What is "Corporate Rock"?

**StevegSr** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by yamishogun

17 million copies of Boston were sold in the U.S. (25 million world wide) while almost 12 million copies of The Wall sold.

Boston's debut album was also the first and fastest to reach 1 million copies and did so within weeks of being released in the summer of 1976. One reason beyond people liking the album (of course) and more marketing is that that is when FM radio was more popular. Someone must know that part of the story that I'm forgetting.

So, does that make one of these artists more corporate then the other?

What is the point of these sales figures? (which I agree are accurate.)

**GuitarGeek** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by Firth

The Boston debut did not sell as much as Floyds the Wall, biggest seller in the 70s. No album in the 70s exceed top sales of the 80s.

I never said the first Boston outsold The Wall. What I said Boston was said to have been the biggest selling debut album of all time. The Wall, in case you didn't know, was not Pink Floyd's debut album.

I've also heard it said that though Whitney Houston and the first Guns N Roses albums both topped the first Boston, over time, the continuing sales of Boston allowed it to reclaim that position. In other words, Whitney and GNR shifted big numbers at first, but it eventually tapered off. Maybe Boston tapered off too, but it didn't taper off as much as the other two, apparently. But that's just hearsay I've seen quoted in articles here and there over the course of the last 30 years. Even before the internet, you couldn't trust anything you read or heard anywhere.

**StevegSr** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by GuitarGeek

I never said the first Boston outsold The Wall. What I said Boston was said to have been the biggest selling debut album of all time. The Wall, in case you didn't know, was not Pink Floyd's debut album.

I've also heard it said that though Whitney Houston and the first Guns N Roses albums both topped the first Boston, over time, the continuing sales of Boston allowed it to reclaim that position. In other words, Whitney and GNR shifted big numbers at first, but it eventually tapered off. Maybe Boston tapered off too, but it didn't taper off as much as the other two, apparently. But that's just hearsay I've seen quoted in articles here and there over the course of the last 30 years. Even before the internet, you couldn't trust anything you read or heard anywhere.

Oh, this was a "who sold more platinum albums" debate.
Carry on then.

**notallwhowander** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by StevegSr

Yes. What you said is correct. But you run from the truth, regarding prog/pop/rock/disco/funk or whatever.

Here is the bottom line for supposed musical purists like yourself....

A) You're the one hanging the label "musical purist" on me. I'm not your straw man. I'm not running from anything. "Rock" limits the conversation to rock bands. That's all.

B) Using the term "corporate rock" to mean nay band that ever turned a profit for a incorporated record label explodes the definition beyond it's original use. Sure, the meaning fits the words, but it re-contextualizes in a way that is of little good in the present conversation.

**yamishogun** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by StevegSr

So, does that make one of these artists more corporate then the other?

What is the point of these sales figures? (which I agree are accurate.)

I was just pointing out that Boston sold more between the two albums. I also thought it was an interesting part of American rock history that the debut Boston album was the first to go platimum in such a short period of time. No Boston on the radio...then... can't escape Boston!

**GuitarGeek** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by yamishogun

I was just pointing out that Boston sold more between the two albums. I also thought it was an interesting part of American rock history that the debut Boston album was the first to go platimum in such a short period of time. No Boston on the radio...then... can't escape Boston!

Boston was initially a studio band. They didn't play clubs or whatever before they got signed to Epic. They were all in bands that had played out before that, but I think Herr Scholz decided he didn't playing live, and preferred to perfect the band's sound in the studio.

But, naturally, once Epic signed them, they pretty much had to go on the road. And apparently, the album took off so fast that the very first time they ever actually played a show in the city of Boston, they were headlining Boston Garden, which is like (or was like, I should say) a 20,000 seat arena.

**Baribrotzer** · 05-01-2016

One point about Boston:

Tom Scholz was not trying to make "corporate rock" - at least not to start with, and maybe not ever. He liked hard rock, liked pop music, and saw no reason the two couldn't coexist. He also owned his own studio, which let him be as obsessive as he liked, and used that both to create the "Boston Sound", with guitars and voices overdubbed into huge quasi-string-sections and quasi-choirs, and to then record it with a polish, slickness, and audio perfectionism previously only found in disco. And the result of that became one of the building blocks of "corporate rock".

The suits then seized upon that as the next step in rock, as the missing link: yes, it was hard rock, but it was hard rock every bit as professionally written, played, and recorded as disco. They promoted the hell out of it, signed similar bands, and encouraged existing bands to copy Boston. But I don't think Tom Scholz ever intended to make soulless "product" - Boston was simply the kind of music he liked - and his unprofessionalism in taking a decade or so to write and record each follow-up bears that out.

**Jay.Dee** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by Firth

Business is both bad and good for art. Historically, Art happens then Business destroys it until art happens again. Perpetual cycle.

**rcarlberg** · 05-01-2016

Re: Warhol -- my thought exactly. "Corporate art" taken to its logical extreme.

What music is equivalent to Warhol's soup cans? Or any of his posters turned out by the thousands in factories?

**Jerjo** · 05-01-2016

Originally Posted by Baribrotzer

One point about Boston:

Tom Scholz was not trying to make "corporate rock" - at least not to start with, and maybe not ever. He liked hard rock, liked pop music, and saw no reason the two couldn't coexist. He also owned his own studio, which let him be as obsessive as he liked, and used that both to create the "Boston Sound", with guitars and voices overdubbed into huge quasi-string-sections and quasi-choirs, and to then record it with a polish, slickness, and audio perfectionism previously only found in disco. And the result of that became one of the building blocks of "corporate rock".

The suits then seized upon that as the next step in rock, as the missing link: yes, it was hard rock, but it was hard rock every bit as professionally written, played, and recorded as disco. They promoted the hell out of it, signed similar bands, and encouraged existing bands to copy Boston. But I don't think Tom Scholz ever intended to make soulless "product" - Boston was simply the kind of music he liked - and his unprofessionalism in taking a decade or so to write and record each follow-up bears that out.

yup, that's pretty much it. Hard rock with melody was already a guaranteed seller and Boston upped it a notch. Supposedly the exec that signed them heard "More Than a Feeling" over a phone pitch from the band's manager and knew a cash cow when he heard one. But Tom definitely had no desire to be a cog in the corporate machine.