For several minutes, my irrational hope was that Tower could have reopened and I didn’t hear about it. As I was about to make a U-turn to try to find the guy, the sad realization finally sunk in. Tower has been gone for almost four years now, and it’s not coming back. I still miss Tower like crazy, hence this belated tribute for MadeLoud.
I can still recall when my family first moved to California in the ‘70s and first going to the Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard, as well as the one in Westwood down the hill from UCLA. Before I had my own car, the trek to the Tower in Sherman Oaks with family and/or friends was really something to look forward to.
Once I became a card-carrying metalhead, I started learning about imports, and Tower was probably the first store in which I had even seen an import album. As K.J. Doughton, who ran Metallica’s fan club back in the day says: “I remember that before Metallica’s Ride the Lightning was released domestically by Megaforce Records, we were all grabbing the import version at Tower. You could find an exotic, Japanese version of Motorhead’s No Sleep ‘Til Hammersmith. The Asian records would have a glossy band running vertically across the cover. You could find Iron Maiden picture discs, with Eddie committing various types of mischief. Every day was Christmas for metalheads at Tower.”
Eventually, a Tower sprung up in my local neighborhood within walking distance. It was a great place to hang out if I was bored, and if I got the craving for a certain CD or DVD, chances were pretty good they would have it. If I was there killing time, it took a great deal of restraint not to spend any money. Like going to see a band, going to Tower was often a social thing where like-minded music fans could get together.
Just ask famed studio guitarist Steve Lukather. “It used to be you’d go to Tower just to hang out, and see what the new releases were that week,” he says. “It was a place where a lot of musicians would hang out, and you’d always run into people you knew, particularly in Hollywood. You’d run into cats, ‘What’s goin’ on? You wanna do a session?’ I actually got work from it.”
“There’s something to be said about going to a place, getting a vibe, seeing what’s there. It’s like shopping for Christmas. People like to go out and hear the Christmas carols, and get the ambiance. Just hanging out in the store, you’d get turned on to a lot of cool music, and there were cool people working behind the counter that would hip you to a new band.”
As indie artist Shawna Hogan (who you can check out on MadeLoud) says, “Music is also about the experience, and going to Tower was an experience - hearing new music over the loudspeakers, meeting other music lovers, and being in an environment that celebrates the art of music.”
“Tower always had that cool factor, unlike a Best Buy,” says music publicist Juliana Plotkin. “It’s what Tower represents in the grander scheme of things. When I lived in New York, Tower was this mecca of music. It’s not so much that Tower closed per se, it’s more about: Tower closed for crying out loud! It’s not FYE; it’s not Hot Topic.”
“Tower was a huge store, but it had an independent, homespun feel,” says Doughton. “Unlike, say, Blockbuster Video, there was a sense that they were attempting to bring unknown, obscure artists to the public, along with pop culture hits.”
With so much going online these days, today’s generation of new artists may eventually be deprived of two thrills: hearing their music on terrestrial radio for the first time, and seeing their album for sale at physical stores like Tower.
Shawna Hogan explains further: “Instead of the dream of one day having your CD in a Tower store where it’s widely available to a potential audience, now all you can hope for is to add your music to the millions of others that are online and market it all by yourself. When Tower closed I felt like, ‘Well, there goes that dream.’”
“People at this point are never gonna leave their house!” Lukather jokes. “They’re gonna stay in their house, stay online. People still want to go to a gig and hang. That will never be replaced.”
And indeed, many music fans still enjoy the tangible element of music. Going through albums at Tower lead you to so many other bands you could impulse buy, and metal fans especially would take a chance on bands unheard if it had a cool cover (Kirk Hammett told Guitar World this was how he first discovered Iron Maiden).
“At Tower, someone might pick up Kill ‘Em All, then stumble onto Slayer, Anthrax, Metal Church, and Megadeth,” says Doughton. “That was the beauty of it. You could find other bands from the genre of your choice, and expand your repertoire of sounds. But you’re not gonna find something like (Japanese band) Bow Wo’s Signal Fire or (Spanish band) Baron Rojo’s Volumen Brutal at Fred Meyer. You’d find both at Tower.”
When the writing was on the wall that Tower was going out of business, I was really hoping somebody would bail it out. But with the way the economy was going, I got the impression it was going to go out of business regardless. The Wikipedia version of events claims “mismanagement, managerial incompetence, and crippling restrictions from the first bankruptcy deal” contributed to Tower going down.
The music business has been called the most progressive of the entertainment businesses, even though a lot of the old timers resist change, clinging on to an old model that doesn’t work any longer. Perhaps losing Tower is one of those unfortunate losses that happens as a result of progress.
“It’s really sad to see the old way go,” Lukather says, “but at the same time, who says the new way’s gonna be worse? It’s just gonna be different. We’re in a transitional period. The next ten years is really gonna show a lot of how this is all gonna be, how music is made, manufactured, and is getting out to the masses.”
The last memory that comes to mind these days is driving past the two Tower Records I used to frequent. I believe both are furniture stores now. The one within walking distance of me was cleared out and has been dark for a long time, but long after the chain had closed down, the red letters TOWER RECORDS still continued to glow brightly all night long.
By konowd1
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