Boston lead singer Brad Delp dead at 55

Boston Globe ^ | 3/9/07 | AP Wire Services

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

ATKINSON, N.H. --Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, was found dead Friday in his home in southern New Hampshire. He was 55.

Atkinson police responded to a call for help at 1:20 p.m. and found Delp dead. Lt. William Baldwin said in a news release that there was no indication of foul play.

article HERE

[derllak]

Britney loves you too, I'm sure. :P

[The Bass Player]

Hey Lurker,,,how does it feel to be like, the only poster who doesn't dig Boston?

[Lurker]

Hey Lurker,,,how does it feel to be like, the only poster who doesn't dig Boston?

Quantity is not quality. Check out the sales numbers for Brittany Spears last album and then get back to me.

I remember being stuck at work in a small pizza place when that misbegotten first Boston album came out. A co-worker played it endlessly over and over and over on the 8 track.

One day before he arrived the tape had a terrible accident involving a pizza peel, the deep fryer, and a turn or two in a 550 degree oven.

Tragic....

L

[The Bass Player]

Dude, if you were truly punk, you wouldn't even own a computer, let alone post anything. Everyone knows this. I'm sure upon reading this, you're gonna get all upset and stuff, so, oh well, lol. Why don't you just fly away homeslice, and be real for a change, go squat underneath an overpass and share some 3 day old Top Raman, and then you can call yourself a real punker. pffft......

[dennisw]

They suck. And same for Tom Scholz who refused to tour

[Lurker]

Dude, if you were truly punk, you wouldn't even own a computer,

It was a phase.

Besides Punk died with Sid and Joey.

L

[The Bass Player]

Scholz made a stand against CBS because they were trying to rip him off. If he wanted to, he could have had Boston tour endlessly, playing giganto-stadiums, playing "More Than A Feeling" into the sunset. It would have been pretty easy for him to have done that, instead, he held out, for income and art, and also created tech stuff for musicians who weren't as lucky as he was.

[The Duke]

Their album was about the only thing I heard echoing amongst the dorm buildings my freshman year in college in '76. Sad to hear of him passing so early in life. Someone who contributed so much deserved better.

[The Bass Player]

Sorry Dennisw, that was meant for lurker, lol

[The Bass Player]

wait a sec, I retract my apology, that was meant for you, lol

[The Bass Player]

Oh no, I guess I have to go to rehab now. lol

[WestVirginiaRebel]

R.I.P. Hopefully he's found his Peace Of Mind...

[zarf]

RIP Brad. You made Geddy Lee sound like a baritone.

[zarf]

I bet you had a crush on Andy Gibb

You know, I went back to listen to Andy's greatest hits recently and I was blown away by the tunes.

Little did I appreciate back in the day how damned good the Bee Gees writing and production skills were.

There's an uncanny excellence about all of Andy's tracks and tunes.

Of course Barry Gibb was the genius behind much of it.

Don't Throw it All Away; Shadow Dancing.....great music indeed.

[PAMadMax]

Wow...Boston was a big part of my misspent youth. I was always partial to "Hitch a Ride". Mellow vibe, yet rippin' guitar.

Had "Boston" on vinyl, 8-Track (no snide comments, please), cassette, CD and now .mp3.

[taxed2death]

Tom S. was kinda a whack job....if you read the back of the first Boston Album he goes on and on about how there's "no synthesizers" used on the album. I was in a band at the time that album came out and me and my band mates kinda looked at each other in disbelief and laughed a bit.... those guitar sounds were so highly "processed" with studio effects that they were in fact "synthesized". Proof of this was the fact that if one looks back and reads the reviews of Bostons first tour.... it was extremely disappointing to say the least. Audiences were EXPECTING the band to sound somewhat close to the album, but the technology at that time was not up to the task. The more Tom diddled in the studio for "just the right sound"... the worse hole he dug himself into when the band would go on tour. People walked away shaking their heads after listening to the band perform live. It took 15 years for the technology to be developed to get that fat guitar sound "portable" and able to be heard on the road. My memory is a bit foggy here... but I believe Tom S. eventually developed some guitar synthesizers... he liked to call them "effects"...hehehehehe called "rock-man" or something (operated by foot pedals)... that would allow a guitar player to obtain those sounds on the road.
The EXACT same thing happened to the band the Cars.

Any hoo...
too bad about Delp... he had a great voice.

[Gardener]

Well now I did actually have a crush on Andy Gibb but I had a boyfriend and brother who introduced me to Boston in '81 or so and the number one CD I still listen to is Boston's Greatest Hits ('The Best of Kansas' is #2). The two are not incompatible!! LOL

RIP Brad.

[DCPatriot]

JUST TODAY, I copied a bunch of songs from my CD collection to an SD card, and the first Boston album is one of the discs that I grabbed. I put all of the others back, but for some reason I left that one aside. I eventually put it back, but I kept thinking about why I forgot about that particular CD. Coincidence?

YOU killed Brad...you dirty rat.

[SamAdams76]

I remember when their first album came out in the fall of 1976. I was just 14 years old. WBCN in Boston put "More Than A Feeling" and "Piece Of Mind" into heavy rotation right off the bat. You knew from day one that this album was going to be a massive hit. Eventually, the Boston radio stations had every track on this album in their rotation which is a very rare feat.

This was also the fastest selling debut in rock history up to that time. I think they moved something like 6 million albums within the first two months of release.

Boston was also one of the first rock bands I ever saw live. It was in November 1978 during the "Don't Look Back" tour. I also think it was the first time they even went on tour! They were not your typical rock band. Just regular guys playing music in their garage. But that show they put on was first-rate. They took the stage as a giant spaceship decended from the rafters.

The band Boston took over two years to release their second album ("Don't Look Back") which was unheard of back in those days when top rock stars were expected to produce an album every year.

Boston's third album "Third Stage" didn't come out until 1986 as Scholt'z preoccupation with "studio perfection" combined with getting the band tied up in lawsuits perpetually delayed the album from coming out. Which is a shame because Boston was perceived as a "dinosaur act" by then and so the album was overlooked by many.

They would have probably put out a lot more music if Thomas Scholz wasn't such an ass. Scholz also went off the rails with his politics and I think his last album had an anti-capitalist theme which is kind of ironic considering all the cash he pulled in with Boston's music. I actually met Scholtz in the summer of 1979. I was working at the Cloud 9 restaurant at Logan Airport and he came into the bar while waiting for a flight to Europe. He was kind of standoffish but all the waiters and dishwashers (of which I was one) kept peeking into the bar to get a look. Just a regular guy other than the fact he had the money to do pretty much whatever he wanted!

Anyway, three near-perfect albums is a legacy that most rock bands cannot lay claim too. Even decades later, most of the tracks from those first three albums still sound fresh today.

Apparently Boston has recently recorded new music with Brad Delp. Hopefully they will see fit to release it one of these days.

[torchthemummy]

Both Delp and Scholz were Beatles fans, and it showed in their music, they took the best of what the Beatles had, and made it their own.

As I stated in another post, I believe Brad's last concert was last Saturday in my hometown here in NH. He led a band called Beatlejuice that did Beatles covers about as good as anyone. In fact I believe they were actually endorsed by Paul and Ringo.