Hamilton Music Store

Name: Paul Delplanque
Comment: It all started sensibly enough when I bought Not Fade Away by the Rolling Stones, six months later I found that this interest in their records had turned into an obsession to collect every record that they had produced, which frankly in 1964 was not too difficult, or was it?

Having bought all four singles, two EPs (remember those) and the LP, I thought I had completed the task, only to find that a single had been released and then hastily withdrawn (Poison Ivy/ Fortune Teller). My collection was not complete, disaster!

Then it turned out that collecting the records of the Stones was a lot more involved than I had imagined, because they released different records in America and other countries. This served to stoke up the obsession to new heights and continued unabated for some years until gradually calming down as adolescence faded.

Hamilton's record shop in Middlesbrough where you could find almost anything except the Rolling Stones' Poison Ivy 45rpm single.

Name: Gordon Baxter
Comment: Saturday mornings in the mid- to late-1970s regularly involved time spent rummaging through the racks of Hamilton's, The Record Shop, and Fearnleys. Fearnleys used to have a numbered, handwritten list of punk/new wave singles just above the counter. Happy days.