There are 20 million (and counting) copies of Boston's 1976 self-titled debut scattered across the globe, some gathering dust in boxes of '70s ephemera, others mounted proudly as treasured slabs of FM radio gold, but all bearing evidence that track one, side one has been thrashed like no other.
More Than A Feeling is, was and forever will be a song to loosen the corset of even the most tightly bound critic of arena rock.
An air-guitarist's dream, it shimmers under the gleam of a heavily processed acoustic intro, flexes its memorably muscular fuzzed-out riff and soars skyward with vocalist Brad Delp's vision of Maryann walking away.
It sounds for all the world like the product of a state-of-the-art studio, which is precisely what Epic Records execs ordered when they finally signed persistent demo-peddler and multi-instrumentalist Tom Scholz and his ''band'' Mother's Milk on the strength of Scholz' basement-studio recordings.
''Yes, give us that,'' they cried, ''Only do it again, in our Los Angeles studio.''
Scholz then carried out his masterful deception, enlisting the assistance of producer John Boylan to put a smoke screen around the recording to enable him to track the bulk of the fresh instrumental takes himself, exactly as he had done previously, on the equipment he had cobbled together in his humble home studio.
Sufficient of the vocals and other tracks were recorded in LA to throw the company off the scent, and the album was duly transferred to 24-track and delivered to an audience that knew nothing of Scholz, his wizardly studio skills or his freshly settled live band line-up (now named Boston).
The album was certified gold after just two months, and platinum within a further month, elevating the ''Boston sound'' to the benchmark for rock production.
