by Rob Patterson

Boston's debut album has now sold over six million copies in the U.S. alone, something all the so-called business factors involved in success(right time, right place. right band, right management, right record company, heavy radio play, blah, blah, blah...) can't all together explain. Perhaps Tom Scholz, whose former top secret project at Polaroid was the development of instant movies, has developed a process by which that Jonathon Edwards album you just had to buy becomes a Boston LP by the time you reach the cash register? It might sound plausible, if the long, long wait for the follow-up didn't prove any "instant album" theories to be little more than a feeling.

Rumors about the delay have been flying about like guitar-shaped spaceships (Close Encounters fans may note how familiar the Boston cover now looks and I challenge trivia experts to find the short bit of "More Than A Feeling" in the film...it's there!), the most prevalent of which concerns the flooding of Tom Scholz's basement studio, summoning up visions of the techno-wizard guitarist struggling amidst the sludge to save his studio album and career.

Don't you wish life was so glamorous? "Tom hasn't really had any major problems," confessed singer Brad Delp, "though this last blizzard hasn't really had a chance to thaw out. The last one was bad elnough that they had to take out the carpet and dry it, though ."

The actual blocks to the completion of the next Boston LP "are a bit more normal, starting with the band's first break from the road last May. "The studio was supposed to be all ready for us by the time we got back, and Tom had left instructions on what he wanted done," reported Delp, "but when we got back, he wound up ripping out some of the walls and doing things himself. He's pretty particular on that stuff and some of it wasn't done quite the way he wanted it."

"The last album probably took longer than some people realized," said Brad. "Some of those songs were five or six years old and had been recorded three or four different times in different ways. By the time we recorded the album, those songs were real tight."

To assure the same effect on this album, the Scholz production process has been methodical and cautious. 'We really appreciate the fact that Tom is so careful and interested in making a cohesive album," said Brad, and you gotta admit, nobody needs the next album to pay their rent.

The album started with Tom composing instrumental tracks at home after which the band took copies to their respective homes where they developed their own individual contributions. The material was rehearsed for a few weeks in the Cambridge rehearsal hall before they even stepped foot in the studio to record. At this writing, nine tracks are recorded--which anyone else would call finished, but for Tom are merely a first draft.

"Lenny Petze from Epic [an A&R vice-president] came down to Tom's house to see what we were doing," said Delp, "and Tom played. him three of' the songs that we'd done. Lenny said: 'That s great these are all finished, huh? And Tom said: 'Well no, we have to re-record them now.' Lenny just couldn't figure it out ."

So at presstime "the 'keep tracks' aren't down yet," according to Brad. "I think Tom now is shooting for an April release. The final tracks are not really that time-consuming because by now we ve all played and recorded each song enough to be really familiar with ebony porn them.

"I've played-the tracks for some friends of mine," said Brad, "and they say it sounds like Boston, but not like the other album--which is what we wanted. I personally feel this is a much better album,. and everyone is real happy with it. I would buy this one rather than the first one if I had my choice between the two, but that doesn't mean it just couldn't come out and bomb."

What do newly successful rock 'n' roll stars do when they're not recording? "Pretty much what we were doing before we started. Franny's driving his Porsche around, Barry is driving his Lotus, and I'm..." said Brad, true to form "still driving my '72 Capri."

"I've decided there's no justice in the music business," he concluded, "and I'm just going to have to stop feeling guilty about selling albums." blog comments powered by Disqus