The album's contents are a complete recreation of the band's demo tape, and contain songs written and composed many years prior.

Besides Scholz, who played most of the instruments on nearly all of the tracks, and Delp, other musicians appear on the album, such as drummers Jim Masdea and Sib Hashian, guitarist Barry Goudreau and bassist Fran Sheehan.

[6][7] In the late 1960s, Tom Scholz began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he first wrote music.

[9] By night, he played keyboards for bands in the Boston bar and club scene, where he collaborated with drummer Jim Masdea.

[10] The two – who shared a concept of the perfect rock band, one "with crystal-clear vocals and bone-crunching guitars" – viewed themselves as only part-time musicians.

"[9] Both musicians later joined Mother's Milk, a band featuring guitarist Barry Goudreau that vied for recognition in the Boston music scene.

[9] Delp, a former factory worker at a Danvers electric coil company, spent much of his weekends in cover bands.

[9] By 1973, the band had a six-song demo tape ready for mailing, and Scholz and his wife Cindy sent copies to every record company they could find.

[9][12] The tape that received the most attention contained embryonic renditions of future songs that would appear on Boston's debut album.

"[9] By 1975, Tom Scholz was finished with the club scene, concentrating exclusively on the demo tapes he recorded at home in his basement.

[9][13] He called Paul Ahern, an independent record promoter in California, with whom he held a gentleman's agreement that if either heard anything interesting, they would inform the other.

Epic contacted Scholz and offered a contract that first required the group to perform in a showcase for CBS representatives, as the label suspected that the "band" was, in reality, a "mad genius at work in a basement.

To complete the lineup, Scholz called Goudreau and two other performers who had recorded on the early demos, bass player Fran Sheehan and drummer Dave Currier.

Currier quit before he knew the band passed the audition, and Scholz recruited drummer Sib Hashian in his place.

[13] Boylan's duty was to "run interference for the label and keep them happy", and he made a crucial suggestion: that the band change their name to Boston.

Boston was recorded primarily at Scholz's Foxglove Studios in Watertown in "an elaborate end run around the CBS brain trust.

[8][9][14] That spring, Boylan returned to Watertown to hear the tracks on which Scholz had recut drums and other percussion and keyboard parts.

[13] He then hired a remote truck from Providence, Rhode Island to come to Watertown, where it ran a snake through the basement window of Scholz's home to transfer his tracks to a 3M-79 2-inch 24-track deck.

[10] Scholz wrote or co-wrote every song on the first album (except for "Let Me Take You Home Tonight," written by Delp), played virtually all of the instruments, and recorded and engineered all the tracks.

[8] The "Boston sound" combines "big, giant melodic hooks" with "massively heavy, classically-inspired guitar parts.

[14] Another signature element of the "Boston sound" in terms of production involves the balance between acoustic and electric guitars.

[14] "Walk Away Renée" by The Left Banke was popular at the time, and it caused Scholz to pine miserably over the girl.

[9] To create the special effect of a bent note on the track's organ solo, Scholz slowed down one of the recording reels with his finger.

The trademark sci-fi theme of the record cover was Scholz's concept: "The idea was escape; I thought of a 'spaceship guitar.'

"[8] The original spaceship was designed in 1976 by Paula Scher and illustrated by Roger Huyssen with lettering by Gerard Huerta for Epic Records.

[10] Had the record failed, Scholz, then 29, planned to abandon his ambition of making a living performing music; he still worked at Polaroid after it was released[14] and doubted its commercial success until it sold 200,000 copies.

[9] For massive popularity, Boston was considered to rival established stars such as Peter Frampton, Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Wonder.

"[9] Boston eventually began headlining shows in 1977 and sold out four Southern California concert halls within one week.

On their swing back to the Northeast, they sold out two nights in the Philadelphia Spectrum—and in their New York City debut, three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden.

[9] "I sold out arenas with this group in four cities from Lincoln, Nebraska to Louisville, Kentucky," said concert promoter Bob Bagaris to Billboard.