Chicago's main songwriter, Robert Lamm, wrote this after a particularly exhilarating 4th of July spent in New York's Central Park, where there were steel drum players, singers, dancers and jugglers. Lamm and Peter Cetera sang lead on the track. According to fellow Chicago member Walter Parazaider, Lamm was inspired to write the song during the recording of V in New York City on July 4, 1971 (actually a Sunday): "Robert came back to the hotel from Central Park very excited after seeing the steel drum players, singers, dancers, and jugglers. I said, 'Man, it's time to put music to this!" Robert Lamm based the melody of this song on "You Won't See Me" by The Beatles, something he openly admitted. This song contains some of the most famous nonsense singing in rock: after Robert Lamm sings the line, "Singing Italian songs," he sings some made up words approximating the Italian language. In the studio version of the song, rendered in the printed lyrics as "?". Piano, guitar, and vocal sheet music arrangements have often read "improvised Italian lyrics" in parentheses after this line. However, in a film of Chicago performing "Saturday in the Park", at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago, in 1972, Robert Lamm clearly sings, "Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari," the first line of a song known as "Eh, Cumpari!", which was made famous by Julius La Rosa in 1953.