Doug Kirstner: How did you hook up with Jimmy Guercio and Chicago and do you recall your first encounter with the group?
Wayne Tarnowski: OK, what happened was I was an apprentice engineer at CBS. I was an apprentice for about 6 months. I got a bachelor's in electrical engineering and I got into an apprentice program at CBS records in New York City. What happened was, the fellow that was my teacher was an engineer at CBS. His name was Don Puluse. Don had been doing Chicago. He did Chicago 2, 3, and 4. He did a lot of Leonard Bernstein's live concerts and studio things and he was doing something at the Kennedy Center in Washington for Leonard Bernstein and that's when Chicago wanted to do their 5th album and he couldn't do it and they really wanted to get started. And I just walked into the scheduling room one day and there was my name on the schedule to do Chicago. So, that's how it happened and that's where I actually began recording with them on Chicago 5, and that's the story of how it began.
DK: You're credited as re-mix engineer on Chicago Transit Authority.
WT: That was after the fact. When Guercio moved up to Colorado, they were taking a lot of the old albums and remixing them in quad. Those mixes are probably what you get on the rack right now, I guess, on the CDs. That's an assumption on my part. I did remix every single album that they did, in Colorado. It was for quad though, when quad was big.
DK: How did you record their tracks?
WT: Basically, the whole group would go in at once and record. And then depending on how that turned out sometimes we would use everything. Sometimes we would go back and redo the vocals, I mean the vocals were basically guide vocals just so the band could feel what the tune would be like. And generally what we would do is go back and redo the vocals and the horn section.
DK: I guess solos were done later too.
WT: Well some of the solos were kept, actually. I mean if somebody really blew a good solo it was kept.
DK: Which album was the most fun for you to record and which one was the most tedious or troublesome?
WT: The most fun to record . . . I would say probably the first one, (Chicago 5) just from my point of view because it was just such a great experience for me. I mean I'd been an engineer for maybe a year and I loved the group, I really did, from when I was in high school and college and to be actually recording them was really exciting for me. Some of the later ones I would say 11, 10 and 11, those were tedious because they were still on the road a lot and they weren't done in one shot, so to speak. In other words, they were done throughout a year, when they would have time off the road, so you would go in, you would record some and then you'd come back 2 months later and you'd record some.
DK: Did the band work out the arrangements in the studio for the songs and can you think of instances where the songs went through a lot of changes before your eyes while you were behind the glass?
WT: Well, I'll say this, If You Leave Me Now, that's probably one of their biggest hits, I think anyway, that started out as just a vocal and guitar. That was the basic track for that song, just Pete singing and playing acoustic guitar. What you hear as the finished record is much different from that, but that's how that song really started out.
DK: You played piano on Byblos
WT: Yeah, Terry was a great friend of mine, we used to have a lot of fun together. And the guys were excited that I was a musician and when they found out that I played piano, Terry said, well you gotta play on this song, you absolutely just have to play on it. And I did.
DK: How about Jimmy Guercio, what was he like in the studio and how much control did he have over the songs?
WT: Well, Jim was always really involved in the arrangements of the songs. If you're talking about control, well, yea, he had a tremendous amount of input into all the records that I did anyway, there's no doubt about that in my mind. Jim was always in charge of everything. Sometimes you would have to compromise, either Jim would compromise or the band would compromise, or they would see each other's point of view and decide on what the finished product should be.
DK: On the box set, there were no previously unreleased songs except for one from Chicago 14. Were there any tunes that you had recorded that just never made it on the records?
WT: I don't think there are. I mean, serious songs, no. There's always outtakes of either them doing a cover tune or them just jamming.
DK: Did you do sound for them on the road at all?
WT: Yes I did, I did PA for them in '74 and part of '75, or maybe it was 73 and 74. At that period of time, they decide that it would be a good idea if the guy that was making the records went out and mixed them live. And I did do that for awhile and it was fun, it was a learning experience for me because I had not done PA before. All of my experience was in the studio and it's like a whole different ball game. We were using Clair Brothers at the time. There is kind of a rivalry between live engineers and recording engineers, and we had some arguments about how I wanted things to sound and how they normally did things. And I didn't want to do things how things were normally done, so it was a give and take. I think generally I did a real good job and the band thought I did, but I only did it for 2 years just because it's an awful large commitment in time.
DK: Did you go to Japan ?
WT: I did, yeah, in fact when I first started with them when I was doing Chicago 5, we did some live recording in Japan which I believe was released in Japan.
DK: Chicago was a big time group when you got into it, but what was it like seeing them become a "supergroup" ?
WT: I thought that they deserved it, it was an incredible experience in my life. Especially because I really loved the group so much from being a kid, When I was in college, I used to get their records and just stay up all night just listening to them on headphones. Over and over and over, because I loved the group, I really did. And to actually graduate from college, get into CBS records and have a shot at doing them, and doing it, and then continuing on for 10 years or whatever the amount of time that I spent with them was an incredible experience in my life, something that I'll always remember certainly.
DK: Do you keep in touch with anybody?
WT: I'm trying to remember the last time I saw them, it was maybe 3 years ago. They were at the Garden State Arts Center and I got tickets, they didn't know I was going to be there. I actually don't keep in contact with them so I don't have their numbers or anything like that. So I just showed up and I know some of the same guys that were their roadies are still their roadies. And I just walked up to the stage and said "Hi" and they said, hey, everybody's got to see you, and I went backstage and got to see them again. That's the last time I saw them.
DK: Chicago and Guercio split and the tragedy of Terry Kath happened in such a short time frame, what you recall from that time? and could you see the relationship of Guercio and Chicago going south?
WT: That was a period of time when I wanted to do other things myself. I had lived out in Colorado and we're talking about 1977-1978 and I moved back to NJ because I wanted to do other people's records, I wanted to do other groups. So I started working in the New York City and I kind of lost contact with Jim and the group and that was during the period of time when this happened so what exactly happened there and the reasons I'm not to sure of. Actually, Jim called me after it happened and he was surprised that I wasn't going to be the one that was going to do the next record, Phil Ramone was going to do the next record.
DK: So what did you do after that? What engineering or producing?
WT: That's when I did Ted Nugent. I did the Cat Scratch Fever album, that was like right after I stopped doing Chicago.
DK: Do you still engineer?
WT: Nope. I haven't done a record in about 9 years.
DK: Why is that?
WT: Well, it was a decision in my own life, The record business is a wonderful business when you're 20, maybe when you're 30, when you're 40, I made the decision I just wanted to watch my son grow up. It's a tremendous expenditure of time and energy and your life is, while you're doing a record, turned up-side-down, you're in the studio for 12-13 hours a day. You're life is not your own. And I just made a decision that I wanted to stop doing it. My father happened to be retiring from the business he had for 40 years and I knew the business because I had cut my allowance with him as an apprentice and it seemed for me, the right thing to do at the time. I spent a lot of time away from home, on the road, it was one of those decisions that you make in your life. And I made it. Do I regret it? No, I really don't. I enjoyed those times, they were wonderful times.
DK: Well, you couldn't have been involved with better albums.
WT: No, I had the best of it, incredible experience. If you're going to get into the record business and do that, it was a great experience, you couldn't have done better, and that's the way I wanted to leave it.