This week in 1976, Boston's debut single, MORE THAN A FEELING reached its US chart peak at #5. When it was released, group leader Tom Scholz still had his day job working for Polaroid (Dec 1976)
Group leader Tom Scholz wrote this song, which is about a guy who wakes up with the blahs, turns on some music, and gets lost in reverie dreaming of his days with Marianne.
"It was written about a fantasy event," he explained.
"But it's one that almost everybody can identify with, of somebody losing somebody that was important to them, and music taking them back there."
According to Rolling Stone magazine, Scholz was inspired by the "heart-tugging mood" of the Left Banke's 1967 song "Walk Away Renee." He worked on the song for five years in his basement studio before it was released on this album.
Tom Scholz recorded most of Boston's first album, including "More Than a Feeling," in his Watertown, Massachusetts basement studio, which was stocked with equipment he bought with earnings from his job at Polaroid.
When Boston finally got a record deal with Epic, they had to abide by union rules and complete it in a proper studio, which Scholz felt was a hindrance. To get around this restriction, he re-recorded his demos pretty much note-for-note in that same basement studio and had his vocalist, Brad Delp, record his vocals in the Los Angeles studio Epic arranged. Boston drummer Sib Hashian played on "More Than a Feeling," but Scholz played all the other instruments on the track.
This was Boston's first single, and a surprising hit. The group's rise was sudden and unexpected; when "More Than a Feeling" was released, their managers spent a lot of time pitching it to radio stations, which is a very tough sell for an unknown band, but the song is so polished and radio-friendly that many stations put it on the air. It took off, and very soon this unknown band with an album recorded mostly in a basement was a major player on the rock scene.
The album Boston is one of the best selling of all time. It sold very well in the '80s and '90s due to catalog sales, which were these offers record companies made to the public where you could get something like "25 CDs for a penny" as long as you chose from their selection and agreed to buy a certain number of albums in the future.
Nirvana sometimes played the beginning of this as an intro to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." When asked about Nirvana's confession of semi-nicking the song's chord progression, Scholz told Best Classic Bands: "They didn't do a great job on the chorus. I heard the story about people thinking that part of that song sounds like it was a swipe from 'More Than a Feeling.' I don't hear it. If it were, I would consider it a compliment."
The dream girl in this song, Marianne, was based on a real person. "She was my older first cousin, who I had a crush on when I was 10," Scholz explained. "I ran into her many many years later and she was very annoyed at me for mentioning that she was my older cousin."
VIDEO https://youtu.be/t4QK8RxCAwo 
