In my college years, my girlfriend was in Nuclear Beauty Parlor, a group of women artists active in protest and performance art in the anti-nuke movement in San Francisco. I was in college radio (with frequent trips to Tower to stock up for my midnight show) and recording engineer.
After an annual protest that had ballooned in participation, the group of women were jailed for 11 days with over 1000 other protesters in tents on the grounds of the Alameda County Jail. By day 7, it was clear their imprisonment could go on for a while - so as a means to inspire and encourage them, I produced a song also named The Nuclear Beauty Parlor, with lyrics by one of the women in jail, Vicki Krohn, sung by The Tubes' Re Styles. The ladies got the entire 'prison grounds' - an open field with white tents - singing. That was a thrill - it was even on national TV. But the other thrill was seeing our self-pressed 7" at the cash registers at Tower. Prime real estate and the manager was generous enough to give it to us. It was no longer just a small local project but it was 'out!' Even more surprising - one year later I produced a 7" to give to friends as my holiday card - a Phil Spector-like production of Auld Lang Syne. I was encouraged to get it into record stores. This time I didn't ask for the counter, just for them to carry it... but to my amazement - there it was, next to the register! I have so many other Tower stories: the day in 1981 I overheard a teen girl ask for Paul McCartney records, and when the salesperson helpfully noted that Paul had been in a band called the Beatles, he didn't even crack a smile when the young customer expressed surprise; or the late-night in the LA Tower Classical Store - a customer spent over an hour introducing me to a half-dozen conductors of Beethoven's 9th and why each was different and interesting - the fellow walked out with a stack of over 50 records himself (he noted it was his monthly buy for gifts to friends - he loves turning people onto music) - strange indeed. But it was my experience in SF that stands out. Tower always promoted the SF talent and felt like a local store. Local bands always felt they 'made it' if they got a painting of their record cover on the wall in the parking lot. Tower was a music Mecca for San Francisco at a time San Francisco was a Mecca for music. RIP Tower. RIP Russ.
Stacy Baird
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Spotify is today's Tower Records,. Amazon, Apple Music, and Google our Wal*Mart, Best Buy, Blockbuster. When will the music industry wake up to realize that when music is a "loss leader," value creation for the eco-system is destroyed?
Joy Howard
Sonos | CMO
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I live in Alabama but always sought out Tower when I traveled. My favorite memories - Standing in the checkout next to Boz Scaggs in 2000 (Sunset location), looking up and - to my surprise - staring Elton John in the face from a few feet away (Atlanta/Buckhead location) and going to Tower in Boston after a long day on a business trip (so glad they didn't close until midnight). Thanks for the great post and allowing me to relive these memories.
Brent Thompson
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I'm doubly (dubly in Spinal Tap speak) late coming to the Tower Records party, but it wasn't until reading this second round of letters that I remembered my own story of Russ. It must've been story after story of artists sharing how they finally felt like they'd "arrived" once their albums were in Tower. It forced me to wonder if I experienced that same feeling ... and then the memory came. I'm pretty sure it was Russ on a conference call with someone else - probably the magazine buyer - but I got a call where he told me, "out of all the goddamn Christian rock magazines out there, we're going to carry yours in Tower." It made me laugh at the irony, which is freshly renewed with the title of Stryper's new album, God Damn Evil. I was proud to have Heaven's Metal Magazine in every Tower store and their well-stocked magazine racks was one of the first places I'd visit whenever I visited the Tower on Sunset or in my own town of Austin or Nashville.
Doug Van Pelt
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When we worked on the Debbie Gibson project and she came to L.A. for her first visit ever ... Tower was our first stop. We were there for quite some time and it became a ritual each time we'd visit the Left Coast.
Me, I'd been going there for years and would always see the likes of Elton John, Jagger and Belushi hanging out and shopping. Solomon was a giant for sure. Never quite grew fond of the Virgin mega-stores. I had worked at Sam Goody and EJ Korvette's so record stores were part of my DNA.
A huge door has closed.
DAVID SALIDOR
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Re: Tower 4th St. & Lafayette
Not only was it the downtown Mecca but you had several record co's including Chris Blackwell's Island in the buildings directly across the street, and Keith Richards living upstairs!! CBGB's on the next block. Countless live music clubs within a 4 block radius. It was the center of the music universe.
The Tower's in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus UK were pretty amazing too (the UK one in the mid 90's had an entire floor of what would have been 1 rack of techno called "imports" in the Times Square store).
Popping out of the office for an in-store by just about any one of our artists (or, in the case of Alice Cooper, a whole concert on the traffic island in front of the Times Square Tower) just came with the territory!
Barbara Wesotski
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Is no one gonna remember (IIRC) the near-riot at the System of a Down performance on Sunset outside Tower, when their record TOXICITY was #1 the week of 9/11?
James Poulos
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Thank you. Reading your email brought memories flooding back. The Tower store on Sunset was iconic to me. Every time I visited from the UK I'd drive up Sunset and wonder what artists would be on the Billboard. I'd pull into the parking lot and then I'd feel that I'd arrived back in LA. I remember picking up Use your Illusion I & II there, they were in the stand just as you walked in.
I look back on that store with incredible fondness and I can't really say that about any other store.
Cheers
Andy Rixon
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Lets not forget Metallica rolling in to the parking lot at Tower Records for impromptu concert - San Jose, June 1996.
Tower was the only "church" I ever went to!
Bob Menafra
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I worked for Sony Music Distribution from 1996 to 2005 as a Field Marketing Rep. My first territory was Long Island, NY and I covered Tower Huntington, Massapequa and Carle Place doing inventory, talking to employees about new releases, handing out promos and supplying the store artist (yes each Tower location had their own artist to make foam core displays for the store) with posters and flats. After winning a Tower Marketing contest I was given the nod for the big show NYC. Territory included Tower Trump (in the basement of Trump Tower), Lincoln Center, and Downtown. All high profile accounts. All Label people would shop Tuesday morning at Tower Trump for their new releases since it was right across the street from the 550 Building. Danny Bennett would stop into Lincoln Center to check on his Dad's releases. I spent a majority of my work hours in these stores. Instore appearances I covered included Incubus, Mariah Carey, Greg Allman & John Mellencamp that I can remember. Back to a time when working for a label was fun and people searched for records (they were CDs but I still called them records). One of my memories includes after finishing up my routine at Tower Downtown I was walking passed the Annex to the subway and the place was packed with people. As I was walking passed the entrance the door swings open and the assistant manager asked if I wanted to come in. I peak my head in and I see Madonna performing to a packed store. I surveyed the place and told him I'm gonna pass. Now that I think about it I should have went in. Best time of my life covering those stores for sure.
Joey Calobrisi
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I used to love perusing the aisles of the Tower stores in Northern VA/DC area back in early 90s, it was the only place to find the deep, back catalog stuff. Kemp Mill Records was pretty big in the DC area too back then, but Tower had a far better selection. My biggest regret is not leaving work in the middle of the day to go to the Tower in Silver Spring MD to see Pearl Jam play an in-store set on a weekday afternoon sometime in 1991. There are videos of it on YouTube and it looks like there are maybe 100 people at most crowded in to see them play several cuts from "Ten" in a tiny little area surrounded by fans. I kick myself to this day for missing out on that.
Wyllys Ingersoll
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So many great Tower stories. When streaming gives way to whatever comes next there will be no such stories. That is guaranteed. I recently had dinner with a computer audio expert/journalist. He asked me if I remembered the first 45 and LP I bought and I did (and still have them): "The Kingston Trio at Large" and Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife". He couldn't begin to remember his first stream.
Michael Fremer
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You would have thought that the main incentive to join my high school journalism's Columbus Day class trip to the program at Columbia University for writer and editors was to miss an entire day of school. The real draw was to skip the entire workshop an spend the day at Tower Records.
My first year, we knew that Tower was in Greenwich Village. My pack was led by a fellow staff writer , a sweet petite girl with moussed up bangs who was super into The Cure and the Smiths. We got onto the bus at 116th street and rode ten blocks, then twenty, then thirty. Being Fairfield County kids, we didn't really know how far Greenwich Village was from Columbia. So when we were driving down Broadway and saw a Tower Records, we all got off and hung out in this famous record store. I felt good being in an authentic and famous record store. It felt good being in a better ambience than a lame place like Sam Goody
Rachel Loonin
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A number of equally "interesting" responses would fill yer box regarding Tower's inclusively twisted magazine section. WOW! WOW! WOW!
Did Russ know (tho he would have gotten a kick) of the multiple periodicals appealing to extreme array of "specialized interests" in his record stores?
Tower was where I learnt about "Pony Play", via BOTH quarterlies that Tower racked.
Let us Hail the Sanctuary Store!
dennis brent
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Wow. All those people and all those memories. Russ Solomon was a genius. I still get chills thinking about the night Kate Bush's "Red Shoes" came out ('93) and racing to Tower at 4th and Broadway just before midnight to get it. And sure enough it was right in the front bin, kind of waiting for me.
But let's not forget Tower Books. As a then-fledgling author, I was thrilled to do my first ever public reading at the giant bookshop (next to the flagship store on 4th Street) and they were even nice enough to put my book cover on those cool Tower plastic bags (still a collector's item?)
Tower was such an institution in New York that in the '90s when they were redoing the outlet along Lincoln Center they had to move the entire inventory to a "temporary store" so people wouldn't freak out.
To think: a record store. It sounds so quaint now. But man, was it important then!
Richard Laermer
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March 20/21, 2006: At around 5PM on Monday March 20th, 2006, I received an email from the New Power Generation Music Club announcing that Prince was playing a show at Tower Records that night. I called Tower and asked the woman on the other end, "is it true?" She said "yes". "Do I have any chance?" "Yes, we are giving out wristbands, come asap." Problem was that in addition to March 20 being my last day at my job at UTA, my parents and sister were also in town visiting, it was raining and I had ridden my bike to work. A fellow Prince fanatic friend had gone to Tower and gotten a wristband. It was just a simple purple wristband. The ironic thing was I had gone to Acapulco on spring break the week prior (I was 23) and brought a bunch of random wristbands (including purple) and the last night my friend took all of them and put them on a drunk friend's arm while he was passed out. Had he not done that, I would have had an extra purple wrist band but then I guess I wouldn't be telling you this story. So I go to dinner at Il Fornaio with my fam and I meet my friend with the wristband at Kinko's on Wilshire after. I had a plan. I explained to the clerk what I needed and $3 later, I had an exact duplicate of the bracelet on photo paper sans holes and plastic clip. I cut it down to size, colored the holes black and had the clerk tape it on my wrist. I said, "Sir, you will remember this for the rest of your life." Coincidentally, as he was taping it on my wrist, Prince's "Kiss" came on the Muzak. I shit you not. I was getting into this show. I raced to Tower on Sunset, parked my car a few blocks away, paid $2 for parking and began walking. There was a bracelet line and a non bracelet line. I got in the bracelet line and waited patiently. At about 11:45 they started letting bracelets in. I was wearing a long sleeved black cashmere sweater which I strategically placed UNDER the purple bracelet so as not to give away there were not actually any holes in the bracelet and turned it away from where the bracelet WOULD have connected. As the line moved, they told us to keep our wrists up in the air until we walked inside. Two sets of security guards inspected the bracelets and one of them tugged on it but it stayed put. And like that, I was inside. At most, 40 people were inside. I moved quickly toward the elaborate stage and lighting set up and waited in a light fog of anticipation. I was in. Within a few minutes, Prince was in the building and the excitement grew. He was wearing a white Sgt. Pepper-esque jacket, black pants, heels and a white fedora. Typical. His band took the stage, did a 10 minute instrumental warm up and then Prince went into a 15 song set that included his new single Black Sweat and ended with Purple Rain and Let's Go Crazy. During an extended rendition of Play That Funky Music, he grabbed a funky white boy from the audience to perform the lyrics and Prince's dancers and DJ began calling people from the audience up to dance on stage. Prince's DJ, Rashida, called me up but the security guard didn't see her and she was already looking toward the center of the stage when he denied me. I tried desperately to get her attention for 2 minutes until I caught her eye and she gave the signal and I danced on stage with him for the rest of the song and kinda blacked out at that point. I have a ton of other memories of Tower in LA, Boston, NY, Atlanta, SF but dancing on stage with Prince takes the cake. When I went to Japan for the first time in 2013 I was so excited to see a 5 story Tower in Shibuya...it was like a dream. In retrospect, every experience I had at Tower was kind of like a dream
Daniel Weisman
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just wanted to say a friend forwarded me your piece on tower and I thought it was just wonderful... best thing I've ever read about that great store--and yes west Hollywood will always be the centerpiece!
best
bob hilburn
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