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

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.

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.

Unlikeable men fall into a CANNOT LOSE business (baby boomer, rock buying generation) and milk the customer dry for decades. Despite making millions, and eventually billions, this is not enough for these offensive parasites. These supposed "businessmen" (actually simple-minded drunkards and coke heads), fail to see digital coming and greedily refuse to offer their goods at reasonable prices. Now that these people are exposed for the lowlife scum that they are, they can only weep at the loss of their jobs (and at the loss of a fellow drunk, a gentleman who hilariously, literally wears a lampshade on his head. What a cutup! This, and the David Crosby / walrus-mustachioed Cletus are these people's idea of interesting people.

Despite each working for decades, adding up to centuries worth of experience, in a music-related field, it is notable that music - remember music? - is never a discussion point for these selfish greed heads, only the good times they enjoyed and the incredible profit they were making, both at the customer's expense.

Tower Records was a good store in spite of these people. Everyone loves music, all you needed to do was sell it to them at a reasonable price. See the Beatles' Apple Records for a similar example of what happens when you put burnt-out hippies in charge of your business. It's a shame alright, shameful actions.

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.

They call it luck, but it takes a particular type of wisdom to be at the right place at the right time. Russ Solomon had this in spades, when he branched out from his entrepreneurial father to expand into records. This movie is a blueprint of how to start a great business. First of all, have the vision. Secondly, get great people, give them freedom and back them up. Sounds simple, but very few businesses actually do this. In the movie, various key employees are interviewed and they all basically tell the same story. That is that they were given a chance to prove themselves and they rose to the challenge. Russ also realized that he could tap into the collective wisdom of all his employees and this he also did, especially with advertising and the Tower Records publication Pulse! It is refreshing to see the 60s again, the hope and the freedom. Russ also realized that he was not a financial type, so he hired an excellent money manager in Bud Martin. The demise of tower records was quite sad, but technology replaces one thing with another, so it was a tremendous ride.