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And all the sound was packed onto 1-inch Scotch 206 recording tape, whose low signal-to-noise ratio provided Tom Scholz with an inexpensive, yet durable, audio medium. "It's still the best sounding recording tape that's ever been used," said Scholz. "It doesn't have the best signal-to-noise ratio, but when you drive it hard, it sounded great. They don't make that tape any more, you can't find it. The replacement ones weren't as good, but they were pretty good."
"So we went in the studio in 1975, and made the final batch of tapes," said Delp. "I remember Tom telling me, 'I'm going to send these out. We've been doing this stuff and we're not getting any response. If I don't hear from anybody in a month, I think I'm just going to get in a bar band and play keyboards for a while. I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall.'"
Unknown to Scholz and Delp, one of their demo tapes had taken hold. Charles McKenzie was a New England representative for ABC Records (and had signed another Boston-based group, the J. Geils Band, to their first contract). McKenzie just happened to be in someone's office when he heard the demo tape that previously languished in a Polaroid desk drawer.
Paul Ahern was working as an independent record promoter in California, and Ahern and McKenzie had a gentleman's agreement between them - if either one came up with anything interesting, they would call the other person. Ahern had connections with Lennie Petze at CBS, and called him - even though Petze had passed on the original Mother's Milk demos. "There was some unknown dealings with this guy at Epic, Lennie Petze, and then suddenly they were interested," said Scholz. "I understand Lenny has been very quick to mention in public that he was a big part of Boston getting signed to Epic Records, so I always keep the letter that he signed, saying that they had no interest in Boston after they listened to the demos. I have one framed and hanging on the wall in my office."
Epic contacted Scholz and offered a contract - but first they had to perform in a showcase for some CBS representatives. Scholz and Delp were ready to perform, but at least three more members were needed to complete the live performing group. A few phone calls to recruit the original guitarist from Mother's Milk (Barry Goudreau), and two other performers who recorded on the early demos, bass player Fran Sheehan and drummer Dave Currier, and the touring group was complete.
Unfortunately, the lineup did not include drummer Jim Masdea, who had started to lose interest in the project. "During those last demos," said Delp, "Jim used to play piano, self-taught, but we'd be in the studio - I think he actually told me he was losing interest in playing drums. I know Tom felt very bad when the whole thing happened. And then, of course, we started getting some interest."
Their first live performance was the showcase - a select group of CBS reps in a Boston warehouse that doubled as Aerosmith's practice facility. One month later, the CBS reps signed the group to a contract - 10 albums over the next six years.
But before the ink had dried on the contract, problems arose. "Their drummer, David Currier, was fabulous," said Sib Hashian. "and they passed the audition. But Tom didn't tell David they passed the audition. So David said, 'If you want me in the band, you're gonna have to start paying me to practice.' And David quit. So they auditioned other drummers, including myself. And eventually, that's how I got the job."
The band needed to travel to Los Angeles and re-record their songs with a different producer. CBS claimed that they wanted to have a union engineer on the premises - but Scholz could have composed Rhapsody in Blue and CBS still wouldn't have let him produce the band's first album. "It didn't matter what it sounded like to them," said Delp, "or whether they loved the tape or not. So that's how John Boylan came on board. Boylan was a friend of someone that Ahern knew. When we first came out from California, he said to us, 'I've listened to the tapes, I think you guys obviously know what you're doing. I'm going to be here to run interference for the label and keep them happy. I'm another set of ears if you need them. But basically, you guys go ahead and do your thing.'"
It was Boylan who also suggested a name change for the band, from "Mother's Milk" to "Boston," after the band's home city. "Boylan suggested the name Boston," said Delp, "and coming from Boston, it sounded ridiculous, the first time I heard it, it was too obvious. But upon reflection, I realized that people not from the area, the name has some meaning for them. It certainly sticks with you, and it worked out great for us. People in and around Boston became very supportive of the band, kind of adopted us as their home town band. Even though we weren't a known commodity like Aerosmith. Aerosmith played every high school and dance party in New England on their way to getting signed, they played everywhere."
"It was a decoy," said Scholz. "CBS wouldn't let me produce an album in a basement by myself. John Boylan took the rest of the band out to the West Coast, and they hung out there and they did some work in the studio, recorded a few cuts, including 'Let Me Take You Home Tonight.' While they were doing that and the record company was thought the record was being recorded on the West Coast, I was recording it in the basement of my apartment house. I remember at one point Boylan arranged for Brad to have a custom-made Taylor acoustic guitar for some incredible amount of money, thousands of dollars on the album budget, and at that exact same time, I was recording 'More Than A Feeling' with a $100 Yamaha acoustic guitar - which was Brad's - back in the basement of my apartment house. When I had finished with it, I transferred the tracks onto two-inch tape. And I went out there, Brad sang most of the tracks out there, a couple of them he couldn't do because he was having trouble with his voice in the smog. We finished a couple of them up in my basement studio, and I had to cart them back to LA and dub them in on a two-inch from another analog tape, which was pretty unusual back then."
The whole effort was an elaborate end run around the CBS brain trust. With the exception of "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," the entire album was a virtual copy - if not a complete clone - of the demo tapes. "We didn't actually tell them that we were transferring the tapes," said Delp, "what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. We told them we were working on the album with Boylan, that was all true - Tom still had stuff to do back home. A lot of bands were signed and get put in with a producer, and then all of a sudden it's the producer's project. Before you know it, it doesn't resemble anything of what you were doing. We were very fortunate that that didn't happen to us. Boylan had the ears to know that Tom knew his way around a studio. We gave them a complete tape, and they thought, 'Man, these guys work fast.'"
Of course, how could Epic have known that "Foreplay," the extensive introduction to "Long Time," was actually a four-minute musical excursion Tom Scholz composed in 1972? How could they have known that "Hitch A Ride" was originally called "San Francisco Day," and was the first song Brad Delp re-recorded when the original Boston vocalist left? How could they have known that one of the special effects of the organ solo on "Hitch A Ride" - bending the note on a Hammond organ - involved Tom Scholz slowing down one of the recording reels with his finger? How could they have known that "Rock and Roll Band" still had Jim Masdea's drums on the track? And how could they have ever guessed that the man they didn't think was qualified enough to produce his own band's album figuratively duplicated seven songs from his own Scotch 206 reels?
It didn't matter. On August 25, 1976, Boston's debut LP Boston (Epic 34188) was released. And it flew out of the stores like the spaceships on its front cover. The first single from Boston, "More Than A Feeling" (Epic 50266) became a smash hit both on AM Top 40 stations (with its second verse deleted for time constraints), and on FM "AOR" stations (with the second verse left intact). "I was at Polaroid when I first heard 'More Than A Feeling' on the radio," said Tom Scholz. "I was listening to somebody else's radio. The first week the album came out, it did better than I expected, because I really had no expectations for it. I was just doing something that I liked. I really didn't expect anybody else would find it appealing. Pleasant surprise, eh?"
Pleasant surprise indeed. The entire Side 1 of Boston, including "Peace of Mind" and "Long Time," hit the Top 40 charts. "The people at Polaroid knew immediately that 'Peace of Mind' was about them," Scholz said to Rolling Stone. "The ones I worked with were cool about it. I had to leave a lot sooner than I thought when the album took off, but I never did want to climb the corporate ladder and become a manager. If you find something that feels as good as sex and you can make a living at it, what else can you want?"
A short six-week promotional club tour through the Midwest got longer - and longer - until Boston found themselves on a nationwide tour that lasted ten months. "We started playing the Agoras in Cleveland and Columbus," said Brad Delp, "500-1000 seat clubs. The response was great, I was amazed that people were singing along with all the songs. It really impressed upon me the power of radio, the fact that wherever we went, they were just playing the record and people just came, and it was great."
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