Start Your Weekend Right With Some Great Songs From Boston's Debut Album

Boston formed up in 1975, only a year before that great album was released, with the driving effort being songwriter/composer Tom Scholz. The band members included Scholz, who played quite a variety of instruments, and lead singer Brad Delp, along with quite a few members that came and went over the years. On this first album, Scholz and Delp were joined by the drummers Jim Masdea and Sib Hashian, lead guitarist Barry Goudreau, and bass player Fran Sheehan.

And, I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t easy to narrow the list of songs from that debut album down. In the end, I picked out for you all seven that I remember hearing most on the radio back in the day. With that first album, Boston really hit the music scene in the United States hard, and that’s for sure and for certain. Here – from one album – are some great, great Boston tunes.

Let Me Take You Home Tonight (1976): Yes, it’s a pickup-line song, and a rather direct one. The 70s were a time for such things, after all. Of all the songs on Boston’s debut album, this is the only one written by their lead singer, Brad Delp, with Tom Scholz writing the others.

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Hitch A Ride (1976): This song literally has to do with hitching a ride somewhere, although it’s not really clear where or on what conveyance, other than the singer is looking to go far, far, away – possibly to a galaxy far, far away, and boy, if this year wouldn’t be the time for it. After all, only a few months after this song came out, there was a certain summer blockbuster movie about a certain boy from a desert planet hitching a ride on a certain famous freighter starship to rescue a certain princess.

Smokin’ (1976): This song’s a great one, full of hammering rock riffs and some great vocals, including some, well, marijuana references. Again, this was 1976, so not really unusual, in this, the prime era of comedy acts like Cheech & Chong. But it’s a great song regardless, and what’s neat is that it was one of the songs on Boston’s demo tape that landed them their first contract with Epic Records.

Of the songs in this list, I will say that this is my favorite.

Rock & Roll Band (1976): There are reports that Tom Scholz wrote this song after a series of anecdote-swapping sessions with Jim Masdea; both had been traveling around in the rock & roll business for a while, both had great stories to tell, both knew about the struggles of a startup band landing a contract with a big label.Foreplay/Long Time (1976): This is another song that arose from the Epic Records demo tape. It’s also the first song Tom Scholz wrote for the startup band that would become Boston, and there were parts of the song that were already recorded when Epic Records signed Boston. That makes the “foreplay” (no, it’s not what you thought) make sense.

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Peace of Mind (1976): There is something to be said for taking satisfaction in your work, no matter what that work is. Before Boston, Tom Scholz worked for Polaroid, and was good enough to eventually make enough money to start equipping the band that would be Boston:

Unlike many folks toiling away in dead-end jobs, Scholz liked what he did at Polaroid and was paid well for it, well enough that he could afford to build a studio in his basement with a 12-track recorder. He played in bands while he was a student at MIT and after entering the corporate world, but the studio let him create new songs using his engineering background to push the boundaries.

More Than A Feeling (1976): Another Tom Scholz song (almost all of them were) this radio-station hit was all about a guy daydreaming of a lost love – and who among us hasn’t done that a time or two?

Group leader Tom Scholz wrote this song, which is about a guy who wakes up with the blahs, turns on some music, and gets lost in reverie dreaming of his days with Marianne. "It was written about a fantasy event," he told Entertainment Weekly of the song. "But it's one that almost everybody can identify with, of somebody losing somebody that was important to them, and music taking them back there."

Boston had a career after that first album. Let us know what your favorites are – and tell us about any concert (or other) experiences. The comments, again, are all yours.

Oh, and new from the Start Your Weekend Right studio: We’re taking requests. Got a band, a performer, a genre you’d like to see featured some Friday? Again, let us know in the comments.