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Requiem for a Record Store
All Things Must Pass, a documentary about the rise and fall of Tower Records, is worth a look. It’s one of those interesting stories that are relevant to me because it’s ephemeral and generational. It’s like watching a doc about free weekly newspapers thick with ads, repertory movie theaters that showed old films, or even as recent as video rental stores; all things that were big in “our” time — baby boomer’s time — and have since faded. But whatever age you are, you may find it of interest.
I’d wondered how they managed to get interviews with people like Bruce Springsteen and David Geffen until I found out the director was Tom Hanks’ son Colin. As Colin’s dad nostalgically depicted in That Thing You Do, back when I was a kid, records were sold in places like TV and radio stores, department stores, and five-and-dimes (a pretty anachronistic phrase now).
A few record stores existed mostly for the classical and jazz fans (I can’t really call them “crowds”) and were smallish hobby and collector stores. We boomers have lived through the whole era of the giant record superstore, rock-driven places like Sam Goody in New York and Tower Records, which started in 1960 in Sacramento and made its first giant leap to San Francisco in 1967. Its early claim to fame was completeness; every record, every genre. That’s what the owners liked to see as the Tower difference, its contribution — a deep catalog, which was as much a commitment to being willing to move, inventory, and stock a lot of things as it was to fuzzier concepts that sound good in today’s interviews, like musical diversity.
Opening a Los Angeles store on Sunset Boulevard in late 1970 gave the Tower chain its real fame, due to its proximity to the live performance clubs and the area where many traveling musicians rented homes while recording in Hollywood. If it hadn’t been for that location, it’s hard to say if Tower Records would have been much more memorable than, say, Pacific Stereo or the Federated Group, both of them big California record-selling businesses with few pretenses of changing pop culture history.
T here are great stock shots of the Sunset Strip in the psychedelic Whiskey-a-Go-Go years, plus plenty of rare bits like a John Lennon radio promo for the store, and 16mm footage of Elton John briskly, expertly roaming every aisle. Anything he liked, he bought three copies of for his three homes. Former store employees said admiringly that he was one star who knew his stuff; if one rack of early jazz had been moved since his last visit, he asked about it.
When Tower opened in San Francisco in 1967, the founder, Russ Solomon, was a 42-year-old man in a suit and tie, serious in expression, balding on top. Five years later, he was bearded, wearing tie-dyed shirts, still balding on top but now with long graying hair on the sides. A side note: as far back as Lenny (1975), I’ve been struck by how much younger many already mature men tried to make themselves look in the late ’60s. Despite Russ’s (and to some degree the filmmaker’s) attempt to pose himself as a Gandalf or an Obi Wan of a musical revolution, he really wasn’t. He was a small businessman at the right time and place to become a bigger one, who smartly made use of the opportunities granted by a younger generation who liked music and was willing and able to spend.
Russ talks about the generations of people who started as clerks and rose through the record-selling ranks, as if he was Roger Corman, the roguish godfather of a thousand careers. But the evidence on film is mixed; some people, usually stars, praise the attentiveness of the knowledgeable staff, while less-elevated personages (i.e., normal human beings) complain that to them, the staff was too often rude, conceited, lazy, stoned, or all of the above.
Like the Tiffany Theater down the street, the original home of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the record store had loose policies, no dress code, and no problems about being high on the job, as long as you could still do the job. One difference is, un-like the Tiffany down the Strip, you weren’t allowed to get high on Tower premises, though I’d bet plenty found basement and loading-dock spots to do so. From the mid-’70s on, cocaine had a bigger, more menacing presence, which the movie makes light of as just one of those historical things. But this also begins decades when the earlier thriftiness of Tower management gave way to wasted money and grandiose expansion.
One top executive in particular is casually said to have hired women strictly on looks, and for closed-door sex. This is the kind of thing that is regrettably not confined to Tower, or to the 1970s, but was especially acute in the cultural/historical border between the increase in public exploitation of sex, and the protections offered to women by changing laws. The documentary shrewdly, or perhaps a bit cynically, introduces the sexism part of the story by having it told by a sympathetic woman, sort of defusing it as supposedly being a funny thing about the old days, or at worse, well, “you know what men are like.”
This film was released in 2015; if it had been after the #metoo explosions of 2017, I doubt it would have been so (relatively) cavalier. As it is, the level of boss-employee hanky-panky described here would, unfortunately, have gotten little more than sympathetic laughs at a festival or a PBS screening, ten, 20, or 30 years ago.
In the ’80s and ’90s, mass merchandisers re-entered the record-selling arena; companies like Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, and Target, were willing to take losses to get people into their stores to buy other things. Their vaster marketing power, meaning larger orders, got them cheaper wholesale prices than Tower. The bigger retailers said in their own defense that they were selling only a mere fraction of Tower’s much-vaunted wide selection, but they knew as well as anyone that Tower counted on selling the mass hits just as much as everyone else to keep up the profit margins that allowed them to boast of stocking the complete Muddy Waters discography.
If you ask, finally, “What killed Tower Records,” “the internet” is a reasonable two-word response. But it’s a little more involved than that.
Sometimes, business isn’t as stupid as people like to assume. Well before the web was used to distribute digital audio, the record chain was innovative enough to use a new medium, a website, to sell records. This was a time when internet commerce was still new, and like other, similar sites, it didn’t have massive success at first. Tower knew it could be a force for selling and someday even home delivery, but they had no way of guessing that music would end up being exchanged for free. It never occurred to them, because despite decades of (by then) nearly everyone having an audio tape recorder, home re-recording of music, though not exactly welcome, or technically legal, had never caused much of a dent in revenue. Tape copies had to be done in real time (real slow time), and second- or third-generation copies already sounded terrible.
What made the MP3 files so stealable and exchangeable was the simple fact of being digital. Making copies that were nearly as good as studio originals, something the record industry chose to do. It wasn’t the only way they screwed up strategically. Once the web was used for outright theft, the record companies would spend years and millions of dollars in legal expenses in a futile attempt to try to shut it all down.
At the same time this digital door to piracy opened, millions of younger record buyers were being squeezed out by the industry’s unwillingness or inability to come up with a successor to 45 rpm vinyl singles. There was some (very) limited success with cassette singles. CD singles were tried but failed in the marketplace. That suited the record companies and artists just fine, because they’d long wanted to funnel everyone into buying albums, which by the late ’90s cost $18; say, $24 now. Besides the money, this had creative elements, ego, and pretention going for them; over decades, albums had become the symphony, the novel, the feature-film medium of rock. But younger people, deprived of the cheap way we ’60s kids had of entering their record-buying age, were ready for Napster, which did what the industry didn’t think possible: give away everything they owned for free. So, it was either $18 or free. A lot of people took “free.”
David Geffen admits the industry made a huge mistake by not simply cutting the prices of records, and the semi-proof was the success of the standardized 99-cent download at the Apple online store. I resist the hero-izing of Steve Jobs when it’s excessive, but I have to admit that his fame, and ruthless reputation, gave him the clout to bluff the record companies, who all felt that their own individual artists deserved a uniquely better deal.
As late as 1999, Tower was still a billion-dollar-a-year company with global ambitions. By 2004, it was bankrupt. All in all, Tower Records had quite a 44-year ride.
All Things Must Pass is available through several streaming services, though I saw it through the miracle of free TV on Pluto.com, a useful and interesting cable substitute.
Published in General
Tower Records let you return albums for exchange for awhile but discontinued the practice, I was told, because they were not allowed to sell used records as new.
After several weeks of hearing the song that inspired you to purchase the LP in the first place (as well as the follow-up song which was uninspired and disappeared mercifully fast) and becoming well sick of it, I can only imagine the muted joy with which the snail-mailed music was greeted.
There is simply no comparison to listen…click…dl…ownership.
iirc, Tower moved across the street from there and I shopped there in the ’00s(?)
Or four. 16 2/3 was also a thing, mostly for spoken language records.
Ours didn’t have that one.
Yep TBA. I don’t know exactly when Tower moved across the street, but I recall shopping at that new location in 80’s and maybe earlier.
Peter Goldmark, CBS’s maverick inventor, created Hiway Hi-Fi, a record player for cars, about ten years before cartridge and cassette tape players were made for them. The records were specially formatted, and ran at 16 2/3.
It worked pretty well in a heavy Chrysler on smooth roads. But in a lighter Plymouth, not so good.
Odd fact, confirmable by anyone with an old vinyl record: For more than a decade, the companies charged more for a stereo record than a mono (usually $1 more). But to avoid the cost of printing two separate labels for the album jacket, every one had stereo and mono printed at opposite ends, top and bottom. They were offset when they were glued to the cardboard so only the proper one showed.
Lots of rock groups have learned how to be a recording or sound engineer. I have a few “Making Of-” DVDs about famous albums. In many cases, other famous musicians or the band members themselves demonstrate what they did with the mixers and all that other stuff in the booth. Find someone to teach you and maybe you can rent the sound stage without paying for the added help . . .
No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .
I loved that Tower Records store on Sunset. It was the only place I bought records ( and tapes and CD’s) for decades.
Stephen King was one of the first to come aboard self publishing once it was feasible. He had been given a tour at one point, of his publisher’s Manhattan offices. At that point in time, King was responsible for 17% of the overall profit of that major publishing firm. Yet the VP’s he was introduced to did not know who King was.
And so he realized that he had given up major revenue for himself for nothing. Self publish and you can be looking at 40% profits, while the traditional publishing firm gives you six percent. (Plus those firms are notorious for fudging the accounts of their writers.)
Here’s my $.02. The new class D amplifiers make it pretty economical to get the benefit of uncompressed music. I never listen to compressed music when I’m at home.
I’ve heard one demonstration of vinyl in a big warehouse with gigantic speakers. It was mind blowing, but it’s a big hassle in my opinion.
I notice they sell all kinds of inexpensive tube amps on Amazon. I bet that would be pretty cool for some situations.
Your Stephen King story reminds me of something similar. (Yes, I know; I’m hijacking my own post.) Sean Connery was reasonably content with his contracts until he found out in 1968 that CBS offered $20 million for broadcast rights to the first five James Bond films and been turned down.
So, needless to say, when United Artists was desperate to get him back after George Lazenby didn’t work out, he gleefully extorted a king’s ransom out of them for Diamonds Are Forever.
Try a medium priced Tube Amp from http://www.tubes4hifi.com/home.html. I just completed a tubes4hifi kit, and it sounds very very good. If you truly want something cheap but good, I would try https://www.parts-express.com/dayton-audio-dta-1-class-d-ac-dc-battery-powered-mini-amplifier-15-wpc–300-380. I also have the Dayton DTA-1 Class D amp, and it works very very well for very little money.
I never was near a Tower, but I really enjoyed the local Sam’s Jam’s and Harmony House ( two different stores ). I have a few Tower commissioned Blue Note Compilation CDs I bought used on Amazon, and I enjoy them. If I get back to Chicago, I am going to http://bluesandjazzmart.com, the successor to Jazz Record Mart which unfortunately was sold/closed. Jazz Record Mart was a glorious dump, which I really enjoyed. Headstone Friends in Terre Haute, Indiana was very cool in the 80’s, and still exists.
I still buy used CDs on Amazon, but I miss the used record scene.
Pretty much. I was a recording engineer, about 40 years ago. The job by then was considered creative; bands sought out the best engineers, much like directors asking for favored cinematographers. There are really two big parts of engineering: First, the original recording session must be recorded flawlessly, with expert mike selection and placement, and an experienced eye on riding gain (too low, you get tape hiss; too high and you risk cutting out and distortion that can’t be corrected later).
Second, the creative part, mixing. This could be done again and again, searching for a “sound”, and usually was. The musicians were in charge, and many of them were experienced enough to do it expertly, but not all, and newer ones especially were often grateful for the help of a creative engineer.
That’s changed. Nowadays, the professional status of the recording engineer has settled back to approximately what it was in the Fifties, a respected but minor player. Digital recording eliminates the problem of hiss and “fast” electronics reduces the problem of clipping at the high end, so most musicians can record their own basic tracks. Accompanying tracks can be done remotely, via the internet. Want a steel pedal guitar, or a skilled Guatemalan flutist? They don’t even have to leave home. And mixing can be done at home, though smart musicians will bring in someone if that someone can do it better than they can.
One of the forgotten delights of boardwalks, fairgrounds and amusement parks was the “Record Your Own Voice” booths, which recorded you onto a thin acetate record (78 rpm, IIRC). Until the ’60s, not many people had tape recorders, so this was hot stuff, a tech “miracle” you could bring home from Rockaway or Jones Beach.
There is some wealthy guy in New York City that has a $1 million home stereo. Artists go there just to hear themselves. It gets pretty emotional for some.
There used to be a cliche in recording: “Think of how it’s going to sound in Clive’s office”. Clive, of course, was Clive Davis.
Sometime in the mid-1990s RCA decided to release some of it “Living Stereo” recordings on CD. I bought a couple of Reiner/CSO recordings. I think they were engineered by Lewis Layton, though I could be mistaken. According to what I read, it was normal to record with only three microphones in the hall. For some recordings, Rumor Control said that two directional microphones were pointed toward the back of the hall and their outputs were mixed in at very low level just to allow the overall recording to capture some of the hall sound. When I listened to the recordings on a very good system, it sounded like sitting tenth row, center seat. It should sound that way. Since it was Reiner and the CSO, the performances were terrific.
I loaned the CD to someone who claimed to be a music lover. His only comment was, “Yeah, you can hear some tape hiss there.” Pearls before swine, I guess.
This sounds wonderful.
I love the concept of binaural recording but it never goes anywhere. I think there’s a really cool demo on YouTube.
Some random and sometimes fond memories of Tower:
The first time I remember going to a Tower was to Tower Books at El Camino and Watt Avenue in Sacramento around 1962. The James Bond books had broken big and there were stacks of them on display. As a seven or eight year old, the Signet cover for Goldfinger made an impression.
I remember being in the Campbell, CA store one afternoon when the staff put “The Carl Stalling Project” on the speakers. Stalling was the composer/conductor of the great Warner Bros cartoons. Within 5 minutes everyone in the store was smiling, remembering their own childhoods.
They did a great job educating the customer. I would spend many afternoons going through their dog eared classical reference books looking for the best recording of something I had heard on the radio.
One of the great things about Tower was that they were open till midnight. When there were few places to go, Tower was lit up and waiting for you. I miss them.
The true effect of binaural recording is heard only through headphones. Through speakers, it sounds like monaural to me. the RCA recordings I mentioned were stereo, but did not use a lot of multi-track, spot microphones, and artificial reverb.
No less a personage than The Founder, @roblong, said he used some of his first Hollywood paycheck to buy CDs at Tower.
Jeez. I think I spent my first Hollywood paycheck at Tom Edison’s lab, buying recorded cylinders.
I know. I just don’t get why some really loaded musicians don’t do this a little bit. It would make portable music a lot cooler.
When we recorded two of the Ricochet Silent Radio scripts, I was reminded of the mixing differences between stereo and mono. Suppose @arahant is speaking while he’s supposedly walking through the middle of a factory. In stereo, you can use “pan pots” (panoramic potentiometers) to toss the machinery noises to the far extremes, left and right, each with (let’s say) 25% of the volume, and Arahant’s voice, with 50% of the total volume, right in the middle. It sounds great. But listen to that segment in mono, and all you have is a muddle–he’s no louder than the machines, so you can barely make out what he’s saying.
So if you’re going for an old time AM radio sound, in mono there’s no panning. You have to reduce the volume of the machines. The difference is subtle but real.
John Phillip Sousa hated those. He said that “canned music” would be the death of musicianship in the United States.
Nailed it.
Few of the musicians I recorded had much money yet, but most of them were loaded, one way or another.