Brad Delp, the lead singer for Boston, has died. Story at www.msn.com.

:rip:

This sucks, Thanks to conversing with someone on msn messenger, I missed getting an E-mail about this. I like Boston, They're one of my favorite bands ever.

R.I.P. Tom :(

That's really sad, he really wasn't that old. It's also sad that they had a career of over thirty years, yet only put out a handful of albums. They never really matched the huge success of their 1976 debut.


Wow, what a way to commemorate my 20 thousandth post. :(

Such sad news!! I always enjoyed Boston's music. :(

That's awful news. I love Boston back in the day.

gee thats so sad boston was one of my fave. bands growing up

I HAVE THEIR FIRST ALBUM AND I ALSO HAVE IT ON CD...They were one of thee best rock groups in the 70's and their debut album set records. R.I.P.

Brad Delp, Lead Singer of Boston, Dies at 55

ATKINSON, N.H. (March 9) - Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, was found dead Friday in his home in southern New Hampshire. He was 55.

Atkinson police responded to a call for help at 1:20 p.m. and found Delp dead. Police Lt. William Baldwin said in a statement the death was "untimely" and that there was no indication of foul play.

Delp apparently was alone at the time of his death, Baldwin said.

The cause of his death remained under investigation by the Atkinson police and the New Hampshire Medical Examiner's office. Police said an incident report would not be available until Monday.

Delp sang vocals on Boston's 1976 hits "More than a Feeling" and "Longtime." He also sang on Boston's most recent album, "Corporate America," released in 2002
He joined the band in the early 1970s after meeting Tom Scholz, an MIT student interested in experimental methods of recording music, according to the group's official Web site. The band enjoyed its greatest success and influence during its first decade.

The band's last appearance was in November 2006 at Boston's Symphony Hall.

On Friday night, the Web site was taken down and replaced with the statement: "We just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll."

A call to the Swampscott, Mass., home of Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau was not immediately returned Friday night.

:( R.I.P. Brad.

That's really sad, he really wasn't that old. It's also sad that they had a career of over thirty years, yet only put out a handful of albums. They never really matched the huge success of their 1976 debut.

Yeah, weird. I just checked, and they only released five albums in 26 years (between 1976 and 2002). There was an eight-year delay between their second and third albums, due to a lawsuit with their former label, Epic. There was a six-year delay between the third and fourth, because Brad Delp left the group for a short time. There was an eight-year delay between the fourth and fifth album.

This is indeed shocking. I can't believe he left us at such a young age!

At the grocery store today the "Muzak" system (plays instrumental music over the PA system) played an instrumental version of "More Than A Feeling" instead of the traditional "elevator music."

CONCORD, N.H. - The family of Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston, said his death was a suicide.

In a statement relayed Wednesday through police, the family gave no other details of the 55-year-old Delp's death at his Atkinson home Friday. Police have said his fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, found him there.

"He was a man who gave all he had to give to everyone around him, whether family, friends, fans or strangers," the statement said. "He gave as long as he could, as best he could, and he was very tired. We take comfort in knowing that he is now, at last, at peace."

The statement said Sullivan, Delp's children and his mother, Micki Delp, were grateful for the sympathy they had received.

Sad news indeed. I always thought Boston's music was awesome!

UPDATE: according to family members, Brad's death was a suicide. Go to www.msn.com, www.yahoo.com, and www.boston.com for details.:(

He committed suicide????? Why???????

God, how many people are in such pain that they feel the need to kill themselves?

Wow, was he having some sort of midlife crisis?? He left behind his family and fiancee. That's so sad, because Boston's music and lyrics were so upbeat. I wonder if they'll ever disclose the reasons behind his suicide. :(

Pie - heard this morning that he suffered from clinical depression all his life. It's just something that comes over you that you cannot control. Don't know if he was being treated for it at the time or not.

I was saddened at the news on Friday, but just heard this morning that it was suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Man this is SAD.

Next to Plant, Lee and Perry he was my favourite vocalist. His voice was so recognizable and always lifted me up. The first album from Boston to this day, is one that I immediately fell in love with the minute I heard it. Whenever I'm down, Boston tunes are ones I pull from to help make me feel better. I just wish we could have returned the favour when Brad needed a lift.

Goodbye buddy - you gave me years of enjoyment and helped me with my depression - just hope the other side provides the same for you. :( Rest in Peace Bradley.

Pie - heard this morning that he suffered from clinical depression all his life. It's just something that comes over you that you cannot control. Don't know if he was being treated for it at the time or not.

I was saddened at the news on Friday, but just heard this morning that it was suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. Man this is SAD.

Next to Plant, Lee and Perry he was my favourite vocalist. His voice was so recognizable and always lifted me up. The first album from Boston to this day, is one that I immediately fell in love with the minute I heard it. Whenever I'm down, Boston tunes are ones I pull from to help make me feel better. I just wish we could have returned the favour when Brad needed a lift.

Goodbye buddy - you gave me years of enjoyment and helped me with my depression - just hope the other side provides the same for you. :( Rest in Peace Bradley.Wow. I had a feeling there was something wrong with him like depression. You're tempted to think that their songs were so upbeat and all, and had this reputation of being such a "happy-go-lucky" nice guy in the press, you never know what's beneath. Depression is such a serious problem in our society. :(

Death of Boston Lead Singer Ruled a Suicide

Brad Delp Was Killed by Carbon Monoxide Poison

BOSTON (March 15) (AP) - The recent death of Brad Delp, lead singer of the rock band Boston, has been ruled a suicide, police in New Hampshire said on Wednesday.

Delp, 55, was killed by carbon monoxide piped through a tube from a vehicle's exhaust pipe into a bathroom where he was found dead on March 9, said Lt. William Baldwin of the police in Atkinson, a southern New Hampshire town where Delp lived.

Delp's family released a statement earlier in the day confirming the suicide.

"He was a man who gave all he had to give to everyone around him, whether family, friends, fans or strangers," the family said in a statement relayed by police Wednesday. "He gave as long as he could, as best he could, and he was very tired. We take comfort in knowing that he is now, at last, at peace."

The family's statement said Sullivan, Delp's children and their mother, Delp's ex-wife Micki Delp, were grateful for the sympathy they had received.

With Delp's big, wailing voice, Boston scored hits with "More Than a Feeling," "Long Time" and "Peace of Mind."

The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s but it remained active off and on, producing its last album, "Corporate America," in 2002.

Delp was born in Boston, and bought his first guitar at age 13 after seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, according to his Web site. Since 1994, he spent his spare time working in a tribute band called Beatle Juice, the band said.

"The 55-year-old Bradley Delp committed suicide and the cause of death was carbon monoxide" poisoning, Baldwin said in a statement.

Thats so very very sad. He was such a talented singer.

That's so sad to hear. I don't know much about Mr Delp, or the group Boston, but it's just such a tragedy anytime a person sees no hope whatsoever, and feels like suicide is the only way out. Being Bi-polar myself, it doesn't surprise me to hear about stuff like this, but it does sadden me greatly!! :( RIP Mr Delp, and may God comfort your family during this very difficult time!!!

Thanks for posting the links. Very interesting update.

Delp Suicide Note: 'I Am a Lonely Soul'

http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/ap/thumbnails//Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.jpg (http://apnews.excite.com/image/20070312/Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.html?date=20070316&docid=D8NSU7L80)
(AP) Flowers are seen in front of the home of Brad Delp, lead singer of the rock band Boston, in...Full Image (http://apnews.excite.com/image/20070312/Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.html?date=20070316&docid=D8NSU7L80)

ATKINSON, N.H. (AP) - Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston who killed himself last week, left behind a note in which he called himself "a lonely soul," according to police reports released Thursday.

The note was paper-clipped to the neck of Delp's shirt when police found his body at his Atkinson home, on the bathroom floor, his head on a pillow. He had sealed himself inside with two charcoal grills; toxicology tests showed he had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Mr. Brad Delp. J'ai une ame solitaire. I am a lonely soul," the note read.
Delp joined Boston in the mid-1970s and sang two of its biggest hits, "More than a Feeling" and "Long Time." He was cremated Wednesday, after a private funeral earlier in the week.

His fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, called police March 9 after noticing a dryer vent tube connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp's car. In the garage, police found a note taped to the door leading into the house.

"To whoever finds this I have hopefully committed suicide. Plan B was to asphyxiate myself in my car."

In another note on a door at the top of the stairs, Delp cautioned that there was carbon monoxide inside.

"I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation. I have lost my desire to live," he wrote. The note also included instructions on how to contact his fiancee: "Unfortunately she is totally unaware of what I have done."

Police later found four sealed letters in an office addressed to Sullivan, his children, their mother, Micki Delp, and another couple whose identity was not disclosed. Police Lt. William Baldwin said police gave the letters to family members without reading them.

Sullivan told police that Delp "had been depressed for some time, feeling emotional (and) bad about himself," according to the reports. He had planned to marry Sullivan this summer during a break in a tour with Boston. A lifelong Beatles fan, Delp also played with the tribute band Beatle Juice.

Delp Suicide Note: 'I Am a Lonely Soul'

http://ak.imgfarm.com/images/ap/thumbnails//Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.jpg (http://apnews.excite.com/image/20070312/Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.html?date=20070316&docid=D8NSU7L80)
(AP) Flowers are seen in front of the home of Brad Delp, lead singer of the rock band Boston, in...Full Image (http://apnews.excite.com/image/20070312/Delps_Death.sff_CON101_20070312153740.html?date=20070316&docid=D8NSU7L80)

ATKINSON, N.H. (AP) - Brad Delp, the lead singer for the band Boston who killed himself last week, left behind a note in which he called himself "a lonely soul," according to police reports released Thursday.

The note was paper-clipped to the neck of Delp's shirt when police found his body at his Atkinson home, on the bathroom floor, his head on a pillow. He had sealed himself inside with two charcoal grills; toxicology tests showed he had committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.

"Mr. Brad Delp. J'ai une ame solitaire. I am a lonely soul," the note read.
Delp joined Boston in the mid-1970s and sang two of its biggest hits, "More than a Feeling" and "Long Time." He was cremated Wednesday, after a private funeral earlier in the week.

His fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, called police March 9 after noticing a dryer vent tube connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp's car. In the garage, police found a note taped to the door leading into the house.

"To whoever finds this I have hopefully committed suicide. Plan B was to asphyxiate myself in my car."

In another note on a door at the top of the stairs, Delp cautioned that there was carbon monoxide inside.

"I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation. I have lost my desire to live," he wrote. The note also included instructions on how to contact his fiancee: "Unfortunately she is totally unaware of what I have done."

Police later found four sealed letters in an office addressed to Sullivan, his children, their mother, Micki Delp, and another couple whose identity was not disclosed. Police Lt. William Baldwin said police gave the letters to family members without reading them.

Sullivan told police that Delp "had been depressed for some time, feeling emotional (and) bad about himself," according to the reports. He had planned to marry Sullivan this summer during a break in a tour with Boston. A lifelong Beatles fan, Delp also played with the tribute band Beatle Juice.



Sad, sad, sad. :( ohno:

http://news.bostonherald.com/galleries/images/582000_frontpage.jpg

Boston lead singer Brad Delp was driven to despair after his longtime friend Fran Cosmo was dropped from a summer tour, the last straw in a dysfunctional professional life that ultimately led to the sensitive frontman’s suicide, Delp’s ex-wife said.

“No one can possibly understand the pressures he was under,” said Micki Delp, the mother of Delp’s two kids, in an exclusive interview with the Track.

“Brad lived his life to please everyone else. He would go out of his way and hurt himself before he would hurt somebody else, and he was in such a predicament professionally that no matter what he did, a friend of his would be hurt. Rather than hurt anyone else, he would hurt himself. That’s just the kind of guy he was.”

Cosmo, who had been with Boston since the early ’90s, had been “disinvited” from the planned summer tour, Micki Delp said, “which upset Brad.”

But according to Tom Scholz, the MIT-educated engineer who founded the band back in 1976, the decision to drop Cosmo was not final and Delp was not upset about the matter. (Cosmo’s son Anthony, however, was scratched from the tour.)

“The decision to rehearse without the Cosmos was a group decision,” Scholz said in a statement through his publicist. “Brad never expressed unhappiness with that decision . . . and took an active part in arranging the vocals for five people, not seven.”

Nonetheless, according to the singer’s suicide notes released yesterday, Delp said he had “lost my desire to live.”

Police say Delp sealed himself inside his bathroom last Friday, lit two charcoal grills and committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning.

“Mr. Brad Delp. J’ai une ame solitaire. I am a lonely soul,” said one of the notes. “I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation.” The note also included instructions on how to contact his fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, who found Delp’s body.

“Unfortunately she is totally unaware of what I have done,” the note said.

Yesterday Sullivan, who was planning to marry Delp this summer, said the situation was “extremely painful” for her, Delp’s children and his family. “To the rest of the world, this is a big story,” she said. “But to Brad and Micki’s children and me, it’s very different.”

According to police reports released yesterday, Delp was found on the floor of his bathroom Friday, his head on a pillow and a note paper-clipped to the neck of his shirt. He died sometime between 11:30 p.m. March 8 and the next afternoon.

Sullivan told police that Delp “had been depressed for some time, feeling emotional (and) bad about himself,” according to the reports.

According to Micki Delp, Brad was upset over the lingering bad feelings from the ugly breakup of the band Boston over 20 years ago. Delp continued to work with Scholz and Boston but also gigged with Barry Goudreau, Fran Sheehan and Sib Hashian, former members of the band who had a fierce falling out with Scholz in the early ’80s.

As a result, he was constantly caught in the middle of the warring factions. The situation was complicated by the fact that Delp’s ex-wife, Micki, is the sister of Goudreau’s wife, Connie.

“Barry and Sib are family and the things that were said against them hurt,” Micki said. “Boston to Brad was a job, and he did what he was told to do. But it got to the point where he just couldn’t do it anymore.”

Considerate to the end, Delp left a note on the top of the stairs at his home warning rescuers that there was carbon monoxide in the house. Another note said the couple’s cat, Floppy, should be in a room that was safe from the deadly gas and asked that someone find her and make sure she was all right.

Police said Delp was so intent on ending it all that he had a backup plan if the charcoal fumes didn’t kill him. A dryer vent tube was connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp’s car. In the garage, police found a note taped to the door leading into the house.

“To whoever finds this I have hopefully committed suicide. Plan B was to asphyxiate myself in my car.”

Outside the bathroom, police found a carbon monoxide detector with the battery removed.

Delp joined Boston in the mid-1970s and sang two of its biggest hits, “More than a Feeling” and “Long Time.” A lifelong Beatles fan, Delp also played with the tribute band Beatlejuice.

Delp was cremated Wednesday, police said. A private funeral was held earlier this week.

Awful, just awful.

Thanks to those who posted the articles. It's a sad story indeed.

THis is very sad. Boston put out some great music.

AP News


Discord in Boston After Delp Suicide

By KATHARINE WEBSTER

CONCORD, N.H. - The band Boston spoke to people's souls during the 1970s with smash hits like "More Than a Feeling" and "Peace of Mind." But two weeks after lead singer Brad Delp's suicide at his New Hampshire home, bad feelings abound. Current members of the band, including the chief songwriter and founder, Tom Scholz, were not informed about or invited to Delp's funeral, which was attended by early band members who opposed Scholz in a 1980s legal battle.

Last week, Delp's ex-wife Micki was quoted on a radio station saying Delp was distressed about the conflicts in his professional life and became despondent after a longtime friend, Fran Cosmo, was cut from Boston's summer concert lineup. The story spread online, where fans trying to figure out the reason for Delp's suicide took up the cudgels.

Scholz, who called Delp his "closest friend and collaborator in music for over 35 years," said he was crushed by Delp's suicide and his exclusion from the funeral. Now he feels he is being unfairly blamed for Delp's death.


"It went from devastating on the initial phone call to an absolute nightmare," Scholz told The Associated Press on Friday in a tearful telephone interview, his first since Delp's death on March 9. (An interview conducted by e-mail was published earlier in Rolling Stone.)

"We had been told it would only be his immediate family (at the funeral), and of course it wasn't," he said.

A lawyer for Scholz sent a letter to Micki Delp on Friday demanding a retraction. She did not immediately respond Friday to an e-mail message from The Associated Press via the publicist who has handled statements for the family.

Boston has canceled its summer engagements, and Scholz said he still hopes the rift can be mended and the band can be part of a public memorial service that Delp's children and fiancee, Pamela Sullivan, said last week was in the works.

Tensions between Scholz and some of the early band members date from the early 1980s, when CBS Inc. sued the band over delays in recording new albums. The company's Epic Records label recorded the band's first two releases: "Boston," in 1976, and "Don't Look Back," in 1978.

Scholz countersued for the rights to the band's name and music. Three members of the original band _ Barry Goudreau, Sib Hashian and Fran Sheehan _ testified for the record company, which lost. Goudreau is Micki Delp's brother-in-law, and she reportedly remains close to the ousted band members.

Delp, the only band member besides Scholz whose name was on the CBS recording contract, remained friends with everyone, touring and recording with Scholz and the others over the decades. He also started a Beatles tribute band, Beatle Juice.

Scholz wrote, engineered, and laid down nearly all the instrumental tracks on the first album, but he said Delp helped him refine the songs and brought his music to life.

"It went from a guitar lick that didn't mean a thing to a real song as soon as he opened his mouth. That was always the case," Scholz said. "We had a very, very close working relationship. I swear it was like we were hooked up by a cable. We didn't even have to talk most of the time."

Scholz and Delp were both vegetarians and pacifists, both dedicated their money and talents to causes they believed in, and both proposed to their longtime girlfriends on Christmas Day 2006 by putting rings in their stockings _ only learning about the coincidence in a conversation afterward.

The band's first album was wildly successful, and remains one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, according to Billboard, selling more than 16 million copies. Boston's early music also remains a staple on classic rock stations, especially in New England.

96.5 FM ("The Mill") in Manchester plans a two-hour tribute to Boston on Sunday featuring excerpts from the station's interviews with Delp over the years. Program Director J.C. Haze said he remembers hearing the first album.

"Tom and Brad, they made such a unique sound it just took the world by storm," Haze said. "Nothing ever sounded like it, and nothing ever did since."