TIME Magazine
Written By T. E. Kalem

RETURN TO GOOD-TIMES ROCK

The conga line forms midway through the Beach Boys' second encore, a
lilting paean to puberty called California Girls. By the time the song ends,
the line has grown to 5,000 teenagers and is snaking all over Kansas City,
Mo.'s Arrowhead Stadium. Turning toward the stage, the churning serpent finds
a lion's voice:
"CHICAGO, CHICAGO !! " As 35,000 spectators pick up the chant, seven young
men amble onstage to join the Beach Boys for a socko finale. They are the
group known as Chicago. With five guitarists, two drummers and a three-piece
brass section wailing, the combined bands form a rock juggernaut that quickly
transforms the stadium into an enormous, throbbing, outdoor discotheque. The
crowd has been on its feet for most of the six-hour concert.
In the entire history of rock, there have been few groups as popular or
durable as the Beach Boys and Chicago. Between them they have sold over 65
million records and survived the popularity of scores of psychedelic, protest
and glitter groups. For more than a decade, the anthem of the Beach Boys has
been sweet, close harmony, and its gospel essentially nothing more profound
than the joys of teenage love, uncluttered California freeways and the
eternal search for the perfect wave. As for Chicago, they are hard-jazz
rockers whose first album in 1969 included a taped replay of some of the
street violence at the Democratic Convention the year before.
The joining of the Beach Boys and Chicago has turned out to be the event
of the burgeoning outdoor rock season. By the end of their twelve-city trek,
the double bill will have played to a total audience of 700,000 and grossed
an estimated $7.5 million. Though allowances may be recession-tight, and the
price of gas high enough to make cruising prohibitive, the kids have poured
into town just as though the music were an old-time religion.
Unaffected by the anguish of the recent past, they are waving off hard
drugs and hard political lines in favor of good-time music and that oldest of
adolescent verities: fun. Gone are the trademarks of yesteryear: denim
fatigues, dove-crowned peace flags, bottles of Ripple wine. In their place
can be found pastel tennis shoes, American flags, and Tab. Many fans come in
halter tops for a suntan and to be part of the carnival scene. They just want
to dance boogie and sing along. Says Chicago Lyricist Robert Lamm, 30: "These
days nobody wants to hear songs that have a message."
American Context. One of the first to detect the trend to conservation
was James William Guercio, 29, a former guitarist with the Mothers of
Invention turned millionaire moviemaker (Electra Glide in Blue). He manages
Chicago and occasionally sits in on bass with the Beach Boys. Guercio brought
the groups together. Garbed in a baggy football jersey bearing his last name
and the numeral 1 and sitting in the living room of his $30,000 mobile home,
Guercio tries to explain it all "The American experience is found in Southern
California and the streets of Chicago. These bands sing about youth, love and
marriage in an American context. America - It's the common denominator."
Inside the Kansas City stadium where TIME Correspondent David DeVoss
caught the show, three acrobats and a high-wire aerialist warmed up the
audience. Vaudeville too is a common denominator. The Beach Boys came out
first and launched into Sloop John B. Later came Sail On Sailor and Surfer
Girl, all close-harmony classics. The Boys broke the aquatic mood by asking
the kids to sit down during a reverent a capella version of Their Hearts Were
Full of Spring. Obviously, the avoidance of message was no sweat for the
Beach Boys. At their peak, in the early and middle 1960's, it was not
necessary to live in California to understand them. Everyone knew what it
meant to Be True to Your School, and there was room in every male imagination
for a Surfer Girl. The only time the Beach Boys ever took up political topics
was in their 1971 album "Surf's Up", in which they dabbled in ecology (Don't
Go Near the Water) and warned their followers of the perils of mob action
(Student Demonstraton Time).
Turnabout Play. Chicago invested more in protest. In early songs they
sang out against police brutality, linked Viet Nam and the riot in Watts and
protested the student apathy that followed the Kent State killings. Their
1971 album, Chicago III, contained a war-casualty poster. Chicago Live at
Carnegie Hall came with a chart explaining voter-registration procedures. But
the group's message songs have regularly been outnumbered by pulsating
instrumentals. Four of Chicago's seven members studied at music schools, and
the group's glory has been a classically constructed mix of jazz-rock, rhythm
and blues, calypso and country. So it was last week. There was no sitting
down while Chicago blasted out such tunes as Saturday in the Park and their
new Top 20 record, Old Days.
Rock as a social force may well be dead, but the music itself is getting
more varied and lively all the time. Jazz and country, for example, now play
as important a part in rock as blues and folk. Anyway, says Lamm, "we always
considered ourselves professional musicians, not pop stars or politicians.
The world in the past two years has gone a 180 degree turn in terms of
political expression." Turnabout can be fair play for both performer and
listener. Says Beach Boy Mike Love, 34: "We're giving the kids something
positive for their money, and it appears that it is working in our favor." As
a way of savoring the favor, the Beach Boys will include their own version of
Battle Hymn of the Republic on their next album.