A Million Dollars & A Holiday Inn

A Million Dollars & A Holiday Inn

BOSTON LEARN TO BE STARS

Toby Goldstein

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Photos by

PHASE I: Passaic, New Jersey’s Capitol Theatre may not be the slime center of rock ’n’ roll, but it certainly ranks as a contender. It is used by bands who need a theatre in which to warm up, but let me tell you, a bonfire would hardly arouse its denizens to put their hands together. Just across the river from New York town, Passaic is a safe place to test out the act. If it bombs, only the rubes’ll know, and the record » company reps can pile back into their rented limos and re-cross the Hudson River, praying the show will get better by the time it reaches the Apple.

So there we were, a bunch of record company reps and press, piled into the rented limos and bundled across the river to see a band who, even in the ice of February, were into the millions on their first LP. Boston’s managers, two high-powered former promo men named Paul Ahern and Charlie McKenzie, swore they wouldn’t book Boston into New York until they could headline Madison Square Garden. Mind you, the group hadn’t played one full tour as a bill-topper, and we’re talking about 18,000+ seats. I remember laughing a lot at the time, the way cynical rock critics do when faced with yet another impossible souffle of puffery. Ho, ho, ho and by the end of April, Boston had headlined Madison Square Garden with a sell out. What do I know?

From the gentle demeanor of the ushers backstage in Passaic, you’d have thought they were guarding the Pope. Too late to chat, we discover, after weaving through a melange of power cables and trap doors. Tom was warming up, and any intros would have to wait until after the show. I later learn that arriving almost any time past

"...Everybody in this band has paid more dues than anybody lean think of in the contemporary rock Wroll scene. • Tom Scholz"

high noon could result in greetings by a locked door. The studious Mr. Scholz takes these road maneuvers dead seriously, sequestering himself and guitar in the dressing room for nigh onto two hours, loosening his muscles, uncorking the knot in his throat. Uno musiciano sensitivo to playing for

people, and in no way does the Capitol, a minor venue to say the least, have the perfect if intense, privacy Scholz found in his years in the basement . Tom would later get pissed at the security force in Detroit’s Cobo Hall; bawl out the troops in the midst of the show and get “so upset my fingers froze up and I couldn’t play for the rest of the set.” But such verbal daring lay in the future as our heroic band of unfamiliar faces roused the Capitol Theatre to a standing ovation.

In his English-cut velvet jacket, lead singer Bradley Delp looked more like a manager than either Ahern or McKenzie, who appear fiercely rock ‘n’ roll, trailing denim and hair. At 6’5”, Tom Scholz towers over the band, hunching himself down to pull a baffling variety of effects from guitar and organ. He is dressed in a two-piece getup cut from a silvery panne velvet, and what look like glitter monster shoes peaking underneath (they are sneakers, thank goodness). With his stiff-jointed one-twohup! one-two-back! onstage march, Scholz resembles a soft-featured, sandy-haired creation that Mary Shelley might have dreamed if she’d met Jimmy Page in 1818. This is the future of rock ’n’ roll, 1977 edition? •One hears rumblings from the group against the “better music through science” epithet they’ve been burdened with, thanks to Scholz’ MIT and Polaroid years. In the meantime, “Long Time” climbs into the Top 20. So much for one-hit wonders.

PHASE II:New Orleans is a weird city. My friend Lois sums up the town as Boston fly in for a two-day stint. “New Orleans,” she proclaims, “is the kind of place where, to get anyone moving, you gotta jump around like you’re trying to get out of your bra without using your hands.” We endure much headbanging and arm flailing, trying to sort out passes for the Warehouse, a 5,000 seat hall that is near absolutely nothing and with good reason.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is terrific for alcohol and not bad for rock ’n’ roll. The mob who’ve bought out the Warehouse are a well-oiled mixture. Their lubrication extends to the venue’s floor, which, we are cheerfully advised, offers a sludge of cola, beer, wine and human by-products. Unfortunately, our clothes for the evening would do well at a bar mitzvah, and we race, arms linked, for the rickety safety of the backstage staircase. We encounter a quintet of Boston wives and girlfriends, dressed in the first whites of spring, who appear equally relieved at escaping the sleaze below. One or two of the ladies soon decide all this road life is a mistake, and head for home after these gigs. However, Cindy Scholz and Kathy Delp would remain on tour for the most part realizing that their respective gentlemen are highly recognizable, nice lookers, and therefore easy prey.

From a backstage vantage point, it can be observed that many of Tom Scholz’s special effects result from a nifty little box, origin unknown. Splitsecond timing of an around-the-room echo, courtesy of the mixing man, elicits an appropriate round of oohs and aahs.

I retired with Tom to an office under the encrusted floor. Though Boston wouldn’t be back in the studio until late April, Scholz had obviously given the situation plenty of thought. “There’s some pressure involved, but I can’t say I mind it too much. I don’t think it’s as bad as the pressure was before. This time, it’s kinda nice. I’m confident that we’re gonna have a good second album. It isn’t gonna be thrown together in a hurry— half the songs were written years ago. There were many we chose not to do for the first album so we’ll be using some of those.

“Frankly, even if it was a better album than the first, it’s gonna have its detractors. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of people waiting in the bushes to jump on it and say ‘Aha! See, it was a lucky first shot’...It’s a lot of work making an album, but now we know when this one gets done, people are gonna listen to it. Before we weren’t sure of that.” In just a few weeks, some industry person would sidle up and sneer, “Well, if the second album does two million, they’re OK. If it only does a million and a half, they better worry.” I can’t tell if he’s joking.

“Very few people anywhere in the world knew what I was trying to do. Probably people in my hometown less than people in the rest of the country. I never got any support from anyone locally...who would listen to the stuff that I did. I played half the album, four, maybe five years ago, on a good demo, for the so-called major club agency in Boston, Lordly & Dame and they said, ‘We’ll call you.’. Local managers and local so-called producers’ they weren’t interested.

“There was a lot of general resentment from the rest of the country when things really started happening with the album, that I heard filter back. I think everybody in this band has paid more dues than anybody I can think of on the contemporary rock ’n’ roll scene—not people like B.B. King, but of the rock ’n’ rollers. There isn’t anybody who’s put as much sweat and nervous breakdowns into what they’ve done as I did, and the guys in the oand. These guys, they’re all over 25 and some of ’em have been playing in bars since they were 13, making a living. They’re better musicians than 99% of the people you could go to see.'..and totally unknown.”

On the way back to the dressing rooms, we pass by the massive equip_ ment which has been set up for Star-1 castle, the opening act. “We’re just J three guitars and a set of drums, sighs J Scholz, “and will you look at all this. And they call us the bionic band...”

PHASE III: Three weeks to go before wrapping up the tour, and Boston are in Detroit to play Cobo Hall, a 12,000 seat sports arena with surprisingly decent acoustics. Before linking up with the band, I am phoned a word of warning by tour photographer, Ron Pownall. There’s moodiness afoot, says he, the strains of the road have given the group an unusually sullen demeanor. Not too encouraging, if this is the case, for the band to fade out on the first national tour. But there’s another reason for the long faces and indignant looks.

Scholz had learned what an easy target Boston made. It seemed that Journey, who were opening the past few dates, bandied it about that Boston were cutting power on them. Given the usual discretion and subtlety present on the road, it took about 3V2 minutes before their accusations spread across the Midwest. “Manfred Mann started making references to us cutting the power,” exclaimed Paul Ahern, ready to shriek. He lowered his voice. “These guys don’t even know anything about that, but an English band on the road for ten years, they’ll kill.” In the limo after the gig, Scholz reinforces his manager’s outrage. “Who else do you know that gets to a hall at two o’clock in the afternoon,” he thunders, “just to make sure the other band has time to do their sound check?” By days’ end, Journey’s people have apologized, and everyone reverts to a wait-and-see attitude. Innocents abroad no longer, Boston have now lived through, an industry truism. There will be others. The music director of a mighty Detroit station pouted backstage, “They’re more inaccessible now.” He still enjoys the show, but not that much.

For the audience, all is peace and tranquillity. The band even thanked J their opening acts. Scholz encouraged £ the house to leave their seats, in direct | violation of the security heavies—the I

Boston on the road... two's company and three's a throng. Welcome to the throng. Barry Goudreau

role of a radical is new to him and disrupts his surface placidity. His hands shake. This is the first time I’ve heard the group play a second encore, another song from the forthcoming album called “Don’t Be Afraid.” It stands a good chance as another hit single.

By now, the fans know who’s who. So do the groupies. At least 25 German exchange students press against the stage door, begging for autographs. As the band obliges, the kids’ screams jolt the room. We all look at one another— it is so easy to forget these guys are famous. Privacy is rapidly becoming a word from a past life. One boy jumps into the front of Tom’s car, orders a smile and bursts a flashbulb into his face.,

The band reaches a quiet steakhouse where they do not throw food, break plates or punch the waitresses. So what were you expecting? Cindy relates her six years of worry about Tom’s career plans. “I was always so afraid he’d have spent all this time on it, down in the basement, and it wouldn’t have worked.” This was surely not what she’d anticipated ten years ago, the night she met Scholz at a college mixer. The Scholzes have no plans to leave their suburban Boston home, and Tom’s major conversation with Mom at dinner revolved around hometown folks and the state of his sputtering Pinto. Boston wearily cruise back to their hotel, one more unpretentious road stop without a lobby.

No one was coherent at 11:30 in the morning, but everyone was downstairs. “You’re being well paid,” Ahern jibes to Scholz. “To be punished???”

There’s a U.S. official plane across the runway from Boston’s chartered Viscount, and people ruminate over whether it’s Rosalynn Carter’s. Mrs. C is expected that day, but this one holds the Secret Service. “It’s not nearly as nice as ours,” all concur, and indeed, the Boston insignia tour plane, rented for between $1200 and $1400 per day, is a lovely sight. Every comfort of home, from 4-track stereo to foldaway beds (which Fran and Sib leap upon) to Double-Stuf Oreos in the fridge. Considering the vicious winds hanging over the Great Lakes, the pilot does a spectacular job and is roundly applauded at flight’s end.

Kathy Delp has papers all over a table, studying for a college English exam. Tom Scholz, when not stretched out in sleep, is reading Scientific American. The lot of them could be en route to a teacher’s convention.

Brad is impressed by his wife’s determination to get her degree and simultaneously stay on the road. “I hate homework,” he declared, “I have no discipline.” He is one of the players Scholz had in mind when commenting on the early gigging within the group. “When I was 12 I met this kid who could play ‘House of the Rising Sun’ on guitar, and I was impressed. Funny how you’re amazed by things until you find out how they work. I was really knocked out when I met Tom, ’cause I never knew anyone who actually wrote songs.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57.

“Barry, Sib and Fran were playing all the awes, while I played high schools and colleges in the suburbs. For eight or nine years. It’s interesting how a lot of people think we just picked up guitars and flew.” Delp is more than a little relieved at kissing his days in. silver soldering at the Hot-Watt factory goodbye. Now, his financial ponderings are more likely centered on investments. “This is what I always wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to do it practically. Fortunately, Tom did.”

PHASE. IV: Kathy, the Viscount stewardess, has catered to the whims of rock and roll bands for over two years. She has seen the good, the bad, and occasionally, the ugly. “They’re stars,” she says of Boston, “but they haven’t gone over the edge yet. They’re not used to being waited on.”

As the entourage rolled toward the vacant-looking hotel they’d reserved in Chicago, Barry peered at his fellow travelers in the two limos. For now, accepting the barrage of new faces and strange places, ne said: “Boston on the road...two’s company and three’s a throng. Welcome to the throng.”