Musicians Who Didn't Like Their Band's Music, but.

kinda took it as a job... I'm sure some didn't think, "One day they'll be talking about us or be in litigation over hundreds of millions"

Peter Cetera... They were a band for a little while. No bass player, and Cetera is a tenor and a damn good bass player and they're almost just waiting for his situation with his Top 40 band to dissolve to scoop him up. He probably thought, "It's much better than $200/wk"...

Remember, he said "I never liked the jazz or blues.. that was the other guys" and that he hates horns and demands none of them on his 80s sh*t... and yes, it's sh*t... His 70s stuff, even the pop stuff, is good pop. But he's thinking he's being used, and he's a defensive, but I understand the guy. He's a blue-collar South-Side Chicago guy in Chicago, and thinks, "Oh, you're not going to get one over me"... Retrospect and revisionism is everywhere, but archivists love (and notice) inconsistencies.. "This is the greatest album we ever did" -- fast-forward 30 yrs... "I always hated that 80s sh*t" ...

Teams up with Guercio when they try to go back to their experimental jazzy/rock/funk/blues/soul prog... "Not commercial enough", so when it comes time to choose which song goes into the trash, it's not Cetera's anymore, who wasn't encouraged to write it seems, except for Robert (a decent man) and they go backwards.. They're still playing. They're coming here the day after I turn 40. My first concert was Foreigner. Last one - America. Now Chicago in Detroit, the day after I turn 40. Omen? Good or bad? I've always been anti-superstition, but numbers and certain dates or things, coincidences, interest me.. the math!

Cetera is referred to as the "self-described dissident member" and this is 1982, right after they were dropped from their label, and then they explode with sh*tty songs with the worst production ever (david foster and his participation trophies for being a leech who couldn't be an artist with 2 billion)

If you're from the Midwest like me, notice Cetera's "Polish Working-Class Blue Collar South Side Chicago accent" (as someone described in the comments)... When they became big months later, his accent was.... left on a tour bus or something.


Robert Lamm talks with Cetera even after the break-up and says how Peter never liked the music and never felt part of the group (which Cetera says in interviews) and Lamm responded with, "Is that something you say on the 10th album?" Must be awkward. I've played songs I didn't like, but from bands I respected, so you give your all, but I can't do that anymore, not for the measly pay they give to 99% of musicians.

Thinking of Gordon Haskell on KC's Lizard

There is a difference between "music and product "

I agree


From what I've witnessed in the 40 some years in the music business I have to admit that the "product " end to this is mostly motivated by contriving and perpetuating a style of music that was in fact successful already and by repeating the style through several different artists /bands the industry's foreseeable profit becomes astronomical. It's a fact.

It's also a fact that several artists who are commercially successful singer songwriters are not particularly trying to be commercial at all and they seem to turn out hit records through a natural process within themselves. Artists like this are constantly under pressure to make the same album twice. Some artists cringe at that notion and will fight for the right to release an album that will be successful..but will not contain the exact same style or formula used on its predecessor.



Edited by Jacob Schoolcraft - May 22 2022 at 19:32

The reason why you practice on an instrument from age 7 to age 18, learn Classical music, Jazz, and Progressive Rock, is so that when you become an adult you can play 3 chords over and over in a bar in front of drunks. That's why you become skilled so you can turn pro and become unskilled...