Beanos

I found this classified ad in the ‘Croydon Advertiser & East Surrey Reporter’ dated 4th May 1990: “Beanos is England’s largest 2nd hand record store. Take advantage of having this shop locally and call us if you have any records, cassettes, CD's or videos which you wish to sell. We pay instant cash and you know that you are dealing with a nationally known name. Beano's record dealer, 27 Surrey Street, Croydon, CR0 1RR, 01-680 1202.”

I lived for a while in Santa Rosa, California in the 1990s. One of my roommates went on an exchange programme to the University of London and fell for a Croydon lad. I visited Mo and her husband in 1998, and she was working in the upstairs café. Beanos was a happy place for me. I grew up in the Los Angeles music scene of the early 1980s, and music was our master. Beanos was a heavenly spot for from home!

Discovering Beanos in the late 1980s was like finding Narnia. I must have read about it in Q or something or someone told me about it. Back then they were in the narrow Surrey Street store. The guy upstairs who ran the singles department was the most extraordinarily knowledgeable, greasy-haired hippy of a man, but a man of few words - until he sussed you out. I bought all my Rolling Stones and Beatles original UK 7"s and EPs from him, I loved it when he slid the correct wooden box holding all the treasure down on to the counter and let me go through it. Then at some point they moved to the big shop which must've been early 1990s.

The big BIG store was extraordinary. On the ground floor it had clearance boxes with the poorer quality vinyl in, and via these I completed my original UK Beatles vinyl collection. I was never bothered by the odd crack or pop, it was part of the life of a piece of vinyl, not like the hipster snobs now! I also got all the original Stones UK albums here too including the lenticular sleeve of Their Satanic Majesties, and they were ALL under £20.

My strongest and unforgettable memory, is when i took all my Queen CD's in to trade to vinyl. Now in those days I was doing the opposite of most people, so the prices were pretty much evenly matched. I couldn't get the price I wanted from the guys at the counter however, so I walked away - but then a guy in the shop mustve overheard me and said come outside I'll buy them. As we were doing the dirty deal outside the Surrey St store, David flew outside and went fucking daft at the guy for stealing business off him out of his shop. David was understanding with me, but it scared the shite out of me lol

It needn't have mattered as I walked back into the shop and got most of the 70s Queen output on vinyl including a beautiful gatefold of Queen II.

In 2004 during the vinyl slump, i sold the lot for about £400. I'm pretty sure now I could retire on what I bought in Beanos. Great, carefree days, when the music still mattered more than the 'heavyweight 180g vinyl' its printed on.

I found this piece in the 'Croydon Advertiser' dated 30th August 1991: “It is record time for the famous record store. IT’S the biggest one in the country (possibly in the world) and it nestles behind the bustling market in Surrey Street, Croydon. Just a step beyond the cabbages and the King Edwards, it is hidden inside a narrow three-storey black and red brick building with opaque trompe-loeil windows which light up at night is almost a secret except to firm customers who visit it every week and know to be a veritable treasure trove, brimming over with memories. In fact, music to the tune of two-and-a-quarter MILLION second-hand records, tapes, compact discs, videos and books are somehow packed into the building and nearby warehouse which comprise Beanos. It is probably the biggest second-hand record store in the country, if not the world. That even Diana Ross asks for their help is the claim of the co-owners, David and Kay Lashmar, a bright and breezy, blue-eyed, denim-jeaned double act in their early forties who live in South Croydon. This year they celebrate a coming of age as it is 18 years since they began selling second-hand records in a couple of cardboard boxes in Plymouth market. “We moved from Croydon to run a gift shop in Polperro, Cornwall and part of our display was a 1950s juke-box which we had restored. We didn’t have enough records to play on it so we advertised and were inundated.” Although David was himself a keen record collector and also played guitar (“badly”) in bands such as the Dead Sea Fruit in the 1960s, he admits neither he nor Kay had any idea how quickly and well the business would develop. Now Beanos in Surrey Street, for years having outgrown their previous shop in neighbouring Bell Hill, has established a fine reputation among enthusiasts and serious record collectors and supplies the BBC and LWT advertising agencies and promotion companies, disc jockeys and stations such as Capital Radio and Invicta Radio, as well as helping customers such as Pete Townshend of The Who to re-discover his first single, hitherto missing from his private collection. Beanos also came to the rescue when Diana Ross needed a recording of her version of 'Chain Reaction' prior to a London concert she was giving. The cheque she signed found it's way back to 27 Surrey Street as it was made out to “Benjos”. The top-storey office is full of magazines and reference books. But their contents pale into insignificance, he says, alongside the extensive knowledge of the music business which resides in the heads of Beanos’ nine members of staff some of whom, such as Ray Bolton and Peter Jackson, have been with David and Kay for more than 13 years. Of course, stars and enterprises aside, the general public has its own special requests. “We often make up packages to celebrate a particular day or week such as the Top Ten on the day someone was born or what was Number One on a couple’s wedding day, say 30 years ago. “We’ve supplied the music for weddings, funerals (for some reason Procol Harum’s 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' is an immensely popular choice), fashion shows and even air displays. “Theatres also ask for our help: one West End production wanted a pile of 78s that could be smashed up every performance. Interestingly that production ended before the supply.” The customers are as colourful as the design of the shop, with its record-studded ceilings and walls, spoof instruments, guitar-neck shelving and vast collection of transistor radios. We like to think that the design reflects us, the people who run the business, in that it’s got a sense of humour and it is serious. Kay: “Customers come from all over the country, indeed from all over the world, a lot specialising in any one of a number of musical fields including folk/rock, British jazz, Northern soul, country, instrumental groups, record producers and record labels. “One long-standing customer collects early English releases of reggae albums. Another collects records only on the Decca label. Several collect recordings of railway engines. Another of our regulars (an accountant) is collecting Top Twenty British and US chart hits 1960-1990. “One of our irregulars lives in Mexico City. He was in five years ago and again a few weeks back with a list of requests as long as Croydon High Street. He was buying records not only for the jukebox in his bar but also seemingly for every other bar and disco in the entire country!” It’s not just for only the sound of music that collectors are after. Vinyl is becoming a sound investment that we are all unwittingly party to in our own collections. “An obvious one is The Beatles’ 'Please Please Me' stereo LP with the early Parlophone gold-black label. That is worth £1,000. “The first two Elvis LPs on the HMV label would be worth about £200 each. David Bowie’s 'The Man Who Sold The World', with him on the cover in drag would fetch about £250, as would many of the psychedelic groups of the late 1960s/70s. “Even recent releases such as David Bowie’s first CDs on RCA, now deleted, fetch £30 while some punk and new wave singles are already attracting three-figure sums. One collector has his 12,000 singles insured for £20,000.”

Like many others I have many happy memories of Beanos in Surrey Street and the big shop in Middle Street. I remember saving up to buy rare albums displayed above the racks in Surrey Street - 'Something Else' by The Kinks was one I remember. Also around that time early to mid-1980s I reckon I was searching the racks downstairs when I overheard a guy at the counter asking for Peter Sarstedt records. I was surprised as there couldn’t have been a less likely request at the time! I turned round to see this tall guy in dark coat - Yes, Peter Sarstedt collecting his old records. Thanks for the good times.

Like so many others I bought a lot of vinyl from them in the 1980s and 1990s. For either £60 or £80 it was they sold gold record displays of Beatles singles at one point, with lyrics of the song quoted on the plaques. Not sure if these were made by someone at Beanos, or something they picked up in a collection or something. I didn't buy any of those as I was a young teenager at the time and it would have been almost a month's wages from my weekend job. Nevertheless in total over the years I (like all the other regulars) ended up spending a small fortune in the shop.