Boston is all about ‘Life, Love & Hope’

Boston’s Tom Scholz — the man who has written nearly all of the group’s songs and created the band’s signature sound — has often said he regretted allowing Columbia Records to release the second Boston album, “Don’t Look Back,” when it did.

He felt he was rushed into releasing the album before it was truly done and made a firm decision then.

“Basically, I decided after the second album that I just wasn’t going to get pushed into releasing something before I thought it was the best that I could do,” he said in a recent phone interview.

Scholz has made good on that promise ever since, and as a result, there have been a grand total of four Boston albums released since “Don’t Look Back” arrived in 1978.

The latest Boston album, “Life, Love & Hope,” has now arrived — a scant 11 years since the previous Boston release, “Corporate America.”

Scholz actually thought he was close to completing “Life, Love & Hope” in 2008, telling this interviewer at the time he felt he was one or two songs short of a finished album.

Then another five-plus years and two more Boston tours came and went before “Life, Love & Hope” finally arrived in December.

“I did record a few more songs than I anticipated, and actually made some fairly significant changes to some of the songs I had already done,” Scholz said, explaining part of the reason why the latest album arrived when it did. “That’s always the problem, of course. I never run out of ideas. I just run out of time to try them. The longer I live with it, the more I experiment, the longer it takes. It’s really a vicious cycle.”

One thing that separates Scholz from many artists is he almost always works alone, usually playing the parts himself or supervising every last detail of the music and vocals as they get completed.

That was the way he worked when he did the final batch of demos for Boston’s self-titled 1976 debut album.

“I had no expectations that it was going to have a massive audience,” Scholz said of the first album. “In fact, I was told after people heard the (earlier) demos that there was no chance this was going to be a big success because disco was the new incoming thing. So I was prepared for relative failure in a commercial sense. But I just wanted to do something that I liked and I was proud of.”

The rest, of course, is history. The “Boston” album became one of the most popular rock albums ever — its sales are now more than 17 million copies — and hits from the album like “More Than a Feeling,” “Long Time” and “Peace of Mind” still get regular airplay on classic rock.

The one time Scholz let others into the writing and recording process was for “Corporate America.” It was a mistake, he said, and something he wouldn’t do again.

So Scholz started the 11-year journey to finishing “Life, Love & Hope” by once again taking control of the songwriting and recording, meticulously crafting the eight new compositions on the album. He also redid three songs from “Corporate America” — “Someone” and “You Gave Up on Love” because he was unhappy with those versions and “Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love” because he wanted to give that song a second chance to reach a larger audience.

Not surprisingly, “Life, Love & Hope” sounds very much like a Boston album, too. Melodic rockers like “Heaven on Earth,” “Someday” and the title song fit right in alongside earlier hits like “More Than a Feeling.” Those songs are balanced by ballads like “Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love” and “If You Were in Love,” as well as a pretty instrumental, “Last Day of School.”

Scholz said the touring lineup for Boston this summer will be the same as the one from 2012. He will be joined by vocalists Tommy DeCarlo and David Victor, guitarist Gary Pihl, drummer Curly Smith and bassist Tracy Ferrie.

“The last tour (in 2012), I’d rate it as maybe the most enjoyable I’ve ever been on,” Scholz said. “It’s a combination of having the music work and having the set work for you and also the people that you get involved with. We just had a really excellent group last time, the crew, band, everybody. There were very few dry eyes at the last show of that trip.”