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GW: Why did you first devise the Rockman?
SCHOLZ: It was a combination of wanting to get a practice amp and also wanting to take a shot at putting all the things I like about a guitar sound in one place. I found that all those things could be packaged in a tiny unit, even with the technology available back in 1981. So that gave rise to actually putting it on the market and making it available as a headphone amp. Because it was small enough to go in a guitar case. And back then, guitarists didn't have stereo sound systems on stage, so there was nothing to plug it into anyway. I figured I would produce it as a headphone amp. People could hear what the box could do in the headphones.
Then, a lot of people went from there and took that little headphone amp and made records with it. In fact, I knew of about 20 or 30 records that had been recorded using that original Rockman headphone amp before Third Stage was ever completed and released to the public. Third Stage has Rockman stuff all over it, some of which were more advanced reincarnations of that little headphone amp.
GW: So on the first two Boston albums, you were just using miked cabinets?
SCHOLZ: Yeah, it's all miked on the first two albums. And a little bit on the third one, too. But mostly Rockman~ The fourth album is virtually all direct.
GW: Do you prefer the sound of direct guitar, or is it a convenience thing?
SCHOLZ: Both. It is a huge convenience. I can go back six months later and change a guitar part and reproduce the exact same sound of the track. You could never do that with miked cabinets. Never. I've tried everything. I set up the mikes with three coordinates, so I could get them in the same place within an inch or so.I tabulated different settings on the equipment-all this stuff. Forget it. It's never the same twice. I thought I had the bases covered pretty well. I had old Ampegs and Marshalls and Fenders. I had regulated voltage power supplies: big boxes supplying regulated AC at a certain voltage level. And it was still totally unpredictable. You'd get a great sound one day and the next week it would sound horrible. As a producer, the Rockman stuff lets me forget about all those hassles. It frees me up to be a musician, rather than hassling with getting guitar sounds and wondering if they're all right.
But I also really like the sound of direct. I did a lot of tracks on Walk On where I recorded direct with my Rockman modules, and then tried the same part through a tube amp with processing and so forth. I almost always ended up keeping the Rockman track. Plus the Rockman allows me to do things I could never do with a tube amp. I can turn the guitar down and it will get very, very clean and still be bright and loud. I can swell smoothly back in to a distortion part and back out. That's impossible on a tube amp.
GW: The one type of gear you don't mention in the liner notes for Walk On is your electric guitars!
SCHOLZ: Didn't I put that in there? It should be in there. It's real easy, anyway, 'cause it's all Gibson Les Paul. That's the only electric guitar that I use. Oh, there's one or two parts where I fooled around with a Jackson a little bit, but that's it. if that's not mentioned, it was an error of omission. I'll have to look at it. I wrote it. Ooops.
GW: Do you have a lot of Les Pauls?
SCHOLZ: One of my Les Pauls is the first good electric guitar I bought. And I bought another one when I got the deal to make the first Boston album-to have a backup for the studio and playing out in clubs. I went to some second-hand guitar shop and saw another gold top, Les Paul. It sounded just like mine so I bought it. It was cheap, like $350 or something. I didn't get another guitar for years. But somewhere on a tour in 1977, I realized that I should get a third guitar. I needed two on stage, and I started worrying about what would happen if something should happen. to one of the guitars I had. So I went into a music store, saw some Les Pauls and said, "Oh, that one looks nice." I picked it up and the neck was totally different from my two Les Pauls. It was a big thing. It sounded good but I couldn't play it. I ended up trying like 12 guitars in the shop, and I freaked: "None of these are Les Pauls that I know. What's going on here?" Now, those two Les Pauls that I bought are the only two Les Pauls that I ever played in my life. And it turns out that both of them were only made for like six months in 1968. It was this one model that had the same kind of neck as a '57 Les Paul. The pickups were single-coil and it was a one of a kind thing and they probably only made a few hundred. And I had learned how to play on these guitars that had necks radically different from all the others. So no, I don't have a lot of Les Pauls, because I can't find any I like. Except, I now have one that Gibson made for me.
GW: Have you modified the pickups in any way?
SCHOLZ: I had to go to humbucking DiMarzios, simply because of the hum problems with the single coils.
GW: You can play all the instruments on Boston albums. Why do you sometimes choose to have other players come in?
SCHOLZ: For a fresh perspective on a part. That's the only reason. Gary plays a lot differently than I do. So, usually what I'll do is run him off a tape of something I've done without telling him what, or even where, I think additional guitar parts should be. And he'll come back with things that never would have occurred to me. I think it's better to have more than one performer's interpretation of the music on a 45-minute CD. It helps keep the listeners' interest. I hate the idea of somebody just skipping to a few favorite cuts on a Boston album and not listening to the rest of it. I always try to make the album so that someone will want to hear the whole thing.
GW: Do you conceive the album as one continuous piece of music as you're writing it?
SCHOLZ: While I'm working on them, the songs are all separate ideas. But in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking of the album as a whole. I'll end up throwing away a lot of song ideas because they don't fit in with the whole thing. And I do some sequencing of songs as I go along [arranging the songs in the order that they will appear on the album.] Traditionally, producers would record a bunch of songs and sequence them in the end. But I try to do that while I'm going. Because a lot of decisions-for instance ,what key to play a song in can make a huge difference in the final result. If you have some idea of the song order ahead of time, you can make a change starting from one song into the next. It will make the next song very effective. Or, if you don't do it right, it can destroy the effect of the next song. It's the same thing with instrumentation, arrangement, the level, tempo ... all sorts of things. I try to have an idea of all of that as I'm recording. But all things do not end up the way I plan them. An awful lot, fortunately, happens by accident.
GW: What takes longer, writing the material or recording it?
SCHOLZ: Recording it. The arrangements are very time-consuming. Songs themselves are hard to come by-they're valuable things. So I agonize over the arrangement and recording of them.
GW: Did "We Can Make It" really go through 87 versions, as you say in the liner notes?
SCHOLZ: Probably more. I picked that number out of the blue. Frankly, there were lots of songs that went through 87 or more different versions.
GW: What kind of console was Walk On mixed on?
SCHOLZ: It's a real old, small Audiotronix 501 that's been totally ravaged and modified inside and out. I like the eq's. It's only got 26 channels, so I had to add some outboard mixing. Things were getting tight with channels. But I'm recording alone most of the time, so I don't need a monitor mix. I have one mix and it's the board mix for the song. The monitor mix system has been turned into auxiliary sends. There's all sorts of rewiring that's been done to expand it to do the things I need to do. I have a real old Fadex automation system.
GW: I remember those. They're from the late-late Seventies.
SCHOLZ: Yeah. Old. And it's very troublesome. But it does something that no other fader system that I've been able to find will do. I can rearrange and cut tape with absolute impunity, because this particular fader system doesn't depend on any sync tones. I can't really use sync tones or anything like that on tape because I always change my mind and make the verse twice as long or something.
GW: And once you cut the master, that's it for the sync code.
SCHOLZ: Yeah. And unfortunately, so much of the equipment that's built today relies on SMTPE code. So I can't use it.
GW: Do you mix very consciously for FM radio compression?
SCHOLZ: I try to. But I finally realized you can't second guess them. Whatever you do, they'll find a way to screw it up.
GW: Each station miscalibrates its gear differently.
SCHOLZ: It's hopeless. I always cringe when I hear a song I produced coming over FM radio. It's never the same. Sometimes they're just demolished and sometimes they're okay. But it's never what it is on the CD or the tape.
GW: And yet Boston are heralded as one of the ultimate FM rock radio bands. That sound seems so suited to the medium.
SCHOLZ: Yeah. [laugh] By the time I'm done with a mix, it's exactly the way I want it. I mean I understand why FM has to limit the dynamics. Most people are listening in their car or as background music in their house. If you put on a tape of Walk On in your car, if you're in any kind of normal driving situation, you won't be able to hear the quiet parts. But unfortunately that's the way it has to be because the quiet parts are there to make the loud parts more dramatic.
GW: When will we be seeing the next Boston album
SCHOLZ: I know that I can't do one faster than two or three years. On the other hand, I've got this new studio worked out really well. So it's possible that it could be as early as '97 or '98. I do have several starts on songs that I'm really excited about. Ordinarily, if you were to ask me that question I'd say Geez, I don't know." But I've already got some things on tape, so I'm getting excited early about the next one
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