Boston has announced that they will release a 50th anniversary edition of their iconic debut album in 2027 featuring “lost demos” recorded during the sessions for the original LP.
In late summer of 1976, a self-titled album from Tom Scholz’s basement studio, was quietly released on CBS’s Epic Records label, under the name BOSTON. Listeners across the country quickly embraced the bright, punchy BOSTON sound, with its relatable lyrics, meticulously double-tracked guitar tracks, and singer Brad Delp’s powerful, crystalline lead vocals. The sheer assertiveness of the writing, performances, and sonics—coupled with the album’s joyfulness—helped thrust the band and their debut into the stratosphere. Within three months of its release, BOSTON was awarded both gold and platinum status by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), while nearly every song from the album was in constant rotation on pop and rock radio.
The band revealed the news on the 50th anniversary of the release date for the “Boston” album, which originally arrived August 25th, 1976. The new expansion is being “released in close collaboration with Tom Scholz,” by Impex Records and is currently scheduled to come out in the second quarter of next year.
Recognizing that the album has been reissued a number of times over the years, Scholz personally supervised the production of the upcoming expansion, with a goal of delivering “the most authentic version of this oft-reissued classic,” the group detailed in a press release.
“Wishing to offer something truly unique to the millions of Boston fans who’ve supported the band through the years, Tom has—for the very first time—dug deep into his massive archive of recordings to find the long-lost, previously-unreleased demos he famously shopped to the labels before being signed by Epic Records,” they shared. “He painstakingly restored and remastered these elusive treasures with the help of producer, digital expert and Boston guitarist Gary Pihl, exclusively for this 50th anniversary release.”
Although the songwriting on Boston’s self-titled is fairly by the numbers by certain rock standards, the real power behind it is just how much Scholz put into the background. Having invented his own guitar pedal to work on most of the songs, his guitars have a cutting midrange that sounds like a metal guitarist just randomly decided to show up on a rock and roll tune.
Outside of playing most of the instruments himself, hearing Brad Delp pull off superhuman vocal exercises is the musical equivalent of looking into the sun half the time. ‘More Than A Feeling’ and ‘Smokin’ might get celebrated as singles, but taken as a whole, this album should be studied by any high-profile producer to know what to look for in a great mix.
The band’s signature hit “More Than A Feeling” entered The Billboard’s Hot 100 on September 18th, 1976 and peaked at Number 5 on Christmas Day, spending 19 weeks on the chart. The single also reached Number 4 on Cash Box’s singles chart. The album’s second single “Peace of Mind” was released on January 7th, 1977 and peaked at Number 22 on The Billboard’s Hot 100.
The specific demos that are being released have not been unveiled yet, but the press release says it will give music historians and fans a chance to “peek inside Tom’s basement studio — and the ability to trace how the creative process progressed as Scholz, vocalist Brad Delp and the other musicians were working on the Boston album. Additional details for the upgraded album note that Scholz and Pihl “restored” the demos, but they were “left in their original sonic state.”
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