Tuesday, January 17, 2012

25 or 6 to 4

Remember that old "Chicago" song?

"Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say" ...

I always wondered where the title came from - what the heck did "25 or 6 to 4" mean?

So I finally did some digging, and here's what I found:

From Songfacts.com -

"This was written by Robert Lamm, who is a keyboard player and singer for Chicago. It's about trying to write a song, with the title referring to the time of day: either 3:35AM (25 to 4) or 3:34AM (26 to 4). Lamm explained on The Chris Isaak Hour: "I was living with a bunch of hippies up above Sunset Strip. One of the advantages of this particular house was that it was in the Hollywood Hills and I could look out over the city late at night. I wanted to try to describe the process of writing the song that I was writing. So, 'waiting for the break of day, searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky' - there was a neon sign across the city. That song came from the fact that it was 25 or 6 to 4am in the morning when I looked at my watch - I was looking for a line to finish the chorus.Most songs that were written, especially in the early days, whenever I got them to the band and we started rehearsing them, that's when the songs took shape - once these guys got hold of them. There was definitely a lot of raw material, I thought it was a song when I wrote the words down, I wrote the changes down and I brought the charts to rehearsal, but it wasn't really a song until they all played it.""



Ohhhhh. NOW I get it.

3 comments:

Rob said...

I don't :)

rockygrace said...

Really, Rob? I'm sorry. Because it's going to be on the quiz, you know.

Badass Nature Girl said...

CREEPY! Danny just told me that this song is one of his two drum solos he picked for competition next month.