Keyboard Magazine Interview with Bill Champlin
by Greg Rule

He’s known the world over as the soulful singer/keyboardist of the iconic jazz-pop band Chicago. His featured spots on the hits “Look Away” and “Hard Habit to Break” are among his mainstream highlights. But Bill Champlin’s defining work with the Sons of Champlin and as a songwriter put him on the musical map long before he arrived in Chicago. Bill and the Sons were blowing the doors off venues back in the ’70s — and they returned to doing the same in the late ’90s and into the present.

When Chicago came through the Bay Area on their Fall 2002 tour, the Keyboard crew was delighted to meet and interview Bill for the first time in his long and decorated career. We were surprised to learn Bill had not been featured in our magazine before, and so it gives us extra pleasure to bring his story to the Keyboard community at long last.

BEGINNINGS
Bill was born in Oakland, CA, in 1947 and wasted little time finding his muse. “I was reading music before I was reading English,” he says in his bio. Backstage at the Chicago concert, he reminisced with us. “I remember exactly where I was when I first heard ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ by Jimmy Smith. When I heard it I said, ‘That’s it!’ And that happened to me only two or three times in my life: listening to Jimmy Smith, the first time I heard Albert King on ‘Born Under a Bad Sign,’ and Hendrix on ‘Red House.’ Just breathtaking.”

Bill’s high school band evolved into the Sons, and from there it was a steady cruise to the top for Bill. As the band’s reputation grew, Bill’s path started to cross with greats, such as producer David Foster and Chicago bandmembers Peter Cetera and Danny Seraphine, with whom he co-wrote and recorded. When Foster signed on to produce Chicago’s 16th album in 1982, the wheels were set in motion for Champlin to join the supergroup. “Bill’s exactly what we’ve been looking for,” said Chicago’s Robert Lamm that year. “He started writing with Danny [Seraphine, Chicago drummer]. They came up with a song called ‘Sonny’ that we wanted to record, but when we got into the studio, neither Peter nor I was really singing it the way Bill could. So we figured why not get him in here and let him be a guest artist on the record. Things just kind of happened naturally from there.” As fate would have it, Bill joined the band just in time for their biggest records to date: Chicago 16 and 17, which sold millions of units and featured the chart-topping hits “Hard to Say I’m Sorry,” “Love Me Tomorrow,” “You’re the Inspiration,” “Hard Habit to Break,” and “Stay the Night.”

Two decades later, Bill continues to inject his world-class brand of soul into Chicago, but that’s not all. “The Sons are back, alive and kickin’,” he says happily.

TALE OF TWO GIGS & RIGS
“Chicago is mainly a keyboard gig for me,” says Bill. “With the Sons I go back and forth between B-3 and guitar.” Onstage with the Sons, he uses a B-3 “that was cut down by Marin Recorders years ago. It was one of the first cut-downs, and it actually weighs more than before it was cut [laughs]. They made it smaller, easier to fit into places, but it’s way heavier than before. With the Sons, what I’m using keyboard-wise is a B-3; Geoff Palmer is using a Korg Triton and a set of vibes.”

The rig Bill plays with Chicago is streamlined and unashamedly old-school. “You go to Guitar Center,” says Bill, “and the guy will show you all these great new synths. ‘Dig this sound, and dig this sound.’ And you go, ‘Yeah, unbelievable. I’m gonna write a bunch of new songs with these.’ You get home, you try the new sounds out on your demos, and you go ‘No, this hangs too long,’ or ‘It’s layered too thick’ and what you end up with are piano, Rhodes, organ, Clav, and Wurly. No matter what I do, I almost always come back to those classic sounds. So with Chicago I find myself in a situation where if Robert’s playing piano, then I’m playing strings or organ. And sometimes with my TS-10, I’ll add one or two sounds: I have a calliope pad-type sound that I’ll layer in, and a funky brass sound called ‘OB Brass.’

“Speaking of Ensoniq,” Bill continues, “I got hooked up with them back in the day when Jerry Kovarsky was there; now he’s at Korg USA. Jerry, by the way, is a mother of a player. But he got me involved in some things with Korg — a lot of the presets on the Korg CX-3, along with George Duke, Tom Coster, and others. I had the CX in the room with my B, and it was hanging. If you can run that out into a combo pedal and get it into a Leslie, that’s the move.”

Tip for Roland JV-1080 users: “There’s a patch on the 1080 I use a lot called ‘Wurly Trem’ that I love. You can use it at any range. It sits there in its own little frequency space, doesn’t compete with other instruments, and when you play it, you have a tendency to play less and let the sound carry the part. Which can be a good thing for a lot of players! [Laughs.]

“The B-3 we have on the Chicago tour is a ’65. It’s Robert Lamm’s old B, and we’ve got an old Leslie that was redone by Bill Beer at Keyboard Products probably 25 years ago. Bill did some work for me a few years ago before he passed away. He beefed up a Leslie for me, one of those small ones, at a NAMM show; it only had about 15 watts. So all these Hammond guys were over there going, ‘What are you doing?’ And Bill did his thing on it — turned it into a neutron bomb. Turn it up over 5, and it’s death! Bill did really great work. A funny thing . . . when he finished that one, the total came to around 2,000 bucks. I said, ‘Man, last time you beefed something for me it was around $700.’ And he said, ‘Champlin, that was 20 years ago!’ [Laughs.]”

On the topic of influences, and in particular, the organ, Bill points to Mike Finnigan, Jimmy Pugh, and Joey DeFrancesco as modern giants. “Those guys kill me,” he enthuses. “And Joey . . . that’s just another world.”

With so many hits to cover with Chicago, how closely does Bill try to re-create each sound? “I’m not too worried about it. I mean, these songs have such a signature just from the nature of the way they’re written — you could play them with kazoos and people would respond. So I have the B; the basic pianos are coming out of the Korg SG-Pro and are controlled by one volume pedal, and the strings, Rhodes, and other MIDI things are controlled by another pedal. So what I’ll do on, say for instance the beginning of ‘Color My World,’ I’ll yank the Rhodes out and just play piano by itself, and then, when the flute solo comes in, I’ll bleed in some Rhodes just to thicken it up. I have the Rhodes sweeping a little bit — I mean, if I could run my life through a little bit of chorusing, I would [laughs]. I said to David Foster one time, ‘I’d like to run the past 20 years of my life through auto-correct.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, and quantize it to the nearest three commandments.’ [Laughs.]”

A Roland JV-1080 with a ’60s/70s card and a Yamaha TX802 are used for Bill’s Rhodes sounds onstage. “At home I’ve got an old DynoRhodes,” he says. “It had been sitting in my garage for years. My kid said, ‘Dad, you’ve got a Rhodes. What are you doing playing these toys for? Get the Rhodes going!’ So I had Ken Rich fix it up, and have been using it ever since, even though the old action is a bit hard on the wrists.”

ANALOG VS. DIGITAL
“Most everyone is using Pro Tools these days,” says Bill, “but I’ve still got my old 24-track [analog tape recorder] and I love it. I mean, there’s something so cool about 499 tape at +6, 30 ips, just in your face. Hit me! That tape compression is so beautiful. There’s just something about it. Just the smell of it [laughs]. Reminds me of victory. But, saying that, I’ve actually got a MOTU 2408 and 1296, and Digital Performer that I use as well.”

HIDDEN TREASURE
Bill and Jay Graydon co-wrote two Grammy-winning hits (see Discography), so when Jay was putting a band together for his solo tour, Bill was a natural for the gig. “We were in Japan on Jay’s tour,” Bill tells us, “and a funny thing happened. Steve Porcaro [keyboardist/bandmate] comes walking in to the hotel holding a copy of the first Sons album on CD. I didn’t even know it had been released on CD. ‘Look what I found.’ And I say, ‘Where did you get that?!’ ‘Just around the corner in the record store.’ So I go around the corner to buy it, and they tell me that Steve had just bought the last copy! So I came back and said, ‘Steve, man, give that to me! [Laughs.]’ I’d lost my only vinyl copy of that record years ago. And Steve says, ‘I have to tell you, when I was young I borrowed this record from Jeff [Steve’s legendary drummer brother] and he beat the crap out of me for taking it from him! [Laughs.] So you’ve gotta realize that this means a lot to me. In other words: This ain’t leavin’ my hands!’”

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STORY OF A TV THEME
Talk about good timing, Bill’s killer vocal on the theme song for the TV show The Heat of the Night was somewhat of a fluke. Bill tells the story. “Everybody in town was asked to come in and sing it. So as fate would have it, I had a week off from touring with Chicago, and was invited in to audition for it. It was something like a hundred bucks for the audition, so I thought, ‘Sure, I’ll take a shot at it.’ I knew the song from when Ray Charles had it out, so I came in and just banged it out. A half-hour later I left: ‘Hey, I made a hundred bucks. Cool. See you later.’ The next thing I know, the show is ready to air and my track is on it. Sweet. Checks still show up in the mailbox from that one — the gift that keeps on giving.”

THE RETURN OF THE SONS
The state-of-the-art school/studio in Emeryville, CA, called the Expression Center for New Media has been the site of the Sons’s recent recording sessions. “We’re doing a record with the head master of the school in their big Studer room,” says Bill. “It’s taking forever, ’cause we’re getting whatever bump-time we can get, but we’ve got that going on and I think it’s going to be a good record. In terms of vibe, it’s slammin’. My heart’s really in it. It’s a soulful thing, and it has that touch of what the Sons were really about. The band is Geoff Palmer, myself, David Schallock, Jim Preston, a new guitar player Tal Morris, who’s a bad bad boy, and the horn section is Tom Saviano and Mic Gillette. So it’s an interesting, cool thing, and the first studio album we’ve done in years. We also have a live show DVD and CD that we’ll be released soon.”

When Bill’s not at the B-3 with the Sons, he spends a large percentage of his time leading the band centerstage with guitar and mic, which frees up keyboardist Geoff Palmer to shine. One thing is certain: To play keys in a band with Bill Champlin, you’d better be a mother. Says Bill, “You should hear Geoff play keyboard. I mean, this guy is on fire! He’s probably the most natural and best musician I’ve ever played with, and I’ve played with some of the baddest mofos on Earth. But in terms of a natural vibe, Palmer kicks them all out of the ballpark.”

LEGACY
Bill Champlin has made his mark not only as a great singer and keyboardist, but as a songwriter, producer, bandmember, and solo artist as well. What stands out the most from his body of work? “There’s a thing that happens to people like me who have notoriety from being in a famous band: When you do a solo thing, people think they know what it’s gonna sound like, and they don’t listen to it. I’ve heard people say, ‘I know what Bill’s solo stuff sounds like.’ And I ask them if they’ve heard it, and they haven’t. ‘But I know he’s in Chicago, so I know what it sounds like.’ Well, they don’t. So my point is that I’ve written songs that aren’t necessarily the biggest hits, but are songs that I’d rather be known for. And because of my involvement in the commerce-side of music, and becoming somewhat of a ‘session guy,’ it’s diminished my value as an ‘artist’ in the minds of some people, and that’s unfortunate.”

What songs do Bill treasure most? “There’s one on my solo album Through it All called ‘Light up the Candles’ that’s one of the deepest things I’ve done. Actually, I’d add anything from the Son’s first albums to the list as well.”

Although Bill has every right to put his career on auto-pilot, he remains as hungry today as when he first started. “One philosophy I’ve always had, and I learned this early on in my career, is: Every gig is a rehearsal for your next gig. And if you keep that in mind — that carrot dangling in front of you — then your odds of success and longevity improve. I mean, I’m 55 years old and I feel like I’m just coming on. And I see a lot of guys at this age who are looking back, as if they’re past it. I don’t feel like I’ve past it at all.”

THE RISING SON
The Champlin name is gold in the music business. Bill’s wife Tamara is an accomplished songwriter, and their son Will is on the rise — currently burning the keys off the piano at Berklee School of Music in Boston. “Will pretty much grew up in a recording studio,” says Bill. “He’s 19 now, and he passed me up about a year ago like I was standing still. He’s an amazing singer, programmer, jazz player, R&B player — he just kills me.”

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