“The man who founded Tower Records” Russ Solomon talks about the history of the company: Part 2

Visiting Japan for the shooting of the documentary film that portrays the rise and fall of Tower Records in US, Russ Solomon looks back on the birth and growth of the chain
Interviewed and written by Daisaku Jobim

The man who founded Tower Records and exerted a considerable impact on the global music culture from the late 20th century, – Russ Solomon, the living legend. Solomon visited Japan this summer with the film crew for the shooting of the documentary film “All Things Must Pass: The Rise And Fall Of Tower Records”, – a film about the vicissitudes of the chain in the US. Mikiki had a chance to speak with the legend, a man of vitality at the age of 89, about the history of the famous retail chain and music.

*Click here for Part 1 of the interview


 

Q: When I joined the company, many of my seniors would tell me about this episode of your ‘cutting (neck)ties off of visitors to the US office and put the ties on the wall for people to see’. “Yup, ‘welcome to Tower Records’” the seniors would say. Why were you doing this?

It wasn’t ’cut’, it was ’take the whole thing’. The way it started., the record companies and the music industry I guess would have conventions, and sometimes the conventions or the big meetings would be in Los Angeles, and these record company executives would come out from New York to LA, Hollywood actually, and they were dressed up in suits and ties and I’d look at these guys, and I’d say, this is California, you’re in the music business, and it’s warm, why have you got a tie on? So I said, I’ll fix it, I’ll take the tie. So I started to take the tie, and get their card and I would staple the card on the tie so I knew who it came from.

And then it go to be fun, and then everybody I got near in the music business, and nobody in the music business should wear any ties, no matter what, so I began to steal ties from everybody that came into the office and everybody that we ran into that was in the music business. So they all stopped wearing ties.  

I never cut any ties. I’ll take the whole tie, and collect them. And keep them in a glass case in my office. So when somebody would come to the office, they’d where an old tie. They knew it was going to get stolen. But you know, some of these guys would just cry, moan. ’This was a tie that my girlfriend, my wife, gave to me.’ No, you can’t take it off!’

Q: Moving on to a different subject, the format for (listening to) music has changed over the years. What is your opinion on this, and please tell us if you have any particular format(s) you prefer personally?

Well, the evolution of formats, almost everytime a new format came along, it was an improvement over the last. In other words, the LP and the 45 were much better than the 78s, and the stereo LP was better than the monoral LP, and the quadrophonic LP really wasn’t all that good, but it lasted for a while. And then when tape came along, the first tape was reel to reel, and that was difficult to deal with. It was expensive, the sound was good, but it was expensive and difficult to load on the machine, machines was expensive, and that wasn’t so good.

And when they invented the cassette, and the 8 track came along at the same time, the world accepted the cassette tape because the cassette was much better, more practical, cheaper to make. The cassettes got very very very popular. But the sound quality of the cassettes wasn’t so good. So consequently, something had to come along that would be better, and when they invented the CD, that was a remarkable wonderful new thing. And so the CD is great.

My personal feeling is that, they went a couple steps further than the CD, over here especially with the super audio CD and the super audio SHM CD, but the sad part of that is that the records companies didn’t promote it; they kind of let it drop. If the industry had gone into super audio, I think it would have been a little bit better. But the general public didn’t really care about the quality that good, even though the quality was there.

The interesting thing that’s happening in America is the resurgence of LPs, the vinyl. But that’s not a big deal, it’s not big enough. But it’s fun and there are lots of collectors that love it. A lot of people think that vinyl sounds better, but in reality, it doesn’t. CDs are still pretty good, -real good in fact.

Q: Since you’ve mentioned the CD, we hear that in the US, the main means to listen to music seems to be digital downloads from iTunes or streaming music from services such as Spotify etc. What is your opinion on this new ‘culture’ of listening to music?

It’s reality. I mean the Americans I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but they prefer to listen to music online. The idea of downloading is while it’s still a large part of the business, it’s slipping and people don’t need to own music. Streaming has caught on, and it looks like at least in America, streaming will be more or less the future. Particularly said streaming will get to a ability to select what you want to listen to precisely. My personal feeling is that quality isn’t good, but I’m not sure if I’m right. It could be that the quality is just fine for most people. And gets better all the time.

So, Japan I think is a pretty unique place in the fact that there is more interest in owning and listening and collecting CDs probably than any place in the world, and it’s true. And so I don’t know that I can even try to predict the future, I don’t know if anyone will invent something new, it’s possible, you know, but I think that hopefully at least, because of its collectability and its quality, will be able to live alongside of streaming for the long time future, but I don’t know.

Q: One of the last questions. The same may apply in US, but for us here, when staffs meet someone new or music fans, we first ask what music they like. So please, tell us your all-time-favorite(s).

Mine? Well, that’s a pretty hard question. I have so many all-time favorites. It will go back to Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Willy Nelson. It’s an impossible question to answer for me because I’ve had the good luck to have been exposed to so much different kinds of music most of which I like. I don’t care so much for rap, I really don’t, but I do love most everything else, I really do. I like R&B, I certainly like country, I love various artists, Willy Nelson, any country artist really, I certainly like jazz, all kinds of jazz, big bands I mean it’s alltime-y, classical, opera... So it’s impossible for somebody like me, or for me personally put it that way, to really pick out one thing I say I like that, you know, because I like em all. Not every everything, but parts of everything.

Q: And the last but not the least, tell us what music is to you, to your life.

Well it makes your life better, it really does. It makes you happy. That’s the main thing.