The godfather of 30-second schlock, though, was Ernest Boch Sr. Many a tacky ad campaign has wormed its way into New England’s collective psyche. “I want to stay here! I don’t want to go with a bunch of strangers.” Couldn’t he have arranged this without erecting a morbid shrine to himself? “Yeah, I suppose,” he answers, after a vanishingly brief moment of contemplation. “When you die, where are you gonna go? You gonna go to some cemetery?” he asks, disturbed. On the contrary, he insists, the decision was purely practical. I ask Boch if building a tomb within view of his bedroom hints at an existential reckoning. When it comes to understanding the heir to the Automile, it may not be possible to distinguish his man-child eccentricities from his idiosyncratic attempts to leave behind something lasting and good. He resists articulating a coherent vision for the future of Boston’s arts, though he trolls me by insisting to nearly everyone we meet that I’m “doing a story on the arts in Boston.” He is reticent when discussing his charitable work, but more than happy to chat about, I don’t know, having sex on a rubber raft with a geisha. That said, Boch is comically uninterested in the narrative I’ve mapped out for him. With the city facing an acute crisis in arts funding, would our raffish new-money scion step unto the breach? Arrangements were made for me to stay in the guesthouse on Boch’s property for a 48-hour period, all the better to witness the mogul’s unique brand of largesse. The impetus for this story, at least in theory, was to sketch the man as he contemplated his final chapter, turning away from profit and toward philanthropy. Most intriguingly, the rock-music obsessive has become a preeminent local patron of the performing arts, agreeing last year to underwrite the organization that runs the Shubert and Wang theaters, which are now collectively known as the Boch Center.
He traveled to Uganda to film a National Geographic reality show in which he built up an impoverished village.
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He hosted Donald Trump at the manse for an elaborate campaign bash, and became Trump’s off-kilter cable TV surrogate long before anyone took the candidate seriously. Two years ago, Boch sold off the last of the retail car dealerships that made Boch a household name and began turning to grander projects.
is sort of ageless, but in the way that we refer to people who are closer to the mausoleum than they’d like. Factor in the shoulder-length hair, and he looks like an unholy mash-up of Sammy Hagar and Howard Stern. At the same time, he’s got the weather-beaten mien of a graying playboy.
He takes delight in his many shiny toys, and has a charming tendency of bugging his eyes and squealing “whaaaaaa?!” when something astonishes him, which is often. He’s diabetic, so he eats frequently, but stays slim with a high-protein, low-carb regimen. Tall and lanky, he cuts a youthful figure. “I love Neil Young.” Then he leads me downstairs and shows off a drainage system for corpse fluid.īoch is 59 years old. There’s something ahead worth looking for.Īnd the living soul inside will carry on.Īfter a minute of silent reverie, Boch shuts off the song. There is room down there for Boch and up to seven of his loved ones, though he concedes he’ll “probably end up alone.” Either way, visitors will be invited to honor his memory by listening, at the touch of a button, to a little-known Neil Young song called “Light a Candle.” Boch cues up his iPhone and we bow our heads to listen. He envisions hosting dinners and fundraisers here, presumably before he dies. Carved in sober granite, the tomb is “gonna have heating, music, and a bathroom,” he says. He leads me away from the main house, past a chainlink fence, and into a construction site. There is one feature of the estate, however, that defies cliché: a mausoleum, half-built and presently unoccupied. Other predictable billionaire accessories-private jet, custom stretch limo-live nearby, and a bespoke Batmobile is on the way. It’s disgusting!” Hence Boch’s Xanadu, a 30,000-square-foot compound that houses rare sports cars, collector’s-item guitars, and one lone resident. “Here, they build houses that are almost disposable. “Back in Europe, they used to build houses that would last generations,” he explains, bungeeing around his property in black athleisure wear on a late-summer afternoon. So, to expand his holdings, he spent 20 years buying up and tearing down the homes of his 17 most immediate neighbors. bought a mansion on a one-acre plot in his hometown of Norwood. Ernie Boch lets loose inside his tricked-out guitar room.
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