Is this BOSTON's Greatest Song?

Nope. Rick's wrong again. It is "Foreplay/Long Time." :)


I saw this the other day. These guys are incredible.

I remember being on a plane heading back to school, in the 80’s, listening to Boston on my Walkman. We were above the clouds and as we descended through thick clouds on approach to Toronto, the eerie keyboard part was playing. At the exact second Long Time starts, we broke through the clouds and all you could see were city lights for miles. It was so cool.
 
Beato seems a bit caf'd up! ☕☕

Growing up my best friend and I split on which band were better musicians: Boston (him) or Rush (me).

Rush grabbed me in terms of prog/experimental range and Boston had such precision, harmonies and production quality. Scholtz was an amazing all around player, arranger and engineer (video below) while Rush largely played off each other for their creative and technical masterpieces.

 
Last edited:
Hitch a Ride is tops for me, the best among a very strong group of songs. For me it’s the solo. Riff after riff just so tasty and melodic. The Long Time solo starts great and then drags along.

One of my favorite concert moments is seeing Boston in 1987 and for the first encore Brad Delp stepped up to the mic and said “since it’s been such a long time…” and then Tom Scholz started the organ for Foreplay.
 
My guitar teacher who is a huge Boston fan and is an excellent guitar player, especially when it comes to Boston songs. In fact, listening to him demo an amp. we were buying for my step-son for Christmas, by playing Boston, inspired me to learn. I jokingly asked if he could teach an old dog (41 at the time) like me how to play. He said sure, come and see me after Christmas, I have an opening. Took lessons from him for a year and learned a lot. We were close in age, so we had a lot in common musically. I would always see him and chat with him when I went to the guitar store over the years, so we became pretty good friends.

One time, he was telling me he was so excited because he was going to a guitar/gear show and he was going to have a chance to meet one of his Boston idols at the show...Brad Delp. Sadly, Brad Delp passed away before he had the chance to meet him.
 
Last edited:
When I got to Berklee in 1980 I decided to check out Harvard Square. Found this giant record store The Harvard Coop.

They had a display of Bostons first album and a platinum record award on the wall.

I started talking with an employee and said that was pretty cool of the band to give the record store the platinum award to display.

He told me to read it again. The record company gave the store a platinum album for selling 1,000,000 copies of the album!

One store😳
 
When I got to Berklee in 1980 I decided to check out Harvard Square. Found this giant record store The Harvard Coop.

They had a display of Bostons first album and a platinum record award on the wall.

I started talking with an employee and said that was pretty cool of the band to give the record store the platinum award to display.

He told me to read it again. The record company gave the store a platinum album for selling 1,000,000 copies of the album!

One store😳


Harvard Coop was pretty cool back in the day!
 
My vote goes to Hitch A Ride.

Always had a sweet spot for “Man I’ll Never Be” off the second record too.

Speaking of retail records, the standing joke in the early 80’s when I was still working that gig and a third Boston record never appeared was this:

Record employee: “Heard about the new Boston album coming out?”

Customer dude: -“Oh man, you’re shittin ‘ me. I’m pumped! That’s awesome!”

Record employee: “Yeah, it’s Boston’s Greatest Hits. And it’s gonna be a double album!”
 
When the Boston album was released, Licorice Pizza (the local chain of record stores in LA) made an offer - buy it, if you don't like it, return it. You could never do that with records. Needless to say, not many copies were returned.

I was hooked by the end of the first chorus of More Than a Feeling. Maybe before the vocals even began ;-)
 
Back
Top Bottom