Boston (album)
Boston | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | August 25, 1976 | |||
Recorded | October 1975 – April 1976 | |||
Studio |
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Genre | ||||
Length | 37:07 | |||
Label | Epic | |||
Producer | ||||
Boston chronology | ||||
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Singles from Boston | ||||
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Boston is the debut studio album by American rock band Boston, released on August 25, 1976, by Epic Records.[3] It was produced by Tom Scholz and John Boylan.[4] A multi-instrumentalist and engineer who had been involved in the Boston music scene since the late 1960s, Scholz started to write and record demos in his apartment basement with singer Brad Delp, but received numerous rejections from major record labels. The demo tape fell into the hands of CBS-owned Epic, who signed the band in 1975.
Defying Epic Records's insistence on recording the album professionally in Los Angeles, Scholz and Boylan tricked the label into thinking the band was recording on the
. All except Masdea became full-time band members.The album was released by Epic in August 1976 and broke sales records, becoming the best-selling debut
Background
In the late 1960s, Tom Scholz began attending the
Both musicians later joined Mother's Milk, a band featuring guitarist Barry Goudreau, that vied for recognition in the Boston music scene. Scholz quickly went from keyboardist to lead songwriter, and the band went through dozens of lead vocalists before Brad Delp auditioned.[9]
Delp, a former factory worker at a Danvers electric coil company, spent much of his weekends in cover bands. Delp drove to Revere Beach, where the three-piece were performing at a club named Jojo's.[9]
Delp was impressed that the band had recorded a demo tape and were still recording, and earned his position in the band after auditioning the
By 1973, the band had a six-song demo tape ready for mailing, and Scholz and his wife Cindy sent copies to every record company they could find. The songs on the demo were "More Than a Feeling", "Peace of Mind", "Rock & Roll Band", "Something About You", "San Francisco Day" (later changed and renamed "Hitch a Ride") and "Love" (later changed to "Don't Be Afraid").[11] The group received rejection slips from several labels - RCA, Capitol, Atlantic and Elektra among the most notable - and Epic Records rejected the tape flatly with a "very insulting letter" signed by company head Lennie Petze that opined the band "offered nothing new".[9][12] The tape that received the most attention contained embryonic renditions of future songs that would appear on Boston's debut album. Delp departed shortly thereafter because "there just wasn't any money coming in".[9]
By 1975, Tom Scholz was finished with the club scene, concentrating exclusively on the demo tapes he recorded at home in his basement. Scholz was renting the house and spent much of his funds on recording equipment; at one point, he spent the money he had saved for a down payment on a future home on a used professional 12-track tape recorder made by Scully Recording Instruments.[9]
He called Delp to provide vocals, remarking, "If you can't really afford to join the band or if you don't want to join the band, maybe you'd just want to come down to the studio and sing on some of these tapes for me."
Scholz had given the Mother's Milk demo to a Polaroid co-worker whose cousin worked at ABC Records (who had signed one of Scholz's favorite bands, the James Gang). The employee forgot to mail the tape out and it sat in his desk for months until Columbia began contacting Scholz, after which he sent the tape to ABC.[9][10]
Charles McKenzie, a New England representative for ABC Records, first overheard the tape in a co-worker's office.
Ahern had a connection with Petze at Epic and informed him, even though Petze had passed on the original Mother's Milk demos.
Epic contacted Scholz and offered a contract that first required the group to perform in a showcase for CBS representatives, as the label felt curious that the "band" was in reality a "mad genius at work in a basement".[9][13]
Masdea had started to lose interest in the project by this time, and Scholz called Goudreau and two other performers who had recorded on the early demos, bass player Fran Sheehan and drummer Dave Currier, to complete the lineup. In November 1975, the group performed for the executives in a Boston warehouse that doubled as Aerosmith's practice facility.[9][10]
Mother's Milk was signed by CBS Records one month later in a contract that required 10 albums over six years. Currier quit before he knew the band passed the audition, and Scholz recruited drummer Sib Hashian in his place.
Epic had signed an agreement with
As such, the label wanted the band to travel to Los Angeles and re-record their songs with a different producer. Scholz was unhappy with being unable to be in charge, and John Boylan, a friend of a friend of Ahern, came on board the project.[13]
Boylan's duty was to "run interference for the label and keep them happy", and he made a crucial suggestion: that the band change their name to Boston.[9][10]
Recording and production
"We didn't actually tell them that we were transferring the tapes. 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.'"
—Brad Delp[9]
Boston was recorded primarily at Scholz's own Foxglove Studios in Watertown in "an elaborate end run around the CBS brain trust."[9] Epic wanted a studio version that sounded identical to the demo tape, and Scholz decided he could not work in a production studio, having adapted to home recording for several years, stating "I work[ed] alone, and that was it."[12]
Scholz took a leave of absence from Polaroid, and was gone for several months to record the band's album. "I would wake up every day and go downstairs and start playing," he recalled. Scholz grew annoyed reproducing the parts, being forced to use the same equipment used on the demo.[12]
The basement, located in a lower-middle-class neighborhood on School Street, was described by Scholz as a "tiny little space next to the furnace in this hideous pine-paneled basement of my apartment house, and it flooded from time to time with God knows what."[12][13]
There was a Hammond organ and a Leslie speaker stuffed in the corner of the room alongside the drums; whenever it was time to record the organ parts, they would tear the drums down and pull out the Leslie.[12]
Boylan felt that while Scholz's guitars "sounded amazing," Scholz did not understand how to properly record acoustic instruments, and flew in engineer Paul Grupp to instruct him on microphone technique.[13]
Boylan's own hands-on involvement would center on recording the vocals and mixing,[13] and he took the rest of the band out to the West Coast, where they recorded "Let Me Take You Home Tonight".[14] "It was a decoy," recalled Scholz, who recorded the bulk back home in Watertown without CBS's knowledge. While Boylan arranged for Delp to have a custom-made Taylor acoustic guitar for thousands of dollars charged to the album budget, Scholz recorded such tracks as "More Than a Feeling" in his basement with a $100 Yamaha acoustic guitar.[8][9][14]
That spring, Boylan returned to Watertown to hear the tracks, on which Scholz had recut drums and other percussion and keyboard parts.[13] He then hired a remote truck from Providence, Rhode Island to come to Watertown, where it ran a snake through the basement window of Scholz's home to transfer his tracks to a 3M-79 2-inch 24-track deck.[13] The entire recording was completed in the basement, save for Delp's vocals, which were recorded at Capitol Studios' Studio C with Warren Dewey engineering the overdubs.[12][13]
All vocals were double-tracked except the lead vocal, and all the parts were done by Delp in quick succession.[13] When Scholz arrived in Los Angeles for mixing, he felt intimidated and feared the professional engineers would view him as "this hick who worked in a basement."[12] Instead, Scholz felt they were backwards in their approach and lacked knowledge he had obtained. "These people were so swept up in how cool they were and how important it was to have all this high-priced crap that they couldn't see the forest for the trees," he said.[12]
Boylan encountered his only real confrontation with the autocratic Scholz during the mixing stage, in which Scholz handled the guitar tracks, Boylan the drums and Dewey the vocals, with Steve Hodge assisting.[13] Scholz pushed guitars too high in the mix, rendering vocals inaudible at times.[13]
The entire operation has been described as "one of the most complex corporate capers in the history of the music business."[13] With the exception of "Let Me Take You Home Tonight", the album was a virtual copy of the demo tapes.[9] The album was recorded for a cost of a few thousand dollars, a paltry amount in an industry accustomed to spending hundreds of thousands on a single recording.[8]
Music
Boston is composed mainly of songs written many years prior to their appearance on the album.[10] Scholz wrote or cowrote every song on the first album (with the exception of "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," written by Delp), played virtually all of the instruments and recorded and engineered all the tracks.[8] The "Boston sound" combines "big, giant melodic hooks" with "massively heavy, classically-inspired guitar parts."[14] For Scholz, the idea of beautiful vocal harmonies was inspired by The Left Banke, and the guitar-driven aspect was influenced by the Kinks, the Yardbirds and Blue Cheer.[14] Another signature element of the "Boston sound" in terms of production involves the balance between acoustic and electric guitars. To this end, Scholz was inspired by his childhood listening of classical music, noting that the "basic concept" of setting the listener up for a change that is coming in the music had been explored for hundreds of years in classical compositions.[14] The record also makes use of multiple-part harmonized guitar solos and baroque melodic devices known as mordents.[14]
"More Than a Feeling" is an ode to daydreaming, and contains a guitar solo reminiscent of "
The trademark sci-fi theme of the record cover was Scholz' concept: "The idea was escape; I thought of a 'spaceship guitar.' "[8] The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.[16]
Release
Boston was released by Epic Records on, according to varying sources, either August 23[17] or August 25, 1976.[18][19][20] The album broke out of Cleveland first, and the following week, it had been added at 392 stations.[10] Had the record failed, Scholz, then 29, planned to abandon his ambition of making a living performing music; he still worked at Polaroid after it was released[14] and doubted its commercial success until it sold 200,000 copies. "And all of a sudden I realized I was in the music business," he told Rolling Stone. "I got word on what the sales figures were while I was still at Polaroid full-time. It wasn't easy staying there two more weeks."[10] Critics were kind to Boston; Rolling Stone wrote that "The group's affinity for heavy rock & roll provides a sense of dynamics that coheres magnetically with sophisticated progressive structures."[21]
The album was certified gold two months after its release, and sold another 500,000 copies within 30 days, going platinum for the first time in November 1976.
By January 1977, the debut disc sold two million copies, making it one of the fastest selling debut albums in rock history.
"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."[9] Epic Records was pleased with their new acquisition—Boston and another new band, Wild Cherry, were among Epic's biggest success stories of 1976.[9]
The album was afforded several accolades, including a
By 1986, the album had been certified for over nine million sales domestically, and Boston went
The album is the second best-selling debut album of all time in the United States, after Guns N' Roses's Appetite for Destruction,[25] and it is the joint eighth best-selling album in US history.[25][26] Boston, along with the band's 1978 follow-up Don't Look Back, was remastered in 2006 by Scholz.[12]
Reception
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Encyclopedia of Popular Music | [27] |
PopMatters | [28] |
The album soared, with three
Touring
The first tour in support of the album was a short six-week promotional club tour throughout the
Boston eventually began headlining shows in 1977, and sold out four
Legacy
Boston has been described as a pivot in the transition of mainstream American rock from blues-based proto-metal to power pop, "combining some of the ebullience of the rock era's early days with the precision and technology that would mark rock record productions from then on."[13] All eight songs—most commonly the album's A-side—are in constant rotation on classic rock radio.[9] Boston's success ushered in the next wave of "producer" rock sound. Following the album's success, its sound became imitated by several other prominent rock bands of the era.[12] The record created a reference point for production values and studio technology that would stand for years.[13] The album is hailed as one of the greatest in rock history, with an inclusion in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[29] The album was also ranked No. 43 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" list.[30]
Track listing
All tracks are written by
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "More Than a Feeling" | 4:44 |
2. | "Peace of Mind" | 4:55 |
3. | "Foreplay/Long Time" | 7:41 |
Total length: | 17:20 |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
4. | "Rock & Roll Band" | 2:59 |
5. | "Smokin'" | 4:20 |
6. | "Hitch a Ride" | 4:10 |
7. | "Something About You" | 3:48 |
8. | "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" | 4:42 |
Total length: | 19:59 |
Personnel
Boston
Additional musician and technical personnel
Additional personnel
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Charts
Weekly charts
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Year-end charts
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Certifications
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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Canada (Music Canada)[49] | Diamond | 1,000,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI)[50] | Gold | 100,000^ |
United States (RIAA)[51] | 17× Platinum | 17,000,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
See also
- List of best-selling albums
- List of best-selling albums in the United States
- List of diamond-certified albums in Canada
- Boston discography
References
- ^ AllMusic. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
- ^ Considine, J.D.; Coleman, Mark; Evans, Paul; McGee, David (1992). "Heart". In DeCurtis, Anthony; Henke, James; George-Warren, Holly (eds.). Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York: Random House. p. 132.
- ^ "RIAA".
- ^ Boston (CD liner). Boston. Epic Records/Legacy Recordings. 2006 [1976]. p. 11. 69699 86322 2. Archived from the original on April 26, 2017. Retrieved April 25, 2017.
{{cite AV media notes}}
: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link) - ^ http://www.ra17.com/kbh/info/beatlesriaa-2-htlm[permanent dead link].
- ^ "100 Best Debut Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. October 13, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
- ^ "The Best Debut Albums Ever - Top40Weekly.com". top40weekly.com. January 7, 2013. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f Larry Lange (1998). "Boston's Scholz Engineers a Rock Dynasty". EE Times.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Chuck Miller (May 22, 1998). "Heaven Is a Reel-to-Reel Tape". Goldmine.
- ^ Rolling Stone.
- ^ Aledort, Andy (September 1997). "The Rock Man". Maximum Guitar. Retrieved May 17, 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Boston: Feelin' Satisfied". Guitar World. October 2006. Archived from the original on September 27, 2013. Retrieved August 14, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Dan Daley (September 1, 2000). "Boston's "More Than a Feeling"". Mix.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Andy Aledort. "The Rock Man". Maximum Guitar.
- ^ "Watch Boston Perform 'Hitch A Ride' Back In 1988". Society of Rock. March 8, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2022.
- ^ Heller, Steven (March 26, 2015). "More Than an Album Cover". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 21, 2015.
- ^ Zito, Tom (December 13, 1976). "Boston Group and How It Grew". Los Angeles Times. p. F20.
On Aug. 23, 1976, their first LP simply titled "Boston" was shipped to record stores.
- ^ "Boston Blast Off with Blockbuster Debut". August 23, 2022.
- ^ Boston by Boston, August 25, 1976, retrieved August 24, 2022
- ^ "Boston by Boston". genius.com. August 25, 1976. Retrieved August 24, 2022.
- ISSN 0035-791X. Archived from the originalon March 17, 2007.
- ^ "Overnight Success". Guitar Player. August 1977.
- ^ a b "American album certifications – Boston – Boston". Recording Industry Association of America.
- ^ "THE TUBES THE TUBES". Classic Rock. September 2010. p. 60. Archived from the original on January 8, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
- ^ a b "Ask Billboard: Best Selling Debut Album, Dido, Australian Acts Trying To Crack The U.S. Market". Billboard.
- ^ "Top 100 Albums". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved March 20, 2012..
- ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
- ^ "Boston: Boston / Don't Look Back, PopMatters". July 25, 2006.
- ISBN 0-7893-1371-5.
- ^ "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" on Lists of Bests". www.listsofbests.com. Archived from the original on March 30, 2012. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
- ^ Jeb Wright. "Feelin' Satisfied: An Interview with Tom Scholz of Boston". thirdstage.ca.
- ^ Boston (CD liner). Boston. Epic Records/Legacy Recordings. 2006 [1976]. p. 10. 69699 86322 2.
{{cite AV media notes}}
: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link) - ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
- ^ "Top RPM Albums: Issue 5146a". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Boston – Alpha" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ISBN 978-951-1-21053-5.
- GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ISBN 4-87131-077-9.
- ^ "Charts.nz – Boston – Boston". Hung Medien. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ^ "Swedishcharts.com – Boston – Boston". Hung Medien. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ^ "Swisscharts.com – Boston – Boston". Hung Medien. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
- ^ "Boston Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved January 12, 2024.
- ^ "Official Rock & Metal Albums Chart Top 40". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
- ^ "Boston Chart History (Canadian Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
- ^ "Boston Chart History (Top Rock Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
- GfK Entertainment Charts. 1977. Archived from the originalon October 24, 2021. Retrieved April 2, 2022.
- ^ "Billboard 200 Albums – Year-End". Billboard. 1977. Archived from the original on October 17, 2021. Retrieved August 19, 2022.
- ^ "Canadian album certifications – Boston – Boston". Music Canada. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
- ^ "British album certifications – Boston – Boston". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
- ^ "American album certifications – Boston – Boston". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
External links
- Album online on Radio3Net a radio channel of Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company