From Home Depot to Lead Singer of “Boston”: Tommy DeCarlo’s Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. The rock band Boston has sold over seventy-five million albums with classic kits like “More Than a Feeling,” “Peace of Mind,” “Rock and Roll Band,” “Smokin’,” and “Don’t Look Back.” Here’s Greg Hengler with his story about a Home Depot employee and his favorite rock and roll band.

00:00:33
Speaker 2: When our favorite songs are played, we all do the same thing. We turn it up and we sing along. But the idea of living a rock and roll fantasy and being the lead singer in your favorite band is only played out on the big screen and on television, right? For everyone who ever dreamed of being a rock star, meet Tommy De Carlo. He sings every night to tens of thousands of screaming fans. But only months before his gig as the lead singer of the legendary rock band Boston, forty-two-year-old Tommy wore the orange apron and worked on the floor at Home Depot in Charlotte, North Carolina, where his singing was confined to the shower and karaoke bars. Here’s De Carlo.

00:01:29
Speaker 3: I remember doing karaoke at a bowling alley. There was maybe thirty or forty people; most of them were bowling. They weren’t even listening to karaoke.

00:01:35
Speaker 2: So, how did Tommy’s life go from this: “We. Can help you, okay?” to this?

00:02:03
Speaker 1: Shot.

00:02:16
Speaker 2: Like most kids who came of age in the late seventies, Tommy De Carlo was struck by Boston in the summer of seventy-six, when the band released the momentous debut album, which perfectly packaged progressive rock with melodic pop. “Back when I was around twelve or thirteen, a friend of mine bought the debut and lent it to me, and I never gave it back,” De Carlo says. “I fell in love with the music, and especially Brad Delp’s vocals.” Boston never toured as much as its seventies counterparts, so De Carlo didn’t get to see Boston until the mid-nineties. “My first show,” he says, “I was able to meet Brad Delp. I wasn’t among thirty or forty people at a meeting greet, but after the show, I hung around by the buses and yelled Brad’s name, and we talked for a minute. I’m really thankful I got to meet him.” You got to tell him how much he loved Boston. But he was so wrapped up in the moment he didn’t even remember to have Delp sign the CD he was holding in his hand. Here’s Tommy describing what life was like before living out his rock and roll fantasy.

00:03:30
Speaker 5: Pretty average.

00:03:31
Speaker 3: I worked a forty-hour-week job at the Home Depot, and still am. I’m on a leave of absence there right now.

00:03:38
Speaker 2: De Carlo’s gig began with an unfortunate incident back on March ninth, two thousand and seven, when Boston’s lead singer Brad Delp took his own life at age fifty-five, leaving a note clipped to his shirt that said, “I am a lonely soul.” The band posted on its website, “We’ve just lost the nicest in rock and roll.” Here’s De Carlo.

00:04:04
Speaker 3: A lot of the fans, including myself, felt terrible about that, you know. It was a pretty rough time for a lot of folks. And I decided to go ahead and write a tribute song in memory of Brad. And it was a very short piece, just a couple of minutes long. But I didn’t really know how to go about sharing that with the other fans, which is what I really wanted to do, so I went ahead, and my daughter, my daughter Talia, told me, “Hey, Dad, why don’t you try MySpace?” So I’m like, “All right, I’ll try it.” Well, I got a message from another fan. That’s the beauty of MySpace and the friends you could make through through the MySpace page. A Boston fan had sent me an email saying, “I love your tribute song. Would you consider sending it to the band? I have an old email address,” and I’m like, “Okay, sure, I’ll try it.” That’s funny because back when I was a young teenager, I had a lot of folks, a lot of friends would tell me that I had a very similar voice to the lead singer of Boston. They didn’t know his name was Brad Delp back then. But, and I said, “Yeah, you know, thanks.” That was a great compliment. And over the years I would sing a lot of the Boston music and still get those same compliments. So when that person sent me that email and told me, “Why don’t you try sending your stuff over to the Boston camp?” I was like, “You know, maybe.”

00:05:34
Speaker 2: Here’s that cover of “Peace of Mind” De Carlo posted on MySpace.

00:05:45
Speaker 5: Just kill It.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: Tommy’s cover eventually reached the founder of the band, MIT mastermind and guitar geek Tom Scholz. Here’s Scholz with the story.

00:06:30
Speaker 6: Actually, through my wife Kim. I was walking through the kitchen, and she was listening to something on her computer that was up on the internet, and I was, and she said, “What do you think of this?” And I said, “Well, I’ve never heard that recording of Brad before. What show is that from?” And she said, “It’s not Brad,” and I said, “Oh, yes, that’s Brad,” and she said, “No, this is not Brad,” and I didn’t realize. I put it up on some big speakers and listened to the background music that it was, in fact, not Boston, and it was some sort of a karaoke track, and then I realized this wasn’t Brad, but it sounded just exactly like him. And I know every nuance of Brad’s voice, worked with him for thirty-five years, so I was shocked, but yes, I did, the moment I heard that, start to think, “All right, maybe there is another future for Boston.” And we proceeded cautiously but quickly and invited him to Boston to make an appearance with us on stage at a tribute show last summer for Brad.

00:07:44
Speaker 2: So, what was it like for this fan of Boston to pick up the phone and hear it was Tom Scholz on the other end?

00:07:51
Speaker 3: I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it. It was, it’s almost hard to put in the words. Really, I just could not believe it. I was shocked and I was excited. It was. It was just an amazing—it was an amazing day, believe me.

00:08:04
Speaker 2: De Carlo’s wife of twenty-one years was his number one groupie, and his two teenagers saw their dad as the real American Idol. For Tommy, it was tough to leave his job at Home Depot in Charlotte. He liked his co-workers and rather enjoyed helping people find hardware, and he doesn’t rule out going back to it at some point. “In terms of lifestyle, not much has changed,” De Carlo says. “We live in the same house, and the best part of my day is my kids and wife, and I get a lot of support from the people at the store.” For the time being, though, he’s just enjoyed the ride.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: You know, just like what the Boston saw him, “Just taking my time, just moving along.”

00:08:50
Speaker 1: And what a story. A terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by Greg Hengler. I’ll never forget the first time I heard “More Than a Feeling.” I was in high school. I didn’t even drive yet, but boy, I had my tape recorder with me, and I was rolling around the neighborhood, hold of my radio, blasting it at 10 all the time. No record played more in my high school than the Boston Record. And what a story about, my goodness, living way beyond anything you could dream of. Tommy De Carlo just recording a tribute to the man he adored, Brad Delp, who took his life sadly in two thousand and seven, and Tom Scholz, the band leader, going, “Well, there goes Boston.” And then his wife, Pops, opened this MySpace recording. Before Facebook, folks, there was MySpace, and there it was, and, well, we had a lead singer for Boston once again. The story of Tommy De Carlo, from Home Depot to the lead singer of Boston, here on our American Stories.