(June 12, 1951 – March 9, 2007)
Delp was born in Peabody, Massachusetts on June 12, 1951 to French-Canadian immigrants. He was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts.[1]
In 1969, guitarist Barry Goudreau introduced Delp to Tom Scholz, who was looking for a singer to complete some demo recordings. Eventually Scholz formed the short-lived band Mother's Milk (1973–74), including Delp and Goudreau. After producing a demo, Epic Records eventually signed the act. Mother's Milk was renamed Boston, and the self-titled debut album (recorded in 1975, although many tracks had been written years before) was released in August 1976. Delp performed all of the lead and backing vocals, including all layered vocal overdubs.
Boston's debut album has sold more than 20 million copies, and produced rock standards such as "More Than a Feeling", "Foreplay/Long Time" and "Peace of Mind". Delp co-wrote "Smokin'" along with Scholz, and wrote the album's closing track, "Let Me Take You Home Tonight". Their next album, Don't Look Back, was released two years later in August 1978. Its release spawned new hits such as the title track, "Party", and the poignant ballad "A Man I'll Never Be". As they did with "Smokin'", Delp and Scholz again collaborated on "Party", and Delp penned "Used to Bad News".
After the first two Boston albums, Delp sang vocals on Barry Goudreau's self-titled solo album, released in 1980. Scholz's legendary perfectionism and a legal battle with their record company stalled any further Boston albums until 1986, when the band released the appropriately titled Third Stage. Delp co-wrote the songs "Cool the Engines" and "Can'tcha Say (You Believe in Me)/Still in Love" for the album, and both songs got significant airplay.
Though well known for his "golden" voice with soaring vocals and range, Delp was also a multi-instrumentalist, playing guitar, harmonica and keyboards. He wrote or co-wrote songs for Boston, RTZ, Orion the Hunter, Lisa Guyer, and other artists.
In 1991 Delp and Goudreau formed a new band called RTZ. After Boston released the album Walk On in 1994 with Fran Cosmo on vocals, Delp and Boston eventually reunited later that year for another major tour and Delp continued to record vocals on several albums and projects, including new tracks for Boston's 1997 Greatest Hitscompilation and their 2002 release, Corporate America.
From the mid-1990s until his death in 2007, Delp also played in a side project when he had time off from Boston – a Beatles tribute band called Beatlejuice. The Beatles had always been a personal favorite of Delp, and he revered them for their songwriting.
During this time Delp also co-wrote and recorded with former Boston bandmate Barry Goudreau and in 2003 released the CD Delp and Goudreau.
Sometime between 11:00 pm on March 8 and 1:20 pm on March 9, 2007, Delp committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at his home in Atkinson, New Hampshire on Academy Avenue.[3] The Atkinson police discovered his body on the floor of his master bathroom after Pamela Sullivan saw a dryer vent tube connected to the exhaust pipe of Delp's yellow car. Two charcoal grills were found to have been lit inside the bathtub causing the room to fill with smoke.[4] A suicide note was paper-clipped to the neck of his T-shirt, which read: "Mr. Brad Delp. 'J'ai une âme solitaire'. I have a lonely soul." Delp left four sealed envelopes in his office addressed to his children, his former wife Micki, his fiancée, and another unnamed couple.[5][6][7] He was 55 years old. The following day, Boston's website was temporarily shut down, the webmaster having replaced their home page with a simple black background and white text message: "We've just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll."[8]
Delp's cause of death was ruled a suicide.[9] The reason for Delp's suicide has been the subject of contradictory news reports and lawsuits. A series[10] of interviews conducted by the Boston Herald alleged that lingering hard feelings from Boston's breakup in the 1980s and personal tension between Delp and bandleader Scholz drove the singer to commit suicide. Scholz denied these claims but lost the defamation suits he waged in defense of his character.[11] Court documents from the trials show Scholz claiming that personal problems plagued Delp and were the true reason for his decision to kill himself.[12] Boston Herald attorneys point to voluminous testimony from former Boston members, other local musicians, Delp’s doctor, and Delp’s friends, including Meg Sullivan (his fiancee's sister), many of whom say the singer didn’t like Scholz, desperately wanted to quit the band, and felt tormented by his role as middle man in an ugly conflict between Boston’s founder and former band members. All of this was summarized in a 140-page statement filed by the Herald in April.[13]
On March 19, 2008, Barry Goudreau released one final song with Delp on vocals titled "Rockin Away". Written and recorded in the summer of 2006, co-written with Goudreau, it is an autobiography of Delp's musical career. According to "America's Music Charts", the song reached #20 on the rock charts in January 2008.[14]
On what would have been Delp's 61st birthday, June 12, 2012, Jenna Delp, Delp's daughter and President of the Brad Delp Foundation, released an MP3 on the foundation website of a "never before released" song which was written and recorded by Delp in 1973. It was also announced that the Foundation intended to release a complete album of Delp's solo work at some point in the future, which would encompass a span of thirty years of previously unreleased material written and recorded by Delp and his closest friends.[15]
On November 25, 2015, The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found in favor of the Boston Herald and Micki Delp in a defamation lawsuit brought by Tom Scholz, producer, primary songwriter and lead musician for Boston. In its ruling, the court said statements attributing Delp’s suicide to Scholz were “statements of opinion and not verifiable fact, and therefore could not form the basis of a claim of defamation.”[16][17] On February 23, 2016, Scholz filed a petition for certiorari asking the Supreme Court of the United States to allow his defamation lawsuit to go ahead. On June 6, 2016, the Supreme Court declined to revive the case.[18]
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