Constant reader, but have never written to you before. I've been on New York rock radio for 47 years now- and sure remember when that Boston album came in. I was doing evenings on WPLJ,/New York's Best Rock where we were a Monolith in ratings- Boston was a no-brainer- right up our alley- and of course, we played the hell out of it. Tom Scholz- wow- we heard he did the whole thing in his basement!
And yes, for Boston, and so many of the well-produced bands that came after---the derogatory term 'corporate rock' and accompanying disdain were coined and fostered by detractors of Boston. At WPLJ, our primary competitor at the time was WNEW-FM, where Boston and 'corporate rock' were not favored, and didn't receive anywhere near the airplay we gave them.
So it was with a certain subversive glee that I remember purposefully playing Boston on my first show when I moved over to WNEW in late '83. Since WPLJ had gone CHR--well---now I humorously had the monopoly on playing Boston during the evenings on 'NEW, where I remained until that format change in 1999.
Fast forward to now- in 2020- where I've been happy to, yes, be able to play the hell out of Boston on Q104.3 "New York's Classic Rock" -doing evenings for the last 16 years--and am also happy to play Boston on SiriusXM Classic Rewind.
That's a lot of Boston---because they sound that good , and the listeners love them!
Now, if anyone can remember the details of the New York radio promotion for Boston, involving a limo ride for us DJ's, maybe to somewhere in Jersey----can you please fill me in?
Thanks!----Carol Miller
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hey Bob...two things I want to say about Boston. They were the first concert I ever went to...December of 1978. seats were behind the stage but that didn't make the experience any less awesome. the opener was this dude who ran around the stage so much it made me dizzy.....Sammy Hagar
Secondly.....I also remember trying to play those Boston songs as an aspiring lead singer/guitarist. I could pick up pieces here and there but pretty much all I could really master were the chords in the choruses of More than a Feeling and Peace of Mind. trying to play those lead parts was futile. also Brad Delp had a sick range that I could come nowhere near. Have you ever noticed that there are no Boston cover bands? or cover bands that even attempt those songs? I know the production is insane but the rest of it is so original it can't really be duplicated
Mike Farley
Michael J. Media Group LLC
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During Boston's '78 tour, they played the Pontiac Silverdome with Sammy Hagar opening. In conjunction with it, they played a basketball game against the crew of WABX radio in Detroit. While sitting in the bleachers with my dad watching Tom Scholz, Sib Hasheen, and Sammy's bass player Bill Church(noted he has a bum leg. Polio?) on the court along with crew members vs. the DJ's. A nice-looking older lady with a younger boy and girl sat behind us and struck up a conversation with my dad. "That's my boy Tommy out there playing. I'm his mother, and this is his niece and nephew. We came up from Toledo, and he doesn't even know I'm here. Would you be nice enough to let him know, young man?" I of course ran down to one end of the court and flagged him down, and pointed them out to him, to which he was very appreciative.
Meanwhile, I scanned the bleachers, and out comes Brad Delp with his girlfriend. He got mobbed, mostly by girls, but seemed to be very gracious about it. I turned and looked over my shoulder, and there was Barry Goudreau with his gal. Alone. I quietly walked over and had a nice, short chat with him. Told him I loved his electrifying solo on Long Time. Nice guy.
No idea who won the game.
Tom Moore
Oxford, Michigan
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I love cover songs and have a playlist for Boston. Some good, some obvious and some obscure. Enjoy!
CoverSNGS:Boston, a playlist by sdbruns on Spotify
Steve Bruns
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I got my driver's license about the same time that the Boston debut album came out. I inherited a 1964 Pontiac Tempest that my father bought when I was two feet tall. It was rusty and I had to put a 2x4 under the hinge of the driver's seat to keep the seat upright. But I didn't care. That summer, my family was vacationing in Wildwood, NJ, as we did every year while I was growing up.
I had a part-time job and spent a huge amount of money installing the best Pioneer under-dash stereo system (with separate dedicated amp!) my money could buy at the time. Jensen 6x9 speakers mounted into the rear deck that I cut the holes for myself with a jigsaw.
I got to drive there myself for the first time that year. As I was driving over the causeway, through a small fishing town called Anglesea, Foreplay/Long Time was blasting on my stereo, having listened to the whole album at ear-splitting volume on the ride down.
I can still vividly remember the goosebumps, excitement, ocean scent of the summer air and sheer life-force that was in me that day as I bridged the gap between childhood and adulthood on my way down the shore.
Memories that I still conjure up today as a happy place. One of the most important albums of my life, and they just don't make 'em like they used to.
Thanks for bringing it back for me.
Stay healthy.
KEVIN DREXLER
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BG (Bob Greenberg) was a sound system engineer/inventor at Werlein’s Music in Boston. He visited me and my girl for dinner one evening around 1977. At the dinner table, my girl mentioned once seeing the Beatles at Boston Garden. I questioned whether the Beatles had ever played the Garden. BG said he could settle the argument, picked up the phone and called the biggest Beatle fan he knew-Brad Delp. Brad confirmed that the Beatles indeed did play Boston Garden, and the he had sneaked into the show by finding an unlocked fire door. He also mentioned that one of his biggest thrills was to eventually meet George Harrison in person.
Stephen Gavigan
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Bob, that ultimate game-changing rock album touched my life as well as my heart and my ears. As it was told to me, Paul Ahern's vacated Capitol promo post was filled by Dom Silvi , whose Capitol sales post was filled by Paul Crisostamo, whose Capitol merchandiser slot was filled by a local bar band guitarist (me). I spent 30 years at Capitol. My friend and ex-bandmate, keyboardist Neil Miller, designed the Rockman circuit board. His signature is on it. Paul Lanning
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"We saw them a few weeks later at Aerosmith's rehearsal facility -- I think it was in Waltham, a Boston suburb."
It was indeed Waltham. I worked at Moe Black's department store, right next to Aerosmith's "Wherehouse".
Joey Kramer was a regular visitor for car detailing supplies.
Tom Quinn
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I credit Boston with jumpstarting my career as a television producer. In 1978, I just graduated from NYU and started working at Gotham Advertising, the in-house agency for CBS Records. I started as an assistant producer, but within two months was given the assignment of producing a spot for Blue Oyster Cult. That went well, and the execs at Epic were pleased. Around the same time, the VP of creative services prepared a :30 spot for Boston 2. This was high priority so the label spent more than usual for :30 of beautiful animation of the spaceship coming down from the mountains and landing and transforming into the album cover. Everyone seemed pleased so they sent the spot to the band for approval. And the guys from Boston HATED IT. They vehemently hated it and stated that the spot said nothing about who they were as a band, and that as far as they were concerned, it was :30 of wasted time. So there was a crisis. The label had already bought the ad time on television. One of the Epic execs suggested that they give me (the kid) a chance to salvage it. The band had no music videos to use. So we talked on the phone with the guys, and evidently the band members loved to take photos from the stage of the audience. They sent what they had, which was about a hundred murky black & white slides of the audience. Though the photos lacked in quality, they showed coliseum sized crowds going crazy. So I went into the edit studio and blasted these images rapid fire, around six per second. “Don’t Look Back” starts building and you see crowds going wild. People screaming and going crazy. At :24 we cut to the slick spaceship animation and the voice over delivers the message - “Boston 2 arrives August 26.” And the band LOVED IT! They said that’s exactly how they saw Boston - a group of guys playing music for the people. Giving fans a great time. I felt very relieved, as was the label, that everything worked out and that we were able to convey their vision of who they were as artists. They honed their sound in the studio, but felt their purpose was to engage with a live audience.
After that experience I went on to produce the TV ad campaigns for Springsteen (Born in the USA, The River, Nebraska, Live Box Set), Michael Jackson (Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad), Ozzy, Journey, Cheap Trick, etc. I don’t know if any of that would have happened without that opportunity that Epic and the guys from Boston have me. Huge thanks to them.
Ken Schreiber
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Tom Werman, BELMONT HILL SCHOOL '63... A friend and soccer teammate...Ron Druker,BHS '62... Small World...
Also,played on same "law firm"( neither of us were members of the firm!) basketball team in a Boston( not the band!) LAWYERS LEAGUE in the early mid eighties with Tom Scholz as my cousin, Steve Simon, was/is his friend and lawyer...more small world!
Ron Druker
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I remember going to my first concert ever in December, 1976 (Foghat, Rush, and Mother’s Finest at the Palladium in NYC) and sitting in the back of my friend’s Camaro when “More Than A Feeling” came on the radio. It is still a memory that gives me chills me to this day.
A couple of months later in February we saw Boston headline at the Nassau Coliseum along with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes who were booed out of the building, and Starcastle. Boston played almost the entire first album and two songs from their second album which had not come out yet. Surprisingly they were able to sound good in a 20,000 seat arena.
I last saw them at Whitman Auditorium at Brooklyn College in 1979. They were on a college tour and while they were still an arena act but for some reason played smaller venues doing a college routing. They killed in a smaller venue. Later that summer, they came back to headline Giants Stadium in front of over 50,000 people.
Adam Gerstein
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I was 11 when the first Boston album came out. This was in the spring of '76 in Australia. What an album! When I first heard 'More Than A Feeling' on the radio, it was like the heaven's opened up. I instantly became a fan and when I picked up the guitar a few years later, I sat down and learned a lot of those solos from that album by ear. 'Hitch A Ride' solo is king! I learned that note for note. Over the years I've bought multiple copies of that album, first it was the vinyl, then the cassette, then the CD and every re-issue after that. More than 40 years later, that album still gives me the same feeling (no pun intended) as the first time I heard it. It takes me back to that time, every time.
Both Boston's Barry Goudreau and Brad Delp went off and formed RTZ in early '90s (another fine and under rated band in my opinion) and I was lucky enough to interview Barry Goudreau in the early 2000s. To hear some of the stories behind some of those guitar parts that he and Tom put down on that first Boston album, to me, it was a guitarist's wet dream. He and Brad Delp had just released their 'Delp And Goudreau' album. Brad was one of the finest singers of our time. Was very sad to hear what had happened to him. He was one of a kind.
Joe Matera, Australia
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The best goddamn tip from the mailbag of all time. Thank you Mike Flanagin. Hindley Street Country Club is the real deal. I’d go see them anytime. They killed it and I got excited and that’s from someone who was there in the beginning.
John Brodey
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Hi Bob, loved your passionate piece about Boston and it took me back to my own first encounter with the band.
In September 1976, I was a young agent visiting Los Angeles trying to build a good roster for my fledgeling agency ITB and woo some USA rock acts over to Europe.
I was amazed by the eclectic range of radio in the States compared to my native UK, and I was especially drawn to KMET (the mighty Met) of Southern California. I listened to that station all the time, in my hotel room and in the car driving around. I even made many hours of cassette tapes from the radio to take back and play in England.
When Boston's 'More than a Feeling' blasted out for the first time on KMET I was just knocked out by the amazing experience; totally arrested by Brad Delp's soaring vocals and the sound of that visceral guitar.
The song was on regular rotation and I just knew that somehow I HAD to sign this phenomenal band. I tracked down their manager Paul Ahern in LA, and hounded him to give me Boston for representation in Europe. By then I'd heard the whole debut album and every track was a winner, especially ‘Foreplay/Long time' and ‘Rock & Roll Band’ etc.
PA (as he was known) and I became great friends and still are to this day. He invited me to New York on my way back to London in order to see Boston perform. In New York he took me up to CBS records where he (jovially) harassed Walter Yetnikoff and Lenny Petze (who had signed the band to Epic) about their new, huge selling artist. PA had broken his ankle so was hobbling around on crutches from office to office in the CBS building.
At the Boston show in New York I met the late, great Frank Barsalona who had signed the band for touring to Premier Talent Agency. I learnt a lot from Frank over the years so, to a young agent like me, the NY Boston experience also gave me a stepping stone to meet some industry greats.
Eventually PA gave me Boston for agency representation in Europe (Frank and Barbara Skydel at Premier Talent kindly agreed to release the band from a worldwide deal). Well, I was as proud as punch.
Boston came to Europe in October 1979 for their only appearances and played five spectacular nights to great acclaim at London’s legendary Rainbow Theatre. All the shows sold out well in advance. They were lovely guys and despite their massive success they were humbled to be so enthusiastically received overseas.
That's my Boston story.
Rod MacSween
International Talent Booking, London
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