Tower represented the best of when it was an excursion to find music. The sights, the sounds, the smells of a record shop and it’s shoppers and it’s employees.
Though it was corporate, it felt like a big cool Indie shop

Tower Records sucked balls…there prices were fuckin ridiculous…the only place worse is Sam Goody…who also went out of business

Guys like wal-mart, barnes & noble, and Best Buy really drove them out. They couldn’t compete.

Tower Records made a huge impression on me as a music collector and fan.

I will never forget the first time I saw the flagship store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Wow, you talk about selection, inventory. I was running a record department at Caldors a department store chain, but this was a whole block dedicated to music! Russ Solomon knew how to market and promote music.
My favorite instore appearance was at Tower Records in the Village, Los Lobos played a mini-set and signed copies of The Ride. It was great to meet them, get that piece of memorabilia and hear them in the store.
Going to miss Tower Records. Sorry, expansion and the fact they failed to reduce their prices sent them out of business (also the digital download and file sharing hit em hard too)

It is a sad day. I grew up with Tower!!! The bright yellow sign & bold red letters shinning in the night sky!! I remember when I first bought & stole my first cassette tape!! LOL!! That was in 83! So long ago… My favorite Tower was the one in San Diego across from the Sports Arena. Lots of mem’s. Long Lines for CD Relese events at Midnight. Working at Pure Platnium during the day then stopping by Tower on the way back to the beach before my night gig picking up the latest 12″ records or concert tickets. When I was 16 I always wanted a job at Tower but never got it. Guess I needed more gel and odd colors in my hair. I remember when Tower went to CD, that was a sad day 2. Now they are closing 4ever!!! wow. the end of an era. Now I truly feel older that they will be closed forever, gone, *poof* that is crazy. Hell, I just found the only Tower in Oregon and now its gonna be gone too. So, So long old friend. you will truly be missed. I will miss your long isle’s of endless music from every genre you could imagine. The posters, t-shirts and box sets. So long big bright yellow bags with tresured prizes of tapes, records, cd’s for your ever growing music collection. There will be no one like you. You could always find what you were looking for at Tower back in the day. RIP TOWER. You will truley be missed. . . .

WAITING IN LINE AT MIDNIGHT TO BUY U2′S “POP” ON VINYL WITH MY WIFE…..STILL A GREAT RECORD DESPITE ALL THE NAYSAYERS OUT THERE….ROSECRANS ST IN SAN DIEGO LOCATION BEST EVER

HEARING RAGE’S “FREEDOM” ON THE RADIO AND THEN HAPPENING TO DRIVE BY TOWER AT THE SAME TIME AND BUYING IT ON CASSETTE

Tower going out of business kind of reminds me of that movie Empire Records, in a way. I’ll miss Tower. I even worked at a Tower for a month. The employee discount was pretty nice. The selection was stellar. I bought countless concert tickets there. I have to agree with Chris’ post. Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart…they all drove Tower out. Bastards. It used to mean something to go out and buy an album you were jonesing for. Now, in the digital age, it kind of leaves me cold. It’s not the same. I’ll miss you, Tower. You were a good friend to my collection.

i remember when i was trying to get the new backstreet boys album when it came out on CD and i couldnt find where they stocked it and i had to ask one of their guys in a blue shirt where it was… wait a second… sorry that was at best buy. i guess tower was the place that charged $16.99 for new releases. yea, i stopped going there as soon as some other place started selling the same things for less.

i went up to the one on 66th like an hour ago but it was already closed… dammnit… cb’s AND tower… what happened to respecting your elders?

“The fat lady has sung … she was was off key. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.” Russ Solomon

Come on folks, music is what needs to be saved…or, at least, better assigned to visual noise.

Never seen one

It truly is a sad day. Back when I lived in Hollywood in the ’80s, I used to frequent the iconic Sunset Blvd. location at least twice a week, since CDs were being released so randomly at the time. It was so much fun to browse the racks, listen to whatever the staff had chosen to play, and even bump into the occasional celebrity. Like the time I was in line behind Tommy Chong. Or when I spotted John Mellencamp… I was a poor college kid with limited funds, and I already had his “Scarecrow” CD, so I ran to the singles bin, picked up “R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A.,” and had him sign it. Given what became of Tower’s prices toward the end, I’m just glad they didn’t charge me extra… after all, since he’d signed it before I’d actually paid for it, it was a collectible!

im deeply saddened by tower closing. i share so many memories there at the one in lincoln center, ny. when i graduated hs, i went there to get my graduation gift, i bothered them when they were late on the shipment of HIM’s dark light being out, i bought french cds for my mom, when i was bummed it got me through some times, on teacher recommendation i bought jeff buckley’s cd and became a fan,i even spotted liza minelli there one time with her assistant looking through edith piaf discs. lots of good memories…not much in the way of low prices though. but that is like the only music store with that extensive collection in that entire area. it will be truely missed….

even though tower is sadly gone – for cds in the SF bay area, there are still 3 streetlight records locations and a few rasputin’s as well…

Yea, Tower Records Hollywood.Just 30 minutes from Lakewood. For the last 30 years I’ve shopped there.From vinyl to CD’s…What memories I’ve had there.Been with 2 different wives and several girlfriends.Does any one remember the psychedelic years 1967/1975?
What a freaking trip walking down Hollywoods streets. Iremember the Neon very vividly..Since I was walking on LSD25 and Mescaline…Not at the same time of course! Yea many memories…Carneys, at least I hope will stay around…Or is it gone? Later everyone….Be Good Safe and Happy….

The Tower in Boston was housed in a historic nbuilding redisigned by Gehry. I used to go every Monday at 11:30 PM to see what was going on sale at the “stroke of tuesday”. I met some very, very, very interesting people during those hours.

If you live in the Hollywood area there is always Amoeba music.

one of my first memories of tower was in 6th grade back in ‘86. i got straight a’s and was rewarded by my mom’s with a trip to tower to pick any tape i wanted. so what was it you ask, run dmc’s new release at the time, “raising hell”, yeeeah boooy. that was the beginning of a great relationship. r.i.p. tower records. you will be missed.

one of my first memories of tower was in 6th grade back in ‘91. i got straight a’s and was rewarded by my mom’s with a trip to tower to pick any tape i wanted. so what was it you ask, run dmc’s new release at the time, “raising hell”, yeeeah boooy. that was the beginning of a great relationship. r.i.p. tower records. you will be missed.

A sad state of affairs. I’ll miss ya, Tower.

I loved Tower. The selection was incredible. They literally had everything. Today is a sad day.

You’re exactly right about Walmart. They use your tax money to build more stores (tax incremental financing), force them-selves on you, eliminate your right of choice and if for some reason your favorite artist pisses them off they censor what you buy.

I remember when Tower Records opened up in Campbell, Ca. in the 1970’s, went there ever since. A story heard here about the closing of the store didn’t mention anything about the internet and this place always had the business. So whatever really is the true story about the closing of the store is really not clear to me.

Finally, a Tower sale. Perhaps if they had continued to have the great sales they used to have, they would not have folded. While Barnes and Noble, and Borders offered upscale clientele high priced CDs with high priced coffee, Tower offered high priced CDs with that ‘wounderful’ warehouse look. I knew the end was near years ago.

We will miss Tower in ATL.It was always so busy…WTF? Yea it was pricey,but, you could find just about anything. They also had a great local music section. Now… go visit Criminal Records in L5P.

Teach the children to remember our heroes. Born and raised in NJ, spent everynight and weekend trolling NYC and now they are all gone. IMAGINE a world without
WNEW-FM
The Bottom Line
CBGB’s
Tower Records East Broadway

These places influenced generations and helped change culture and music. How sad.

Agreed with Ken.
If their prices were more competitive, they wouldn’t be closed. I love my ipod, I love the cd, I love the playlist and I love album. So, my hope is that this will be realized as the industry shifts.

I’ll miss Tower, but everyone has to learn that you can’t charge more than $15 for an album. Do you hear that Sam Goody? FYE? I spent a consdierable amount of money on their going out of business sales. And of course, it still didn’t go to Tower but to the company that bought them (ha!).

Lower the prices!

href=”http://www.blackcoffeere flections.blogspot.com”>Jack
from blackcoffeereflections

It all started out trying to locate a friend who tends to get lost from one point in space to another–so I looked up ’strange artists’ and found Zappa in a web search?
His music is awesome and certainly unique.

That brought me to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website. While looking through the pages; then there was a reference to “Missing Persons”, and the tune “Destination Unknown”–even the lyrics describe my friend!

While the pages here on Rolling Stone are great–now Tower is closing; who will distribute and sell the music? And just how much of it — with how many different types and varieties?

Is it really just music, no, it’s Rock and Roll.

IN_store by Swervedriver @ tower on sunset in LA. Amazing. going to tower on northpoint (sp) in SF from forever ago.

It has taken me a long while to wrap my head around the closing of Tower Records, and in particular, the store in Massapequa, NY – the setting for some of my most cherished memories.

When I was a teenager, all I ever wanted to do was work at Tower Records. Just being in an enviorment like that created a stimulus likened to what a child feels when he’s let loose in Toys R’ Us – because in essence, that’s all Tower Records really was but an endless toy store for those that lived and breathed for music.

In retrospect, what started out as just a dream job to a young man in his teens, eventually became the fabric of the loves and the losses that define me as a person. I met all my best friends at Tower Records, and I’m proud to say that those people are still my best friends today. Beyond the love of music, there is a genuine love for each other. And through the good times and the bad, these friendships have endured, growing tighter and tighter as the years fly by.

There are too many memories to list, but I need to mention some that will be forever etched in my brain. I’ll never forget the infamous trip to Great Adventure in 1997, where I crashed into a side of a bus carrying old folks to Atlantic City and almost killed Dina Dwyer in the process. Again, sorry about that Dina.

I cannot forget the night I slept out overnight in front of the store so we could all score Jane’s Addiction tickets. At five in the morning, I awoke to the light of a flashlight in my eyes belonging to one of Nassau County’s finest – an empty case of beer to my side, along with six or seven others bundled up in layers of blankets. The officer and I had a very interesting conversation, to say the very least!

Of course, anyone who remembers The Black Crowes Limo Extravaganza fondly remembers the good, the bad, the arrests, and the copy of Garage Days Revisted (on cassette!) that was played over and over in that limo the whole way to Jersey and back.

Since the store is closed, I guess there’s no need to keep secrets – I used to get fucked up a lot while on the job! I blame Uno’s and their 2-for-1 beers, and I also blame anyone with the last name Neder, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point of all this is that if there was ever a point in my life where I truly felt on top of the world, I cannot think of any other time besides my days at Tower. Of course, today would be the exception, as writing this reminds me of how fortunate I am to have been able to put in a lot of miles with all of you. I love you all and I don’t know where I would be without any of you.

Before I go, it needs to be said that conceptually, Tower was unlike any other establishment that claims to provide music for the masses. What happens now to the kid in Massapequa who wants the new Comets On Fire album? Where does he/she go to find what they need? Or better yet, what does he/she do now on Saturday nights when there’s nowhere else to go? Whatever the answers to these questions are, I hope the soundtrack to their lives end being just as timeless and universal as ours was.

- Daniel M. Alleva, 12/25/06, NYC
http://www.warmtape.blogspot.com

Tower carried everything : but you paid a price for them having so much stock – here in the UK, it was not unusual for a new CD to be £17 : you could walk 100 yards and get it for £10 from a major megastore… it’s no wonder they went out of business.

I totally understand what happened to Tower. I owned 3 music stores from 1990-2002. I had wonderful success even with a Sam Goody, Wal-Mart and a K-Mart in my city. But coming from a guy in the business, when the world was hit with napster, the music industry changed forever. All of us are to blame. The music industry didn’t know how to deal with it, the music producers continued to put out one hit wonders and abolished the cd single, marketing reps paid whatever it cost for radio to play the same shitty songs day after day, and the customers found that downloading, file sharing, and buying $2.00 bootleg cds was much more disirable. One by one my stores went under as my faithful customers started to disappear. Everyone had a part in it. The music business will never be the same as it was in the beginning when it was all about the music. Now it’s about the dollar. I am all for advancement in technology and the digital age of music is great. But I feel like we took the wrong path to get here and now we are paying the price. Like it or not, Wal-Mart and Best Buy now run the music industry. What a sad fuckin’ day for music lovers.

ANY JAMES BROWN CDs ON SALE?

…..
I remember one fuzzy evening scavenging Tower Records for a rarity classical and finding it waiting for me on one shelf there. RIP Tower, your products still have their places on my discoteque.

HREF=”http://www.turkiye.org/b logger.html”>Turkish Diary

Blue Christmas without you, Tower Records. Have been browsing and buying from Tower since the first store opened in New York’s Village back in 1983 while a student at NYU. It was my home away from home. Loved the world music section the most, the late night hours, and surprise, the great bargains!

The high prices never bothered me. I rarely spent more than $11.99 on any CD and often much less than that, as there were so many bargains if you looked hard enough. At one point, there was a whole separate department devoted to bargains (Tower Outlet). I agree that the experience of shopping a great record shop is fast becoming history. I feel sorry for all the younger folks out there who will never experience a great record store.

I was still shopping at Tower last Friday right until closing hour. How I will miss those red neon lights on Broadway. A very sad Christmas time for me.

Best wishes to all the former Tower employees and customers.

I would always go the Tower on Newbury st for midnight sales. Mary Lou Lord used to play on the street a lot by that store. I camped out for tickes over the years. I’m going to miss Tower but having an ipod I rarely by CD’s anymore.

Cactus Records in Houston was similiar to Tower in that it was an icon here. I went to Tower many a night needing some inspiration for studying and since it was right across the street from campus, it was an easy walk. Then I found Waterloo Records and their prices are cheaper and they had everything Tower had.

I love going in to Tower and finding everything I wanted, but I really don’t want to pay $20 for a cd, and no one else did either. Their’s and FYE’s clerk’s excuses is that “That is what the list price is”. Well my friends, that is why you guys are out of business, when Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, Target, Frye’s, etc., sell the cd for 9.99 to 13.99.

Thanks for the great memories Tower, but you should still be here.

i remember stealing a rolling stone magazine from tower back in 1988. they hauled my ass up to their back room upstairs, took a poloroid of me, and told me never to enter another tower again! haha. a year later, i got hired at tower video, and 5 years later i was writing for rolling stone…

I think Tower once represented the best of music culture. I was one of the thousands who camped out for tickets, albums, and instore appearances. Unfortunately, it went down the dark path of money-hungry-ripoffs and just started charging way too much for their albums (Sam Goody anyone?). It’s sad to see them go, but I got my local indie record shop near by and they are even better…

man i miss paying 20 bucks for any cd released before 2004…f them thats what they get for charging so much.

Tower Was known for it’s high prices but at the same time they gave breaking new artists a chance when nobody else would…I remember buying some CD’s for 5.99. Thats what I loved about em

risk takers…

Oh man, i knew about this but i didn’t realize that they were history. So where can we all go to get obscure tunes these days? They had anything and everything.

For you whiners you get what you pay for. You have bought CD cheaper somewhere else but your choices were limited. Tower had EVERYTHING!!
If it was in print Tower had it or could get it. I have an extensive collection of vinyl and CDs many that are collector’s items. Where did I get them? You guessed it TOWER. However, I guess time moves on. They demolished the infamous Brown Derby Restuarant a eatery that was frequented by all of Hollywood’s royalty and was actually built in the shape of a derby.
Goodby Tower, you will be missed.

I’m so sick of people bitching about “tower’s high prices”. get off your butts, get a job, and start patronizing music businesses that support the artists and their employess, not just their own wallets. used to work for them in SF, and was a life changing experience. they will be missed

It is with great fondness that I remember dancing with others in the music magazine section of the London store to The Chemical Brothers’ “Chemical Beats” all cranked up when it had just come out, or shuffling through CD’s in the New York Greenwich Village store while listening to Nancy Wilson on their speakers around Christmas time and the snow falling outside. Or even meeting Jeff Buckley there…
Always my favorite shelter from the cold in a way that I never quite found from similar chain stores like Virgin or HMV.
Pricewise, they could be strangely cheap or strangely expensive, but for some reason I used to find some imports that I could never find in other stores.
Odd to say that about a chain store, but to think that I will never go to Tower Records again really does break my heart… *sigh*

Tower was the FIRST specialized media superstore. They blazed trails in media merchandising, advertising, and selection…and then their competitors took all the best bits that could fit into a corporate scheme, applied them, and TRAMPLED Tower into oblivion with generic imitation.

Want to understand the price thing? Well, until late in the game, it was not unusual for Tower to have five or six full-time buyers in one store who knew the local tastes and their section better than anybody in TOWN – no bigwig buyer a thousand miles away buying only the most popular titles by the millions and distributing from a central warehouse to a thousand stores. Tower Buyers bought all but advertised special products INDIVIDUALLY. And they bought in quantities of one and two for items that weren’t in demand, just so everybody had a chance to walk away with that obscure gem that they’d never been able to find anyplace else. Tower made its (late) fortune on deep-catalog. It costs a lot of money to have slow-moving product on the shelves, as a courtesy, JUST IN CASE SOMEBODY MIGHT WANT IT…

Back when I worked for them, ALL of the employees (despite being known for piercings, green hair and tattoos before it was de rigeur) had to have an INSANE amount of musical knowledge to get in the door. Once in, we were THRILLED to have one of the most respected minimum wage gigs ever known. And where else on earth could you work with a guy that looked like Johnny Rotten (only not so attractive) capable of conversing fluently about the relative contributions of Hank Williams, Sr., Charles Mingus, Sonic Youth, and Engelbert Humperdinck…all while changing a roll of cash register tape?

It was not unusual for a customer to wander in looking for an obscure song, ask the staff for help, and walk out an hour later with at least two of the following:
A complete education on the history of the song and any trivia attached, their name on the guest list to see one of the employees’ bands that weekend, possibly a phone number for a date with either an employee or another customer who was present during discussion of the song in question, a referral for where to get that tattoo he/she always wanted…and a shiny red and yellow bag containing a record/tape/cd of the song they were seeking and a copy of Tower’s FREE honest-to-god music magazine, Pulse!

And it worked that way for YEARS before it finally lost its niche and had to scramble to the beat of its competitors’ corporate drums. Up until the mid-1990’s, it managed to keep some vestige of its unique personality.

If you have fond memories of Tower, or want to understand why so many people DO, go watch the movie “Empire Records”; it was written by a former employee of a Tower in Phoenix, and she NAILED the personality of Tower in part of its heyday. No, it’s not exactly Casablanca, but when you’re finished watching, you’ll feel like you just spied on a day in the life of old-Tower.

So I guess, even all these years later, I really should thank Russ Solomon – instead of trying to beat us into cookie-cutter submission, Tower was a come-as-you-are culture where they liked you MORE for bringing something new to the table. Back when company culture wasn’t a buzzword for business school graduates. If I’d only known that all jobs weren’t like that when I was young, I would have appreciated it SO much more.
Ah, youth.

I remember going to the Tower Records across from the Sports Arena in San Diego when bands like Metallica and Slayer were relatively unknown. I remember going to Tower when they still had a ton of LP’s and when they started to sport cassette tapes. One day I was looking for some Aerosmith and I asked one of the employees to help me out. Man, did that guy know his stuff. He gave me the whole history of Aerosmith and then he told me that I could also get them on a Compact Disc. I asked him, “What’s that?” The guy that wrote the part where they used to hire employees that had colored hair and tats when it wasn’t common was so true. Man, that cannot be stressed enough. Heh Heh! Tower Records back in the day was the shit! You will never find that kind of selection anywhere; not even the internet! Man, so many things have changed in so little time. I feel so old!

WA6zCt hi! hooli?

Damn. It’s been three years since they shut down and I still can’t get over it. I used to go to the WOW! in Las Vegas (Tower Records b/w the Good Guys [electronics store]), and when Good Guys closed, it signaled the beginning of the end of a great era for me. I never truly appreciated it until I really got into music about a year after the last one closed. I got my first Zappa album there (Strictly Commercial). They were the Messiah of record stores and I wish dearly that they would come back.

RIP (for now)

ktsf,no,lv nailed it right on the head. Those of us that worked for Tower did it for the love of the music and for the pleasure of bringing to the customer that same joy that each of us experienced every Tuesday when that long awaited release came out, or a re-issue of a lost relic.
As far as prices go, The record labels, in accordance with the industry itself, set the list prices. Tower didn’t charge above those prices and, typically, charged less. It was when the big box stores such as Best Buy, Circuit City, and Wal-Mart moved in and used CDs as a loss leader and made up for it by selling expensive electronics, washers and dryers, etc., that Tower couldn’t compete. When all you sell is music, you can’t sell it for less than you bought it for. The big boxes did just that. CDs always remained one of your best bargains. I’ve gotten years of enjoyment out of each CD. When CDs first came out, they were roughly $18. 20 years later – $18. Compare that with concert ticket prices. The artists have to make it up somewhere when you’re stiffing them on their music. Support your local indie music store while you still can.

Wanna know how much I miss Tower? The only award I can brag about is being the ONLY Mexican bred ‘Geekus Musicus Maximus’ in their much missed yearly trivia contest only instance South of the border. I still keep the humongous invoices I didn’t pay for! (Not to mention the corresponding box sets…).

Wanna know how much I miss Tower? The only award I can brag about is being the ONLY Mexican bred ‘Geekus Musicus Maximus’ in their much missed yearly trivia contest only instance South of the border. I still keep the humongous invoices I didn’t pay for! (Not to mention the corresponding box sets…).

I miss Tower. I will miss Virgin. And I miss all of the wonderful, small record stores I used to depend on – Especially Freebeing Records just South of St. Marks Place in NYC. However, I have to strongly disagree with the former Tower employee quoted below who defends the charging of $18 – $20 by Tower for back catalog items. Without even getting into specifics let me say this: record stores depended not on the occasional buyer, but on people like me – the music freaks who would spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on music annually. My small, local, independent stores sold records at a discount. WallMart, KMart and Target still sell them at a discount. BMG & Columbia House also sold them at a discount. Amazon? Frequent discounts. J&R Music World, the Local NYC Music/Video/Electronics/Comput er superstore — discount!!! If all of these retailers could somehow manage to sell at a discount… then why could Tower and Virgin not figure out why? Did they have a faulty business model or were they just stubborn to the point of extinction? Clearly downloads have had a HUGE impact… so have the big-box stores. All the more incentive to have figured it out. But they didn’t. Now, if I have $250 to spend on CDs… who’s going to get my money? They guy that sells me 20 CDs for the price or the one who sells me 12? Do the math.

i miss Tower. it was part of my life for a number of years til for some reason it closed down. i later discovered the sad news.

yes, they did have everything… and then some!

thanks for the memories!

Tower Records was the best chain record store I’ve ever had the pleasure of shopping in. I first walked in a Tower Records in a rainy Spring afternoon in 1988. The other competing store (in the vicinity) was Record World, who were good but smaller than Tower. It was like an awakening of sorts. They had a large budget section.
I bought Sting’s Bring On The Night double-live album.

I miss Tower but I understand why they folded. A significant decrease in new music by Major Labels and MTV had a huge influence on the record-buying public for years. Take away a significant amount of that music from MTV and major-labels, retail-chains and the artists themselves suffer. This is why The Wall, Sam Goody, Coconuts and several other chains closed their doors as well.

There is still tower records in Dublin

Empire Records was mentioned in a previous post. Another piece of trivia about it is that many of the events in the movie were based on happenings at Tower Sunset in West Hollywood. An employee really did run off to Las Vegas with the store’s money. Tower Records was an incredible experience. I was a buyer and supervisor at Tower Sunset and I still regard it as my favorite job. I wish Tower founder Russ Solomon the absolute best with r5 Records in the old Tower location in Sacramento.

I remeber going to Tower Records back in the early 80’s. It was one of these stores that you could check out all cool new shit, like T-shirts and the latest new cassett tapes from Van Halen to Fishbone. We made it a New Year’s Day ritual to go to Tower Records because it was the only place open on New Year’s Day.Back then we could somke in the store and check out all of there new stuff.