Biography
An MIT engineering alumnus with an extraordinary gift for electronics, Tom Scholz orchestrated the extraordinary rise of the 1970s rock band Boston. He first attracted the attention of Epic Records by circulating homemade tapes cut in his basement workshop, prompting the label to offer the guitarist a recording contract. Scholz then recruited an ensemble of session players and devoted an exhaustive stretch of time to laying down the tracks for the group’s debut album, which emerged to immediate acclaim and ultimately moved more than nine million units, driven by the chart successes “More than a Feeling” and “Peace of Mind” and establishing the biggest-selling first release ever at that point. Complications arose, however, as the meticulous Scholz—whose rumored perfectionism once led him to recut a single drum part 108 times—spent several years preparing subsequent Boston releases. Legal disputes followed, and only in 1986 did he finally issue the band’s third album, titled Third Stage. An emphatically “un-rock n’ roll” personality who shunned the spotlight of live performance, the MIT-trained scholar applied his technical training by launching Scholz Research & Development, whose patented designs include the widely adopted Rockman amplifier. More recently, Scholz has redirected his energies toward philanthropy, contributing large sums to causes he supports.