The record's opening track, "More Than A Feeling," was an immediate success on US radio and the UK, reaching Numbers Five and 22 respectively. The band went from being virtually unknown to playing sold-out arena shows all over the country. It quickly became the largest selling debut album of all time and the best-selling debut album by a group. The brainchild of Tom Scholz, who recorded countless demos in a home-built basement studio, including six that led to eight tracks on the album, Boston's eponymous debut captured millions of US and UK radio listeners with a blend of melodic, well-crafted AOR, spine-tingling harmonies with intelligent instrumentation. Zagat Survey Music Guide - 1,000 Top Albums of All Time, 2003.īoston was one of the few "corporate rock" albums to contain the germ of something more than the usual bland, edgeless music produced by the group's peers at the time.
Oh-so-'70s, but oh-so-listenable, Tom Scholz's basement creation revealed his home-studio wizardry, unleashing super anthems and a whole new spectrum of incredible sounds, containing all the elements that make classic rock classic: from the first note, it brings out the air guitar. It was more than a feeling - the nova that was Boston sold over 16 million copies of its blockbuster debut and still reverberates through R&R's celestial sky. Eric Deggans, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996. Bouncy, slick tracks such as "More Than a Feeling" and "Peace of Mind" defined new parameters for rock during the 70s, with soaring vocals, searing guitars and trite lyrics. The Tom Scholz formula sounds freshest on Boston's debut. Donna DiChario, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995. The album that virtually defined '70s FM rock sold over six million copies and featured the smash hits "More than a Feeling," "Peace of Mind," and "Let Me Take You Home Tonight." * * * * Best cuts: "More Than A Feeling," "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," "Smokin'." An unusually auspicious debut in an era of particularly high standards for new rock groups. Scholz and Delp individually wrote all the songs on the album too, again with much more melody and imagination than one usually expects to find on a heavy metal outing. Lead singer Brad DeIp and his many overdubs vocalize with a lot more feeling and beauty than the often perfunctory singing that can be found in even big-name hard rock groups. Scholz was chief engineer and co-producer of this album, which grew at least partially from some phenomenal demo tapes he made in his own home studio. The uniqueness would appear to emanate from Tom Scholz, an MIT mechanical engineer in product development for Polaroid who played a mean local guitar in bar bands by night.
This highly touted New England group more than lives up to its billing as being able to rock in heaviest metal style while remaining warm and fluid. Still, in a period when imaginative rock-and-roll hit singles are getting harder to find than practicing Druids, it's nice they're around. There isn't another song remotely as memorable anywhere on the rest of the album, and, unsurprisingly, the group's singing is as faceless as all the rest of the metal bands'. But, like most left-field smashes, it's a one-shot. Todd Rundgren, not to mention Eric Carmen, must be reaching for the razor blade every time he hears it. It really is good: a soaring riff out of Lou Reed by way of Joe Walsh, stunning playing and production, and the best job of adapting the George Martin/Beatles approach to heavy metal that anyone has come up with in ages. "More Than a Feeling," of course, has been the left-field smash of the year, coming seemingly out of nowhere from a first album by an unknown group of musicians who have quit their day jobs. Kris Nicholson, Rolling Stone, 10-7-76. If Boston is as exciting to see as it is to hear, Aerosmith will soon have company at the top. He teams with guitarist Tom Scholz, who coproduced and wrote six of the album's eight songs, in a relationship that's the key to the group's striking personality. Lead singer Bradley Delp's muscular vocals are powerful and graceful. But that's merely a point of reference - Boston surfaces from the melting pot as a refreshingly original band.
"Foreplay/Long Time," for instance, is a perfect marriage of Led Zeppelin and Yes that plays musical chairs with electric and acoustic sounds. The group's affinity for heavy rock & roll provides a sense of dynamics that coheres magnetically with sophisticated progressive structures. Boston is a five-man band that embodies the finest influences of English heavy-metal and progressive rock as no other American band has ever done.
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