re: Chicago in 1970

Ballad for a Girl in Buchannon is a MONSTER. And BTW, Chicago never "ditched the horns" at any point in their career. James Pankow was one of the most important writers/arrangers in the band. His stamp was on everything they ever did, including the Foster produced sessions.

You are correct that Foster was brought in to revive their career, however the sound you wound up with had much more to do with the fact that Seraphine was terribly addicted to drugs and simply could no longer keep time. Other band members were disgruntled about Foster and Cetera seemingly taking over, which resulted in the use of a Linn drum machine and the heavy synths instead of live horns. Foster had zero track record as a producer in preferring synths to live horns. In fact, he was still working with Earth Wind and Fire, using live horns. Again, no one other than Cetera wanted to perform on those albums.

Additionally, if you look at Fosters work, he would often find certain band members not up to this performance standard and use other musicians. A great example of this would be The Tubes, "She's A Beauty". I'm not sure there's more than two members of the band on that track. That's Steve Lukather on guitar and Bobby Kimball and Bobby Lamm on backing vocals. Another Tubes track that got the "Foster Treatment" was "Don't Want to Wait Anymore."

As for Chicago, on tour they never performed without live horns playing those parts.

I liked some of the ballads but damn, I don't want a whole album of nothing but ballads either. I liked Hard Habit to Break And Remember the Feeling but that's it.