Chicago celebrates 35 years as a band

Group playing Memorial Day concert in Washington

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More than three decades down the road from its humble beginnings in an apartment near the DePaul University campus in the Windy City, Chicago is poised to help the United States honor its national heroes, start another summer tour, and reissue its massive archive of music.

It's an ambitious agenda for a band marking its 35th anniversary, but the band has taken little time to slow down since it formed in 1967 as The Big Thing, later to become Chicago Transit Authority before taking its present name.

Band members l-r: James Pankow, Keith Howland (red scarf), Bill Champlin (maroon suit), Lee Loughnane, Robert Lamm, Walter Parazaider, Tris Imboden, and Jason Scheff.

The Memorial Day concert kicks off another summer of touring as the group celebrates the 35th anniversary of the original members gathering in the North Side Chicago apartment of saxophone and flute player Walt Parazaider to commit to the concept of a rock 'n roll band with horns.

In the years since, Chicago has notched record sales of 122 million, making them second only to the Beach Boys as the most successful American band of all time.

Chicago's extensive music catalog gains a new marketing push this summer when Rhino Entertainment begins reissuing material from the band's entire history -- their debut "Chicago Transit Authority" in 1969 to 1999's "Chicago XXVI Live In Concert," plus unreleased recordings, as part of a deal announced May 6.

EXTRA INFORMATION PBS.org: Memorial Day Concert  Note: Page will open in a new browser window.

On July 2, Rhino will release a 2-CD "Complete Greatest Hits" package, including all 20 of the band's Top Ten singles, plus 19 other tracks billed as "more of Chicago's finest."

CNN spoke with founding member and trombone player James Pankow in Washington as the band prepared for its Memorial Day concert and summer tour.

CNN: Seems like you have a busy summer planned.

James Pankow: We're kicking off the year with a terrific, very relevant and exciting event. It's the 2002 National Memorial Day Concert in Washington. That'll be on the 26th of May. It'll be televised on the PBS network (8 p.m. EDT, check local listings). ... It's a concert and a full-day celebration honoring the victims and heroes of 9/11.

I think this is going to be the most relevant Memorial Day ever in the history of this country in the light of the events last September. That wakeup call, as terrible as it was, has changed the climate in our country and world forever. I don't think I've ever been more proud to be an American.

We're lucky to have the platform to use to speak our mind and to make people aware as Americans, other than just performing as musicians, which is also a great blessing. We're so lucky to have been able to perform our music for so many years, but to be able to tie this into it is even more meaningful.

CNN: How is this concert different than a normal show?

Pankow: It doesn't get much more visible or significant than playing on the lawn of the Capitol of the United States. It's not just "Let's go play some music and have good time; see you later; hope everybody had a fabulous time." ... You are not only performers, but you are Americans.

So the responsibility is awesome. Yea, you get a few more butterflies than you would at a typical concert venue.

CNN: What are the pluses and minuses of having been in a band 35 years?

Pankow: Things are different now than they were 35 years ago. We're not 20 years old any more, for one. I can't be out there 300 days a year, because your life changes and your priorities do too as you get older. ... Now we work more moderately, because we can and we choose to. We've paid our dues for 35 years and we've worked every year for those 35 years, so we really haven't taken time off.

At the same time, a lot of it has to be credited to this music and this incredible phenomenon that has to do with music that doesn't seem to want to go away. This is about timeless songs that have no demographic.

I've had 15-year-olds come up to me and ask me to sign the first album. It's "Chicago 16." After the gig, they go home and see "CTA" [Chicago Transit Authority] or "Carnegie Hall" in their folks' collection and they go "What's this?" and their folks tell them, "This is the same band." All of a sudden we're a family affair. You see the kids and their folks and their grand-folks sitting together at a gig. ...

Perhaps one of the rewards for sticking it out for so many years is the fact that our music has jumped over that need to be pertinent for the day and has remained classical music and timeless. Perhaps that is why Beethoven is still around. Beethoven doesn't need a hit record next year to be played. That's why Sinatra and Ellington are still around, they don't need hit songs next year, by the virtue of the classic timelessness of what they've done. Picasso doesn't need to come back from the dead to paint a new painting to make his incredible life's work have great value.

I don't know why these people want to keep coming back, but they do and God bless them, because without the fans there wouldn't be any point in doing this.

CNN: What's it like to still go out on stage after 35 years? Can't it become robotic?

Pankow: Things can get tedious. The 21 hours of the day when you're not on stage do indeed become robotic. You follow the leader. It's a blur.

It's those couple hours on stage each night that are the redemption, because each night as you walk on stage it's like the first night. Again, I think that's why Ellington and Sinatra and other legends like that worked until their deaths. You can never get enough of that drug, that adrenaline, that approval from a crowd that make those songs you've been playing every night for 30 years seem fresh.

That is the pull. That is what keeps you going. It redeems the other 21 hours. ...

In general, at this stage of the game, there are no bad crowds. Some are tougher than others, but there are no bad crowds. They can to hear the band. They know that and we know that, and we're both there to have a great time, so we make that happen.