"Lake Shore Drive" is a song written by Skip Haynes of the Chicago-based group Aliotta, Haynes and Jeremiah, initially recorded in 1971 and released on their 1972 Lake Shore Drive album.  The song is a homage to the famed lakefront highway.   Even though "LSD" had long been an abbreviation for the Drive, many people thought the song referred to the hallucinogenic drug. 

Haynes maintains that the song is not about LSD, the line "Just slippin' on by on L.S.D. / Friday night, trouble bound" has been construed as a double entendre of both driving on Lake Shore Drive in the winter and tripping on the drug.  Haynes has said that he conceived the song after a night (and early morning) at some of the bars in Chicago.  He said that he basically wrote out the words of a conversation he had regarding driving on Lake Shore Drive. 

Initially he didn’t care for the song, but his manager pushed him to record a demo at the Chess Records studio and ultimately the band recorded the song at Paragon Recording Studios.  It was one of the first songs recorded by a local band that used a string section from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Skip Haynes was the guitarist and lead singer, Mitch Aliotta played bass and John Jeremiah was the pianist. 

In an interview with Haynes in 2012 he said, “We were lying on the floor of the studio listening to the rough mixes, a habit we picked up when listening to Rotary Connection mixes at Chess Records, when we realized we had been having so much fun we had neglected to put an instrumental solo in the song.  The song was finished so there was no going back at that point.  We figured that Lake Shore Drive would have to live without a solo when Joe Golan (CSO 2nd chair violin) popped up and asked if he could try something on the long tag at the end of the song.   He was still buzzed on the tequila we had so thoughtfully provided, and he knew the song well, having written the score for the strings.   He went into the studio and ripped off the amazing violin solo at the end of Lake Shore Drive in one take!”

Various Sources