Tom Scholz
Tom Scholz
Donald Thomas "Tom" Scholzis an American rock musician, inventor, engineer, and philanthropist, best known as the founder of the band Boston. He is also the inventor of the Rockman portable guitar amplifier. He has been described by Allmusic as "a notoriously 'un-rock n' roll' figure who never enjoyed the limelight of being a performer," preferring to concentrate almost exclusively on his music, and in more recent years, spending much of his time working with charities...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth10 March 1947
CityToledo, OH
CountryUnited States of America
Analog sounds so much better. I frankly can't listen to digital audio for more than a few hours without really starting to hate what I'm listening to. Even decent 24-bit digital resolution really irritates me after a while.
I've sort of decided that I can settle for being just the artist, arranger, writer and part-time engineer. That seems like enough to do.
I played in a couple of really crummy bands, including one in the dorm I was in at MIT, for a year or two.
Fun is when you're writing a song and you're trying a rough shot at a demo and... it works. That's when it's fun. After that, it's work.
I took classical piano for a couple of years, but I sort of lost interest - I couldn't read a note today if I tried. I still enjoy that stuff, and I think I naturally gravitate towards the classical licks; in fact, I know that I do. I gravitate towards the classical licks that I heard by famous old composers.
I take chances. I don't limit myself. I don't think anybody who listens to Boston would have predicted hearing a female rapper on the beginning of the song 'Sail Away.' But that's what fit.
Everybody's seen a stream or a wood they knew replaced by a strip mall.
Virtually every magazine, newspaper, TV station and cable channel is owned by a big corporation, and they've squashed stories that they don't want the public to know about.
The public has been sold a bill of goods about the free market being a panacea for mankind.
There aren't a lot of cover bands that do Boston material or do it well, and the reason for that is that they are hard to play. So we put a lot of work into it. The musicians that I've managed to surround myself with after all of these years are individuals who really excel at what they do.
'Higher Power' was the result of a personal experience: a friend of mine who went through the process of addiction and recovery. It's a very, very tough thing - very easy to become addicted and very, very hard to become a recovering addict.
Musical accidents are a gold mine. The thing about accidental discoveries is they won't be made unless you put yourself in a position to make that discovery. To do that means hundreds of hours, days and weeks where you do things and don't discover anything.
If things aren't going well, music is what I turn to so I can get away from it, to take my mind somewhere else.
I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren't supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else.