After a five-year hiatus, painstaking guitarist Tom Scholz and his band Boston are back and seeking revenge on Corporate America, their fifth album in 26 years.
Tom Scholz likes to do things his way. As the guitarist and figurehead of arena-rock pioneers Boston, he ll lay down hundreds of tracks to get a song the way he wants it, and if he can t find a processor to shape a sound properly, he ll build one of his own. When he is forced to compromise to cut two-track masters in digital, for instance he does so grudgingly. It finally became a bad idea to mix anything down to a two-track analog tape, he says, because nothing is available to the consumer that has not been digitized.
Classic Tracks: Boston's "More Than a Feeling"
By Dan Daley
In 1976, mainstream American rock was making ebony porn
the transition from blues-based proto-metal to what would become a decade-and-a-half's worth of power pop. It was an era when the recording of the pistons of rock - guitars and drums - made the transition from a crude craft to a true science, as guitar sounds began to receive the kind of data processing heretofore reserved for NASA telemetry.
Boston's "More Than a Feeling"
Dan Daley - Mix Magazine Online
Sep 1, 2000
In 1976, mainstream American rock was making the transition from blues-based proto-metal to what would become a decade-and-a-half's worth of power pop. It was an era when the recording of the pistons of rock - guitars and drums - made the transition from a crude craft to a true science, as guitar sounds began to receive the kind of data processing heretofore reserved for NASA telemetry.
"More Than A Feeling," the first single from Boston's eponymous debut album, hit the airwaves that autumn (making it to Number 5), and acted as a pivot in this transition, combining some of the ebullience of the rock era's early days with the precision and technology that would mark rock record productions from then on. That song and album also set benchmarks for the record business. Boston became the best-selling pop debut effort in history, a title it held for a decade before it was supplanted by Whitney Houston's first album. It ultimately sold 16 million copies in the process of creating a reference point for production values and studio technology that would stand for years.
Classic Tracks: Boston's "More Than a Feeling"
In 1976, mainstream American rock was making the transition from blues-based proto-metal to what would become a decade-and-a-half's worth of power pop. It was an era when the recording of the pistons of rock - guitars and drums - made the transition from a crude craft to a true science, as guitar sounds began to receive the kind of data processing heretofore reserved for NASA telemetry.
Boston More Than a Feeling, Less Than an Album?
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.
Overnight Success
Guitar Player, August, 1977
Surely, it would have made a great ad for the back pages of some fan magazine:
"Now you too can become a rock 'n' roll star in just your spare time. Record tomorrow's hit songs right in your own basement. Millions of records sold almost overnight."
A rock and roll fairy tale? Sure, but one that has come true for Tom Scholz, the lanky (he's well over six feet) guitarist and spiritual motivator of the rock group Boston. His band has sold over three million copies of their first LP, Boston [Epic, PE 34l88] constructed almost entirely from tapes recorded in Scholz' 4-and then 12-track basement studio. For massive popularity, Boston rivals such established stars as Peter Frampton, Fleetwood Mac, and Stevie Wonder.
Boston: Metallic and Melodic
Circus Magazine 12/30/1976
by Anastasia Pantsios
Whoa! It all happened so fast for a group called Boston that it taught them off guard.
But, a month after the album's Fall release, it had sold in excess of 200,000 copies and record company personnel were rhapsodizing optimistically about a gold album before Christmas.
All this, and nobody really knows who Boston is yet. Like the liner notes on the album say, they haven't been in any bands you've heard of. Guitarist Barry Goudreau, lead singer Brad Delp and the band's leader and chief songwriter Tom Scholz had been playing together for five years, strictly basement-style, working on their own music while working at other jobs, they quit those old jobs only last June when the band went out to Los Angeles to mix the album, an album which was largely recorded in Tom's home studio. Fran Sheehan, bassist and Sib Hashian, drummer, had been playing in other bands around the Boston area.