LEMONT, Ill. — It wasn’t an aspiration that Peter Schivarelli was fortunate to step into, but more of a happy accident that’s lasted for more than four decades.
And grew into a passion and a purpose that the former Notre Dame football walk-on can’t see an end to and certainly isn’t counting down the days until it’s over.
Which begs the question for the longtime manager of the rock band Chicago. Over and over and over and over.
“Still to this day, when people say, ‘What do you play?’ And I tell them, ‘I try to as hard as I can to play the radio.’” the 80-year-old Schivarelli said back in his home base in suburban Chicago between legs of the band’s current tour. “I have no talent whatsoever musically.”
That’s not to say that he doesn’t know music.
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Neighborhood friends with the original band members first known as The Big Thing in 1967 then as Chicago Transit Authority before morphing into Chicago in 1969, Schivarelli finally got a test run as manager in the early ’80s.
That was roughly the time Peter Cetera was leaving the band for a solo career, and a gig for Schivarelli that he was warned might only last a couple of years. And yet the Commercial Arts major and 1971 ND grad with a booming Demon Dogs vending business at the time wasn’t afraid to make waves anyway.
“I saw a lot of mistakes they were making,” he said. “Even before I started ever realizing that there might be a chance to manage, I used to like to go sit in the audience, and then just watch the reaction to different songs and how things would be.
“And so, when I got a little more into it, I was able to kind of approach them. And there were certain songs that they loved to play, but when they played them, I started calling them ‘bathroom songs,’ because people would either get up to go to the bathroom or go get a beer.
“And I said, ‘You gotta stop playing what you guys like. You gotta play what the people who are here want to hear. It took a little while. They wanted to, obviously, keep working.
“And it just kind of developed more and more to the point where now this is our 58th year. And the average life of bands is one to three years. So, the fact we made it to 58, I guess we gave people something to love.”
And music has loved Schivarelli back.
Specifically, the band Chicago, through some lineup changes around three active original members — Robert Lamm, Lee Loughnane and James Pankow. And Notre Dame's marching band, which has become far more interconnected to the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees than both groups just having some representation at Schivarelli’s surprise birthday party at Notre Dame Stadium earlier this month.
Wife Denise Schivarelli set it up, with university president Rev. Robert Dowd and Notre Dame head football coach Marcus Freeman among the other attendees.
Regulars to Notre Dame Stadium know that the Band of the Fighting Irish routinely plays some of Chicago’s songs during Irish home football games, but Chicago songs are popular nationwide among college marching bands.
“It’s the horns,” Schivarelli said. “Every marching band has got tremendous horn sections, and so whenever — it's the trombone, the trumpet player, the sax players. And that's really the main thing, plus they're songs that everybody knows, right?”
But the Band of the Fighting Irish is the only one of those that Chicago played with. And vice versa. Schivarelli’s crew has played four times in Notre Dame Stadium, starting in 2017 and most recently last season.
“The first time that we ever performed, I met with the kids,” Schivarelli said, “and I asked them, ‘Is there anything I could help you with?’ I mean, they practice more hours than the football team. And not one kid's on scholarship. And they're the most dedicated kids in the school.
“And what it turned out that they wanted was the same backpack that the football team gets. And the athletic director at the time turned them down. He said, ‘You're not an athletic team.’ So, I said, ‘Geez, this is terrible.’”
So, Schivarelli went to Under Armour and bought the backpacks himself. And once Freeman became the head coach, he got involved.
“He comes with the football team captains,” Schivarelli said, “and we pass out all the backpacks to the kids. It’s a great way to bring everybody together.”
With no end in sight.
Chicago's original connection to Notre Dame came in their early years when Father George Wiskirchen worked with the band in their formative years while serving as the band director at Notre Dame High School in Niles, Ill. That is before he moved on to the University of Notre Dame for a 30-year career devoted to music.
Chicago’s first encounter with Notre Dame football, though, had an inauspicious beginning.
It was the last regular-season game of icon Ara Parseghian’s coaching career, Nov. 30, 1974 in Los Angeles.
That was four seasons after Schivarelli finished his run as an Irish football walk-on. And at the time, just friends with, not the manager of Chicago.
“It was a big game, and not only did they want to come, they wanted to be on the field,” Schivarelli said. “So, I asked Ara, ‘Coach, is it OK? He said, ‘OK, but stay with them.’ So, I keep them back, so they don't get hurt.’
"The wind-up was, it was the game we were winning 24-6 at halftime, and then USC took the second-half kickoff, ran for a touchdown, and they wound up beating us 55-24.”
Parseghian and the Irish bounced back in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 1, as No. 9 Notre Dame upended No. 2 Alabama, 13-11, in an epic Parseghian coaching battle against Bear Bryant.
It would be almost a decade later before Schivarelli’s association with the band started to evolve beyond friendship.
By that time they had opened on tour for Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, evolved into a headliner act themselves and got hoodwinked out of appearing at Woodstock by their former manager, according to Schivarelli.
“That’s the thing that bothered me the most,” he said. “They wanted them to play at Woodstock, but he already had shows booked where he would make good commissions, and he convinced them they shouldn't play Woodstock. You know what I mean, because he didn't want to give up the commissions.”
The band getting paid consistently on other fronts was a problem in the club scene in Chicago.
“Do you know who mothers and fathers of Italian-Americans are,” Schivarelli asks, chuckling, his guests sitting around the table. “That's who owned all the clubs. So, take the first letter of each of those words — M.A.F.I.A.
“So, a couple times I wanted to make sure they got paid. I did it for them as friends, and not even thinking, you know, I could wind up getting my legs broke or something. I just felt that they deserved this. And it just kind of grew from there. And then the manager opportunity grew out of that.”
After producing 38 albums and 100 million in worldwide sales, Chicago still tours, though the 200 to 250 shows a year is more like 100 these days. Sometimes, the Schivarelli's dog, Milkshake, comes along and even winds up backstage.
Plaques commemorating the 25 gold records and 18 platinum records and eight multi-platinums line the walls at a home he owns near the Notre Dame campus. On one of the walls where most of them hang, is also an autographed picture signed by all the members of the Band of the Fighting Irish.
“Really, a lot of people say to me and the band, ‘Oh, how could you keep doing this?’ Why keep going?’” Schivarelli said. “Well, at one point, I was commissioner of the city in Chicago. And guys that I started out with would come up to City Hall, and they'd say, ‘I can't wait. I got six more months, or I got a year to go. I can't wait to get my pension and be able to just do what I want.’
“And they’d leave and for a few months, they thought it was great. Another six months later, you'd see them, and they'd say, ‘Worst thing I ever did. I don't know what to do with myself, you know.’
“And so I always said that I would never retire. In fact, we joked about the famous artist, Picasso. I think he died with the brush in his hand working on a thing at 90-something years old.
"And I said, ‘I want to be like Picasso.’
"I think the band feels the same way. How many people really get to do — and especially for them, they started it at 17,18, years old — for their entire life, to do what they love? To get the kind of adulation, people screaming for you and everything, not to mention the kind of money they make? You know what I mean?
“So, I mean, how could you have anything better than to do something that you really enjoy and be able to do it? And I guess if you really like it, like that old saying — You never feel like you work a day in your life. And that's kind of how it is.”
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