Album of the Day — June 27
Boston — Don’t Look Back
Boston — Don’t Look Back
27.June.2020
Boston
Don’t Look Back
1978
Conventional wisdom may have chosen Boston’s debut album … but then no one has ever called me conventional.
MIT alumni & wunderkind
After completing his master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tom Scholz began working at the Polaroid Corporation.
Always a music fan, he formed a band with singer Brad Delp and, as an engineer is want to do, began tinkering with a recording studio.
The tinkering led to demos which led to a record deal which led to a band named Boston which led to selling some bazillion copies of their debut album (still one of the top ten debut albums by sales).
When it came time to record a follow-up to the insanely successful and unprecedented debut, Tom Scholz and his band Boston had nothing but pressure when they stepped into Scholz’s Hideaway Studios in 1977 to begin the process.
The success of their self-titled debut and the two years it took to release Don’t Look Back was unheard of in the mid-’70s. Coming off the most successful debut in history, two years — back then — must’ve felt like a millennium to the executives at Epic Records. Visually, I picture it as a bunch of starving foxes (the label) circling a hen house (the band in a recording studio).
Eventually giving in, the band released Don’t Look Back in August of 1978 — it would sell four million copies in the first month.
However, its success didn’t come without problems.
The album would mark the beginning of the band’s legal fight with its record label, Epic Records. Scholz felt the label had pushed him and the band into releasing something before they felt it was ready (they probably did) … and he felt the album “was ridiculously short” (it is).
I tend to be of the school that only the artist can determine whether they feel if something is ready or not, but at just under 34:00 Don’t Look Back is a little short. As Scholz himself has said, the album “needed another song.”
However, by way of comparison, another 1978 release (and monster debut album), the self-titled debut by Van Halen clocks in at 35:34, sooo …
The songs themselves on Don’t Look Back pick up right where the debut album left off.
The title track was the albums first single — peaking at #4 on Billboard — contains the lyrical harbinger that would come to define not just the band but its creative force, Tom Sholtz (emphasis mine):
Don’t look back
A new day is breakin’
It’s been too long since I felt this way
I don’t mind where I get taken
The road is callin’
Today is the day
I can see
It took so long to realize
I’m much too strong
Not to compromise
After giving in to Epic Records for this album’s release, Scholz would stay true to that edict and not compromise again. It would take another six years and a label change for new Boston single “Amanda” and eight years for a new Boston album Third Stage.
Looking at the cover art of Don’t Look Back, you may think “WTF is this goofy shit?”
But then you hear “The Journey”, the atmospheric/science fiction sounding guitar instrumental that bridges the albums opening title track and “It’s Easy”. The light bulb goes off and you think “Ah. Well, OK then — it’s still goofy, but I get it.”
And just when you anticipate “The Journey” going into some kind of ill-advised King Crimson territory, drummer Sib Hasian busts in with the big hit as if to say “ENOUGH OF THAT!”
“It’s Easy” is most like the songs of the debut. It’s got the crystal clear, perfect sound and almost operatic vocals from Brad Delp. A prototypical rock song about a one-night stand … or is it?:
Hey
I’ve got no place to be
And no one I’d rather see
I won’t mind if you can find
The time to stay with me
But then songwriter Scholz switches gears and reveals a little sensitivity:
I’ve got no time for wastin’
I got to live a life while I can
I won’t hide if you decide
To let me be your man
Cause when I get close to you, not much to say
I get that same old feeling I had in my younger days
That sensitivity is in full force with the fourth track, “Man I’ll Never Be.” Music and Cultural critic Greil Marcus has called “Man I’ll Never Be” one of the albums “masterpieces” … while I find it a bit mawkish. Nonetheless, I still like it. That said, while the title is gender-specific, I think it’s a sentiment most people have felt at one point or another, which is the song’s appeal.
I can’t get any stronger
I can’t climb any higher
You’ll never know just how hard I’ve tried
Cry a little longer
And hold a little tighter
Emotions can’t be satisfied
You look up at me
And somewhere in your mind you still see
A man I’ll never be
If only I could find a way
I’d feel like I’m the man you believe I am
And it’s getting harder every day for me
To hide behind this dream you see
A man I’ll never be
Like “It’s Easy”, “Feelin Satisfied” could very well have been a holdover from the debut album.
The one song Scholz shares writing credit on is “Party”. The soft guitar picking intro flows right into an explosive guitar riff that is an air guitar player wettest dream.
He and singer Brad Delp mine the annals of their pre-rock star days and storm the castle of fellow Boston band Aerosmith — the tried and true work and release song. You work, you party, you get laid, rinse and repeat:
Well you know I don’t get off on workin’ day after day
I want to have some fun while I’m here
I play the game when it’s goin’ my way
And there’s nothin’ like a party when it’s kickin’ into gear
I’m gettin’ ready for a party tonight
Yes I’m gettin’ ready to cruise
And if you’ve got somethin’ for me
I’ve got somethin’ for you
Baby
It’s a party and nobody cares
What we’re doin’ there
Baby, it’s a party as long as you’re there
It’s a party, party, party!
The one song Tom Scholz hands over entirely is Brad Delp’s “Used to Bad News”, a song that almost seems to blend Beatle like harmony and lyricism with Rik Wakeman keyboard playing.
**BUMMER ALERT**
In 2007, at 55, Boston’s lead singer Brad Delp took his life. The suicide note that was around his T-shirt simply read: “Mr. Brad Delp. ‘J’ai une âme solitaire’. I am a lonely soul.”
The next day, Boston’s website was shut-down and replaced with a simple black background & white text that said: “We’ve just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll.”
Knowing that now, it paints a far less sanguine read to the lyrics of “Used to Bad News”:
I’ve been used
But I’m takin’ it like a man
I’m confused
But I’m doin’ the best that I can
I’ve been tossed around plenty before
I’ve had this heart of mine broken and more
I can’t find a reason for sure
But I’ve gotten used to bad news
Can’t find me a reason for sure
Don’t tell me why
It’s over I can see the end
But please don’t lie
If you’re leavin’ leave me like a friend
“Don’t Be Afraid” closes out Don’t Look Back. And as far as album closers go, this is a fine one. It’s not bad, but easily forgettable.
Don’t Look Back was produced by Tom Scholz. As producer, songwriter, lead guitarist, studio owner, and by this point budding entrepreneur of guitar and audio equipment, it’s safe to say Boston was his band and his vision. History has proven as much as he remains the only original member.
Like it did on with the band’s debut, Tom Scholz’s perfectionism paid off as critics were almost universally favorable:
Billboard described the album as “an equally superior effort [to their debut album] that further refines this group’s ability to play hard rock underlined by a sweet, melodic base.”
Ken Emerson of Rolling Stone said Don’t Look Back consolidated the sound of the band’s debut album but was less pretentious than Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. [an odd comparison]
Brad Chadderton in The Ottawa Journal praised the album for its heavy, innovative, and melodic guitar lines; for Brad Delp’s vocals; and for lyrics that contain philosophical meaning … he titled his article “Thinking Man’s Rock.”
Robert Christgau, the self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics, weighed in and gave a B- to Don’t Look Back — a competent or mildly interesting record that will usually feature at least three worthwhile cuts. Although I am not sure the review mirrors the grade: “Debut pomposities having been excised, a pure exploration of corporate rock remains. Pretty streamlined.”
After selling four million albums that August in 1978, and three singles “Don’t Look Back”, “A Man I’ll Never Be” and “Feelin’ Satisfied", Don’t Look Back would sell seven million copies … and continues to sell today.
Those legal battles that began with Don’t Look Back would eventually be settled in 1990 … in favor of Tom Scholz.
No looking back.