39

IN WHICH… I’M LOVE-ING IT!

Literally crate-digging, as he thrust his hands into the plastic containers, the middle-aged customer in Second Scene was piling up the records he wanted from the several crates in front of him, in a rapidly growing heap. Julian, the owner, was popping in and out from the back room, bringing in ever more records and the odd cup of coffee for his prolific customer.

‘Here’s another Love,’ called Julian, possibly the fourth or fifth time I’d heard him say that since I’d come in. I was a little surprised because I wasn’t aware that singles by that particular band were that commonly available. Or that Julian was given to addressing his male customers in such affectionate terms. He’s never said that to me. I noticed, too, that he was also handing over large numbers of Beatles’ singles – and the customer didn’t seem to be worried about what condition they were in.

‘What’s twenty-eight times three?’ Julian asked me as he jotted down how many 45s he was getting rid of, impressed that I was able to tell him 84 almost instantly, courtesy of my working lifetime in bookmaking. That was just the cost of the number of £3 singles his customer was buying, but there were other, more expensive ones, one at £73. I was becoming a little bemused at the whole situation. ‘I don’t think I can manage any more crates after this one,’ said the customer. ‘There’s only so many you can go through without beginning to feel the pressure.’

Julian spoke of another customer, who ‘comes in regularly and invariably goes through those crates, even though he’s done it many times before, which may actually be why he does it. I suspect he may be autistic, and I’m not sure what he’ll do now you’ve decimated the titles he’ll be expecting to see!’

‘I think all record collectors must be slightly autistic,’ suggested the customer.

Neither Julian nor I could disagree with him. It seemed to me that this customer’s buying habits were exceedingly unusual, as was the fact he’d already mentioned to us that he used to be the son-in-law of Monty Norman, famous for writing the music to the first James Bond movie, Dr No, including the ‘James Bond Theme’, the signature theme of the 007 franchise, and thus receiving royalties since 1962. I asked him why he needed so many singles by Love, and it turned out that he didn’t. He was just buying up songs with the word ‘Love’ in their titles and they, together with all The Beatles, Prince and other groups and singers whose records he was gathering up would mostly be used in his work and not for listening purposes, although he is also a collector himself – hence, I assumed, the £73 item.

Keith Haynes, for it was he, is an artist who uses vinyl records and their covers to help create his works which, when I checked out his website, art-partnership.co.uk looked impressive – and if I had any wall-space left at home I’d certainly be in the market. His online biography explains: ‘Born in 1963, Keith’s work is noteworthy for his choice of materials, creating works from the “clutter” of pop culture – button badges, CDs or, more uniquely, vinyl records. Whether it’s a graphically iconic portrait or a meaningful song lyric, each piece is created from original vinyl records.’ Keith’s not the only vinyl-minded artist. In 2014, Roger Miles created a pop-up record store as part of a final degree from Chelsea College of Arts. I met Roger on a visit to the record shop he had just begun to run across the road from London’s famous Olympic Studios, and he confided to me that his first album was ‘Hot Rats by Frank Zappa – and I still own it.’

Olympic Studios, an early twentieth-century building close to the Thames in leafy Barnes, where swans were sunning themselves on a patch of grass next to a busy road when I visited, ceased to be a music studio in 2009, but after four years of closure, reopened in 2013 as the home of the Olympic Studios cinema. In their heyday, the Olympic Studios were amongst the most important such venues in pop and rock history. I was there to see the recently launched record shop almost opposite, which Roger opened up for me in late August 2018.

Bands such as the Stones, Beatles, Hendrix, Procol Harum, Small Faces, The Who, Zeppelin and U2 recorded there between 1966 and 2009, and although no longer used for that purpose, there are nostalgic reminders of its past throughout the building including original Ronnie Wood artworks and nostalgic black and white photographs of the likes of Brian Jones, Scott Walker and Marianne Faithfull. I was there with a friend, Times journalist Alyson Rudd. Although not remotely interested in vinyl records, she is a local resident and she had contacted the proprietor so that I could get a look at the new premises.

Roger, recently Artist-In-Residence at the Olympic Studios, created a collage of hundreds of the albums recorded there, before becoming the front man in the shop, Olympic Studios Records, funded by the owners of the Studios. He explained that one of the unique aspects of the new outlet would be stocking records recorded and mixed in the Olympic Studios – of which he estimated there were some 900. He handed me a list of those titles, with the ones he had already acquired for the shop marked in yellow. Not surprisingly, there was still a significant number of non-yellow titles to track down. The records range alphabetically from A Band Called O’s 1976 album Within Reach, which they had when I was there, to Zucchero’s 1989 Orro Incenso & Birra, which they didn’t. ‘The most popular and in-demand record of those recorded at Olympic has so far been the 1970 album of the show, Jesus Christ Superstar,’ said Roger.

I was able to look through their stock and although Roger did admit ‘there may be a little Barnes-weighting to the prices’ I thought they were not outrageous. They clean all of the records with a very high-tech piece of kit whose inner workings remain an absolute mystery to me but appear to achieve their stated objective. I compromised between new and second-hand original, by purchasing a pre-owned copy of the 2017 reissue on silver vinyl of Marianne Faithfull’s 1985 LP, Rich Kid Blues for £15. I listened to the Marianne record that evening – she originally recorded it in 1971 when at a pretty low ebb in her life. It shows!

Shortly after these encounters, I heard about still another artist working within a vinyl milieu. Entirely by chance, I had an appointment in London’s Piccadilly, when a friend told me about an exhibition taking place nearby by an artist who specialised in reproducing classic rock records as artworks. He was talking about Morgan Howell. I duly made a short detour, to Masons Yard, where the famous Scotch of St James club, which attracted high rollers of the rock industry like The Beatles, Hendrix and the Stones during their and its heyday, was and still is located, albeit there was a 20-year hiatus after the glory days had dwindled away. The Scotch is at Number 13 Masons Yard – but Number 4 was playing host to Morgan and his artworks, and, just as used to happen in many films and TV programmes of the 1960s, precisely as I arrived outside, a car zoomed into the kerbside, disgorging a man clutching a variety of items, including the keys to the door.

‘Are you about to open up?’ I asked him. ‘Sure, come in,’ he said. Inside, as he turned up the heating and bustled about making tea, asking me if I wanted one, he began to talk about the artworks lining the walls, ranging from life-size examples of his reproductions of singles up to the giant, supersized versions in which he also specialises. One of the most stunning of these is of the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’, the original of which, he tells me, was sold to Andrew Lloyd Webber for an astonishing £21,500. This immediately made me think his work would be comfortably out of my price range. We chatted away and he said he got into this style of work when he was searching for a type of art which would be original and offer him a unique artistic identity.

Morgan, born in 1965, was introduced to the music of the 1950s and 1960s through his older sister’s record collection. The record reproductions are absolutely fascinating. Framed and displayed like this they really brought home what miniature works of art the originals were, from their usually simple but striking designs, to the information collated on the labels. The examples hung around the small gallery area included rock and roll classics. Morgan told me gleefully about the original lyrics of Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’, written by Dorothy LaBostrie, credited as the song’s co-writer on release in 1955. ‘In its original form it was absolutely filthy,’ he laughed. He’s done Chuck Berry records, too. There are examples of Beatles and Stones discs as well as the Kinks, with whom he recently worked on a version of their minor hit ‘Wonderboy’, which we both agreed is one of Ray Davies’ most under-rated songs. Oddly, Morgan said Ray wouldn’t sign the finished article (although he did later) – brother Dave did.

We both enthused over some of the sleeve designs and were in agreement that the Island design was a mini masterpiece, as was Immediate’s. One of Immediate’s singles Morgan had done was ‘Tin Soldier’, by the Small Faces. ‘Tin Soldier’ is one of my wife Sheila’s very favourite discs. She bought a copy when it came out, and claims it originally had a picture cover, which mysteriously disappeared at some stage. I’d been thinking I should buy her a replacement copy for Christmas. When I showed her photographs of various releases of the single and the picture covers they came in she immediately identified the one she’d had – bizarrely enough, a Dutch release. Now, I nervously asked Morgan how much a copy of his ‘Tin Soldier’ print would cost me. There was – just – change from 200 quid. OK, not ‘cheap’ but as one of only 75 copies in existence, not exactly ragingly expensive if you consider the cost of diamond rings.

Morgan is obviously a fan of this 1967 release and was first drawn to the song when he was in a band himself: ‘We covered it (badly) in our band when we were kids. That intro is still the greatest in my mind, and the stop… before the power chords and wailing vocal… magical. I always just loved the ‘Immediate’ bag with its Mod arrow and simple black and white aesthetic.’ The easy-going, mod-style-dressed Morgan was great company, and a fund of anecdotes and memories as we swapped stories about some of the artists and their tracks hanging around us. I had to depart all too soon, but I left with the solution to the always difficult problem of what to get the other half for Xmas unexpectedly solved.

I also came up with a way of enhancing the present by seeking out a copy of the Netherlands’ pic sleeve single and framing it and the Morgan print together. Thus, for the first time since 1973 when Sheila and I visited an amazing record shop in Amsterdam, we’d truly be going Dutch! I gave it to her for Christmas, and she seemed to really like it. Then she caught a sickness bug, and whilst running a temperature and feeling unwell she ‘accidentally’, she assures me, threw up all over the framed ‘Tin Soldier’. These things happen…