I was driving south along Interstate 95 on Saturday afternoon when I flipped the dial and landed on Boston's song, "Rock We oohed over the album cover's upside-down guitar, which doubled as a flying spaceship, and pored over the album's liner notes while spending hours in her bedroom talking about school, our tree fort and boys. The band had hook-laden songs, multi-layered guitar riffs capped by vocalist Brad Delp's pure, soaring voice, the biggest-selling debut rock album up to that time and a name that paid tribute to the city less than an hour away from our hometown.

But in the pre-punk music scene of the mid-'70s, Boston was not without its critics.

"Over-produced" by MIT-guy and band founder Tom Scholz, some naysayers sniffed. But to us, Boston, the band, was the coolest thing next to John Havlicek's Celtics.

I carried those memories with me when I interviewed Brad Delp in 1999 and 2000. Were it not for my love of Beatles music, I wouldn't have had the chance.

Delp was perhaps best known in these parts as the frontman of the Beatles tribute band, Beatle Juice, a gig that was no trifling vanity project. Mop-top wigs, phony Liverpudlian accents and matching, collarless suits were not part of the act. Note-perfect Beatles covers joyously played -- often as benefit concerts for area charities.

Delp and the boys, top-shelf musicians drummer John Muzzy, bassist Joe Holaday, guitarist Bob Squires and keyboard player Steve Baker, (Musician Dave Mitchell also joined the band in recent years.) kept things simple and just delivered. It worked.

The two shows I reviewed, both benefits for the Stratham Recreation Commission, were packed with baby boomer moms and dads, but also teenagers -- not yet born when Paul McCartney's Wings flew over America -- who embraced the Beatles' music as their own. For them, Beatle Juice offered up musical history lessons with love to spare.

Both three-hour-plus shows featured intermissions during which band members signed autographs and chatted with fans about the Beatles. In 1999, as I stood at the side of the stage waiting for my turn to talk to Delp, I saw he recognized fans from previous shows, knew their names and asked about their hobbies and families.

"I never thought of the music necessarily as timeless; I always thought of it as contemporary. But there's obviously an element in there that you didn't have to be there to appreciate it," he told me of the Beatles' generation-spanning appeal.

When I returned for a second bite of the apple during a Beatle Juice show in 2000, Delp immediately remembered me and we picked up where we had left off. He told me he was just playing the music he loved, Beatles' music that took him back to his youth.

As I took down notes, I hoped he well knew that somewhere out there, journeymen musicians of my generation were playing in Boston cover bands because those songs -- Delp's songs -- shuttled them back to their teenage years the same way.

And then, he did something else. As I thanked him, closed my notebook and turned to walk away, he called out to me.

"Wait, come back," he said. I figured he had forgotten to tell me something. But as I turned to look at him, he reached out his hand and clasped it around my forearm. I looked down at my arm, then up at him.

He looked straight at me.

"Thanks for coming," he said.

It's a good thing we have recordings of his music, his voice, to remind us of his generous spirit.

Bradley Delp died on Friday at age 55. Donations in his memory may be made to the American Heart Association, 20 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01710.

By Nancy Cicco
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