PHOTO BY BOB SUMMERS
Guitarists Tom Scholz, left, and Gary Pihl will bring the band Boston to TD Garden Thursday night.
By BILL BROTHERTON
Gary Pihl remembers the first time he heard a song by the band Boston.
He was driving down a street in his hometown, Petaluma, Calif. It was 1976 and he had the radio on. The motorist in front of him abruptly stopped his car and ran back toward him. It was a buddy. “Gary. This is Boston. This is the song I was telling you about, ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ”
“Later, I was in a classic-rock band in California and I played ‘More Than a Feeling,’” said Pihl with a chuckle. “And here I am, all these years later, playing it on stage with Tom Scholz, the man who wrote it.”
Pihl, Scholz and their bandmates will certainly play that iconic song, which rocketed to No. 5 on the Billboard charts, Thursday night when Boston brings its Hyper Space Tour to TD Garden. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts will open.
Pihl and Scholz might just be the most complementary collaborators in rock and roll today. “Two electronics geeks having the time of their lives,” said Pihl, 66, who plays guitar, keyboards, provides harmony and backing vocals and handles a gazillion other tasks when the band is on the road.
“I was on tour with Sammy Hagar in 1977; we ended up opening for Boston through 1979,” said Pihl, who was born in Chicago and now lives with his family in Western Mass. “I was always asking Tom questions, ‘How did you get that guitar sound?’ ‘What’s does that gizmo near the keyboards do?’ … When Sammy left to join Van Halen (replacing former Swampscott resident David Lee Roth), Tom called me up and asked me to help him finish the ‘Third Stage’ album. That was 1985 and I’m still here.”
Scholz, of course, is the MIT graduate with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mechanical engineering who has patents on numerous studio innovations. He built the home studio on which much of Boston’s debut and subsequent albums were created and recorded.
The TD Garden lineup has plenty of local roots. Bassist Tracy Ferrie studied at Berklee College of Music and lives on Cape Cod with his wife and four children. Drummer Jeff Neal lives in Maine and Scholz has made Boston his home since the late ’60s. Lead singer since 2007 Tommy DeCarlo and Beth Cohen spend a lot of time in Boston recording and rehearsing with Scholz.
The first Boston touring band, of course, had a potent North Shore flavor (longtime singer Brad Delp was from Danvers; bassist Fran Sheehan from Swampscott, and guitarist Barry Goudreau and drummer Sib Hashian from Lynn were in the band until 1979).
Pihl and Scholz both have inquisitive, analytical minds. Scholz has said of Pihl: “I’d be lost without him. Gary’s the only other person on tour that has a thorough understanding of the complex audio productions systems that turn the efforts of seven musicians and singers into the perfectly mixed stereo sound coming out the the sound system.”
Pihl, whose first guitar teacher was a pre-Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia, is the ultimate multitasker. In addition to his musical prowess, he’s an award-winning artist, designer and photo editor who did all of the editing for the graphics on the “Corporate America” and remastered “Boston” and “Don’t Look Back” CDs.
When asked to compare touring with Boston and Hagar, Pihl laughs. “With Sammy, what you see is what you get. He does know when to say ‘no’ however. I enjoyed eight great years with him.
“Tom was put on both the 100 greatest guitarists and 100 greatest keyboardists of all-time lists. And he designed the amps we use on stage. No other band that I know of can make that claim.”
Boston, with Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, at TD Garden, Thursday, July 13. Tickets: $35 to $99.50, at www.livenation.com/events/654115-jul-13-2017-hyper-space-tour-boston-with-joan-jett-the-blackhearts
