"Friends said it was Delp's constant need to help and please people that may have driven him to despair.
Teen suicide band break up series#
"I take complete and sole responsibility for my present situation."Īfter his suicide, the Herald's gossip column published a series of articles about the story sourced to friends and insiders. Strangely, Delp had been caught after installing a camera in the bedroom of his new wife's younger sister at the time, the guilt of which, he explained in one of his suicide notes, was too much to live with. Scholz and Delp continued to tour over the years off and on with a rotating cast of of some 20 musicians.Īlthough Micki and Delp divorced in 1996 due to the latter's mental health issues, she said, they remained close up until the time he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. As Delp's ex-wife contended at the time, it was that tension of being caught between the two opposing factions of the band that exacerbated Delp's mental crises. It's a somewhat heartening ending to what has been a sordid and saddening saga for the beloved band, who have sold over 31 million albums since their formation in 1975 and are known for hits like "More Than a Feeling." For years, the band has engaged in a series of bitter feuds, based largely around fights between Scholz and the three other founding members of the band, Barry Goudreau, Fran Sheehan, and Sib Hashian. "Because the statements even arguably attributing responsibility for Brad's suicide to Scholz were statements of opinion and not verifiable fact, and therefore could not form the basis of a claim of defamation, we conclude that summary judgment properly was entered for the Herald by the second motion judge, and that the first motion judge correctly allowed Micki's motion for summary judgment." In his filings in 2010, Scholz contended that, in writing about the suicide of his longtime bandmate, singer Brad Delp in 2007, the paper, and Delp's ex-wife Micki, had falsely and maliciously placed the blame on him in a series of interviews with the paper's gossip column "The Inside Track." (A second case brought against Micki was consolidated with the one against the Herald.) But the unanimous decision today found that Scholz "could not establish a required element of his libel claim, i.e., that the articles contained any false statements of fact." The court ruled: "This is a huge victory not only for the Herald, its publisher, its editors, and its journalists, but one for journalists across the country," the Herald's attorney Jeff Robbins said. It's a decision that brings a lengthy series of appeals to an end, and it could also have implications for similar cases brought against the media. The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled against Tom Scholz, guitarist of the band Boston, in a libel suit he brought against the Boston Herald, saying the musician must also compensate the tabloid for $132,000 in expenses.