Boston - More than a feeling

Brad Delp

Lead singer of Boston

By Pierre Perrone

Published: 12 March 2007 independent

Bradley E. Delp, singer and songwriter: born Danvers, Massachusetts 12 June 1951; married (one son, one daughter); died Atkinson, New Hampshire 9 March 2007.

Boston's spine-tingling "More Than a Feeling" featured a soaring performance by Brad Delp, who was not only the band's lead singer, but also recorded all the harmony parts and backing vocals. Released at the end of 1976, the single charted on both sides of the Atlantic and helped the group's eponymous first album become the fastest selling début of all time in the US until surpassed by Whitney Houston 10 years later.

Boston's layered guitars and high-pitched vocals came to epitomise the adult-oriented rock genre which dominated US FM radio throughout the late Seventies and into the Eighties. In 1991, Kurt Cobain borrowed the central riff from "More Than a Feeling" to create Nirvana's grunge anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Nirvana occasionally performed part of the Boston song in concert and Cobain openly admitted in interviews that he had spent an inordinate amount of time listening to the group's music in his teens.

Born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1951, Brad Delp was part of that generation of US teenagers transfixed by Beatlemania. He bought his first guitar after seeing the Fab Four on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Within a couple of years, he was playing around the Boston area in a cover band called the Iguanas which evolved into the Monks. In 1970, he auditioned for a band formed by the multi-instrumentalist Tom Scholz and joined an embryonic line-up which included the guitarist Barry Goudreau and the drummer Jim Masdea.

A product designer at Polaroid, Scholz had a master's degree in mechanical engineering and started to build a studio in the basement of his house. He also began steering the band away from covers of Led Zeppelin and Steve Miller towards recording his own compositions. "We spent five years playing together," said Delp. "We weren't making any money at it so we concentrated our efforts on the recording part of it. Three-quarters of the first album was done on the equipment in Tom's basement."

Delp showed amazing versatility and a natural ability for arrangement, multi-tracking harmony and backing vocals around his lead parts. However, in the mid-Seventies, a state-of-the-art demo was the last thing a record label executive expected and the musicians, who eventually named themselves Boston after their home-town, struggled until Epic offered them a deal in 1975. Even then, the label insisted that the group should re-record the finished tracks in a Los Angeles studio. Scholz and the producer John Boylan fooled them by having Delp, Goudreau and the new recruits Fran Sheehan (bass) and Sib Hashian (drums) cut Delp's new composition, "Let Me Take You Home Tonight", in California while Scholz beavered away with the multi-track masters in Massachusetts.

Issued in August 1976, the Boston album quickly became an FM radio favourite as the group went out on an eight-week tour which eventually lasted for 10 months. Promoters kept adding dates and the band moved from playing clubs via supporting the arena acts Black Sabbath and Foghat to their own headline shows. When "More Than a Feeling" was released as a single at the end of the year, it charted around the world, helping the album sell more than 20 million copies. "I didn't see it coming," admitted Delp. "We actually headlined our own show at Madison Square Garden at the end of the first tour."

At the end of 1977, the group started work on a follow-up but whereas Scholz had spent several years honing their first release, he was now under pressure to deliver. Nevertheless Don't Look Back, the second album, nearly matched the success of their début and topped the US charts on its release in September 1978. Boston spent much of 1979 touring the world, but clouds were looming on the horizon.

Over the next few years, Scholz became embroiled in various lawsuits: from his former manager Paul Ahern; from Epic, who wanted a third album; and from Boston's guitarist Barry Goudreau, who recorded his own solo album in 1980 and subsequently left to form Orion the Hunter, another project Delp helped develop. Scholz set to work on Third Stage, which eventually came out on MCA in 1986. Delp delivered a trademark high-register performance on the chart-topping power ballad "Amanda" but, by the beginning of the Nineties, he was just about the only former member of Boston not suing Scholz. Delp didn't sing on the 1994 Boston album Walk On, which instead featured Fran Cosmo on lead. When in 2002 Boston toured and recorded Corporate America, the band showcased both vocalists.

In recent years, between Boston commitments, Delp had been fronting a Beatles tribute group called Beatlejuice, displaying an uncanny inability to mimic not only John Lennon but also Paul McCartney and George Harrison. "I enjoy it," Delp said.

It's not because I need the money for groceries. I tell people that it is the only thing that I can do that makes me feel 15 again.