everything else. On that same album, there is 'While The City Sleeps’ which is hardly a single concept."
In a podcast he did in December
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIQexWMBSk8, Rick Beato named Saturday in the Park Chicago's greatest song. "One of the best songs of the '70s," he said. "Great bassline. Pete Cetera -- oh, c'mon man, that's like right out of Paul McCartney's. Great horn stabs. I love this [the transition after Cetera's vocal part]. This part is the best, how it leads down to the chorus. Everything about this is great. The arrangement is phenomenal. The lyrics are great, the singing is great. The horn parts, the chord progression, oh my God, there is so much stuff. This is one of the most complex songs of that era, actually. Key changes, tempo changes, killer drum fills. A very tasteful drum fill there. Very rare. Notice there's no crash on the beginning of that section. I mean everything, all the upbeat accents in the vocals, the horn line that leads into the chorus. And then they go into a shuffle for the bridge, which is incredible. One of the greatest songs of the '70s. There's 11 songs on this greatest hits album, Chicago IX, some are 97%, some are 99%, this is 100%. Every one of these songs is a great song, and these songs never get old to me."
Live performance on Chicago in the Rockies TV special (along with Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cab_XlnJZjc
Live in Japan version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHvIqYjJuqQ
Leonid and Friends version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg8H9vrJCcU
At #5, a song that was a major hit but has an instrumental passage that you would not expect to hear on AM radio.
