Flyover Records

Name: atb2008
Comment: I'm from Denmark but lived in London in the mid-seventies for 14 months. I shared a flat in Notting Hill, but very often I went to Hammersmith just to visit Flyover Records. I bought dozens of Beatles records imported from Japan, the US and Mexico. The shop was located at 15 Queen Caroline Street on Hammersmith Broadway and just the thought of it brings back great memories. I spent hours in the shop and still have the old catalogues and price lists. Just for the fun of it...

Japanese imports were:

• Single album £8.99
• Double albums £15.95
• Treble albums £24.50
• Singles £2.65
• EPs £3.60

Those were the days!

Name: John Brassett
Comment: I knew Flyover Records in the late 1970s. The owner was Louis Rayner. The shop was the size of an average living room and the office was the size of a telephone booth. The shop was well known for imports and Louis was the first to sell Dylan's Japanese live album. All round it was a great place to go. Elton John was said to have spent over a grand there one day... Flyover Records also did some distribution of indie labels. Louis sent out a load of our (Left Hand Drive) singles in 1978 and to our surprise they sold... He was a nice guy and a great businesman too... a rare thing.

Name: [email protected]
Comment: I worked for Charmdale, the record import company who, along with competitor Vixen, supplied a lot of Flyover's imports. We used to break open the shipments at Heathrow, stow them in a racked-out Transit and hammer down the A4 in a race to get the latest imports into the shops. Being on Hammersmith Broadway Flyover Records sat directly opposite the end of the motorway, so Louis's was often the first shop to stock a new album in the UK.

Louis was a great guy and a good friend. He had such a nice personality that even traffic wardens let him park his BMW 2002 on the yellow lines outside the shop all day long. When the store closed down prior to redevelopment he gave me his contact details in Cyprus (if I remember correctly). Unfortunately I mislaid them, but over the last 35+ years I have often thought about him, such as today when I found this forum. I hope he is well. If anyone knows where he is it would be lovely to hear from him.
(30 July 2013)

Name: Gary Critcher
Comment: I'm originally from Chiswick, so Flyover Records was a short bus journey on a Saturday morning for me. I remember buying the Japanese import copies of quite a few Ian Gillan solo 'live' albums from Flyover (would have been around 1979 methinks) because they hadn't been released in Europe. I remember it being a brilliant place where you could just stand there going through the racks for as literally as long as you wanted.
(17 January 2013)

Name: Robert Negri
Comment: I remember this place vividly. For some reason a Plasmatics album sticks in my mind. Loads of records in plastic sleeves on the wall. I remember that it was one of the first places I ever saw Japanese import vinyl. Would pop in almost every day with a friend on our way home from school, early eighties.
(18 October 2012)

Name: Louis
Comment: Thanks for your nice comments. Yes it was a great time. Keep well.
(28 January 2012)

Name: Mick (Mike) Warlow
Comment: Hi Louis, remember me? I turned down major store management offers to travel every day from Hatfield in Herts (two hours each way) to 'manage' your store. I learned all about the importing business from you and still fondly remember searching for hours trying to find albums in your masterbag filing system! Went on to have a successful career in the music business, much learned from my short sojourn at always "Your Joint". Much love and fond memories.
(26 March 2015)

Name: Louis Raynor
Comment: Hi Mick - of course I do. Glad to know you are doing well.It was a great, fun journey we took. Keep well. L

Hi Richard - nice to hear from an old friend. Great exciting times which I miss, but I am a million miles from it all now. Haha... quite amazing to park on the Broadway all day and get away with it. Such arrogance on my behalf!
(2019)

Name: Louis Raynor
Comment: @John Brassett - a tiny correction.The first time Elton came to Flyover he was brought in by Roy Carr, one of the great Music journalists... he spent over £5,000 which is probably around £15/20,000 in today's money. Thereafter he was in every week to collect his orders and to pick up anything new that had come in since his last visit. I knew him going back to One Stop Record days when he actually worked at a rival store whose name I have since forgotten.

Elton was just one of the many people/stars in the business who supported Flyover Records. As important were all the record collectors/fans that came in religiously to spend their hard-earned money on sounds. some every week even queuing every weekend to pick up the latest sounds from the USA or Japan. Sometimes it would be that they would go over budget and I would still let them have their sounds which they could pay for whenever they could. Not once did anybody let me down and not pay their dues. There was even one guy who I had given up on, but he too did eventually turn up around a year on and paid the £20 he owed. . We had them all, the jazz guy, soul, the heavy metal guys... you name it. We even had The Rod McKuen/Elvis fans who would visit from all over the UK and abroad to pick up stuff they couldn't find anywhere else. Loved them all then and still think of all our customer friends warmly even now.
(2021)

Name: Peter Robinson
Comment: Living in Hammersmith, I was a frequent visitor to Flyover Records. I believe that Louis moved there after having a record shop in the Kings Road, Chelsea.
(2021)

Name: Chris Simon
Comment: Started buying tunes there with my old friend Tony and we met Mark who worked there and served us some classics. We all started a mobile DJ business together with the guys covering Essex and the Home Counties. Tony and myself started working there part-time to pick up some classics at a discount but Jean was a very clever operator. This shop gave me my grounding and allowed me to work for numerous pirate radio stations JFM, Solar, Horizon, and I also opened and ran four successful record shops in my time... The history right there... The beginning.
(2021)

Name: Glen Beasley
Comment: I bought Accept's Russian Roulette album in Flyover about half an hour before heading up the road to Hammersmith Odeon to see them in Concert. Happy Days.
​(2021)