Fast forward to 2008. Boston remains the best-selling debut rock and roll album in the history of Billboard s charts, at 17 million copies. Four more Boston studio discs and a greatest hits set have followed in its wake, racking up more than 30 millions albums sold worldwide. But the yin of Scholz and Boston s success has been countered by the yang of divisiveness and lawsuits, and, most tragically, his friend Delp s suicide in 2007.
This summer Boston is reconvening for the first time in four years to celebrate the group s triumphs. There will be a North American tour built around its musical cornerstones: More Than a Feeling, Don t Look Back, Smokin , Peace of Mind, Hitch a Ride, Long Time, Amanda, and other tunes stitched into the lives of many who came of age in the classic rock era.
The tour, which starts on June 6 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and ends August 26 in Syracuse, New York, ebony porn
sports a surprise: singer Tommy DeCarlo. The North Carolinian was plucked from his job at a Home Depot when Scholz heard DeCarlo s Delp-like pipes on his Myspace page, where DeCarlo had posted his own version of Boston tunes in tribute to his late vocal idol.
Less surprising is Scholz s choice of guitars. That s because he s used the same pair of 1968 Les Paul Goldtops both on stage and in the studio throughout Boston s entire history.
For an inveterate inventor and tinkerer who created his own Rockman line of electronic amps and effects and is always tweaking Boston s sonic arsenal, Scholz s unshakeable devotion to his Les Pauls dependability is astonishing. So when we spoke recently, we opted to talk guitars.