Brad Delp

I never wrote about Brad Delp’s suicide because I didn’t think it was my place to. To put it another way: I was so burned on anything Boston that I feared my words would sound insincere.
In some kind of silent memorial to him, I finally purchased Boston’s first album. In the thirty years since it was released, I’d only made a very primitive copy of it (by placing a cassette recorder against one speaker of a fairly pathetic portable record player) and I’d never actually owned a Boston album.
Many friends did own their debut or the follow-up Don’t Look Back but I don’t recall ever hearing either one getting played, probably because nearly every fucking song on those first two albums received constant airplay on A.O.R. radio stations.
I was actually working in radio at the time Third Stage was finally released. I was curious as to what it sounded like, but not to the point where some were fanatical about it. Seriously: the Program Director actually put a handwritten note on the album informing all airstaff members that they could only play one track from Third Stage per airshift. I listened to it, determined it was a piece of shit, and played Tommy Bolin’s “Post Toastee” instead.
Incessant airplay aside, there should be no question about Delp’s enormous talents and critical importance to the formula that was Boston’s textured studio-induced rock. While Tom Scholz seemed hellbent on perfection and countless takes to achieve it, Delp had such a gift that he rarely needed multiple takes to get Scholz’s desired results.
Brad Delp was born on June 12, 1951.