BOSTON S future never looked more bleak that it was on March 9, 2007  the day vocalist Brad Delp took his own life. Now, a little over a year later events have come to pass that bring a renewed energy and spirit to the band. Tom Scholz has once again assembled a band that can carry out and carry on his musical vision. A genius musician, songwriter and engineer, Scholz has recruited new vocalist, Tommy DeCarlo, who was discovered under the most unlikely of circumstances and new guitarist/vocalist Michael Sweet. The unknown DeCarlo, employed at Home Depot, contacted the band with a link to a website showing him singing BOSTON songs. Michael Sweet, a huge BOSTON fan, is also the front man for the band Stryper. The events that brought both men to the band seem to have been scripted by someone up above  that someone being Brad Delp.

In this interview, Scholz discusses the new line up, the death of Brad Delp, the making of the first album, the CBS court case and the albums Don t Look Back and Third Stage in detail. Scholz is an intelligent man who tells it like it is. He has championed many charitable causes without much publicity. He prefers to make music, support his causes and live his life on his own terms as he figures he knows what is best. This interview proves he does indeed know what is best for both himself and his band. Read on to discover more about the man who created the band BOSTON.

Be sure to check out www.bandboston.com for all of the bands 2008 tour dates.

Jeb: BOSTON is back with a couple of new faces in the band.

Tom: I think we are going back in style; things are going really well. Tickets are selling much faster than expected.

Jeb: Some BOSTON fans wondered if the band would stay together after Brad [Delp] died. I think people are happy to see things continue on.

Tom: Brad was the most talented musician/singer that I have ever known. No one person could replace him. We could have looked for a lifetime and never found that person. I have to say that both Michael [Sweet] and Tommy [DeCarlo] have done a great job filling his shoes. Rehearsals have been amazing.

I am not a mystical sort of person but it is almost as if Brad is up there pulling some strings. These two guys were left on our doorstep. We didn t go out looking for anyone and we didn t do auditions for new singers. We didn t even know about either of them. Both of them, through their own efforts, showed up. They are both easy to get along with and they are both really talented. They are very excited about BOSTON. It was the most serendipitous set of circumstances that I have ever experienced.

Jeb: Michael Sweet was in a band already but Tommy DeCarlo . . . he came out of nowhere.

Tom: That story reminds me of the Cinderella story that is BOSTON. BOSTON appeared out of nowhere. I knew about it because it was in my basement but we got no attention from anyone. When it hit, it really hit. Tommy DeCarlo is the same way. He is a regular guy who works a regular job. He was married for a while and he has a family. He has not played in bands but he is a phenomenal singer. He sent us an email and a link to a file.

The last thing I was interested in at the time was listening to files someone had made on MySpace or whatever. Somebody sent it to my wife and she was playing it as I happened to be walking by. I asked her when that recording was made. She said, "This is some guy." I said, "That is Brad. What show is this from?" She said, "It is not Brad" and I said "It is Brad." We plugged it into some big speakers and the only way I could tell it was not Brad was because of the background music. I quickly realized this was neither recorded BOSTON or live BOSTON; it was a stored track. I thought, "Oh my God, this isn t Brad." I couldn t tell. I have been listening to Brad in the studio for thirty years and I know every little nuance of his voice. I know what is sounds like when it works and when it doesn t work. It was shocking.

Jeb: Did you contact him at that time?

Tom: We were doing a tribute to Brad. We were lining up some singers to do the show and he had offered to come up and sing. We didn t know what his background was. Anyone who sang like he sang had to have experience. He had to play in bands and have had recorded. It wasn t so. The biggest crowd he had ever sang in front of was forty people at a karaoke bar in a bowling alley. His first real appearance on stage with a rock and roll band was at the tribute in front of five thousand people. He came on stage and didn t have a sound check because there were problems. He came out like he had been doing this his whole life; he wailed. He is a natural singer  like Brad. He also plays keyboards.

Jeb: How did Michael Sweet come about?

Tom: He had contacted us with a condolence. He was a BOSTON fan. He was also the front man for Stryper. When we were putting together some singers to do the tribute we sent him an invitation. He said he would be happy to do it. He lives down in the Cape so he was close. He came up and ran through a song with us. It was he, Gary and I. We all looked at each other after we played all agreed this BOSTON song had never sounded better. We had him play backup guitar and sing harmony for the entire show. It sounded so good that we knew that these two guys were the future.

In the past we have done some long and drawn out rehearsals for upcoming tours but this one went really fast. It was like magic. In a few days we had gone through the whole set and we had everything in place. I was almost afraid of how good it sounded because I didn t want this to be one of those great warm up, bad game sort of things. I think this tour will have the best sounding BOSTON performances of all time. I think Brad had something to do with it. For the way that things happened and all of the circumstances that came together, it was just uncanny.

Jeb: Tell me about the tribute show.

Tom: We had a bunch of performers from years past and we had a lot of guest singers. It was just a great vibe. It was a very difficult night emotionally but it all came off very positively.

Jeb: Is the Come Together Tribute going to be released?

Tom: It was recorded but there were massive problems. There were two recordings made. We tried to make a recording of our set like we always do but it was a bizarre set up because we had all these bands and the equipment wasn t ours. The levels going to our recording systems were unusable. There was another recording made by a company and it was in some sort of bizarre file that we could not deal with. We could not get to them to provide us with something that we could use. We never even got to see what was on those recordings. The performance was difficult with so many bands. No one got to do a complete line check and we had bands go on stage with missing instruments. It was a pretty hard night from that standpoint. Because of all the mess ups of our gear it was almost impossible. It was compromised but that was not the important thing for the night. It was more about the feel of the night  which was good. I can pretty much guarantee that show will never see the light of day.

Jeb: I want to ask you some very personal questions that I think the fans really want to know. After Brad killed himself did you think about hanging it all up?

Tom: Sure I did. I think it went through everybody s mind. When something like that happens  it is hard to put into words the sequence of events that happened to keep this band going. I think we all felt the same way. It sounded too good to just leave on the doorstep and ignore.

Jeb: Brad s death was so shocking. I don t think anyone saw it coming.

Tom: They didn t see it coming  I certainly didn t see it coming. Brad wasn t a happy camper. He had a tough life in a personal sense. He went through two divorces and he had a couple of engagements that never led to marriage. That part of his life was not very good.

Jeb: It had to be like losing a brother.

Tom: We were work friends. Sometimes your work friends are your closest friends. We shared a lot of things together. We spent a lot of time together when we were not working, during our breaks and when we were on the road. You talk about a lot of things and a lot of things come out. We had some really unusual parallels. We both had serious relationships in the nineties that left us both in not a very good state of mind. Ten years later, I ended up marrying somebody and being happier than I have ever been. Brad was not so lucky.

Jeb: Why didn t you go to his funeral?

Tom: We actually were not told of the funeral. Not only were we not invited, we were not told about it. We were not the only ones. Not one member who is in the current line up of BOSTON was even informed of the funeral. ebony porn I don t want to get into that as you know there were some very bad things that happened after that. We are currently in court over many statements that were made to the press at that time.

Jeb: What is it with you and the courts? People love to sue you.

Tom: They do, actually that s true. The good thing is that I have a really good track record in that department. My theory is that you should not start a lawsuit unless you are sure that you are going to win it. Anybody who has been in the music business for thirty years has been in lawsuits as it is unavoidable.

Jeb: You run a charity but you don t talk much about it.

Tom: Primarily it was set up as a vehicle for me to give my money away. I don t solicit donations for it. It has received some donations from some people who found out about it. Brad contributed a lot to it. The charitable foundation basically funds other charities that Brad and I were trying to support. They are mostly anti-cruelty and anti-suffering programs and vegetarian organizations trying to enlighten the public about vegetarian lifestyles and why they should consider it. Brad, Gary and I are longtime vegetarian. I think that is one of the things that sort of kept us in tune over the years.

Brad and I were very different people but that is one of the things that we had in common. I followed Brad after he got into it in the Seventies. Gary got into it in the Eighties after he met me. I think it was one of the sort of binding things that held us together.

Jeb: It has to be mentioned that you are a very outspoken person.

Tom: I said that Brad and I are very different people and that is it. Brad is the most passive person that I have ever met and I, on the other hand, am the most outspoken, rebellious guy who takes everything on.

Jeb: What you have achieved in BOSTON has helped you support your causes.

Tom: It has helped both financially and by lending a name to it that they can use to bring attention to it. I don t think we have made any monstrous difference but there are plenty of people who have thought about things that they would not have thought about if BOSTON didn t exist.

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