Happy Birthday, Brad Delp!
On what should have been his 72nd birthday, if only he were still here.
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You’ll receive early access to everything, and paid subs (I want so much to call it like, the “fan club” but I seem to be stuck calling it...yeah, screw that, it’s the fan club now) will get exclusive content as well. For example, this week you’ll get the next installment of “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, which is of course if you’ve been following, “Red China”, which means I get the opportunity to crap on left authoritarians which will be a fun change of pace.
In fact, this will be the last piece that immediately goes out to everyone.
If your money needs to be spent elsewhere, understood-for many, it’s rough out there. You’ll still get plenty of good stuff from here. As much as I’m not loving the idea of a paywall, or doing any capitalism, the reality is that in order to survive you have to do at least a little capitalism and hopefully still bring some value to the world without being shitty.
Speaking of capitalism, my art store is up and running. You can get cool stuff with my art on them. It’s my landscape, nature, and other stuff. What I use for cover art here is not for sale, I’m not sure how that would work as far as copyright, lawyers, suits, and all the things I have so much love and patience for. Although if you have a commission idea, I’m open!
Okay, enough talking about this stuff, let’s talk about crap I actually want to talk about!
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Today (June 12) would have been the 72nd birthday of the guy who was my favorite singers and all around favorite humans of all time, Brad Delp from the band Boston.
Sadly in 2007 Brad left this world of his own volition in a particularly brutal way after really struggling internally, possibly making some shitty choices in that space, and seeing no other way out. There’s plenty out there on that if you want to read it, but I really don’t want to talk about it other than acknowledging that there is an elephant in the room and moving the hell on.
He was from the North Shore of Massachusetts, and was living just over the border in New Hampshire later in life. So, he was one of us.
He was considered by many to be the “nicest guy in Rock N’ Roll”. He was just as happy playing dive bars and high school gyms in the North Shore in his Beatles cover band Beatle Juice, sticking around long enough for anyone who wanted to meet him, or get a picture. It also wasn’t out of character for Brad to be talking to fans after a show and being like, “hey, you guys want to get something to eat?”
To this day I still kick myself in the ass for never making it up to one of those Beatle Juice shows. There was one once where I started to make plans and didn’t get the night off. I should have told the boss to go piss up a rope. You always think you’ll have time later...until you don’t.
I mean, I did get to see Boston a couple of times. One was really crazy and unexpected. It was 2003, when I went to a Red Sox playoff game at Fenway Park. They played the national anthem, then followed it up with “Rock & Roll Band” right before the game from up on the old right field roof. Back when it was a roof and not a beer garden or whatever it is now. But seeing them in a space with thousands of people may be cool, but it’s not quite at the level of meeting one of your idols (especially as someone who deliberately has very few of them) after they played at a rando dive bar in the middle of nowhere.
Crazy thing was I had this conversation with someone in the biz a couple of years back when he came up. This person knew Brad and considered him to have been a friend, one of many that were artists or otherwise in the music business in the Boston area who have stories about how Brad helped and/ or befriended them along the way. They told me, “it’s too bad that never worked out where you could have met him. He’s everything you’ve heard and then some, one of the kindest, most genuine people period, never mind in music. And he would have loved you.”
I still tear up over that, which is a step up from the waterworks that came through when I first heard that. Or those that came through when I first heard of his passing, and somehow having to pull my shit together to be at work 20 minutes later only to get through 8 hours to just cry again.
It’s very rare that I get like that, but here we are.
Anyway, let’s dive into some music, shall we?
There’s of course Boston. The band with one of the great all-time debut albums back in 1976. You all know the songs, of course. What you may not know is that they were recorded in band leader/ guitarist/ organist/ engineer/ crazy ass genius Tom Scholz’ basement studio in Watertown, MA. Scholz did all of the guitar, bass, keyboard work, the drums were local drummers Sib Hashian (who would become part of the actual band once one was actually formed) and Jim Masdea (who would later replace Hashian). Brad dropped all the vocals, all the solos, the backing harmonies, was just him nailing the same part perfectly again and again. Which is fricking crazy nowadays.
The funny part behind that? When signed to Epic records, the label wanted them to record the album in Los Angeles. Scholz was like, “nah”, mostly because he was still working as an engineer for Polaroid and still working (?!?) at the time he was recording. The producer the label assigned to them went along and covered up, and Scholz kept sending him tracks the producer could give the suits, everyone was happy, kumbaya. The record was done, a band was actually assembled to tour, and they were on their way.
My all time favorite Boston song is “Hitch a Ride”. It was reworked from what was originally called “San Francisco Day” on one of their first demos. It, to me is as close as one gets to a perfect song. At one point there’s this haunting organ solo in the middle, and then an outro dual solo-you hear the electric of course, and it starts with a riff that not only gives me chills still after hearing it probably thousands of times, but if I’m in a room with others and the song pops on I’ll make everyone in the room shut up when that part’s about to start. That riff isn’t even that hard, I used to be able to play it...but as the solo went on past it, it gets real impossible real quick. Hell, I was watching Rick Beato break the song down on his channel and he usually plays along with things by ear and HE had to tap out.
And as a personal aside, when my nephew was like, 2 weeks old, crying like crazy, and my dumb ass couldn’t figure out how to soothe him I started to vocalize the bass line to Foreplay/ Long Time and than started singing. Maybe he was like “if I stop I won’t have to hear this crap anymore”, but whatever, it worked.
So Boston toured. And toured. I guess Tom finally quit Polaroid. Don’t Look Back was recorded somewhere in between, they toured some more.
At one point Boston was touring with Black Sabbath, and at one stop Brad got Ozzy Osbourne to go with him to see The Exorcist. How frickin’ cool is that, going to see The Exorcist with the Prince of Darkness himself? Apparently the movie fucked up Ozzy so much that he just...disappeared and no one saw him or heard from him in days. Probably not ideal when touring. But man that story is hysterical.
After the touring wound down, instead of just going and recording the next album, Scholz got into a pissing contest with Epic Records that led to lawsuits, leaving the label eventually and Boston ended up in hiatus until 1986.
Sick of waiting around, the rest of the band, assisted by singer Fran Cosmo, went into the studio and banged out an album produced by Epic, credited to guitarist Barry Goudreau. Scholz, while being a musical and engineering genius, was also a genius when it came to being a sue-happy dick (hopefully he doesn't see this and sue me!). When this album came out in 1980, Scholz sued to kill the album because it sounded too much like a Boston album (which...yeah, that’s actually true), fired Goudreau, Hashian, bassist Fran Sheehan...and yet the singers survived the wrath. It took until 1996 for this album to see the light of day again, which is a shame because while it’s not to the quality of the first two Boston albums (ESPECIALLY the first), it’s still a really good album.
Delp somehow stuck around and he was the vocalist when Third Stage finally appeared. A very different album but still really good, and probably the last Boston album that I would really love. It was also the album that spawned their only #1, Amanda. Although either Can’tcha Say or Hollyann are the best songs on the album. Source: Me.
In the early 90s Delp passed on recording the next Boston album Walk On, instead joining Goudreau in his band RTZ, who spawned a couple of minor hits, including “Until Your Love Comes Back Around”. RTZ was a more raw rock sound, a little bluesy at times even, and really brought out different elements of Delp’s range that you weren’t going to hear in Boston. Not a knock, what Scholz created just brought out different things.
The singer Scholz brought on to record Walk on: Fran Cosmo. Because again, somehow the singers escaped the wrath from that Barry Goudreau album.
From there Delp would tour with Boston and would record some after Walk On, splitting duties with Cosmo but also keep joining Goudreau on projects. Besides RTZ, they recorded a pair of albums as a duo, Delp & Goudreau. They were clearly locally produced on a local budget but that’s not a bad thing. You could hear Delp’s range head a little deeper in his later years, but voices evolve with age.
Having to exist with the eggshells of going back and forth between projects with Goudreau and Scholz, I can definitely understand how playing gigs in Swampscott with a Beatles cover band must’ve felt like a vacation. But damn if they didn’t sound really good though.
Fun fact: Goudreau taught Scholz, primarily an organ/ keyboard player, how to play guitar back in the day. Make with that what you will.
As I wind this down, because I could go on all day yet probably shouldn’t, this Delp & Goudreau song came out posthumously and got a little traction locally. It’s really haunting and in ways almost feels like a final goodbye. It’s called Rocking Away.
With that, happy birthday out in the beyond, Brad, however that works. For those of us still here, thanks for reading and see you soon.