Don't Look Back (Boston album)
| Don't Look Back | ||||
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| Studio album by Boston | ||||
| Released | August 2, 1978 | |||
| Recorded | 1977–78 at Tom Scholz's Hideaway Studio and Northern Studio, Maynard, Massachusetts | |||
| Genre | Hard rock, arena rock, progressive rock | |||
| Length | 33:47 | |||
| Label | Epic | |||
| Producer | Tom Scholz | |||
| Boston chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Don't Look Back | ||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
Don't Look Back is the second studio album by American rock band Boston, released in 1978. The title track is one of the band's biggest hits, reaching #4 in 1978 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album sold over four million copies in the first month of its release, and was certified 7x platinum by the RIAA in the US.
This album also marked the beginning of the band's legal fight with its record label Epic Records. Scholz claimed that Epic executives pushed him and the band into releasing the album before they felt it was ready. He also said that the album "was ridiculously short. It needed another song." Their next album, Third Stage, was not released for another eight years, by which time the band and record label had parted ways and were fighting a courtroom battle that Boston ultimately won.
Don't Look Back was recorded during 1977 and 1978 at Scholz's Hideaway Studio, except for the piano on "A Man I'll Never Be," which was recorded by engineer David 'db' Butler (erroneously credited as "Dave Butler" in the liner notes) at Northern Studio in Maynard, Massachusetts.
When Don't Look Back was released on LP, 8-track and cassette in 1978, it was originally to be titled Arrival, but Boston members discovered that ABBA had already released an album by that name, so Don't Look Back was chosen instead. The album was listed erroneously as "Arrival" in the cassette inserts of some other CBS releases at the time promoting albums available from the record company and its associated labels.
Billboard Magazine described the album as "an equally superior effort [to their debut album] that further refines this group's ability to play hard rock underlined by a sweet, melodic base. Ken Enerson of Rolling Stone Magazine noted the album consolidates the sound of the band's debut album but that it is less redundant and pretentious than Bruce Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. Emerson sees a theme in the album of Tom Scholz expressing his anxieties, particularly with making this album, with lines about being unsure about measuring up as man in "A Man I'll Never Be" and a line "I've been used/But I'm taking it like a man" in "Used to Bad News." Emerson also pointed out contradictions between the lyrics of certain songs, such as the line that "I'm much too strong not to compromise" in "Don't Look Back" versus the line in "A Man I'll Never Be" that "I can't get any stronger," or the line "Emotions can't be satisfied" in "A Man I'll Never Be" versus the title itself of "Feelin' Satisfied." Brad Chadderton of The Ottawa Journal praised the album it's heavy, innovative and melodic guitar lines, for Delp's vocals, and for lyrics that have some philosophical meaning, calling Don't Look Back an improvement over the debut album.
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