#Boston debut album mit plus#

I could play the parts on these songs with my eyes closed any time. It’s very easy afterwards to listen to a song and learn to play a part that you hear on the tape. I’m working on a tape and it’s gonna be what goes out there. Usually when I record the first time I play something that I like and that’s the one I keep. Having recorded the songs on your demos, did re-recording the final tracks come together more quickly? So the album wasn’t the actual demo tapes, it was a re-recording done exactly the same way: all the instrumental parts, with the exception of the drums, which were done by Sib and Jim Masdea, were done in my basement. We took the instrumental tracks out to LA, and Brad overdubbed the vocals. It was still done in a basement studio by the same person. And not only did I record it exactly the same, I recorded it on the same equipment.

I had to record all the songs exactly the same as they were on the demo. Meanwhile, I would make a master with all the instruments on it back in my basement. Brad had written a few songs on his own, and of course he had co-written several songs with me over the years. I think they worked on three of Brad’s songs out there. Let Me Take You Home Tonight was the only song that ended up being included that was recorded in LA. They would record some songs out there, and Epic would think all the recording was done in LA. I would make the record in my basement and wouldn’t tell anybody, and he would take Brad and Barry Goudreau – my old friend that used to play guitar with me – and a couple guys he knew out to LA. John Boylan, the producer Epic chose, offered me a deal. I knew that I couldn’t make that album in a so called ‘professional’ studio. The only time there was someone else there was when I laid down a basic drum track with a drummer or if Brad Delp was singing his parts and I was engineer/producer. It was me running the machines and playing the guitar and the organ and the bass. There was nobody else there when I was playing my parts. I knew I couldn’t record in a real studio.

#Boston debut album mit plus#

The funny thing is they wanted those songs on that demo plus some other ones, but they didn’t want that demo it had to be recorded in a real studio. I finished those up, put the six songs together, and within a matter of a few weeks Epic came in with a good offer to make an album. I still had two more songs to finish that weren’t quite complete at the time. I think later that same guy claimed that he had discovered Boston. In fact I got an incredibly terse rejection letter from a guy in the A&R department at Epic, saying: “This band has absolutely nothing new to offer”.

I had sent out a portion of that demo and suddenly got a reaction from three major labels RCA was one, A&M Records, and possibly Columbia, but not Epic. I wrapped it all up, and in the meantime some of these songs had been heard by a few companies. My friend Jim Masdea played drums and I would overdub all the instruments, Brad Delp would overdub all of the singing parts.

All of these demos were done in the same way. It was Rock & Roll Band, Peace Of Mind, Something About You, More Than A Feeling, Hitch A Ride and one more. There were six songs on this final demo tape. I made so many tapes and sent them out, and I’d get all the rejection slips back. So I was gonna finish this last demo, sell the equipment and stop pissing away all my money doing these stupid recordings. Being married and looking at 30 coming up, it was time to throw in the towel. You graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a master’s degree and go to work for a company and have a good job, you’re expected to do a little bit better than I was doing. I’d been spending money for six years in pretty large quantities – as much as I could make, basically. The culmination was finally completing this last demo tape. This was where I did most of the work and developed Peace Of Mind, Rock & Roll Band, More Than A Feeling, all of the songs that I wrote that appear on the first album and a couple from the second album. I built my own little cheap demo recorder to start with, and gradually put a better studio together over the years. I learned all about the technical part of tape recording at Polaroid, from a couple of friends I had there in the electronics department and some of the work I was doing. I cobbled something together from a few tape machines, some that I had bought as junk and got the parts. Then after I had blown enough money doing that and realising that this was just gonna cost too much, I decided I would put my own little demo studio together. I worked at Polaroid, and the money I made at Polaroid went into recording demos.