Town Records

Name: Shaun
Comment: That Town Records bag certainly takes me back in time! Town Records was very well known for importing records from the United States and members of The Rolling Stones and other groups would often drop by to catch up on the latest imports.

The problem was that the USA pressings were often of such poor quality - we used to get a lot returned as faulty which then had to be written off - so this was not very profitable. Those in the States didn't seem to worry about quality - but shoppers here had got used to good quality pressings, particularly those pressed in Germany.

In the end I decided to sell Town Records as I found overseeing two shops as well as our Spanish imports and public library business was really more than I could cope with. I left empire-building to the likes of Richard Branson and of course in time he too decided to get out of record retailing. It was always thought that Richard was a very talented self-made business man. This was true - but he probably wouldn't have been so successful without the start-up capital that he got from his father, estimated to be £100,000 in the early 1960s, which would be well over £1 million today.

Name: Simon Drew
Comment: Well Mick J and Bill W used to leave Keith R in the armchair at Town Records at about 10am and not come back for him until 6pm! He was very docile, if you know what I mean!
(7 August 2016)