Writer: Robert Lamm
Producer: James William Guercio
Recorded: September 1971 at CBS Studios in New York City
Released: August 1972
| Players: | Peter Cetera — vocals, bass Terry Kath — guitar, vocals Robert Lamm — keyboards, vocals Danny Seraphine — drums, vocals Lee Loughnane — trumpet, vocals James Pankow — trombone, vocals Walt Parazaider — sax, vocals |
| Album: | Chicago V (Columbia, 1972) |
"Saturday In The Park" was Chicago's highest-charting single at the time, hitting Number Three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart shortly before the release of Chicago V.
The song, one of eight written by keyboardist Robert Lamm for the album, was inspired by a walk Lamm took the previous Fourth of July, recording his thoughts and observations into a song.
The song's success brought a new audience to Chicago, one that wasn't familiar with the more experimental music it had made during the previous two-and-a-half years, while some older Chicago fans were put off by the group's sudden ascension in the pop market. "We became more singles oriented," remembers drummer Danny Seraphine. "That in itself made the songs shorter. We got sick and tired of our songs getting chopped up and decided to try and condense things. I don't know whether that was good or bad. It worked to a certain degree, but we may have left a little bit of our artistic integrity behind."
But Seraphine also felt that "musically, we were still doing some things that were turning people's heads."
Chicago V was the first of five consecutive Number One albums for the group on the Billboard 200 chart.
Chicago V was also the first single-disc album released by the band since its debut in 1969. It's first three studio albums were all double-record sets, while the fourth, Chicago At Carnegie Hall, was a whopping four-disc collection.
It was also the last Chicago album to be recorded entirely in New York City.