How did Boston’s ‘More Than A Feeling’ change the music industry forever?
Maybe we’re losing the heart of music because nothing takes anyone any real time anymore. Strings of new albums are typically trotted out within a year or two – no one can cram so many life-altering experiences into such a short space of time, surely. It’s a notion that Tom Scholz from Boston certainly doesn’t approve of.
It really is quite something to consider that Scholz’s defining masterpiece, ‘More Than a Feeling’, was the very first track on the very first album from Boston, almost like the ultimate opening calling card for everything the band would come to represent in the scores of classic rock. When the track was released in September 1976 and soared to number five in the US charts, you could be mistaken for only seeing that at face value – but Boston had already been on a very long journey in reaching that point.
Indeed, it had taken a whole five years for Scholz to compose the song that would go on to become a pillar of the genre, because he was nothing if not adamant about refusing to take help from anyone – not his bandmates, not his family or friends, not a single other person. Instead, ‘More Than a Feeling’ was very much the epitome of a sole, undivided effort – but in the sheer principle of doing so, it also changed the entire face of the music industry forever.
Scholz’s fate as a rock star was never set in stone. He’d studied at MIT and, to all intents and purposes, had the makings of a real high flyer with a job at Polaroid. But he became a “horrible employee” – by his own admission – as he became fixated on the idea of making music, and subsequently started skiving work to stay at home and put his graft into making an album, the genesis of which would eventually belong to Boston.
That story may not seem all that out of the ordinary to us now, because artists record songs and demos in their own home studios all the time, don’t they? But that’s the epitome of what the warping of time does to us – we forget that the forms of technology we have at our fingertips now were far less commonplace not so long ago, even within the past few decades. Back in the 1970s, it was essentially unheard of.
As such, for Scholz to do what he did in terms of the DIY approach to ‘More Than a Feeling’ was a massive feat, not just in terms of its sonics, but also its engineering as a whole. In the long run, his background in technology clearly did serve him well in some ways, even if it wasn’t down the path he originally started on. The fact that he managed to create an entire rock anthem straight off his own back, with no prior experience and with no label support at the time, is an utter testament to the state of tenacity.
This is only amplified further when you consider the full scale of ‘More Than a Feeling’, which quite literally launches the listener into the stratosphere from the very moment the lyrics “I close my eyes, and I slip away,” are uttered. The reality was that there was no slipping away to other worlds for Scholz other than the basement in his house, so imagination was key to allowing the song to reach the stars and run wild.
“I would literally imagine I was in front of thousands of people,” Scholz later explained, “Playing this rock and roll music, and it worked.” We can all have a wry smile at that – every wannabe rock star has allowed their brains to jet them off to stadiums and arenas all over the world, tearing up the stage and being adored by millions – really, you’re just standing in your bedroom, using a hairbrush as a microphone, and maybe a real guitar if you’re lucky.
But the essential difference for Scholz was that in his mind, to see it was to truly believe it. This was a young guy who had seemingly downed his chances of climbing the ranks of the technology industry because he had chosen to follow his heart, so he really had no other option but to somehow make this rookie song into an international hit. The stars just kept on aligning in this sense when the demo landed on the desk of CBS Records – and, of course, they loved it.
For the most part, from that moment on, the rest was history – Scholz found a band in Boston, they rocketed off, and ‘More Than a Feeling’ will forever be celebrated as a staple of classic rock. But burrowing down beneath the surface, it also symbolises something far greater in how music is made and how certain essences can be intrinsically felt from its mode of creation.
We think of bedroom pop as a relatively recent phenomenon in younger stars like Clairo or PinkPanthress, but with the roots of the same approach ranging as far back as this, maybe the idea isn’t as novel as we first thought. Really, Scholz demonstrated one of the very earliest examples of what could be achieved from this insular sound – the point being that his was anything but insular, and instead reached for the outer orbits.
In the end, five years of constant hard graft and pioneering invention led to the song’s soaring success, even if the fate of Boston as a band themselves ultimately proved to be slightly less stratospheric. As far as enduring legacies go, however, you would much rather be remembered for something nobler than any awards or commercial acclaim. In the case of Scholz, he’s the first man to create a classic hit from his basement.
