Tom Scholz and Brad Delp Pilgrim's Progress

With three multi-million selling albums in a row, Tom Scholz, the composer and multi-instrumentalist leader of Boston, and his trusty singer, Brad Delp, have more in common with the tortoise of the fable than with any other legendary hit-making conglomerates around. As devoted fans who jubilantly celebrated the release of Third Stage a couple of years ago, after a six-year layoff, will learn from this interview, all three Boston albums of first takes couldn't have happened any faster. We sat down with Tom and Brad to find out which might come first, the next Boston Lp, or the millennium.

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Dallas Music Guide: "The Feeling Continues..."

By: Justin Press
August 2004

You d be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn t currently own, has previously owned, or at least knows five tracks from Boston s self-titled mega-hit debut. It practically changed the way record label s expectations of a band s first albums should do as far as sales. 20 million plus and still counting to this day, and a majority of that had been done without the marketing dollars of today. It was strictly radio and touring that made that thing into a monster. It is the ultimate in precision production, timeless melodies, powerful performances, all done very organically by founder Tom Scholtz (an MIT grad and engineer for Kodak) and vocalist Brad Delp. Done over the course of several years, it is the equivalent of Dark Side Of The Moon for head bangers, as far as it sounds impeccable still.

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Boston's Scholz engineers a rock dynasty

By Larry Lange

The rock band Boston is familiar to just about anyone with a radio. But few fans may realize that the creative force behind Boston's distinctive sound is an engineer.

Indeed, Tom Scholz' engineering acumen helped propel Boston to se emingly instant stardom back in 1976, and it's keeping the band's signature sound vital as Scholz prepares a new Boston recording for release later this year.

"Tom Scholz is a modern-day Renaissance man  an engineer's engineer," said D.C. Williams, a Carson City, Nev.-based electrical-engineering consultant and Scholz fan who runs a Web site devoted to Boston .

Songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist Scholz is both the creator of and techno-brains behind the Boston phenomenon. He's a producer, sound technician and inventor, with nearly 35 patents in his portfolio. Indeed, Scholz' innovations have earned him renown among audiophiles and recording professionals: His unique Rockman line of guitar amplifiers and effects boxes revolutionized the way professional music has been re corded over the past two decades.

"Most people live their life around what other people do," Scholz told EE Times in a recent, rare interview. "They watch their life go by in somebody's else's vision. To me, that doesn't seem like a good idea."

So Scholz mapped out a journey for himself that has taken him from music stardom to the annals of audio electronics.

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Scholz reinvented rock-processing equipment

By Larry Lange

Though the creative force behind the rock group Boston, Tom Scholz had an engineering problem. Because of the limitations of mid-1970s guitar-processing equipment, he couldn't quite get the majestic rock music sound swirling around in his head to translate easily to tape.

In order to get the distorted, overdriven power-rock sound out of a guitar amplifier, technicians were saddled with recording then-state-of-the-art tube amps at maximum volume to achieve the desired "heavy" effect. Scholz found that technique to be less than elegant, so in true engineering form, he addressed the problem with an ingenious end-around.

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Boston's Slam-Dunk

Most rock stars have a weakness for ostentation. When their albums hit the Top 10, and the millions start pouring in, they do things like buy Rolls Royces and Caribbean islands. Not Boston's Tom Scholz. When Scholz found out that his band's last album had gone platinum the very day it was released, he and his manager, Jeff Dorenfeld, tore off to their favorite soda joint in northeastern Massachusetts and bought chocolate malts. "It was really great news," said Dorenfeld about "Third Stage." "Tom thought we'd go out and celebrate." An MIT graduate with a degree in engineering, Scholz, 39, heads his own multi-million-dollar high-tech company: Scholz Research & Development. Despite three phenomenally successful albums, he and his family still live in the small suburban house outside Boston he bought while he worked at Polaroid; he drives a beat up Datsun pocked with rust holes. Although he wrote most of the songs, played most of the instruments and recorded and produced his albums all in his tiny basement, he doesn't consider himself musician first and foremost. "Above all, I'm an engineer." He says. "Music started out as a hobby, and I really try to keep it that way."

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Boston's Sonic Mystery Tour

Time Magazine ebony porn 1978

On the second pass Tom Scholz's crew still flies high

Enough of this overnight sensation business. Or course, no one had heard of Boston before their first album came out two years ago. Not even heavy corporate types around the record company who got interested when this virtually unadvertised debut by an unknown group sold its first million albums. Interest grew keener when Boston doubled those sales, then doubled them again.

Nearly 6.5 million copies have now been sold. The success of Boston was so left field--as abrupt, decisive and cleaving as one of Leader Tom Scholz's guitar breaks--that the group came to be treated as if it had been freshly cloned for stardom. When Boston went back into the studio to make their second album, much hope was raised, but many doubts lingered. The new album, out a little more than a month, could settle the score. Don't Look Back shot to the upper regions of the charts; the album's title track, released as a. single, is staking out heady territory in the Top Ten.

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