Song Lyric of the Day (Chicago, With a Protest Song 50 Years Ago)

“Hey, everybody

Won't you just look around

Can't anybody see?

Just what's going down.” —Keyboardist-singer-songwriter Robert Lamm, "It Better End Soon,” from the Chicago LP Chicago II (1970)

Fifty years ago this week, the jazz-rock band Chicago released its second LP., Chicago II. Much of the radio play from this platinum seller centered on its singles, "25 Or 6 To 4," “Colour My World” and “Make Me Smile.”

But that era in rock music coincided with two developments: the double album and free-form radio. Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and the Beatles’ White Album opened the floodgates to the first; the rise of FM radio stations progressive rock stations like New York’s progressive-rock WNEW-FM created space for the other.

Into that pocket of creative freedom stepped Robert Lamm, Chicago’s keyboardist, as well as one of the group’s principal songwriters and vocalists. Most distinctively, he was also the most political outspoken member of the musical ensemble. With “It Better End Soon,” he sought to lift his voice in rage against the Vietnam War.

The Sixties and early Seventies were filled with protest music, many of them ending up as hits: Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” CSNY’s “Ohio,” The Rascals’ “People Got to be Free,” and Marvin Gaye’s entire album “What’s Going On.”

At their best, when rich in imagery and symbolism, continue to prick the collective consciousness decades later. At their worst, they are preachy and hardly geared to last beyond the present moment. This particular composition by Lamm hangs suspended uneasily between these poles. Chicago’s strength lay in its mesh of harmonies, its driving horn section and (before he died) Terry Kath’s hard-edged guitar licks—and these are indeed on display here. But Lamm’s lyrics don’t go much beyond “war is hell.”

Lamm had better luck in this vein later. One was draped as much in nostalgia as anger: “Harry Truman,” a lament for the loss of the plain-speaking President in the wake of the Watergate scandal directed by a man he (and Lamm) despised, “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

Better yet was “Dialogue (Parts I and II,” from the band’s Chicago V. The lyrics—a civil conversation between two people with differing political viewpoints—somehow, against all odds today, inspire me with hope that a similar meeting of minds can take place today. I still get goosebumps when I hear Kath ask, "Will you try to change/Things, use the power that you have,/The power of a million new ideas?"

In recent years, as Chicago has gone back through its vast catalog in concerts, the band has delved more deeply into such tunes, in a way they hadn’t in decades—and been surprised at the results. As Lamm related in 2018 to Gary Graff in a Billboard article two years ago:

“We always do ‘Dialogue,’ but lately we've been playing ‘It Better End Soon’ which...I forgot how intense that was, and the way it's being performed now, it really gets the audience. I mean, you get a lump in your throat, and we're using visuals behind that, like we do with ‘Dialogue,’ and people are commenting on it. We're in such trouble in this country, and the world. There's so much disarray that people are just searching and longing to hear someone else say, ‘Yes, it's bad and it's got to get better.’ And that's really unfortunate.”