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.

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  1. Donwatt Inactive
    Donwatt
    @Donwatt

    By the way, a pretty odd double bill on the marquee, the WWII story, “The Train” paired with “How to Murder Your Wife.”  I don’t think the Tower Theater had multiple screens in the mid 60’s, so they may have been separate showings.

    The Train is still very watchable today, with great directing, acting, and cinematography.  There are some fabulous set piece shots all in an age pre-dating digital effects.  How to Murder is an artifact of the 60’s but still has the ability to amuse.

    • #61
  2. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Donwatt (View Comment):

    By the way, a pretty odd double bill on the marquee, the WWII story, “The Train” paired with “How to Murder Your Wife.” I don’t think the Tower Theater had multiple screens in the mid 60’s, so they may have been separate showings.

    The Train is still very watchable today, with great directing, acting, and cinematography. There are some fabulous set piece shots all in an age pre-dating digital effects. How to Murder is an artifact of the 60’s but still has the ability to amuse.

    Two of my favorite unintentionally funny marquees: 

    In Massachusetts somewhere, 1973–“Bambi” and “The Last Ten Days of Hitler”

    NYC, 1983–“Coming for Christmas! YENTL”. 

    • #62
  3. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    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. 

    Feature?

    • #63
  4. RightAngles Member
    RightAngles
    @RightAngles

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Two of my favorite unintentionally funny marquees:

    In Massachusetts somewhere, 1973–“Bambi” and “The Last Ten Days of Hitler”

    NYC, 1983–“Coming for Christmas! YENTL”.

    • #64
  5. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Gary, thanks for the trip down memory lane.

    I was in the LA area for college from 1985 to 1989.  I don’t recall going to a Tower Records, and images of the main store on the Sunset Strip don’t look familiar to me.  I seem to recall a Tower Records location with an actual tower, though not a very big one.

    I wonder if kids today even know what records are.  I grew up at the transition from vinyl to cassette.  The common practice was to record an album — or better yet, a unique mix — from vinyl onto cassette.  I had a little component stereo system in my room, as a teenager.  I don’t even remember all of the terminology.  There was a turntable, a cassette player, and something like a receiver or amp.

    I was a bit too young to have an 8-track.  I do recall a friend’s car with an 8-track player, which (if I recall correctly) had the unusual feature that you could not rewind, but could only fast-forward.  The 8-track was an endless loop system, so you could eventually get to a particular song by going forward.  It is also a bit strange that while I remember my friend’s car, I don’t remember which friend it was.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Gary.  I’m thinking of my dear departed dad, and the albums that he loved in the 70s — Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton John, Roberta Flack, and the Carpenters.  Pretty good stuff.

     

    • #65
  6. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Gary, thanks for the trip down memory lane.

    I was in the LA area for college from 1985 to 1989. I don’t recall going to a Tower Records, and images of the main store on the Sunset Strip don’t look familiar to me. I seem to recall a Tower Records location with an actual tower, though not a very big one.

    I wonder if kids today even know what records are. I grew up at the transition from vinyl to cassette. The common practice was to record an album — or better yet, a unique mix — from vinyl onto cassette. I had a little component stereo system in my room, as a teenager. I don’t even remember all of the terminology. There was a turntable, a cassette player, and something like a receiver or amp.

    I was a bit too young to have an 8-track. I do recall a friend’s car with an 8-track player, which (if I recall correctly) had the unusual feature that you could not rewind, but could only fast-forward. The 8-track was an endless loop system, so you could eventually get to a particular song by going forward. It is also a bit strange that while I remember my friend’s car, I don’t remember which friend it was.

    Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Gary. I’m thinking of my dear departed dad, and the albums that he loved in the 70s — Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver, Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton John, Roberta Flack, and the Carpenters. Pretty good stuff.

     

    Thanks for your comment, Jerry. My mom liked the same kind of stuff, mostly soft rock. Later in life she began listening to country, which is funny because the only South we’re from was the South Bronx. But she liked the sincerity and the sentiments. 

    Yep, 8 tracks could be run faster, but not backwards. The continuous play was a selling feature. I had a stereo with separate components in my dorm room, but I’m younger than you are and separates were still associated with being classy; unclassy by then were all-in-one phonographs, and oddly enough, record changers, which were the height of hi-fi fashion in the Fifties but fell out of favor. (The word hi-fi had also become obsolete by then, until Sony revived it to describe the quality of the audio on their finest Betamax VCRs.) 

     

    • #66
  7. aardo vozz Member
    aardo vozz
    @aardovozz

    Stad (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    In a second-hand store in Baku, Azerbaijan, I saw an album of a Stalin speech on five 78s. The speech took up nine sides. The tenth? Nothing but applause.

    No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .

    For a (mostly) live (and held captive) country…

    • #67
  8. Donwatt Inactive
    Donwatt
    @Donwatt

    aardo vozz (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    In a second-hand store in Baku, Azerbaijan, I saw an album of a Stalin speech on five 78s. The speech took up nine sides. The tenth? Nothing but applause.

    No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .

    For a (mostly) live (and held captive) country…

    If I recall correctly, they used to ring a bell to stop the applause because no one wanted to be seen as the first to stop.

    • #68
  9. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Donwatt (View Comment):

    aardo vozz (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    In a second-hand store in Baku, Azerbaijan, I saw an album of a Stalin speech on five 78s. The speech took up nine sides. The tenth? Nothing but applause.

    No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .

    For a (mostly) live (and held captive) country…

    If I recall correctly, they used to ring a bell to stop the applause because no one wanted to be seen as the first to stop.

    I hadn’t heard about the bell. I had heard stories of it being bad for your career to be the first one to stop, though. 

    • #69
  10. The Cynthonian Inactive
    The Cynthonian
    @TheCynthonian

    Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Gary!   I used to patronize the TR location on Beach Boulevard in Buena Park, California (not far from Knotts Berry Farm) fairly regularly back in the day.   I generally found the staff lazy/rude/stoned, and wondered often who did the hiring.   There was another Orange County location in Costa Mesa, and the staff there fit the same profile.

    That being said…..I loved the massive pre-Internet selection!   And yes, I recall wandering through the aisles with dates back in the days.  We didn’t hang out in bars much, and TR was a great place to head after a movie.

    • #70
  11. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    E. Kent Golding (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    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.

    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.

    Audiophilia. Ew. Don’t we have a private group for you…people? 

    • #71
  12. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    The Cynthonian (View Comment):

    Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Gary! I used to patronize the TR location on Beach Boulevard in Buena Park, California (not far from Knotts Berry Farm) fairly regularly back in the day. I generally found the staff lazy/rude/stoned, and wondered often who did the hiring. There was another Orange County location in Costa Mesa, and the staff there fit the same profile.

    That being said…..I loved the massive pre-Internet selection! And yes, I recall wandering through the aisles with dates back in the days. We didn’t hang out in bars much, and TR was a great place to head after a movie.

    Thanks for the comment, Cynthonian! That’s a story from back in the day when OC was more easily distinguished from LA. The two counties are neighbors with a somewhat supercilious attitude towards each other, or were. Other commenters have also praised Tower Records’ open til midnight policy. 

    • #72
  13. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    TBA (View Comment):

    E. Kent Golding (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    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.

    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.

    Audiophilia. Ew. Don’t we have a private group for you…people?

    In late ’50s copies of Popular Eletronics and Popular Science, the image of the audiophile in ads was a bearded, rather Satanic looking professor in a white lab coat, using a magnifying glass to suspiciously inspect a sine wave displayed on an oscilloscope. 

    • #73
  14. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Django (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    “Record Your Own Voice”

    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.

    Audiophule. 

    • #74
  15. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    aardo vozz (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    In a second-hand store in Baku, Azerbaijan, I saw an album of a Stalin speech on five 78s. The speech took up nine sides. The tenth? Nothing but applause.

    No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .

    For a (mostly) live (and held captive) country…

    “Few audience members were harmed in the making of this recording.” 

    • #75
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    TBA (View Comment):

    aardo vozz (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    In a second-hand store in Baku, Azerbaijan, I saw an album of a Stalin speech on five 78s. The speech took up nine sides. The tenth? Nothing but applause.

    No doubt taped before a live (and held captive) audience . . .

    For a (mostly) live (and held captive) country…

    “Few audience members were harmed in the making of this recording.”

    A quote from Nikita Khrushchev: “When Stalin said dance, a wise man danced”.

    • #76
  17. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Well, folks, in an hour or two this post will drop off the Main Feed top 10, which on Ricochet means the marquee lights are turned off, the popcorn machine is emptied for the night, and the floors swept. Thanks for reading, and commenting! Naturally, I’ll keep monitoring this one til the end. See you soon in the comments of other R> posts.

    • #77
  18. kylez Member
    kylez
    @kylez

    Starting going there occasionally with my dad in the late 90s. Selection unlike anything I had seen. Opened one in Long Beach, combined with Good Guys –Tower Wow. That was only open about 7 years. 

     

    • #78
  19. MACHO GRANDE' (aka - Chris Cam… Coolidge
    MACHO GRANDE' (aka - Chris Cam…
    @ChrisCampion

    There was one record store everyone went to growing up, in Burlington, Vermont.  It’s still there, unbelievably.  A small basement record store.  I bought albums and eventually CDs there in the late 1980s/early 1990s.  Big wooden bins filled with vinyl.  Wall-mounted bins for cassettes.  It was old school even 30 years ago.

     

    https://www.purepoprecords.com/about/

     

    https://www.yelp.com/biz/pure-pop-records-burlington

     

    • #79
  20. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    By R> standards, this is a fairly “light” post, no heavy emotions, no complicated science or international history. Lots of people vividly remember spending time at a record store. Nearly everyone marveled at how quickly almost all of them disappeared.

    Of course, record stores are part of a pattern of the internet impacting an old, established industry—travel agents; ticketing agencies; maps; magazines; printers;  newsstands; DVDs and all other physical media, long distance telephone and video conferencing, eventually even such unexpected, unlikely new candidates for near-obsolescence as book sellers, taxi drivers and restaurant waiters

    • #80
  21. MACHO GRANDE' (aka - Chris Cam… Coolidge
    MACHO GRANDE' (aka - Chris Cam…
    @ChrisCampion

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    By R> standards, this is a fairly “light” post, no heavy emotions, no complicated science or international history. Lots of people vividly remember spending time at a record store. Nearly everyone marveled at how quickly almost all of them disappeared.

    Of course, record stores are part of a pattern of the internet impacting an old, established industry—travel agents; ticketing agencies; maps; magazines; printers; newsstands; DVDs and all other physical media, long distance telephone and video conferencing, eventually even such unexpected, unlikely new candidates for near-obsolescence as book sellers, taxi drivers and restaurant waiters

    Why do some quality things disappear, while Communism remains alive and well?

    It’s a mystery.

     

    See the source image

    • #81
  22. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    MACHO GRANDE' (aka – Chri… (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    By R> standards, this is a fairly “light” post, no heavy emotions, no complicated science or international history. Lots of people vividly remember spending time at a record store. Nearly everyone marveled at how quickly almost all of them disappeared.

    Of course, record stores are part of a pattern of the internet impacting an old, established industry—travel agents; ticketing agencies; maps; magazines; printers; newsstands; DVDs and all other physical media, long distance telephone and video conferencing, eventually even such unexpected, unlikely new candidates for near-obsolescence as book sellers, taxi drivers and restaurant waiters

    Why do some quality things disappear, while Communism remains alive and well?

    It’s a mystery.

     

    See the source image

    You call that “alive and well?”

    • #82
  23. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    I think it was in 2007 when Tower and the other video stores like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster started closing.

    I remember the Tower on Sunset Blvd quite well because I worked across the street, 8800 building, from 2005 to 2007. 

    I think the combination of netflix and redBox accelerated the death of Tower and Blockbuster and the rest

     

    • #83
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