Foreplay/Long Time

"Foreplay” / “Long Time” is an astonishing piece of work, certainly one of Boston’s greatest accomplishments. Many, including musicologist Rick Beato, consider it Boston’s very best, surpassing even “More Than a Feeling”.4

It is unique in the Boston canon in several ways: it’s two separate songs stitched together, but in such a way that it is always played on the radio as one long song;5 taken as one, it’s the only song on which the entire original band plays; “Long Time” is the only song that does not include Scholz playing an electric guitar (Goudreau does everything); and it is Boston’s only progressive work.

“Long Time” was the second single from the debut album, and charted at #22; a stand-alone edit of “Foreplay” was used as the B-side of the third single (“Peace of Mind”).

Writing

“Foreplay” is the first song Scholz ever wrote. The earliest version was composed in 1969, while he was still a student at MIT. The first demo was cut two years later, with Jim Masdea on drums, in Masdea’s basement studio.

Further demos were done, and when the song was first recorded for the six-song demo packet Scholz assembled in 1974-75, he did all the “Long Time” vocals himself.

Recording

Hashian was providing the drums for all but one track on the album; Delp was handling all the vocals, and Scholz was doing all the guitars and bass work himself. Barry Goudreau and Fran Sheehan were virtual non-entities, playing only on the album-closing Delp track, “Let Me Take You Home Tonight”.

So Scholz brought them in on “Foreplay/Long Time”, handing over the frenetic bass part to Sheehan on “Foreplay” and surrendering the electric guitar to Goudreau on “Long Time”. Scholz did provide the spacey sound effects underlying the whole-note organ chord progression that closes out “Foreplay”, rendering them on guitar, but the heavy rhythm guitar chords on “Foreplay” are Goudreau; after that, Scholz played only the acoustic guitar part on “Long Time” (and, of course, the organ part, which is considerably less busy).

Scholz recorded those organ parts of “Foreplay” and “Long Time” on a Hammond M3 in his basement studio.

Breakdown

The composite track opens with a lone organ line, a pattern of triplets played at a blazing tempo of 180. Scholz chose to put the song in the unlikely key of B♭m, a key with five flats, making it challenging all around:

The pattern, worthy of Rick Wakeman, alternates a D♭-F-D♭ triplet with E♭-A♭-C, doing four passes before a left-hand chromatic walk-down from B♭ begins, journeying six measures to the low B♭ at the octave. Hashian and Goudreau meet him there (0:11), inserting a jolting staccato B♭m power chord:

Scholz has now descended an octave, and continues the original triplet pattern for another eight reps before introducing the A-theme – a complex triplet pattern that essentially moves through four chords per measure, breaking each chord apart, as a walking (or, more precisely, sprinting) left-hand line adds context:

Scholz plays the theme once through as Hashian taps out a brisk hi-hat pattern, and is joined by Sheehan’s bass doubling his left-hand organ notes as Hashian goes to his splash cymbal. Then a boisterous, spacey guitar effect builds as the third pass begins (0:30), Scholz jumping up an octave as Goudreau roars into the song, blasting out a power chord over every one of Sheehan’s notes – 13 chords in four seconds – as Hashian blasts out a machine-gun snare, hitting two out of every three triplet beats. They do it all a second time, then vary it on a third pass, returning to B♭m I rather ending on the V F, as they did above.

Call that the A section. At 0:41, Scholz introduces a B section, a pattern of dotted half-note and quarter-note chords that pause the frenetic pace of his triplets: B♭m-F-D♭m-F, repeating, then dissolving into triplets of the same chords. Goudreau, Hashian and Sheehan then match Scholz’s triplets with quarter-note pulses again until the phrase crescendos on a hovering V and Scholz does his descending run again.

Now a second pass of the A theme and B section occurs, this time with the addition of a clavinet line doubling Scholz’s left-hand organ notes. At the end of this second pass, on that hovering V, everyone crashes into the parallel major B♭, and Hashian trash-cans the rhythm down to a glorious halt as a new section is introduced.

This one is the opposite of what came before: big, fat, bird’s-eyed whole-note measures filling the air, complex Scholz chords over Goudreau’s roaring distorted 5ths, with ornamental spacey guitar effects creating an otherworldly wash as they drift out of one measure and into the next:

C – Fm/C - E♭/C - G/C - Csus4 - C

This section is a bombastic, raucous, unruly ocean of noise, a sonic supernova, leveraging organ chords with a Phantom-of-the-Opera feel – tension-building, suspense-heightening, edge-of-the-seat anticipation chords. When they finally resolve, with a Csus4 – C, there’s an overwhelming sense of triumph.

Then comes yet another complete change-up: on that huge trash-canned C chord, everything suddenly drops away, leaving a lone high C sighing out of the Hammond M3. That note lingers, as Scholz’s space guitar returns, taking the listener deep into interstellar space, bathing that C in sonic starlight.

And as the high C persists, a short progression of bird’s-eyed whole-note chords follow underneath it:

Cm7 – F - E♭ - D♭ - B♭m - C

When the progression finally resolves to a C major chord, “Foreplay” is in coda. The chord persists, and beneath it we hear, faintly but building, a kick drum counting down with a staccato C on the bass – 16 heartbeats, the final two of which are accompanied by sharp snare strikes by Hashian...

...all to say, “Ladies and gentleman! Barry Goudreau!”

Now “Long Time” begins at 2:31, transitioning the composite song to F-major (the C chord was a fake-out, a V setting up a new I). Goudreau soars into the song’s first of three leads, starting on F-above-high-C, then gives us eight measures of joyful, exuberant melody, one of Boston’s greatest guitar events.

It is, in fact, not only his true introduction to the world, but his greatest Boston moment; Scholz doles out instrumental work sparingly on the first two albums (the only ones that Goudreau appears on). But in this moment, Goudreau just glows, and as his final note fades, Delp takes up the first verse:

It’s been such a long time

I think I should be going, yeah

And time doesn’t wait for me,

It keeps on rollin’

“Long Time” is written around the theme of moving on, taking next steps in life. Delp is expressing that such a moment has come, and as he is leaving, there is someone on his mind.

The first verse displays the classical dynamics that Scholz spends the entire album establishing: present a theme, crank it up, drop back, quiet down, crank it up again. He also persists in parading his almost-adolescent emotional naïveté, a relentless hopefulness and optimism that lifts his most somber and depressing lyrical moments into major-key sunshine (doesn’t “More Than a Feeling” make you feel great every time you hear it, despite its sad, moody theme?).

The dynamic is a sudden casual calm in the backing tracks as Delp starts singing, a loping bass pulse – just a repetitive F – as Scholz knocks out organ chords – F, F, E♭-E♭, B♭sus4-B♭sus4, B♭ - in a repeating two-measure block. For the first half of Delp’s verse, that and Hashian’s simple four-on-the-floor drums are all the backing we hear.

Then we get to

Sail on, on a distant highway, yeah

I’ve got to keep on chasin’ a dream

I’ve gotta be on my way

Wish there was something I could say

...preceded by two explosions at 3:01, from Goudreau’s hard-distorted rhythm guitar and Hashian’s cymbals, and a power-chord F on the downbeat of “Sail on”, which Goudreau lets linger into feedback. Those blasts repeat on the next line, and the verse goes to V as it peaks with “I’ve gotta be on my way”, where Delp is joined by his choir-of-self – both harmonies higher than his melody once again. How high? His three vocal parts stretch A-above-middle-C to high C to F-above-high-C. The Andrews Sisters never went that high.6

The song has no chorus, just verses of 18 bars, and a refrain that comes up after the first verse ends.

At 3:23, everything once again drops away, leaving only Scholz himself on an acoustic guitar, knocking out a rhythmically-varied version of the verse chord progression – F-F, E♭-E♭, E♭-B♭, B♭ – as hand-claps commence. And once again, there is no vocal as this new section of the song commences: as with “More Than a Feeling”, Scholz just presents the new progression twice, before Delp returns with his harmonies:

Well, I’m takin’ my time, I’m just movin’ along

You’ll forget about me after I’ve been gone,

And I take what I find, I don’t want no more

It’s just outside of your front door...

There are no other instruments at work in this near-a capella refrain until it ends on a strummed Dm, then ramping back up through two measures of G and two measures of B♭ as Delp howls “It’s been such a long time, it’s been such a long time!”, on the way back to the next verse.

Goudreau’s second lead, at 3:48, connects to the verse with eight short measures that are more emotive than melodic, laying down a signature of Not Scholz that is unmistakable: the notes he lays down here would not double-track well, and the pitch-perfect, no-not-blurred feel of a Scholz lead is absent. Goudreau has no problem with bending notes all over the place, and he trills away in the upper register in the second half of the lead, having nothing in common with Scholz but unconfined ebullience.

Another verse and refrain, ending with those two measures of G and two measures of B♭, and Goudreau steps up a third time at 5:24, this next lead break being the main one. It lasts almost a full minute, and it is one of Boston’s all-time greats. Goudreau holds nothing back (even throwing down a scrape at 5:31):

“At the 5:24 point of ‘Foreplay/Long Time’,” wrote Tim Sommer of www.observer.com, “there’s an instrumental bridge (many of Boston’s bridges are purely instrumental) that is such a precise mixture of geek-satisfying prog soloing, absolutely genius simple Who/Move chording, and Abba/Floyd layered production that, heck, I could have written this whole damn article on just those 56 seconds.”

It’s pure magic.

It peaks with two roaring power chords – four measures of power chord A♭, followed by four measures of C – as Goudreau’s peak note lingers and begins feeding back and a second scrape takes us into the final verse, at 6:20.

After the second half of the verse, where Delp sings

There’s a long road

I’ve gotta stay in time with, yeah

I’ve got to keep on chasin’ that dream

Though I may never find it

I’m always just behind it...

...and the drop-off where the acoustic guitar had occurred before is now filled with a roaring Goudreau rhythm guitar at 6:58, and the entire band surges back in for the outro, which is Delp’s chorus repeating “Takin’ my time, ooo-ooo,” as the song fades over Goudreau’s jubilant riffing...

Song structure (“Foreplay”)

Intro

A section

Bridge

A section

Bridge

B section

C section

(lead-in)

Song structure (“Long Time”)

Intro/Lead [A]

Verse [A]

Bridge

Refrain [B]

Lead 2

Verse [A]

Bridge

Refrain [B]

Lead 3

Verse [A]

Bridge

Outro [A]

Boston Progressive

We can safely call both “Foreplay” and Goudreau’s centerpiece lead in “Long Time” progressive rock - the kind of music played by Yes, Rush, ELP, and that crowd.

The former demonstrates virtuosity, a core component of prog. While not every progressive rock band is composed entirely of virtuoso members (Rush springs to mind), every progressive rock band has at least one. Scholz, in his Hammond work here, stands alongside the best of Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson in his execution.

Prog rock also includes variations on themes, an element of classical sonata form (Yes’s “Close to the Edge” is a showcase of variation). Scholz varies the central theme of “Foreplay” as he recapitulates it, and though the variation is slight and brief, we can hardly expect more in a song that lasts barely two minutes. Rhythmic experimentation is another prog element; Hashian’s use of the snare in the song’s transitional phrases is something we might hear from Neil Peart.

Goudreau’s third “Long Time” lead is likewise innovative in its dead-stop, double-stutter introduction of its wildly contorting opening note, springboarding into the steady build of a sonic wash, a mash-up of techniques that explode the palette of his tone. His range runs the entire fretboard, and his stellar minute is as arhythmic as the backing tracks are Swiss-clock steady.

Boston would never get more progressive.

"Foreplay/Long Time” Live

Scholz played organ on both songs in the studio and on the stage, leaving the guitar chores to Goudreau (and later Gary Pihl). This presented a problem, because the essence of those transitional phrases between the triplet explosions of “Foreplay” and the build-up to “Long Time” is in that spacey guitar work, which only Scholz could play.

Live, then, Delp would join Scholz at the Hammond when he hit the B♭-major chord at the end of the triplets section, replacing Scholz’s fingers with his own to keep the chord going, while Scholz would slide off the organ bench and grab the Les Paul a roadie would have standing by. He would then provide power chords, along with Goudreau, as Delp played through the first of the organ chord progressions.

When the second set of organ chord progressions (the quiet ones) began, Schulz would play the spacey guitar effect sounds, as on the album, until Delp got to the C-major chord – at which point, while Hashian and Sheehan were doing their heartbeat pulse, Schulz would surrender the Les Paul and replace Delp in the same way Delp had replaced him, freeing the singer up to get back out front as Goudreau ripped into the intro lead.

What Tom said

“I wrote it on an electric piano in my fourth-floor apartment. I had had enough of dynamics and so forth to understand how sound can transfer through a wood floor. The three nurses that lived below us were extremely patient with me because I usually wrote between 12:00 and 2:00 in the morning and every time I pounded on those keys they felt it through the ceiling - and never complained. I think they felt sorry for me because I had to go to MIT.”

What the world said

Rolling Stone called “Foreplay/Long Time” “...a perfect marriage of Led Zeppelin and Yes that plays music chairs with electric and acoustic sounds.”

The Scrapes

5:31

6:19

Cover versions

Phish performed this at some of their concerts in the '90s.

Rascal Flatts included a cover on his album Rascal Flatts LIVE.

Factoids

In 1976, Epic released an alternate version called “Foreplay/Fiveplay/Long Time” on a promotional album, It’s a Knockout. That version is slightly longer, and contains some different lyrics.

The running time is 7:47 (2:25 for “Foreplay”).