All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records Page #2

because they weren't

getting paid very much.

and that was the beginning

of tower records.

j daddy let

your mind go long. .p

i worked for tower for 37 years.

i started

when i was 19 years old,

and it started out

at the watt avenue store.

stan was this kid

that was the son

of one of the pharmacists

that worked for my father.

he came to work and he said,

"you gotta give the kid a job."

i said, "okay, put him to work."

i walked out

in to the watts store,

and this guy george horton

came running up to the counter

and looked at me and goes,

"who are you?ii and i go,

"oh, uh, i'm the new guy.

my name's stan, how are ya?"

and he says,

"oh, great, you're here.

charlie and i

are going to lunch."

and i went, "okay."

he says,

"good, everything's $3.88

" except for frank sinatra,

phase four, and command.

"that's $4.88, see ya later.

we'll be back in an hour."

and there i was,

that was my training.

tower was like

the place to work at

because it was so open.

plus, you could play whatever

you want on the record player,

so you could be

an amateur dj, too,

and it was definitely

the place to work.

what happened

in the very early '603,

'63, '64,

was a couple of artists

happened on the scene

that just changed

the world around.

.p let's go surfin' now .p

.p everybody's learning how .p

i come on and safari with me i

i come on and safari

with me....p

when the beach boys'

early album

surfin' safaricame out,

all of a sudden,

the business kind of shifted

from a singles business

to a lp business.

then, of course,

throughout the '6os

as the baby boomers

kind of came of age

and there started being more

and more potential buyers

of these records.

the great thing

for the record industry

was that they cost a lot more.

so instead of spending 49 cents

or whatever it was

on a single back then,

people were spending

$3.99 or $4.99

or $5.99 on an album.

we could literally sell

a thousand copies of a record

over a weekend,

or something like that,

which was incredible.

the hits began to sell

in quantity,

the kids came in more and more,

they grew up with it,

they widened their taste

in music.

by the late '6os,

radio began to explore

something besides top 40.

you had these really

free form radio stations.

they were changing the way

that everybody looked at music,

and we just rode that wave.

.p let's go surfin' now .p

.p everybody's learnin' how i

i come on and safari with me i

i come on and safari

with me...i

but as the '603 went on,

you had one lp after another

that was a huge

artistic statement.

sergeant pepper and pet sounds

and on and on and on.

then suddenly,

you started to have

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