“When you start a band and you first write songs, you’re just hoping for that 15 minutes of fame. The fact that people still want to hear those songs 40 years later is really a testament to Tom Scholz,” Boston guitarist Gary Pihl told the The Des Moines Register about the 40th anniversary of the rock band’s legendary debut album.

Asked if the band gets tired of playing the old songs, Pihl says, “People ask us if we get tired of playing the old songs. But I would get tired if I just had to sit in my living room and play them. But when you stand up on stage and look out in the audience and people are smiling and singing along … there’s no better feeling than that.”

North American syndicated Rock radio show and website InTheStudio: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands explores the biggest selling debut album in history, Boston’s self-titled debut, with multi-talented Tom Scholz on its 40th anniversary. 

A year before releasing what quickly became the biggest selling debut album in music history (a record Boston held for decades until only recently when nosed out by Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction), the band Boston did not even exist. In 1976 Tom Scholz’s seven year basement tapes project would emerge out of nowhere to re-write the record books on popularity and profits. The Cinderella story of Scholz and Boston’s debut would produce astronomical numbers (over 17 million sold to date), driven by three Top 40 singles “Peace Ff Mind”, “Long Time” and the Top 5 smash “More Than A Feeling”.  

Tom Scholz shares with In The Studio host Redbeard how the monumental success of Boston’s debut album insured his future in the music business.

“That album doing as well as it did is the only thing that made it possible to do a second and a third one, because there was no way I was going to be able to write the songs for additional albums in the time frame that some bands do, pumping one out a year or even shorter ... It was only because it sold so well that it was possible to take the time to do it, and do it again... If it had been a 900,000 seller instead of a 9 million seller, I think there probably wouldn’t be a Boston in existence today”.  - Tom Scholz

Stream the program at InTheStudio.net.