Boston Lead Singer Dead at 55
 

Saw them in concert in the 70's. Great band and I just saw they were supposed to appear in San Diego this summer.
On edit - they were to appear in San Diego next weekend.


Boston Lead Singer Brad Delp Dies at 55
Mar 9, 6:58 PM EST


The Associated Press

ATKINSON, N.H. -- Brad Delp, the lead singer for Boston, a huge rock sensation in the 1970s, was found dead Friday in his home, police said. He was 55.

Atkinson police responded to a call for help at 1:20 p.m. and found Delp dead. Police Lt. William Baldwin said in a statement the death was "untimely" and that there was no indication of foul play.

Delp apparently was alone at the time of his death, Baldwin said.

The cause of his death remained under investigation by the Atkinson police and the New Hampshire Medical Examiner's office. Police said an incident report would not be available until Monday.

Delp fronted the rock band, who rose to fame in the late 1970s and had several hits, including "More than A Feeling." The group sold millions of records.

omg how tragic :( I was JUST talking to a patient the other day about him. He said his all-time favorite band is boston. Awful :( :distress:

Aw man...
 

Brad Delp had one of the greatest rock vocals around. I am very sadden to hear of his passing.

I will be playing Boston's "Third Stage" tonight in his memory.

RIP Brad

I'm throwing on a little boston myself. and I agree. His voice was fierce.

He had a phenomenal voice. Very sad :(

Thats terrible. Way too young. I kike boston. "More than a feeling" has been a favorite song of mine for ages.

Oh no :[ This is so horrible. He was such a phenomenal singer, and Boston had so many great records. I'm just in shock now. So, so sad.

Their music was a very important part of my childhood. I'm gonna have to listen to it tonight. May he rest in peace. :distress:

man i just love boston:distress: ~
R.I.P. brad:angel: ~

Amen...
 

I remember between 1984-1986 that the Tulsa radio station 97.5 KMOD were the only station in the US that had the track "Amanda" from the "Third Stage" album before it's 'official release'.

Weeks immediately before it's release KMOD played more-and-more tracks and on the day of its release in '86 they had an interview (Via telephone) with Tom Scholz.

I was the first person in my hometown ("Sur-prise, Sur-prise, sur-prise" - I was infamous for being the first to have a new release in my hands) to purchase a copy of "Third Stage" and I have wore out many copies of the CD/cassette (Which is blasting through my headphones as I speak).

Rock on Brad, where ever you are in the afterlife :nod:

R.I.P. I was looking forward to seeing them this summer...

this is sad news

I absolutely adore I HAD A GOOD TIME from their last album Corporate America that came out in 2002.

Wow. What a shock. My regrets to his family. It's another piece of those halcyon days in my life gone. What a loss. I'll have to listen to some Boston this afternoon in his honor.

Official announcement on Legacy.com...and guest book!
 

I just can't believe this; I'm in shock. Brad was such a fabulous vocalist, and I have loved Boston since I first heard them in 1976, when I was six years old. I grew up with them from there, through "Don't Look Back" and I remember being 16 in 1986 when "Third Stage" came out ~ we all played it in High School...

One of my favourite songs has always been "Feelin' Satisfied" ~ I'll be playing it again, and keeping my thoughts with his children and family. So sad.

Very sad. :distress: What a great talent. Third Stage remains one of my favorite albums to this day.

I have been moving all weekend and found out friday night. I am so bummed right now. Boston has been and always wil be one of my favorite bands. Brad was probabaly the nices person on earth, I have had the pleaser of meeting him. He willbe missed. I don't know how to fill in the void right now.

Its been a Boston music weekend for me and will be a Boston week in honor of Brad

RIP :distress: :(

CONCORD, N.H. - The family of Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, said his death was a suicide.

In a statement relayed Wednesday through police, the family said gave no other details of the 55-year-old Delp’s death at his Atkinson home on Friday. Police have said his fiancée, Pamela Sullivan, found him there.

“He was a man who gave all he had to give to everyone around him, whether family, friends, fans or strangers,” the statement said. “He gave as long as he could, as best he could, and he was very tired. We take comfort in knowing that he is now, at last, at peace.”

That is shocking. I guess it usually is a shock when someone commits suicide though. :(

Let's all just hope his spirit is in a better place, and he has ended his life the way he wanted to..., Sad for us...but perhaps he was just TIRED as the family states.
Rest...

Holy cow...
 

...rest in peace dude, I can't picture my youth without Foreplay/Long Time from their debut.

:distress: :distress: :distress: such a waste. I hate that :(

Man, that is indeed sad... :(

Why do the talented feel the need to leave us so prematurely?

So true!

I am so upset right now. I can't imagine my life not being able to have that hope for new Boston......

this is a pity...count me among the Boston faithful :nod: The Stones got it right: Time Waits for No One.

‘I am a lonely soul,’ Delp suicide note says
 

Frontman of Boston had been emotional and depressed, fiancée tells police

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17613903/

ATKINSON, N.H. - Brad Delp, the singer for the band Boston who killed himself last week, left behind a note in which he called himself “a lonely soul,” according to police reports released Thursday.

The note was paper-clipped to the neck of Delp’s shirt when police found his body at his Atkinson home, on the bathroom floor, his head on a pillow. He had sealed himself inside with two charcoal grills; toxicology tests showed he had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Mr. Brad Delp. J’ai une ame solitaire. I am a lonely soul,” the note reads.

Delp joined Boston in the mid-1970s and sang two of its biggest hits, “More than a Feeling” and “Long Time.” He was cremated Wednesday, after a private funeral earlier in the week.

His fiancée, Pamela Sullivan, called police March 9 after noticing a dryer vent tube connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp’s car. In the garage, police found a note taped to the door leading into the house.

“To whoever finds this I have hopefully committed suicide. Plan B was to asphyxiate myself in my car.”

In another note on a door at the top of the stairs, Delp cautioned that there was carbon monoxide inside.

“I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation. I have lost my desire to live,” he wrote. The note also includes instructions on how to contact his fiancée: “Unfortunately she is totally unaware of what I have done.”

Police later found four sealed letters in an office addressed to Sullivan, his children, their mother, Micki Delp, and another couple whose identity was not disclosed. Police Lt. William Baldwin said police gave the letters to family members without reading them.

Sullivan told police that Delp “had been depressed for some time, feeling emotional (and) bad about himself,” according to the reports.

He had planned to marry Sullivan this summer during a break in a tour with Boston. A lifelong Beatles fan, Delp also played with the tribute band Beatle Juice.

Beatle Juice performed a benefit last year to help build a new public library in Atkinson, a small town of about 6,000 residents on the Massachusetts border.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

^ Oh no. :(

Truly terrible. :distress:
May he be floating free in the stars.

BOSTON Singer's Death Blamed On "Long-Standing Issues Within The Band"

Launch Radio Networks is reporting: the ex-wife of late BOSTON singer Brad Delp blames long-standing issues within the band for Delp’s suicide. Micki Delp told The Boston Herald that Brad has always been stuck in the middle of fights between bandleader Tom Scholz and former members of the group, and that the past 30 years’worth of tensions finally got the better of him.

Brad had stayed friendly with former Boston members Sib Hashian, Fran Sheehan, and Barry Goudreau, whose wife is Micki’s sister, and Micki said, “No one can possibly understand the pressures he was under. Brad lived his life to please everyone else. He would go out of his way and hurt himself before he would hurt somebody else, and he was in such a predicament professionally that no matter what he did, a friend of his would be hurt. Rather than hurt anyone else, he would hurt himself. That’s just the kind of guy he was.”

Micki said the last straw was the recent firing of fellow Boston singer Fran Cosmo and his son, guitarist Anthony Cosmo. But Scholz denied the claims. He said, “The decision to rehearse without the Cosmos was a group decision. Brad never expressed unhappiness with that decision… and took an active part in arranging the vocals for five people, not seven.” Scholz also said that while Anthony Cosmo was out of the band, no final decision had been made about Fran Cosmo.

The Herald also quoted one “insider” as saying, “Tom made him do the Boston stuff and the other guys were mad that they weren’t a part of it. He was always under a lot of pressure.”

Another source revealed that Scholz wasn’t invited to Delp’s funeral last week and added, “What does that tell you? Brad and Tom were ‘the best of friends,’ and he’s been told nothing about anything.” Delp’s family held a private funeral for the singer, whose body has been cremated.

I really don't think that's fair, to place that kind of blame on someone for someone else's suicide :shrug: it's a personal choice, and I think for her to say it was because of the other bandmembers is very tacky. No matter how many issues they may or may not have had-he is the one who made the decision and went through with it. May he RIP.

^ Exactly what I was thinking. :(

BOSTON Guitarist Reminisces About Late Singer
 

BOSTON's Tom Scholz Reminisces About Late Singer Brad Delp

As previously reported, BOSTON lead singer Bradley Delp was found dead in his home at the age of 55 on March 9th. He had committed suicide leaving behind a note in which he called himself "a lonely soul," according to police reports released last week. The note was paper-clipped to the neck of Delp's shirt when police found his body at his Atkinson home, on the bathroom floor, his head on a pillow. He had sealed himself inside with two charcoal grills; toxicology tests showed he had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene asked Boston leader/guitarist Tom Scholz for some recollections about his experiences with Brad. According to Scholz, "Here is the complete unedited note I sent to Andy:

Thanks you for allowing me to answer your questions by e-mail. I haven't been in the mood to talk to people much for the last few days as you might imagine, but I appreciate you turning to me for this. Brad and I were friends and collaborators for 35 years. Both of us being vegetarians, non-drug users and more interested in music than money, put us in a very small minority in the music business; our bond ran much deeper than just Boston music.

In answer to your questions:

I met Brad, soft spoken and unassuming, when he auditioned in a recording studio outside of Boston one night to sing several songs I had written. Back then in the early seventies recording a song demo meant coming up with a significant amount of money, several weeks of my day job savings, to buy a few hours of 8 track time.

Having endured countless sessions with other singers, most with undeserved egos, I had only the faintest glimmer of hope that he might be good enough to squeak by as a suitable vocalist.

He didn't warm up; he just listened to the prerecorded instrument track once. Then he started to sing. I don't know if it took two seconds or three, but before he finished singing the first line I knew that some guardian angel had just delivered to me one of the best vocalists ever to step up to a microphone! Then he kept going and I realized he wasn't just one of the best, he was amazing! High notes I hadn't heard before followed by harmonies, and overdubbed exact duplicate layered tracks, all with ease, all with emotion, and yet all technically precise.

Before we left that night he had rewritten the lyrics and the melody, sung all the vocal parts, and with the magic of his voice turned my stark guitar riff into a song! From that moment on I only hoped I could write and record music worthy of his attention and interpretation.

There were soulful notes that pulled you into the song, stratospheric screams and angelic high notes, and after hitting these record breaking notes he'd go back and sing a harmony part above it! He didn't rehearse any of these parts, he could jump back and forth between harmony parts, double tracking parts, and then go back and do it again exactly the same with one tiny change, adjusting all the other singing parts to fit with bionic accuracy.

You'd think anyone with this super human talent would be an insufferable egomaniac. But Brad was just the opposite, and amazingly he remained honestly humble in spite of the incredible star pressure that followed Boston's success.

Brad and I banged our heads against the wall trying to get a break with record companies for five years. During that time he and I did a lot of basement recording; we received absolutely zero recognition locally and complete rejection submitting our demos to national record labels. I think this experience put our future success in perspective as we both realized that after so many years of insult, we were just very lucky to be able to record and play music above ground! Unlike many other individuals eventually involved with Boston, Brad's down to earth personality never wavered; it was his natural demeanor.

When someone asked me what Brad was like, the first words that always came to mind were "nice guy." Oddly, his incredible performing abilities seem barely worth mentioning compared to his attributes as a human being. He was soft spoken yet very quick and funny. Although I rarely remember seeing him in the throws of a good belly laugh, he could keep the people around him in stitches effortlessly, and did so on a daily basis. When he wasn't making someone laugh, or giving his time to a fan, he was a tireless worker, both in the studio and on stage.

He and I had a very strong personal connection because of our moral beliefs, yet we were drastically different kinds of people. While I am rebellious and easily provoked to an unyielding defense, Brad was passive and studiously non confrontational.

Somehow over the years I think we both grew not only to accept this in each other, but to respect it; I think this is part of the reason we were able to work together for so much of our lives. In an odd parallel we were also opposites in the studio. Once Brad would laid down a vocal track he became instantly committed to it and would dig in if challenged, whereas I would want to change everything and never be sure. We were usually at odds on how vocal arrangements should go also, which in early years caused heated debates. Later we both developed such respect for each other's abilities that the collaboration, so important to the eventual outcome of Boston's music, became much easier. It was largely my music, but it was Brad who brought it to life, and this struggle we both had to endure was part of what made it so many people's favorite.

I last saw Brad at rehearsal last month where we prepared several old and new songs for our upcoming summer shows. These are my fondest memories, playing music with my friend and the greatest singer in rock and roll.

Andy, Brad and I have been used and abused throughout our adult life by the music business, it continues even in his death. Please do the right thing with this. Sorry I wrote you a tome."