By September 1976, Chicago was riding the strange, transitional sound of Chicago X — a band built on horns and jazz chops suddenly scoring its way toward a very different kind of hit. “If You Leave Me Now,” the Peter Cetera ballad that would give the group its first-ever No. 1 single, was already climbing the charts that month. But onstage at SPAC, the lineup was still the classic one: guitarist Terry Kath still anchoring the band, less than two years before his sudden death in early 1978. It was Chicago at the hinge point — horn-driven rock giants about to become an entirely different kind of hit machine.
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