The 1970s was the era of the story song on the pop charts, some of which were true stories, some of which were made up whole hog by inventive songwriters. Paper Lace split the difference with “The Night Chicago Died,” as pop fans opted for catchiness over historical veracity and put the song at the top of the charts in the U.S. in 1974.
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What is the song about? How did it represent another chance for Paper Lace at U.S. success after poor timing hurt their first opportunity? And how did the song play fast and loose with an actual historical event? Let’s go back to “The Night That Chicago Died” to parse fact from fiction.
Second Time’s a Charm
Hailing from Nottingham, England, Paper Lace, like several other bands and artists that scored success in the UK and abroad, used the television talent show Opportunity Knocks as a springboard. They had already released an album that didn’t do much when they appeared on the show in 1973 and went on a winning streak.
That exposure brought them to the attention of the songwriters Mitch Murray and Peter Callander. Their songwriting credits were pretty impressive when taken one at a time. (Murray, for instance, had written the song “How Do You Do It,” which very nearly became The Beatles’ first single.) When they teamed up in the mid-’60s, they started churning out hits at a rapid pace.
They offered Paper Lace the story song “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” which turned into a UK smash for the group. But before their version could gain traction in America, a competing take by the U.S. outfit Bo Donaldson & the Heywoods beat them to the punch. But Murray and Lancaster had another history-based song waiting for the group that would help Paper Lace bust down the door of the U.S. market.
“Chicago” Facts and Fiction
“The Night Chicago Died” simply couldn’t be denied upon its release in 1974, with its bold production featuring grunting backing vocals and kazoos, and an engagingly energetic lead vocal by lead singer Phil Wright. So what if it wasn’t anywhere near historically accurate?
Murray and Callander probably could have gotten away much easier with their embellishments if they hadn’t name-checked Al Capone, the notorious Chicago gangster. That set folks looking for an incident with Capone that led to this result mentioned in the song: ‘Bout a hundred cops are dead. Well, they could have looked till Mrs. O’Leary’s cow came home, because no such incident happened.
The songwriters seem to have been referencing the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but the details of that melee were far different. In that case, Capone disguised some of his crew as cops, who then used the ruse to murder several members of a rival gang. But in the same way the classic Kevin Costner-Sean Connery film The Untouchables tells a mostly made-up but extremely entertaining version of the Capone legend, “The Night Chicago Died” works as a supercharged fever dream of those gang wars.
What is the Meaning of “The Night Chicago Died”?
Like “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero” did for the Civil War, “The Night Chicago Died” brings us into the Chicago organized crime story via a personal tale. The narrator is essentially telling the story of his father, one of the policeman who took part in the fictional battle: I heard my Mama cry / I heard her pray the night Chicago died.
The writers do an outstanding job of setting the scene: In the heat of a summer night / In the land of the dollar bill. Wright belts out the lyrics with a combination of excitement and fear: There was shouting in the street / And the sound of running feet. One area where this song differs from “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”: a happy ending, at least for the narrator. Then the door burst open wide / And my Daddy stepped inside, we find out in the final verse.
Like many of the story-song heroes of the ’70s, Paper Lace struggled to recapture that kind of magic on subsequent efforts. But you can’t quibble with the achievement of “The Night Chicago Died,” even if you choose to quibble with the authenticity of the tale.
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