If you want a good account of the legal issues Scholz was involved in get the book "Hitmen" by Fredric Dannen, which is a great read anyway. Scholz turned the music business on its ear because he was smart enough to legally hold CBS to an internal audit for royalties, in which they were screwing him out of millions.
CBS didn't care because they thought they had him by the balls so they just withheld royalties to prevent him from being able to afford a good lawyer, so Scholz started SRD to fund his legal fight, selling mostly guitar based effects. I bought the SRD 'PowerSoak' when it first came out and that thing ROCKED, in fact it STILL rocks, I use it all the time as an amp attenuater (it was WAY ahead of its time).
CBS got so pissed off at him because he was taking forever to finish "Don't Look Back" (because of his neurotic perfectionism and his legal fight with CBS) that they actually came in to the studio they were working and STOLE the master tapes and pressed the album. Side B of "Don't Look Back" is completely unfinished btw.
Scholz got so mad over this and the legal issues he gave the master tapes to the third album to the head of MCA, who was the head of CBS record's biggest rival (they HATED each other) and MCA released the album even though Boston was under contract to CBS. The ensuing legal fight led to the downfall of CBS records and is the stuff of legend. As crazy as Scholz is I laud him for his perserverance, because these record company execs were some of the most crooked people on this planet and he got the best of them.
SRD made some great products, a lot of people here mentioned the Rockman, of which I still have 2 working ones, and they had a HUGE influence on '80's music, you can hear it on hundreds of songs from that era..and it led the way to all of these direct recording effects you see today.
They also made these really cool Rockman rack mounted guitar processors that sounded incredible, I still have mine and use it every now and then for that larger than life sound. The 'stereo echo' unit is especially good because it has a unique sound.
The first album was done in Scholz's basement, and he played most of the instruments, but their were other musicians involved on certain songs.
RIP Brad. Your first 2 albums were huge influences in my life, and I spent countless hours learning all of the guitar parts and marvelling over those incredible high notes you could hit. Your vocal layering is still probably the best I've ever heard in rock music.
Great post!
I have their vinyl albums. So I went to the music newsgroups to find them and put them on a hard drive. Download, combine, decode and burn to a CD, or just keep them on a computer. I have Sound Forge with all the good plug-ins to enhance it the way I want it to sound for me. You can also find Boston on FTP sites.
It's real musicians like Scholz who pushed the record companies into their current model of carbon cut boybands and girl dancers. I'd like to see a indie label resurgence of real music put out by guys like Scholz who are still out there but not getting the contracts.
RIP Brad. Your first 2 albums were huge influences in my life, and I spent countless hours learning all of the guitar parts and marvelling over those incredible high notes you could hit. Your vocal layering is still probably the best I've ever heard in rock music.
Third Stage is one of the very few albums on this earth that can make my neck tingle if not bring a dampness to the eye. Prayers of everlasting peace to Delp and his family.