THE PHONE RANG AT SIX IN THE morning, early in 1975.

Twenty-eight-year-old recordman Paul Ahern grumbled into the receiver: "Who the fuck is this? This better be good!' "It's McKenzie. You gotta hear this, PA...."

As employees in Warner-Elektra-Atlantic's regional office several years earlier, Charlie McKenzie and Paul Ahern were the young lions of Boston-area promotion. McKenzie had the ear, Ahern the rap. They became buddies with all the jocks and, one golden month in 1972, broke Yes and the J. Geils Band and placed thirteen company singles and album cuts on the Top Thirty playlist of Bostons WRKO. They had dreamed of finding the band that would take them off the street and make them "the idle rich," but their era passed. Ahern moved to L.A. for a better job with Asylum Records. McKenzie left WEA but continued to work for other record companies in Boston. And he hung on to the dream.... You gotta hear this," he was saying that early morning" in '75. "Local guy, Tom Scholz ... the group has no name. The whole tape is like this!"

"Rock 'n' Roll Band" came blasting over the phone. Amid a torrent of mediocre disco, here was something powerful and melodic., The kind of hard rock that's never lost its huge audience. Within two days Ahern and McKenzie were partners again in the management and song publishing) of the five-man group led by Tom Scholz, a Polaroid engineer who'd produced, arranged, written, played guitar and keyboards and paid for the demo.

Ahern, who would later suggest the name Boston , sat up ; "Get tight with them," he said, "and airfreight me a tapes! The first Boston album, released in August 1976, was the biggest debut in the history of recorded music. Gold in seven weeks, platinum in eleven weeks, twice that in sixteen, and at this writing, Boston is upward of seven million in domestic sales alone.

"I would like to say that we made a colossal executive decision to make them this big," says CBS Records Group President Walter Yetnikoff. "But we did not. The album took of immediately, all by itself. I didn’t even hear the first album until it was platinum."

IN THE SUMMER OF'78, BOSTON'S INCREDIBLE debut is no longer the issue. They may have had twenty-some years to compile the first album, but two years seems about all Boston will have for number two. Everyone, from critics to rack jobbers, is poised and waiting for more, asking about the Second Album, now a full year off schedule. "Well, I haven't heard it yet," shrugs Paul Ahern, a cross between Groucho Marx and Ringo Starr, and whose eyes are hidden by dark aviator shades. It is evening, and the shimmering North Shore lights outside the tinted windows of this limo mean we are approaching Swampscott, Massachusetts, the group’s home base. "It's not easy slaving over a hot band-especially when they haven't left town in fifteen months. They won't leave until the album's done."

McKenzie is out of the picture now, bought out through a complex "dissolution-of-partnership" agreement that made Boston's discoverer a wealthy man. And alone at the reins, Ahern has not had much time to live like the idle rich. Though a millionaire at thirty, he can barely get through the paper work of the summer- tours and offers that havepiled up during the grouts "inactive" period. To escape the pressures, he disappears for days on end. And, living in L.A., Ahern has other problems. "I gotta get to know these guys better," he says as his limo whooshes up to a two-story home in Swampscott. "We're here," he says. "This is Fran’s place."

FRAN'S PLACE IS THE ideal spot to begin one's education concerning the North Shore music scene, where names like Cool Ray and the Polaroid’s, the Uncalled Four and the Revolting Tones Revue were far more memorable than the warmed-over Zeppelin they played. Fran Sheehan, Boston's bassist, is a veteran of most of these groups. His dining room was their rehearsal room.

The house (which he grew up in and now occupies alone) is renovated. The once-peeling wallpaper is fresh; downstairs is a well-stocked wine cellar. An Old Chicago pinball machine (a Christmas gift from Ahern) rests in the dining room. Presiding over everything is an Epic Records display case with six platinum albums spread out like so many medals on Mark Spitz' chest. And there's a copper-colored Lotus parked outside. All of Boston-except for Scholz-is at Fran's tonight. Gathered around the television and searching for the catch phrase Saturday Night Live might supply for the coming week ("Give me five, black soul mad'), they seem thoroughly normal and good humored.

"We all hear the most amazing things about ourselves" Sheehan tells me the next morning at the Swampscott pancake house where he eats regularly. "And it's all because most people don't have any idea who we are, just that we've sold all these records. We're always hearing that we've been replaced or that we're just studio cats ... or that we've never paid any dues. We've all played around here for years. I remember all of us playing a Hell's Angels bar one night. There was a rail around the band, so the Angels could gulp a hindfia of whites and just hang on. They'd scream at us. They'd throw bottles off the ceiling. We're talking about dues"

"Hey Frannie!" The teenage host of the restaurant scoots alongside Sheehan in the booth "When’s that album coming out?"

"Soon," Sheehan smoothly replies. He shifts to less imposing matters. "How's the buffet doing?"

"Aw, you know-same old slop leftover from all week After breakfast, Sheehan offers a short tour of Swampscott sights, like the Surf Theatre, where Fran and second guitarist Barry Goudreau were watching Hard Times when singer Brad Delp came tearing in with the news of their first contract. Everywhere Sheehan passes, small schoolchildren recognize him and yell, "Boston!. . . Allright!" Aging store owners come bounding out onto the sidewalk to salute that Sheehan boy, the most famous Swampscott resident since Walter Brennan. They all want to know when the Second Album is coming out. "Yeah, pressure," Sheehan alternately addresses me and the road.

"You know that we never played a headlining concert until we had a gold album, right? On our first tour I would be twitching in bed, going over songs in my head, staring at the ceiling. Then the sun would come up and I would still be lying there thinking, 'Oh no, I gotta play in front of 20,000 kids tonight ... better than they ever heard before.' It's better now." Sheehan points out an expansive, wood-frame house on the side of a hill, the new home of Barry Goudreau. Next stop.

The nucleus of Boston, these three practice almost every day. They seem intent on matching up to their reputation, honing their live attack and working up demos for presentation to the "Mother Studio." "It's like reporting in with homework ' " cracks Goudreau. For some time now they have been all revved up with no place to go.' Until the album is completed at Scholz' basement studio forty minutes from here, they are still on call. Over the next week, they will all be anxious to point out that there is no tension between Scholz, who has been the object of most of the initial publicity, and. the rest of the band. There has been a conscious effort to deemphasize him as the total mastermind of Boston. Nobody really mentions Tom Scholz, as if talking about him too loudly might disturb him as he's agonizing over the Second Album. But when a Polaroid Instant Movie System commercial comes on television, they point at the screen. "There," say Sheehan earnestly, "that's Tom."

"OH, HI," SAYS TOM SCHOLZ. HIS GRIN unveils an endless vista of gleaming white teeth. Like an absent-minded basketball star, he springs his six-foot-six frame up off a small swivel chair in his studio, adjusts his wire-rim glasses and loses confidence halfway into his first sentence. He winds up saying, "Just let me get ... this one line ... really bugs me."

The upstairs of Tom and Cindy Scholz' petite suburban residence is green with plants, the mark of a botanist (Cindy) in the family. Downstairs, past the washing machine, the Foosball (a football game found in bars) and two stray basketballs, is a tiny, studio the size of a large bathroom. The air is different down here. This is pressure central.

The "aw-shucks" grin quickly gives way to a grim stare, Scholz falls back into the swivel chair and hunches over a guitar. Surrounded by state-of-the-art electronic equipment, most of which is connected somehow to a foot pedal before him, Scholz controls it all with his long white-tennis-shoed foot. He listens intently to the same two seconds of tape, trying to record a single sustaining note that sweeps across an avalanche of guitars.

He wheels around suddenly. "Want a beer or something?" No, Tom, it's okay.

It's futile, of course. He tries a few more passes before giving up ... for now. Working virtually alone in his basement for months upon months, Scholz has not often entertained guests. Any visitor is a reminder of the outside ... and after only a few moments of small talk, Scholz is wearily and sheepishly drawn to the inevitable. He explains that he'd even promised Walter Yetnikoff he would have the Second Album in by a certain deadline. But that deadline was ten days ago. "I give up," he says.

(Replies Yetnikoff. "I've tried to get to know Tom in the last year. Sometimes I think he's overly harsh with himself. I don't want him to feel pressure. He's working. He's striving for artistic perfection. With Boston as a group, it's the long haul we're interested in. If the record is late, the record is late.'!