‘It really takes a collective effort’: Replacing Brad Delp’s iconic vocals hasn’t been easy for Boston

Share this:

As Boston continues on without the late vocalist Brad Delp, it is taking the equivalent of a small army of people to replace him on live dates.

Tommy DeCarlo joined Boston after posting a tribute video to Delp on his MySpace page, and has shared some vocal duties with David Victor since last year. Guitarist Tom Scholz, who co-founded Boston in 1976, also sings backup, as does rhythm guitarist Gary Pihl (the band’s other longest-tenured member, going back to 1985) and bassist Kimberley Dahme.

“A big part of it is the harmonies,” DeCarlo tells Vintage Rock. “When Tom wrote these songs, along with Brad Delp years ago, I think Brad said in an interview that he set the bar pretty high for himself. So, it really takes a collective effort between all of the band members to pull off the harmony vocals in a live show.”

The voice behind such signature Boston hits as “More Than a Feeling,” “Amanda” and “Don’t Look Back,” Delp committed suicide in 2007, at age 55. More recently, BradDelpFoundation.org compiled some rare unreleased tracks from the iconic singer.

Scholz rebuilt the lineup and mounted a tour as Boston last summer. They appeared at the 2013 edition of NAMM last week.

“Funny enough, though, that even though you do have David and myself singing lead at times,” DeCarlo adds, “with the harmonies that we all have to sing, you may as well say that we are all singing lead — because they’re incredibly hard harmonies to do. But we love to do them, and when we do them right, they sound great.”

[amazon_enhanced asin=”B000EQ47GS” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B001N26GG6″ container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000008KAO” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B0000025C0″ container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000002O51″ container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /]

Something Else!