Boston - The feel of arena rock

I wasn't trying to follow a trend. I just wanted to create the sound I had in my head

(Tom Scholz)

Boston's music is made to make you feel better, to help you escape, even if just for a few minutes

(Brad Delp)

Boston's success proves that melodic rock can be powerful, extremely polished and commercially overwhelming, all at the same time

(Rolling Stone)

The inventor

Toledo, Ohio. In the suburb of Ottawa Hills, a thick-haired, dark-haired boy named Donald Thomas Scholz grows up, born on March 10, 1947. His father, Don Scholz, is a prominent local architect, who quickly became wealthy thanks to his home design projects for the construction of luxury prefabricated houses.

Raised in a well-off, culturally rich environment, Tom takes up piano and classical music as a teenager, but above all shows he can follow in his father's footsteps in the art of design. He loves tinkering with all sorts of objects, from go-karts to model airplanes, while earning top grades at Ottawa Hills High School. His adult life seems marked by a natural leaning toward design, so much so that he decides to enroll at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to earn a degree in mechanical engineering in the late Sixties. After finishing his studies, he is hired as a senior product designer at Polaroid Corporation, the company founded in Cambridge to revolutionize the camera market.

A huge music fan, from blues to rock'n'roll, Scholz has already tried his hand at writing his first instrumental pieces, while dreaming of a private recording studio he plans to build himself, piece by piece. During his MIT years he plays several instruments, having fun gigging around on guitars and occasionally keyboards with his first band, Freehold. During one of many nights on stage he meets another guitarist from Boston, Barry Goudreau, four years his junior. Goudreau too has played since childhood, after borrowing a first acoustic guitar from a friend to start practicing on his own. After taking a few lessons from a professional, he joined the Tornadoes at thirteen, performing up to seven nights a week in various nightclubs around his city. That's how he came into contact with singer Bradley Edward Delp, who was looking for a guitarist for his group. The same age as Goudreau, Delp grew up in Danvers, in Essex County, the son of French-Canadian immigrants. Goudreau's audition to join Delp's band didn't go well, leading the guitarist to set aside his passion for music and enroll at Boston University to study Geology. The proximity between Boston University and MIT brings Goudreau and Scholz together in conversation in late 1969, soon joined by drummer Jim Masdea. Tom openly talks about his projects as an engineer lent to the world of music, showing his new friends his entirely homemade recording studio, as well as his first compositions in demo form. Goudreau suggests the two of them hire a singer, and the choice falls on Delp.

The quartet starts rehearsing in Scholz's studio, with Tom handling bass, guitar and keyboard parts, but every tape sent to the various record labels around the Boston area gets rejected. The group, later named Mother's Milk, offers up a mix of bright rock'n'roll, hard rock tones and a pop flavor. But Mother's Milk's recordings continue to be ignored by record executives in the early Seventies, forcing the band to split up between 1973 and 1974.

Boston

Despite the failure of Mother's Milk, Scholz doesn't give up, working with the others on new demo tracks. The band's new material finally catches the attention of two local record men, Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie. The latter works as a rep for ABC Records and one day happens to hear, completely by chance, a track by an unknown band in the offices of a friend who works at RCA. He immediately mentions it to his partner Paul, who has recently left his job as a promotion executive at Atlantic Records. The pair have just founded a management company called Pure Management, which thus gets in touch with the author of that track, Tom Scholz, to convince him to give Epic Records a shot, a CBS-owned label described as a “friendly,” and therefore malleable, one.

Ahern flies to New York to present the demo tapes to Epic producer Tom Werman, who listens to them in the office of label boss Steve Popovich. One track in particular makes everyone sit up and take notice, titled “More Than A Feeling”, opening with a delicate guitar arpeggio under the melodic vocal before exploding into a hard-boogie riff. Werman finishes listening to the track and stops everything, incredulous: how is it possible that something like this just landed in our laps? With a sly grin, Ahern admits this is his last shot after a landslide of rejections, but Epic doesn't sign on immediately despite its astonishment. The label wants to see the band perform live first and organizes a sort of tryout session in front of all the company's top brass. The group is obviously thrilled, but there's a problem: Ahern and McKenzie want drummer Jim Masdea replaced, deemed not up to the band's future potential on the world rock stage. Later on, there will be talk of a general lack of interest Masdea himself showed toward music, while others will say it was a forced departure stemming from his insistence on including a drum solo. But in 1974, after so many rejections, Scholz and his bandmates can't afford to let the chance of a lifetime slip away, so they decide to bring in a temporary drummer, Dave Courier, and bassist Fran Sheehan, who was already looking for a career in music after dropping out of college.

With Epic's backing, a warehouse owned by Aerosmith is rented for a day to stage the live set that wins over the label. Still without an official name, the group secures a six-year, ten-album deal, signed only by Scholz and Delp.

With a contract secured, the drummer issue still needs sorting out, having definitively dropped the idea of bringing back Masdea. The choice falls on Sib Hashian, an old acquaintance of Goudreau's, while Epic insists the band work with an experienced producer, John Boylan, who comes from a country-music background — much to the displeasure of Scholz, who wants to produce the debut album himself. Fortunately the friction is only short-lived, as Boylan reaches an understanding with Tom, both leaving him the role of co-producer and avoiding tampering too much with the tapes already recorded. The band is then brought to Record Plant studios in Los Angeles, simply to put the finishing touches on songs already written, later remixed by Boylan at Westlake Studios in Boston. For Scholz it feels strange working on compositions that were born entirely at home with Masdea on drums, but the excitement is far too strong: the money earned working at Polaroid had turned amateur recordings into songs now ready to be heard across the United States. But there's another problem: they don't have a name. Producer John Boylan, together with his sound engineer Warren Dewey, mulls over a very simple fact — that every member of the band comes from the Boston area. So why not just use that very name, Boston?

Rock'n'Roll Band

The summer of 1974 thus becomes Boston's season, as they debut with their self-titled debut album at the end of August, on Epic. Driven by the opening single "More Than A Feeling", the record is a smash success, first ignited by radio stations in the Cleveland area before spreading to heavy rotation on hundreds of stations nationwide. The ringing, sixties-style riff – influenced by bands like The Kinks or The Yardbirds – combined with Delp's sweet, powerful voice effectively shapes a new branch of hard rock, closer to the mainstream, in a style that industry insiders would come to define as arena rock. With no fewer than three singles landing in the American Top 40, Boston takes just three weeks to go gold, selling 500,000 copies in the States.

In a musical landscape upended by disco music and punk, the band comes to the rescue of classic-rock radio stations, more than happy to play songs like "More Than A Feeling" and "Peace Of Mind" on repeat — an irresistible uptempo track that combines the choral exuberance of the Doobie Brothers with a hard-pop sound that builds an imaginary bridge between Queen and Black Sabbath.

With nearly 20 million copies sold, Boston is one of the best-selling debut albums in the history of American rock, able to satisfy a wide range of tastes, from the instrumental progressive air of "Foreplay" – one of Scholz's earliest compositions from his college days – to the electro-acoustic, handclapping rhythm of "Long Time".

Boston's sound is genuine and direct, as on the two bar-room boogies "Rock'n'Roll Band" and "Smokin'", which radiate joy from every pore, sparking a staggering success for a group of first-timers. The combination of Delp's falsetto vocals and Scholz's powerful bluesy phrasing works a genuine sonic magic, as for instance on the power ballad "Hitch A Ride", which blends liturgical vocal harmonies, folk textures and electric jolts. Boston's sound becomes a blueprint for classic rock, from the roaring "Something About You" to the sweet ballad "Let Me Take You Home Tonight".

With sales skyrocketing, Boston catches the attention of the mainstream media, quickly moving from small clubs to opening for bands like Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult. Between 1976 and 1977 the group fills America's biggest arenas with startling ease, becoming the first band in history to play Madison Square Garden on its debut New York date. After winning a Grammy Award in the Best New Artist category and spending a remarkable 132 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200, Boston effectively becomes a heavyweight of American music. That's a problem for Tom Scholz, who immediately starts facing enormous pressure from the Ahern-McKenzie management duo, who want a second album for Epic as soon as possible. But Tom is in no hurry; he wants to work calmly and meticulously in his new home studio, nicknamed Hideaway, unbothered by the band's overwhelming success. The tug-of-war with management is resolved through an unusual compromise, since Don't Look Back doesn't come out until the summer of 1978, and even then it doesn't fully satisfy Scholz's songwriting ambitions — he considers it too short and not fully developed, especially on the second side.

Critics, however, are generally kind to the record, which is particularly praised for consolidating the band's hard rock foundation with melodic structures. Starting with the title track, which effectively reworks the hit "More Than A Feeling" through an anthemic riff and sweeping tempo changes. Don't Look Back sells over seven million copies, proof of just how readily Boston can turn whatever they produce into gold — even though the record generally falls short of the debut, having been made without fully accommodating the perfectionist pace of Scholz. From the brief cosmic interlude "The Journey", the album constantly teeters between ambition and pragmatism, crystallized in the guitar-driven new pop-boogie "It's Easy", which dances between hard rock surges and melodic slowdowns. The new chart-topping hit is the tender power ballad "A Man I'll Never Be", which, in a Zeppelin-esque structure, reveals the more lyrical side of a band generally associated with a lighter-hearted sound. And indeed, "Feelin' Satisfied" brings things back to full-throttle rock'n'roll, opening the much-maligned second half of the album, at least according to Scholz's own criticism. "Party" is a boogie-rock number for rowdy crowds, while "Used To Bad News" weaves Beatles-esque melodies into a glittering pop ballad.

Closing the record is the crescendo of "Don't Be Afraid", one of Scholz's earliest demo recordings from his amateur home studio, full of swirling wah-wah solos and falsetto vocal harmonies.

Sonic Warfare

The Don't Look Back tour lasts almost two years, starting in the United States before landing for the first time in Europe and Japan. The band decides to bring along a massive pipe organ – nicknamed Bernie – custom-built at a considerable expense, over a hundred thousand dollars. For the final leg, Boston arrives in the United Kingdom in the autumn of 1979, playing to thousands of fans completely unaware of what's about to happen. At the end of an exhausting tour, Tom Scholz talks to Brad Delp, admitting he feels completely drained, demoralized by certain mechanisms of the music industry, and partly guilty about the ever-growing expectations of an exponentially expanding audience.

Scholz no longer wants to go back to playing live, and seriously considers the possibility of returning to engineering work. The situation worsens at the end of 1979, when Tom reaches a breaking point with manager Paul Ahern, who claims an old signed contract entitling him to substantial royalty payments. A meeting is called with all the band members, in which Scholz announces that the Boston project will be put on ice, inviting his bandmates to consider exploring individual artistic paths. The first to act on this is guitarist Barry Goudreau, who secures a solo deal with Epic to release his self-titled debut album in 1980, with contributions from Brad Delp, Sib Hashian and singer Fran Cosmo. The record revisits Boston's classic sound, encapsulated in the single "Dreams", which comes close to cracking the Billboard Top 100. A promotional blurb, however, sends Scholz into a fury when he reads the line: "Twelve million people know the sound of this guitar. We'd like to introduce you to its owner." Meanwhile, the founding mind behind Boston has set up SR&D (Scholz Research & Development), devoting himself to building new musical gear, from the Powersoak to the far more famous Rockman – used by artists like ZZ Top, Journey and Def Leppard – which lets even budding musicians reproduce a thicker, fuller guitar tone.

As Goudreau leaves Boston to form his own group, Orion the Hunter, Delp also comes to loggerheads with Tom, announcing his intention to leave the band after the sessions for one final album. But the situation grows ever more tangled: Cbs ramps up the pressure to release a third Boston record, drastically cutting Scholz's earnings from the two previous albums. The label attempts an unethical move, convinced that by denying him cash flow, Scholz will be forced to finish a new record. Tom categorically refuses to bow to any pressure, leading Cbs executives to sue him for breach of contract terms – reportedly seeking a sum somewhere between 20 and 60 million dollars – claiming he had proven himself over time to be "creatively uncooperative."

The clash heats up when Scholz tells the press he will never work with Epic again, launching a countersuit against Cbs for unpaid royalties. In the spring of 1985, a New York judge rules that the label's case is baseless, freeing Tom to negotiate a contract with another record company. The battle between the guitarist and Cbs boss Walter Yetnikoff will drag on for another five years, ending in Scholz's definitive victory, as he receives all the back royalties owed plus millions of dollars in damages. In the meantime, Tom strikes a deal with Mca Records for the release of the third album, only to be threatened once again by Cbs with a cease and desist suit demanding a fee of 25 cents for every copy sold.

This isn't the only battle Tom Scholz finds himself fighting by the mid-1980s: starting with Delp, the other members of Boston demand greater creative involvement in the project, while Goudreau has already said his goodbyes, not without resentment. Troubled by this total lack of harmony, Scholz brings back drummer Jim Masdea, along with new guitarist Gary O. Pihl, who comes from singer Sammy Hagar's band. The recording sessions take place at Scholz's own Hideaway Studio, where he reworks several tracks sketched out over the most turbulent years of his life.

Third Stage finally sees the light of day toward the end of 1986, a full eight years after Don't Look Back, propelled up the charts by the single "Amanda," a wrenching electro-acoustic power-ballad that lands in the Billboard Top 40 and remains one of the decade's classics. The album, however, also leaves a bitter aftertaste, locked into Boston's classic sound as though it had come out at the end of the 1970s. After so much struggle, Scholz takes the easier path, avoiding any major changes to the band's sonic framework, caught between sweet pop harmonies and guitar aggression. The group continues down the arena-rock road to the delight of radio stations, which blast the solo of "We're Ready" at full volume, surely one of the album's finest moments. Scholz's studio experiments give rise to the cosmogonic mini-suite "The Launch," which opens the excellent rock'n'roll of "Cool The Engines," somewhere between Steppenwolf and Aerosmith.

Third Stage does, however, suffer from a few dead spots, starting with the filler ballad "My Destination," which closes out side one. "To Be A Man" is another dose of romanticism inlaid with guitar modified via the Rocketman device, while "I Think I Like It" returns to a more mainstream boogie-sound, and "Hollyann" is another powerful ballad that stirs the fans' emotions. There's no shortage of missteps either, like the a cappella intro to "Can'tcha Say (You Believe In Me)," which borders on tedious, in a setting reminiscent of certain Queen bombast — something unlikely to win over the new generation of listeners, already tuned into other musical wavelengths by the mid-1980s.

Moving forward?

Between 1987 and 1988, Boston take the long-suffering Third Stage out on an extended tour, often playing it in its entirety alongside new additions to the line-up, Doug Huffman (drums) and David Sikes (bass). Scholz also invites drummer Jim Masdea, who performs solely for the opening of "Rock'n'Roll Band." The shows are, unsurprisingly, a hit with audiences, despite some criticism aimed at Tom for having softened the band's sound. While tending to various charitable causes through his newly founded foundation, Scholz once again shuts himself away in his home recording studio to work on a fourth Boston album for Mca. But yet another problem lurks around the corner: Brad Delp, by now fed up with dealing with Tom, hands in his resignation, ready to embark on a new venture with none other than former guitarist Barry Goudreau. He's replaced by Fran Cosmo, who had already been working with Goudreau in the group Orion The Hunter, and whom Scholz regards as something of a natural heir to Delp given his extensive familiarity with the Boston catalogue. The recording sessions for the new album once again prove difficult, caught between Tom's perfectionism and renovation work on his personal studio.

Fans are thus made to wait another eight years before getting their hands on Walk On, which hits the American market in the summer of 1994, right in the thick of the grunge revolution. The single chosen to drive the album is "I Need Your Love," a hyper-melodic power-rock track that struggles to climb the Billboard Hot 100. It is, in fact, the last song by the band to appear on the US charts, a sort of depressing tombstone for the group's career. From the plasticky riff of "Surrender To Me" to the orchestral, bombastic intro of "Livin' For You," Walk On proves to be a flop with both critics and fans alike, in a musical landscape that had changed radically. Between the explosion of Mtv and the rebellion of the grunge movement, listenership for mainstream classic-rock radio had collapsed, stripping away the primary source of sustenance for arena-rock bands like Boston. Tracks like the title track, for instance, are still nicely crafted, thanks above all to Scholz's legendary perfectionism in production, but the feeling one gets listening to Boston's music in the mid-90s is steeped in nostalgia and has little connection to the musical present.

The album fares better when it offers instrumental moments like "Get Organ-ized/Get Reorgan-ized," which steer the American band's sound toward progressive complexity, because otherwise tracks like "What's Your Name" are yet another rehash of "More Than A Feeling," with even a faint whiff of shameless self-plagiarism.

Walk On stalls at platinum status, kept afloat only by the most diehard fans. Scholz pins everything on the promotional tour, but realizes that without Delp singing the old classics, it will be an uphill battle. So he makes his boldest and most humble move: bringing Brad back to join Cosmo for the 1994-1995 tour, thereby drawing the American public's attention back in.

In the summer of 1997 the group releases its first compilation, Greatest Hits, which achieves double-platinum status in the United States on the strength of these now-historic staples of American mainstream-rock. The record includes a few new tracks, starting with the soft-pop ballad "Tell Me," followed by the classic arena-rock number "Higher Power" and the as patriotic as pointless rendition of the nationalistic theme "The Star Spangled Banner/4th Of July Reprise."

The success of the greatest-hits album prompts Tom Scholz to return to his recording studio and begin work on a new record of original material. Once again, the sessions resemble a multiple birth, since Boston don't release Corporate America until the very end of 2002, nearly ten years after the lackluster Walk On. The surprising title track, which transforms the band's sound into a Spectorian wall given a progressive-dance twist, is uploaded by Scholz himself – under the pseudonym Downer's Revenge – to the Mp3 platform, with the ultimate aim of testing the reaction of younger listeners. The result is satisfying, as the track climbs to the top of the progressive-rock chart for a couple of weeks, paving the way for the new album's release on the independent label Artemis, run by former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg. The show of force is considerable, since the group's line-up at the dawn of the new millennium features Delp and Cosmo trading off on vocals, with Gary Pihl moved to keyboards and new guitarist Kimberley Dahme joining the fold. The sonic "revolution" works, if only partially, because the album at least has the ambition to refresh the band's sound for the new era. "I Had A Good Time" revives Bon Jovi-style arena rock, while tracks like "Stare Out Your Window" and "With You" add a folk-rock touch to Boston's classic framework.

The shift, partly criticized by reviewers, veers toward a dated progressive-pop on "Someone," abruptly alternating with grunge-flavored outbursts like "Turn It Off." Corporate America is thus a muddled record, caught between Gallagher-esque electro-acoustic ballads ("Cryin'") and anachronistic choral pop featuring yet another return of the riff that made the American band's fortune ("You Gave Up On Love").

Life, death and hope

Despite Scholz's efforts, Corporate America is a commercial flop, completely ignored by the public after those two weeks on the Mp3.com chart. The Boston frontman is furious with Goldberg and his label Artemis, accusing them of doing virtually nothing to promote the record and help it sell. Scholz sees it as a breach of contract, dragging Tom back into court against the indie label, which shortly after declares bankruptcy, taking the album down with it: it would remain out of print for more than twenty years.

Boston embark on a long tour starting in 2003, eventually taking the stage at Symphony Hall on November 13, 2006. On the surface it's just an evening honoring beloved quarterback Doug Flutie, who receives the Red, White & Blue Award for his contributions to the local community. But it turns out to be singer Brad Delp's last public appearance: on March 9, 2007, he is found dead by police at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire. The call for help came from his girlfriend Pamela Sullivan, who found him lifeless in the master bathroom, along with several notes he had deliberately left behind. Inside the bathroom, police find two charcoal grills set on the fixtures, the door sealed with tape, and a towel placed underneath. Investigators find no signs of forced entry or evidence of foul play, ruling the case a suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Boston fans are left in shock as an unsettling hunt for someone to blame begins, pointing squarely at Tom Scholz, accused of worsening Delp's depression through his authoritarian behavior after pushing him out of the band. Scholz immediately denies the accusations, stating that he had welcomed the singer back into the fold multiple times — and gladly so — but Delp's ex-wife Micki won't let it go, publishing an interview in the Boston Herald that sparks a new defamation lawsuit. Months later, new revelations surface pointing to troubling behavior by Delp toward Pamela Sullivan's sister, Meg, which help clear the legal air around Tom.

On August 19, 2007, a major concert in Delp's honor, titled "Come Together: A Tribute to Brad Delp", is held at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston. Among the artists invited by Scholz are Ernie and the Automatics, Beatlejuice, and Orion the Hunter, who take the stage alongside surprise guest Tommy DeCarlo, a Boston fan discovered through a MySpace page. With the collective grief behind them, the band keeps performing across the United States, until new tensions emerge during the 2008 US presidential campaign. Guitarist Barry Goudreau appears in public alongside Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, performing at several rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee uses "More Than A Feeling" as his campaign anthem, sparking the fury of Scholz, a committed supporter of Barack Obama. Tom sends an open letter to Huckabee in early 2008, stating that the band has never endorsed any candidate and has not authorized the use of their old hit. In the spring of 2008, Scholz reshuffles Boston's lineup for a summer North American tour with more than 50 dates packed into just a few months. Tom is by now the only founding member still on tour, alongside Gary Pihl and fan-turned-singer Tommy DeCarlo, who has become a fixture on vocals alongside Michael Sweet, later replaced in the summer of 2011 by David Victor.

Boston's new album arrives in December 2013 under the title Life, Love & Hope, more than ten years after their last studio effort. Among the various coups for Naples-based label Frontiers Music's hard rock roster, the American band's sixth album is, as ever, the painstakingly meticulous creative brainchild of Tom Scholz. Opened by the roaring power-pop of "Heaven On Earth", the record acts as a time machine, carrying the listener back to the golden years of the late Seventies. On the elegant, melancholy love song "Didn't Mean To Fall In Love", tears well up at the sound of Delp's voice once again, while the immortal riff of "More Than A Feeling" rides on once more.

Life, Love & Hope is thus a pure exercise in nostalgic retrieval of the past, from the instrumental "Last Day Of School" to the classic arena-rock of the title track. Scholz only experiments on a handful of tracks, such as "Sail Away", which veers toward an electro-progressive flavor. Still, the album leaves a lingering sense of incompleteness, feeling more like a collection of songs assembled by design than a finished product built around a clear idea. From the choral pop of "If You Were In Love" to the standard mainstream groove of "Someday", Tom Scholz's once-magic touch seems to have vanished for good.

In 2014, Boston launch the Heaven On Earth Tour, with a lineup featuring Scholz, Pihl, DeCarlo and Victor. After a handful of shows celebrating the band's fortieth anniversary at the Wang Theatre in Boston, the American group mourns the death of former drummer Sib Hashian, who collapsed aboard the Legends of Rock cruise ship. During 2017, Scholz begins writing new material for Boston's seventh album, telling the press he has songs in mind with strong live impact, aware of the need to evolve the band's sound. But when a journalist presses him for any certainty on a possible release date, Tom lives up fully to his famous perfectionism: "Who knows? I'm only 70. I think I've still got 30 years left." More than seven years later, Scholz is talking about difficult repairs to his homemade equipment, insisting he is still working on new material in the studio. To this day, American fans keep hoping a new album will see the light of day before those thirty years run out.

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