All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

I live in a major east coast city and we never had a Tower Records but I was certainly aware of it and always visited when in NYC, or Los Angeles. It really did have its own sort of ambiance and each franchise was different. For me Tower Records was at its peak during the vinyl period.

Colin Hanks does an outstanding job of showing the progression of Tower Records from initially a Sacramento pharmacy selling 45's to an international record giant and the vision of Russ Solomon and his team of loyalists . Russ is portrayed as an all around good guy who enjoyed nurturing employees to find their strength and grow with the company. I loved the interviews with the employees and recording artists who loved the place. Unfortunately digital music and the death of the CD killed the stores . But Russ was not bitter and had a great attitude. Glad this was filmed before he died so we could get his perspective. An excellently paced documentary.

I recall being excited to visit the Tower Records store in LA in the mid 1990s on my first visit to the west coast of the USA. When I returned a decade later to their San Francisco store, it somehow felt less exciting, the store looked a little too ordinary and it seems they were having a fire sale on. A few months later Tower Records had gone bust.

Colin Hanks documentary examines the growth of this record chain from its early years from founder's Russ Solomon's dad's drug store where he had a section which sold records.

Russ took over the business in the 1960s, starting in the west coast and moving to the east coast and then internationally to Japan.

As is the case, these heady years of the counterculture was a supposedly drug and drink fuelled hazy party for the staff (it always seem to be the case with maverick start ups.) Live hard and party hard was the motto. The staff I saw in the 1990s seemed to be mainly bored teenagers on minimum wage.

At the turn of the millennium Tower Records was valued at $1 billion. Their seemed to be no end to its success and they were determined to sell albums, preferably CDs.

The impact of online shopping was a body blow. The Apple Store allowed you to buy singles you wanted for 99 cents. Tower Records wanted you to buy the whole album for an ever increasing price and their online servers was on AOL.

Even worse the young IT savvy consumer could now get music for free from Napster and other torrent sites. Combined with the company's debt laden expansion, choppy waters awaited them.

The documentary interviews key staff from the early days as well as the man himself Russ Soloman who comes across as a charismatic maverick. We also get to hear from musicians such as Dave Grohl, Elton John and Bruce Springsteen about their joy in visiting the Tower Record stores, browsing, talking to aficionados. Elton admits he spent a fortune in their shops.

The documentary was a bit messy, in fact a little overlong. We see a former executive being fired by a new management team and how Russ took him out for a meal after a Christmas party which bought him to tears. I wanted to know why he was fired, why he could not get another job, what happened after he went for a meal with Russ and then the same executive turns up later on when the attention shifts to the company's declining fortunes.

In fact seeing some of the staff being interviewed I was impressed how they managed to become so big, it seemed to be more by serendipity than design.

Nostalgic, slowburning (sometimes a bit boring) story about the rise and fall of the biggest record store company in the world called Tower Records, which rose to fame during the seventies. Bruce Springsteen and Elton John declare their unconditional love for Tower Records, because both and many other famous artists where household guests at Tower Records, which opened an hour earlier especially for these popstars to let them be able to go on their weekly shopping spree for new records.

There was something quite special about that feeling of visiting an actual existing recordstore, which simple can not be experienced by simply downloading A TRACK.Going to the record store, with all these zillion records stacked up high, gave a feeling of coming home. And it was a home, for many music lovers AND musicians for many many years.

Internet killed the record store though after 2000. But the record store miraculously DID SURVIVE in Japan, of all places!

A bit too many management talking heads are the only downside of this documentary. For that reason I skipped the middle part. But the first part of the origin and rise to fame of Tower Records and the last part about the downfall are pretty interesting and fun to watch.

Greetings again from the darkness. I do not envy those experiencing their childhood in this modern era. Sure, they have far superior electronics and hundreds more TV channels, but they also have very little independence (most can't even walk alone to a friend's house or a park) and they likely will never experience the pure joy of perusing the stacks at Tower Records (or any other record store) for hours … experiencing the thrill of discovering a new artist or style of music that rips into their soul. OK, I admittedly suffer from a touch of "old man" syndrome, but filmmaker Colin Hanks (yes, the actor and son of Tom) has delivered both a cozy trip down memory lane and a stark accounting of good times and bad at Tower Records.

With humble beginnings as little more than a lark, Tower Records began when Russ Solomon's dad decided to sell used 45 rpm singles in his cramped Sacramento drug store. He bought the singles for 3 cents and sold them for 10 cents. Within a few years, Russ purchased the record business from his dad, and proceeded to run it as only a rebellious kid from the 1960's could. From 1960 through 2000, the business grew each year. It expanded the number of stores (peaking at 192 worldwide) and constantly adjusted to the musical tastes and the delivery method – 45's, LP's, cassettes, CD's, etc.

Using some terrific photographs and video clips, accompanied by spot on music selections, director Hanks brilliantly and generously allows the actual players to tell the story. The expected celebrity drops are present, and even the words of David Geffen, Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen and Sir Elton John carry emotion. However, far and away the most impact comes from extended interviews with the unconventional and charismatic Tower Records founder Russ Solomon and his devoted and forthright employee team. Their sincere recollections provide the roadmap through the phenomenal growth, as well as the devastating end in 2006. We understand how these stores became so much more than retail outlets … they were cultural hotspots for at least two generations. We also learn some things we probably shouldn't … like the definition of "hand truck fuel", and the reason Russ installed hot lighting in the listening booths.

Mr. Hanks surprises with his ability to balance nostalgia and the harsh realities of the downfall of an iconic cultural business. The film captures the key role Tower Records, while also pointing out that the crash was due to more than just Napster and digital music delivery. An interesting case study for business majors highlights the importance of vision vs debt. For more insight from Colin Hanks, check out the interview from film critic Chase Whale: http://www.hammertonail.com/

"No Music. No Life". The motto of Tower Records was somehow inspirational, and fit perfectly for stores that featured mammoth album artwork on their store fronts, their own "Pulse" magazine, and staff that couldn't fathom life without music … much less wearing a suit and tie to work. This was truly "a chain of independent stores", and trust me when I tell you that hanging out at Tower Records was more fun than having hundreds of cable channels.

It's a great documentary, especially for those of us who remember a time before iTunes, when you had to go to a store to buy new music. It's very meaningful even for those like me who Tower Records was not the friendly neighborhood "supermarket" of music. I remember the Tower Records that was very close to me, but I went to another store, a store which probably had the same story (or at least the same ending to their story).

Actor, Collin Hanks directs this documentary of the rise and fall of an important landmark in music history, from behind the scenes (as we all are most likely familiar with the surface of the story (especially it's end).

The interviews and narrative take me back to the days when you could not download a single, and had to go into a store to buy an album. Watching footage of rows and rows of albums and CDs fills me with the memories.

And the documentary truly points out what an interesting place Tower Records was and how interesting the people who worked there are, as they talk to people who were either there from the beginning or started out as a stock clerk at the original store and worked their way up to VP of something. It felt like the cool place you wish you had a job at.

Especially if Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl was a fellow Stock Clerk. He and Bruce Springstein and Sir Elton John told about their personal experiences at the store and showed their love for it.

It seems so recent, but Tower Records is now just a part of music history. This doc did a good job of showing that history from beginning to end.