45 years after writing and producing Boston‘s mega-platinum self-titled debut, leader Tom Scholz recalls never fitting in. The Boston leader looked back to Rock Candy magazine, and recalled, “I was always an outsider. I wasn’t part of a scene, not part of the crowd that recorded or played in L.A. or New York. I wasn’t part of the drug culture; I didn’t know anything about it. I wasn’t at the parties. I didn’t do any of those things. I was like this enigma that came out of no place and it really pissed people off.”
He went on to say, “There were a lot of people, and there still are today, who just totally resent me and Boston music. They will never understand what went into that music or what was behind it, or, once it became successful, what I intended to do with it. That part was not pleasant.”
Aftre recording what became the band’s first album, Scholz was prepared to pack it in: “I was going to send demos out and assuming I got nothing but rejections, which is what I thought would happen, I was going to dismantle all of the equipment, sell everything off, and recover what little I could from the money I’d spent.”
Scholtz — an MIT-trained engineer employed by Poloroid — went on to reveal that upon signing with Epic, the label wanted him to re-record all the tracks in a professional, conventional studio: “I said, ‘It can’t be done. I cannot do it without the equipment I used to record everything we’ve done so far, it would have taken another 10 years rather than another six months. All of the equipment would have had to be modified.”
DID YOU KNOW???
- Boston‘s self-titled debut album peaked at Number Three on the Billboard 200 albums chart, where it stayed for five weeks.
- All told, Boston stayed in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 for a whopping 29 weeks.
- To date, Boston, has sold over 17 million copies in the U.S. alone.
FAST FACTS
- Boston‘s Love, Life, And Hope, which was released in December 2013, peaked at Number 37 on the Billboard 200 album charts and marked the band’s followup to 2002’s Corporate America collection.
- The album was the first to be released since the 2007 suicide of beloved frontman, Brad Delp.
- The new collection includes lead vocals from Delp, Tommy DeCarlo, Kimberley Dahme, David Victor, and Tom Scholz, himself.
CHECK IT OUT: Boston’s 1978 promo video for “Don’t Look Back”: