"That, so far as I'm concerned, destroyed any argument of irreparable damage here," he said in his decision. "Before this litigation really got underway, CBS had already fixed its price."

Broderick also took exception to CBS' withholding of the deferred royalties. Once CBS withheld the royalties, they in fact had broken the recording contract, not Scholz. "I don't find anything that makes this money," said Broderick in his decision, "which was being held in a special account by CBS, as being subject to withholding on the grounds of some grievance CBS may think it has with respect to performance under the basic contract."

So Third Stage would be an MCA product, and they released a press release stating that they were excited about releasing the new album, which was - ahem - "almost finished." Actually, Scholz still wasn't finished with the disc, but things were moving faster. One track in particular, a sensitive ballad called "Hollyann," took over six years to write, record, finalize, adjust, fine tune and polish.

Finally, in September 1986 - eight years after the release of Don't Look Back - Boston's new album, Third Stage, was released. The songs on Third Stage were more interpersonal than those on previous Boston albums, as party songs and rockers gave way to ballads and excursions on relationships and adulthood. Other musicians had used Tom Scholz' Rockman products for their own albums and concerts; the inventor showed his students its full power on Third Stage, turning an electric guitar into chimes on "Amanda," into a violin quartet on "A New World," into an armada of axes on "Cool The Engines." "I wasn't ever worried," Scholz said to Rolling Stone about Third Stage's success. "I knew it was the best I could possibly do. But let's put it this way: I certainly would have been crestfallen if it came out and sold half a million copies and no one liked it."

Actually, it flew out of the stores. "You'd think they were coming off a No. 1 album based on the calls we've been getting from stores," said Norman Hunter, an album buyer for the chain of Record Bar stores, to Billboard writer Fred Goodman. In only its third week of release, Third Stage topped the Billboard album charts. The first single from Third Stage, the tender ballad "Amanda" (MCA 52756), raced up the Top 40 charts, hitting #1 on November 6, 1986. Third Stage even topped Billboard's Top Compact Discs chart, and received the first RIAA gold certification ever awarded for selling 500,000 CD's.

Subsequent pressings of Third Stage would later restore Sib Hashian's drumming credits to the album jacket, but it took a lawsuit to do so. "We went through a lawsuit with that, because when the Third Stage album came out, and I was on five songs, guess what - my name wasn't on the album. I had to go through a long suit, I actually had a judge order Tom to sticker the record so that when future records came out, it gave me some drumming credit. I didn't get any gold records or awards on Third Stage, until a fellow in Phoenix, Arizona, a fan named Richard Acevedo, he called up the record label, and the next thing I know I had five platinum albums at my door. I never met that guy, but he's a saint."

With Third Stage topping the charts (and, thanks to catalog sales, Boston and Don't Look Back returning to the album charts), Boston embarked on another world tour, beginning on June 20, 1987 with an appearance at the Texxas Jam Festival in Dallas. For Tom Scholz, returning to the road was a new beginning, a new chance to show audiences the new maturity of a Boston song. "We didn't have a great time on the road in the 1970's," said Scholz, "and it was because of the conditions of the people we were associating with, a lot of trouble with people doing drugs and so forth, and Brad and I both quit the road. It wasn't until the mid-1980's, when I started working around Gary Pihl a little bit, that we got the idea that maybe we could actually put a band together and a crew together that were decent human beings first, and secondly, good at what they did."

Gary Pihl, the former bass player for Sammy Hagar, made his Boston debut on the song "I Think I Like It," based on a song by John DeBrigard (DeBrigard, who performed under the name "Johnny Tomorrow" - and credited in Third Stage as "John English" - performed in many of the same clubs Scholz did during those early 70's formative years). After his contributions to "I Think I Like It," Pihl was invited to stay as a touring and performing member of Boston.

Opening for Boston on the Third Stage tour was a new band, Farrenheit. Although appearing on the Boston tour didn't make Farrenheit superstars, their songs did win Brad Delp over. "I thought they made a great record, and Charlie Farren, the main singer/guitar player with that band was tremendously talented. I always tell him there's a song called 'Impossible World,' which is a great song which probably nobody's heard, very few people have heard."

The tour also featured the entire Third Stage album - from "Amanda" to "Hollyann" - played in sequence. It allowed the audience to hear the Third Stage album as a complete concept - if not the equivalent of Tommy or The Wall, a step in that direction. "Besides eliminating what little tension there might have otherwise been over what songs would be played next," wrote David Wild in Rolling Stone, "this approach meant that the band played some of its weakest material back to back. That said, the live versions of the Third Stage material were a bit more hard edged than their sometimes claustrophobic vinyl counterparts."

But fans loved it anyway. Boston played to sellout crowds throughout America, and capped off their tour with nine sold out homecoming shows in the Worcester (Mass.) Centrum. The show broke Centrum records for performances by a single group and for gross ticket sales (nearly $2 million for 111,000 tickets sold, according to the Worcester Telegram).

"There were only two people from those early days (the 1970's) that we kept for later things," said Scholz. "They were very excellent at what they did, and very excellent people - my guitar tech and our stage manager. But that was it. The rest of it - we just started over, everything. Manager, road managers, crew, musicians, everything, we started from scratch. I don't think we would have done it at all if we hadn't run into Gary Pihl and if he hadn't started doing some work in the studio with me in the mid-1980's, because up until that point, I had no thoughts of going back on the road, and I don't think Brad did either. It was his idea to put together a band and a crew that was with people that we would enjoy being with, and were good people. Brad and Gary, I give credit for finding the other people that we were playing with."

It's now 1989. Tom was beginning work on a new Boston album, but a new variable had entered the equation. Brad Delp received a call from Barry Goudreau - Goudreau was forming another band, and asked Delp to join them and sing lead vocals. "We had finished the Third Stage tour," said Delp, "and Barry had approached me with some more demos. And at the time, I thought it would be fun - like the first record was fun. So I made a commitment to him to do this record and a tour. We were getting set to go out to California to start recording that record, and I got a call from Tom. He was getting started on the Walk On album."

Delp had to go over to Scholz' house and tell him the bad news, that he had made a verbal commitment to Barry, that they were leaving for California for a new record and a tour. "When I left that meeting, he wished me well - I remember he gave me a big hug before I left, he said, 'Good luck with that, and I'll do what I can.'"

Barry Goudreau's new group, which included Brad Delp, Brian Maes on keyboards and harmonica, bassist Tim Archibald and drummer David Stefanelli, was christened "RTZ," after the "Return To Zero" initials on the reset button of a tape machine. Paul Ahern, the former manager for Boston, became their manager. Their album Return to Zero (Giant 24422) spawned three singles, including the Top 40 hit "Until Your Love Comes Back Around" (Giant 19051). "'Until Your Love Comes Back Around' was written by our keyboard player, Brian Maes," said Delp. "That was a real nice song that I had done at one point or another - I used to go over to Barry's house - Barry and I being related through marriage, our wives being sisters - I used to see him a lot, and he'd be working on one thing or another. That particular song had been recorded six, seven years before it finally made it on that record. I always liked that song, too."

RTZ later went on tour, playing tracks from their debut album, as well as songs like "Dreams" and "All Those Years" from previous Barry Goudreau albums. Boston classics like "Long Time" and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" also showed up at an RTZ tour. But in 1992, despite RTZ's desire to record a second album, Giant Records dropped the group from their roster. Maes, Stefanelli and Archibald later joined Peter Wolf's band. So did Charlie Farren, the lead singer from Farrenheit, the band that opened for Boston during the Third Stage tour.

"We did the record, and we did a tour, and what happened to Farrenheit happened to RTZ," said Delp. "In our case, my assumption is the record company thought they had Barry Goudreau and they had Brad Delp, let's put the record out and see if all the Boston fans pick up on it. I don't know if Giant Records put a lot of time behind the record. But who knows why those things work or didn't work. My reflection on that was it was a fun project to be involved in. We did a club tour - some nights it wasn't promoted particularly well, and we had 20-30 people there, and then we'd play places like Hammerjack's in Baltimore and we'd have 1100 in the place. Overall, I enjoyed the experience."

In February 1990, Tom Scholz was back in court, as his long-standing legal battle against CBS finally reached a judge. Scholz had already been awarded more than $3 million in disputed royalties by U.S. District Court Judge Vincent L. Broderick in a previous trial; but this trial centered on the legality of Scholz releasing Third Stage on MCA, despite having a contract with CBS.

CBS' attorneys opened by stating Scholz refused to produce his album, in violation of the contract. Don Engel, Scholz' attorney, retaliated by stating CBS bullied and threatened Scholz, and responded to Scholz' artistic thoroughness by cutting off royalties that were due. Scholz took the stand, as did CBS president Walter Yetnikoff, to argue their cases.

Six weeks later, the jury unanimously ruled in favor of Scholz. Scholz had argued that his desire to release the perfect record - not to be hampered by writer's blocks or label's threats - caused the delays. In addition to the royalties due, Judge Charles Brieant awarded an additional $1.6 million in punitive damages to Tom Scholz. "Basically, what the jury decided was that a record company cannot hold its performers to strict contractural time limitations," said attorney Don Engel to Billboard. "Putting together an album is an artistic process that cannot be governed by a record company, regardless of how many millions of dollars that piece of art is epxected to generate."

The jury believed that despite the six-year, ten-album contract between CBS and Boston, and despite threats to deliver the Third Stage album to CBS within six months, Scholz was indeed working on the album, and was not in breach of the contract so long as he continued work. "It's not a load of coal where you say you'll deliver it in two weeks and it's there in two weeks," said Engel to Variety. "We felt we were right, and we have felt so for six years."

Armed with his victory over CBS, Scholz continued his work on the Walk On album (MCA 10973). Gary Pihl returned from Third Stage, adding lead and rhythm guitars to the mix. Ironically, Fran Cosmo, the lead singer on the Barry Goudreau and Orion The Hunter albums, became Brad Delp's replacement on Walk On. Although listeners knew Delp would not be handling vocals on the Walk On album, Scholz wouldn't announce Cosmo as the new vocalist until the record was ready to hit the stores.

"Van Halen did it the other way," said Scholz to the Boston Globe. "They made a big deal of it when they changed singers. I'm not finding fault with that, but they made a big deal out of it to get some added promotion for that record. Which is fine. But Boston is not a band of personalities. At least it isn't perceived that way publicly. It really is a band that just has a sound and a style that is perceived publicly, but not the personalities. Also, we weren't making a wild departure in style. It wasn't like Michael McDonald stepping into the Doobie Brothers, where there was a big departure in sound. Plus, I wanted fans to hear the album without a lot of attendant thinking like, 'Does this song sound different from before?' There's been a positive reaction from fans, so that's worked out well."

Finally, in December 1993, Scholz presented Walk On to MCA for distribution. "It was a combination of an awful lot of effort over an awful lot of years, which is why Walk On is my favorite album of all five Boston records," said Scholz, "and probably always will be. For that one album, I felt like I had finally got my act together, in every way. I liked the songs, I liked the performance, I liked the production. There has been no other Boston album that I could stand to listen to after I was done. Walk On blasted on my car stereo from the moment it came out of the box."

While Boston prepared a spring and summer outdoor tour (with Cosmo, Pihl, former Giuffria bassist David Sikes, and drummer Doug Huffman), MCA sat on the record until June 1994, when Walk On was finally released. Despite initial success (and a #7 debut in Billboard's Album chart), Walk On did not sell as well as other Boston albums, and quickly skidded out of the Top 10 album chart after a couple of months.

The relationship between Boston and MCA ended that year. "What relationship?" said Scholz to the Boston Globe. "Let's put it this way. I killed myself to finish the record Walk On in December of last year. But MCA didn't put it out until June. We had planned a spring and summer shed tour and that whole thing went down the drain when [MCA] waited so long to put it out."

The tour was also delayed when Boston's former manager, Paul Ahern, dragged Scholz into court in a breach of contract suit. In October 1994, a federal jury in Boston awarded Ahern over $500,000 in damages (the decision was later reversed on appeal in 1996). "I didn't think he was entitled to the money," said Scholz to the Boston Globe after the verdict, "or I wouldn't have postponed the tour to fight it in court. The bottom line is that after living expenses, the money I get from royalties gets donated to a long list of charities."

Charities like homeless shelters, food banks, animal rights, AIDS research and domestic violence support groups. Since 1987, Tom Scholz has donated more than $2 million - from album sales, concert tickets, a Boston Garden benefit show for AIDS research, souvenir merchandise revenues and his own wallet - to these causes of conscience. In 1987, Scholz received the Mahatma Gandhi Award, in recognition of his support of these social causes. In 1988, the National Hopsice Organization named Scholz "Man of the Year." The Third Stage, Walk On and Greatest Hits albums contain addresses and information for organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

On December 12, 1994, Boston prepared for two benefit shows at the House of Blues in Cambridge, Mass, their first club date in their home town since the days of Mother's Milk. Scholz even requested (and the House of Blues acquiesced) that the sound system be rewired for the occasion, just so every note and beat be as perfect as on the records in their audience's memories.

"It's going to be fun, believe me," said Scholz before the event to the Boston Globe. "There's going to be some comedy to these shows ... It's pretty comical just trying to fit our production into the House of Blues. It's amazing what can grow out of a simple, 'Hey, let's have a Christmas party and jam at it.' You know, we might as well stay all week once we get our equipment in there. It's going to be so hard to shoehorn it in - we're tearing it down a bit just to fit in."

The show also offered fans a chance to see the new Boston lineup - in addition to Gary Pihl and David Sikes, Scholz added drummer William "Curly" Smith, from the 70's band Jo Jo Gunne, to replace the departed Doug Huffman.

Rumors circulated that there might be another performer joining Scholz and company at the House of Blues shows - a rumor that was later confirmed when Brad Delp took the stage. "When I finished with RTZ, Tom had finished Walk On. And then there was a period after that record came out, they were strongly considering going on tour. Fran Cosmo was a little apprehensive about going out and singing those old songs, because he was a little concerned about how he would be accepted - certainly I'm sure he could have sung them and done a fine job on them."

"I was home," said Delp, "and I think Tom knew that RTZ was pretty much finished at that point, so I got a call from him and he said, 'Look, we're going on tour, would you be interested in maybe going out with us?'

"I said, 'I really didn't want to go out and replace Fran on the other record - but I think it would be great if the two of us went out together.' Tom was thinking the same thing also."

Brad Delp and Fran Cosmo traded off on vocals, with Delp singing classics like "Don't Look Back," "Party" and "Long Time," while Cosmo took the lead vocals on newer songs like "What's Your Name" and "Walk On," as well as the "Smokin'" encore. Being a Christmas show, Boston added John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," as well as an old 50's classic, "Merry Christmas Baby" to the set list.

"It was really a terrific thing for the vocalists," said Delp, "I got to sing on some of the songs from Walk On that I didn't get to record. And Fran could hit the high notes on songs like 'More Than A Feeling' that might give me some trouble on tour."

As the House of Blues party wound down, Scholz handed out two $5,000 checks - one to the Boston Globe's Santa Claus campaign, and one for "Operation Christmas" in Fall River, Mass. The shows were so well received that Boston embarked on another summer tour in 1995, playing outdoor arenas and festivals.

One of the highlights of the 1995 tour was an appearance in Mansfield, Massachusetts, at the Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts. With the lead guitarists (Scholz, Delp, Cosmo and Pihl) playing in four-part harmony, and Delp and Cosmo continuing to share vocal duties on old and new Boston classics, the band performed for 2 1/2 hours in front of a heavily enthusiastic crowd - then played more classics in the encores.

Tom Scholz also found new avenues to channel his creative energies. He shut down Scholz Research & Development, selling the Rockman line to Dunlop Manufacturing. An avid basketball player in his youth (he led his high school to the state championship game), Scholz continued to shoot baskets whenever he could find a court, a ball and a hoop. In fact, a 1996 package tour with Cheap Trick was cancelled because Scholz injured his hand while shooting hoops.

He also took up figure skating, even requesting rink time during concert tours. Ever the inventor, Scholz even came up with a brand new skating jump that Tara Lipinski might consider - a "Scholz" (jump from the wrong foot, spin, land on the wrong foot). "I saw skaters on TV doing jumps where you zip across the ice and launch into the air off of a sharpened steel blade and somehow come back down going backwards on one foot and live through it," said Scholz to the Boston Globe. "That looked too cool for me not to try, so I did. It's not easy, but you know what? I missed my calling, because I can do it."

In 1997, twenty-one years after the release of their debut album, Boston released a "Greatest Hits" CD. Included among the classic tracks - "More Than A Feeling," "Don't Look Back," "Amanda," "Cool The Engines," "Livin' For You," to name a few - are three new compositions: "Tell Me," which marks bassist David Sikes' debut as a lead vocalist; "The Star Spangled Banner/4th of July," featuring Tom Scholz' reinterpretation of the Francis Scott Key classic in 4/4 time; and "Higher Power," a song dedicated to those who found the strength to quit substance abuse (two versions of "Higher Power" appear on Greatest Hits: the original, which contains the famous "Serenity Prayer" heard at self-help meetings; and a shorter "Kalodner Edit," as remixed by Sony executive John Kalodner).

And although some of the band members have mixed feelings about their exodus from the band, they still look fondly at a time when their album was the hottest selling debut disc of all time (and may still be - every time someone like Whitney Houston or Guns 'N Roses eclipses Boston's sales total with their own debut albums, catalog sales of Boston still creep ahead to reclaim the title). "I still enjoy playing now and again," said Sib Hashian. "I still see Barry and Frannie on a regular basis, and we still have a good time. I don't want to sound vindictive or have sour grapes. I'm a happy guy. I'm happy with the success I had. I don't have the time to hate anybody. What happened in the past is done. We had a good time making music back then."

The group now has its own website (http://www.bandboston.com), and its Internet-equipped fans can meet and discuss everything from the concerts they've seen, to the whereabouts of former Boston members (when last seen, Barry Goudreau was working with a new singer, Lisa Guyer, in clubs around New England), to the plans of the members of Boston (Brad Delp's side band, a Beatles tribute group called "Beatle Juice," posts their schedule on the web). Some of the most dedicated Boston fans, whether on the Internet or otherwise, get together in Ohio every year for "Bostock," a weekend convention/party celebrating Boston's music.

And even on that Greatest Hits tour, Tom Scholz continues to smile as the crowds stand and cheer for every Boston song. To get his music to the public, he battled two record companies, former bandmates, floods, darkness and the evolution of electronics from 8-tracks and vinyl and analog to CD's and the Internet and digital editing - and he still remained standing, playing his guitar and grinning like a Cheshire Cat. "Somewhere between 18 and 20 record labels rejected demos for songs we wrote," said Scholz, "all of which appeared on the first two Boston albums, which I think sold more than 24 million records. That means that the A&R people from 90% of the labels that I selected out of the song book at random, 90% of them thought that songs that later were proven to be hit songs one year later were worthless. That should tell you that if you're pushing tapes on record companies, don't expect them to know what they're talking about. You just have to do it and have some confidence that what you're doing is the best you can do and it's something good and worth pursuing for your own interests."

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