Today’s classic song of the day is “More Than a Feeling” by Boston. This track was released in September 1976, my first month in college, and rose all the way to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s since become a classic hard rock track and a staple on classic rock radio.
“More Than a Feeling” was the lead single from Boston’s self-titled debut album. That album, Boston, spawned three Top 40 hits (“More Than a Feeling,” “Peace of Mind,” and “Foreplay/Long Time”) and became the best-selling debut album of all time—until Guns N’ Rose’s Appetite for Destruction in 1987, in any case. To date, Boston has sold more than 17 million copies, an incredible accomplishment for what was essentially a guy working out of his basement.
“More Than a Feeling” took five years to create. Group leader Tom Scholz, who wrote the tune, started working on it in his basement studio while holding down a day job as a product design engineer at Polaroid. It was pretty much a one-man show; Scholz contributed all the parts save for drums and vocals.
Scholz started writing music in 1969 when he was a student at MIT. (Not too many MIT-educated musicians out there, just saying.) While at MIT he joined a band named Freehold, where he met future Bostonians Barry Goudreau (guitar) and Jim Masdea (drums); vocalist Brad Delp joined up with them in 1970. In 1973 they formed their own band, Mother’s Milk.
That band broke up a year later but the quartet remained friends. Scholz used them to record demos for the songs that would eventually make it to Boston’s first album. Masdea left the collective right as Scholz got a record contract, so they added Sib Hashian as the new drummer and Fran Sheehan on bass. These were the musicians who had to learn all of Scholz’ multitracked recordings when the group played live—which, considering the considerable layering of instruments on the album, was no mean feat.
Scholz says he was inspired to write “More Than a Feeling” by the Left Banke’s 1966 hit, “Walk Away Renee,” a former classic song of the day. Scholz’s lyrics follow a similar theme of lost love and Scholz even mimicked the former song’s descending chord progression at the end of each verse (“I see my Marianne walking away”). Scholz also appears to have been influenced by Joe Walsh’s opening guitar riff on the James Gang’s “Tend My Garden” and there’s a passing resemblance to “Louie, Louie” in the song’s chorus. Hey, good music influences more good music.
I can confirm that “More Than a Feeling” and all of Boston were played frequently on many of the cheap stereo systems in my college dorm my freshman year at Indiana University. It was a sound that was hard to escape, and all of Scholz’s hard work definitely paid off. There’s still nothing quite as layered and pristine on the airwaves or the Internets today.
