Well, we were just another band out of Boston

On the road and tryin’ to make ends meet,

Playin’ all the bars and sleepin’ in our cars

And we practiced right on out in the street.

—from “Rock & Roll Band,” Boston

Why is it that so many of the greatest albums are debuts?

It’s no mystery. In that long gestation before an artist or group gives birth to a first record, whole lifetimes of musical growth have likely transpired. Influences are absorbed, sonic predilections sifted. Songs are written and scrapped. And the songs that stick around get honed—performed and improved along the way until they’re burnished to a high gloss.

All those lifetimes burst forth on great debuts. Before they finally got into a studio, The Beatles played hundreds of hours live (in Hamburg between August 1960 and May 1962 they played three sets a day six days a week.) They recorded their first LP in one day (which is why John Lennon’s voice sounds ragged on the final take, Side 2’s last cut, “Twist and Shout.”) Similarly, Led Zeppelin recorded their first album in roughly 36 hours.

Diamonds need pressure—ambition, competition, adversity. They also need time.

Here’s a time for you: August 25, 1976. Ah, that date! That’s the day the self-titled album by a group called Boston began enriching the world. It’s hard to imagine a time before it.

When Boston unleashed its euphonic flood over the airwaves I was nine, just old enough to be an avid radio listener who had recently discovered the other, much better sounding bandwidth on the dial:
FM. The Summer of ’76 gave this kid so much joy. While my Mets were moribund, the Yankees (along with the arsonists) were setting the Bronx on fire. Every 4th of July promised the pleasures of illicit fireworks, but the Bicentennial set a new standard. And much of the fireworks that summer took the form of music, with no album more pyrotechnic than Boston.

The record execs chose the opening track, “More Than a Feeling”, for the first volley; guaranteed, it’s playing somewhere right now on an American Rock radio station. Nearly 50 years later, the whole album sounds so uncannily fresh that it’s hard to convey just how “new” it felt back in 1976—the rich textures of its guitars, the sweetness of its lead vocals and harmonies, the accomplished complexity of its songs. In short order, Rock radio stations started spinning every tune on the album, one lapidary hit after another:

Side 1

More Than a Feeling

Peace of Mind

Foreplay/Long Time

Side 2

Rock & Roll Band

Smokin’

Hitch a Ride

Something About You

Let Me Take You Home Tonight

On their debut, Boston was Tom Scholz on lead and acoustic guitars, bass, organ, and keyboards; Brad Delp on lead and harmony vocals and rhythm guitar; Barry Goudreau on rhythm and lead guitars, particularly the solos on “Long Time” and “Let Me Take You Home Tonight;” Fran Sheehan on bass guitar; and Sib Hashian on drums and percussion.

More than anyone, though, Boston is Tom Scholz. He wrote or co -wrote all the songs (except “Let Me Take You Home Tonight,” written by Brad Delp.) Famously, Scholz graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had always been a tinkerer. So, along with co-producing Boston, he recorded most of the tracks in his own studio using devices he engineered himself. (He parlayed his patented gadgetry behind “the Boston sound” into Scholz Research & Development, Inc., a company that developed and made guitar amplifiers, attenuators, compressors, and monitors.)

Let me put it another way: if you’re familiar with The Beatles and their studio team, in Tom Scholz Boston had the equivalent of George Harrison, George Martin, and Geoff Emerick in one person.

But then there’s that voice! Brad Delp’s singing truly merits the accolade soaring. His voice is freakishly great, capable of sustained strength at vocal altitudes where others would wither from hypoxia. It’s shot through with an essentially American tone and accent. More than that, his voice is effusively youthful; I can’t imagine the wielder of those vocal cords ever growing old, let alone dying, which, sadly, Delp did in 2007.

Any way you slice it, Boston is an audiophile’s delight: the musicians’ virtuosity, the breathtaking vocals, the technical production, and, finally, the mastering of the LP and pressing on one of the best labels when it comes to sound, Epic Records.

Let me offer a few personal barometers of how deeply this album matters:

1. I have three copies of Boston, a pristine vinyl LP and two CD pressings, one of which permanently resides in my ’67 Mustang, as essential an automotive component as the tires or the steering wheel.

2. Boston is Life Soundtrack; its songs range from exuberant to transcendent, mellow to melancholy, ass-kicking to soul-soothing. This record has informed countless moments—and enhanced them.

3. If music could somehow become encoded in one’s genes through repeated listenings, then all the tracks on Boston are surely woven into the strands of my DNA.

4. If I hike one day to the top of Mount Olympus at the invitation of the gods, I won’t be surprised in the least if they’re listening to “Long Time” or “Hitch a Ride” when I finally arrive.