Kelleys Records (Radio)

Name: Viv Hughes
Comment: There was also a branch of Kelleys Records in Brentwood High Street - on the first floor above quite an upmarket audio/visual shop (B&O hi-fi's and the like). Bought my first chart singles there in the early 1970s! Happy days!

Name: David Malone
Comment: Kelleys had a shop in Basildon town centre, their rivals were Godfreys and Downtowns, or Rumbelows, same as the shop in Brentwood - top-notch B&O and Finlux TVs and hi-fi downstairs. I shouldn't say it but I knew a guy who worked there for a bit until he was sacked - people would go in and ask for the latest mod or disco 12" and he'd bag it up and say thanks but take no money!

The Basildon shop was in the middle of town by the clock, now (I think) a JD Sports or something - used to be Burtons tailors there one time, next door almost.
(12 April 2015)

Name: David
Comment: I have a picture of the TVs and hi-fi lined up on the shelf in the Southend shop when I was the locum manager there for a couple of weeks, but none from outside unfortunately. You can see the window display of LP covers and posters in the background.

I lived in Billericay and was assistant manager in the Brentwood branch of Kelleys Radio (with two 'e's), and a security key holder whose telephone number was on record with the local police. The manager lived MILES away - about 75 minutes drive. So I got a call from the police at 2am on Thursday (my day off) the week before Christmas to say that the shop had been broken into. The thieves' crowbar had at first bounced off the glass, but they managed eventually to knock a hole large enough to climb through and steal a few smaller things. The emergency boarding-up team came within an hour and by lunchtime the window was replaced!

The following Sunday at 4am... you guessed it, "Mr. Jayne, I'm very sorry to have to wake you again at such an early hour, but your shop's been done again." This time it had been ram-raided and could I 'attend'. The devastation was stunning. The large reinforced glass window had exploded into a million pieces that went all over the pavement, flying down the shop, and also into the record department. There were hifi pieces and TVs dragged half way out of the windowframe that they hadn't managed to get out because we used to tie the mains cables together to stop petty shoplifting.

As luck would have it, a police patrol was driving down towards Romford and saw a van ahead with some cables hanging out the back door. They stopped it and managed to nab the two thieves, together with a whole lot of quite damaged hifi too.

It's never been written anywhere before so it will be news to most that Daryl Bamonte, friend, Road Manager and at one-time live member of Depeche Mode, once briefly worked in the Record Department of 'Kelley's Radio' in Basildon in 1981.

The branch of Kelley's Radio in Basildon opened in 1960 in an early phase of the town centre development and traded well into the 1980s. Firstly at No. 82 Town Square, then in the early 1980s moving to No.14 in the newly built Eastgate centre.

It was in fact (at one time) one of the few hundred 'Chart return shops' which meant its record sales (paper-based) went towards the statistics which produced the UK charts. These shops were nominally meant to be secret but everyone in the record industry knew which they were leading to opportunity for abuse (See the Hazel O'Connor film Breaking Glass).

Like most UK towns, Basildon had a great choice of independent record shops during the 1970s and 1980s. This period really was their heyday. Other well patronised shops in Basildon included 'Downtown Discount, Records & Tapes' at No.42 Southernhay. Downtown Discount was opened on 8 July 1974 by celebrity Noel Edmonds, Radio 1 DJ and Top of the Pops presenter.

In 1972, Godfrey Photographics moved from No.33 East Walk to 28-32 East Walk, in the process opening its own record department which became a real centre for local youthful music fans with a pillar on which you could stick handwritten notes asking for musicians for bands.

My favourite place in the whole of Basildon was the 'POP INN' record stall on Basildon Market where they played music via speakers and I spent my pocket money. I bought the Pistols' God Save the Queen there, listened to the electronic Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer I Feel Love, and had a choice of every indie record released between 1977-1980.

All these record stores drew the youth of Basildon out to meet, particularly on a Saturday morning. You would bump into friends, make new friends and learn all you needed of what was new, locally and nationally. You could drift from shop to shop. All the managers and people who worked in these shops during that great period were amazingly knowledgeable with any enquiry. All the members of Depeche Mode bought records in these shops.

During the 1980s a number of national record shop chains began to spread throughout the UK. I asked local musician and member of Alison Moyet's 'The Vandals', and Vince Clarke's 'No Romance in China', Sue Ryder Paget about this time. She said "I started working in Our Price after it had opened in Basildon in October 1985. Members of Depeche Mode also used to buy their records in my shop. I remember one occasion when this poor boy (assistant) served Dave Gahan a whole pile of CDs, he was so nervous and starstruck (this was in about 1987) he put all the wrong discs in the wrong boxes. Dave had to bring them all back later and I had to sort them all out for him!"

Many thanks to Gary Clarke, founder of BAS Productions, for digging out this great piece of 1981 Basildon memorabilia and Sue Ryder Paget (Associate Director of Development at Bas Productions) for your memories.

Name: Andrew Williams
Comment: Great writing, love these details that you don't get to hear otherwise. Funnily enough I worked for a short time at Kelly's. I sold Martin the Human League's Dare album.