Soundtrack to my Life: "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago

Artist: Chicago
Track: If You Leave Me Now/Label: CBS4603/Album: Chicago X/Release: 9th October 1976/Highest Chart Position: 1

I was born in the October of 1976 in a hospital 7 miles away from the town of Redcar, in the north East of England, where (for some reason) my parents had decided to call home. We lived on Southampton Street, number 16. Think Coronation, but without the cobbles, or maybe there were. It was a Saturday and I was my mother’s first offspring of a future three.

The Number One single in the charts was Dancing Queen by ABBA. This was succeeded (when I was a day old) by Mississippi by Pussycat but it was the next single to hit the “top spot” as it was inclined to be known back then, Chicago’s If You Leave Me Now on November 7th, when I was only a few weeks old that was destined to be the first important part of the Soundtrack to my Life.

While still in hospital in Guisborough, I had developed an eye infection which led us to be sent to the isolation ward at West Lane Hospital in nearby Middlesbrough. As my mother was breast-feeding, she expected to be with me in the same room. When we got there we were separated. She thought that they were taking me away for treatment and that I would be brought to her regularly even if it was just for feeding. She didn't see me again for days which was extremely distressing for her at the time. She kept asking why they weren't letting her see me and pressing on them that the reason she was there was to feed me and that was all. They had her isolated in a sterile environment in a room with a glass wall and anyone who came in had to wear a gown and a mask. She was told to express milk so they could give it to me in a bottle. I asked her about this.

“This was extremely hard as I had to use a breast pump which didn't work very well. My boobs were in agony. I remember being in tears, hugging myself and rocking backwards and forwards. Remember I was only eighteen.”

Looking back, she wished her dad or mine had the nerve to stand up for her but the attitude in those days were hospitals know best, so be quiet. Not like they are today and the patient is very much in charge, despite protestations to the contrary. The hospital eventually apologised and reunited me with my mother together in our own room. We stayed there for a couple of weeks and it was at this point that she sang to me a song that was all over the radio at the time as she rocked to me sleep in those first crucial weeks. I think subconsciously, the music helped me and her and gave us our earliest bond through music.

“If you leave me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me...”

It was the first Number One for Chicago at a strange time for the band. The song pegged for Chicago X (their 10th album) nearly never made the cut at all and was something that was recorded at the last minute to make up space. They hadn’t previously been a ballad sort of band, preferring more of a jazz-rock stance and because of the song, the album went platinum, selling a million copies in three months.

Through her bosom and encouragement through the power of this tune that I now actually have grown to hate, my mother urged me to fight and keep going by my bedside. My father wanted her to come home but she never left me once. He wanted my to leave me in the care of the nurses. We don’t know to this day whether it was because he was feeling lonely or left out of the experience at home, but I know that he never chose to hang around the hospital and hum any Mowtown my way either.

The song is actually about a quarrelling couple who are deciding on whether to end their union for the better. It is believed that Peter Cetera wrote this song about his faltering marriage and was a plea to his wife at the time to stay. Unfortunately, she left him not long after.

The sudden success of If You Leave Me Now increasingly seemed to become the preferred style of Chicago's audience and radio listeners, which ended up putting a lot of strain on the band who drifted apart only to reform not long after with an almost new line up but nowhere near the success that album had given them. It was so popular at the time in America, it was known to be playing on a number of radio stations at the same time.

"That drove me crazy," says Keyboardist Robert Lamm. "I know it drove Terry (Kath, Original Guitarist and Singer) crazy, because that isn't what we set out to be and it isn't how we heard ourselves."

Incidentally, a few days before my sister was born at the end of January 1978, Kath, whilst inebriated, accidentally shot himself in the head at a party when he was joking around with a gun he was cleaning. He was quoted as saying, "Don't worry, it's not loaded" to friends who warned him of putting the gun to his temple. He was 31.

So, Arguement Number One ensued between my parents and as it turned out that it wasn’t to be the first I would cause, but there was no way they could convince my mother to leave me after they allowed her to start feeding me again and she was still getting conflicting advice from the different midwives rotating the shifts on the subject of my care. Whereas my mum was just happy whenever she felt I needed feeding, one of the midwive’s was insistant and aggressive with our new family unit that I had to be woken strictly every 4 hrs and weighed before feeding then after to see how much milk I was taking in, which my mother balked at.

After coming home in the middle of October we returned on Bonfire Night when my eyes flared up a second time. This time though, I also had a very bad nappy rash. I spent the next two weeks lying on my front with my sore, red arse pointing to the heavens.

The affect the song had on our early relationship is clearly evident but the bitter sweet and sad story of the song, unbeknown to my mother at the time, would seem to have been a succicent omen for the future.