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IN WHICH… I CONTEMPLATE DEVASTATING LOSS

Writer Ed Vulliamy, who was moving from the UK to Arizona in January 2011, shipped his 1600-strong record collection out to the States. Then 56 years old, he’d been collecting since he was 12, and had stayed loyal to vinyl. ‘I’ve always listened to vinyl, never threw any away. I dislike the metallic edge on digital sound and couldn’t download my way out of a paper bag even if I wanted to.’ As a result of a mix-up over the shipping arrangements, the US Customs ended up destroying his records. All of them. ‘The right paperwork did not reach the right people. My books and records had been “released to carrier for destruction” by US Customs in Phoenix.’ Ed was, like the collection, shattered. I think all record collectors will empathise with his comment that: ‘I felt as though the physical evidence for most of my life had vanished.’

But, drawing strength from some deep-hidden source, he set about re-collecting the entire collection after a friend gave him six of the albums he’d previously had – by Neil Young, Sly Stone, The Beatles, Electric Flag, Stoneground and Poco. He has gradually managed to gather copies of the majority of his former records together, having done so by enlisting help from friends, acquaintances, and John Stapleton of Bristol’s Wanted Records, as he set about the task, which must have initially been soul-destroying to contemplate, and ultimately rather more costly than when he had originally acquired them.

I just hope an insurance pay-out is covering the cost. Mind you, I’ve found it very difficult even to explain to insurance companies just what a record collection is. I have virtually the same conversation every year when renewing my contents insurance and we come to the matter of valuables or individual works of art worth a certain amount. I begin to endeavour to explain the concept to someone who seems never to have even heard of or come across vinyl records before, or just refuses point blank to believe that, even if they do exist, they could have any value whatsoever, let alone a four-figure one.

‘Are you talking about a proper work of art, a painting?’

No, a single vinyl LP record I own which I could sell for £1000 at least, so I need to know it will be covered if stolen.

‘I should think so.’

That’s not a definitive answer, is it?

‘You’re covered for works of art worth up to…’

Oh, forget it…

I did once suffer a radiator malfunction in a room in which some records were stored on the flooded floor and, to be fair to the insurance company involved, they did pay out without complaint even though the records had not been ‘individually itemised in advance’ as they would have preferred. I can just imagine what they’d have said, had I actually sent them a list of a couple of thousand singles and LPs and asked for confirmation that each one was individually covered against fire, flood, theft, and accidental damage.

I’ve often wondered, just what does my own record collection really mean to me and why do I have it? I can only conclude that it comes down largely to ego. Why do I love the collection so much, and continue contributing to its enlargement? For sure I love talking about, looking at, and listening to it. I have no reason to believe (sorry!) that it will ever be otherwise. But would I be suicidal if I were somehow – through theft, fire or some other disaster – to lose the whole thing? Logically, no, I would not. I may feel bereft. But I might also think that it was a great excuse to start collecting all over again from scratch. As Ed V probably will do in time.

Would a replaced collection end up looking exactly the same as before, or be significantly different? Somehow, I suspect the former. It would not be as large, for sure. Because I wouldn’t bother replacing the records which I now know I will never listen to again… despite the fact that I can barely persuade myself to part with those same records and they form a hefty part of the collection. Obviously, as some of the records I now own are pretty valuable, and many others came to me free of charge in the first place, it would cost rather more to reassemble the entire collection now than it did originally. No change from the best part of 50 grand, I’d estimate.

There’s little doubt that I do enjoy being able to boast that ‘I have’ some of the LPs which have lived in the collection for many a long year. But that’s just bigging myself up to myself, really. Because who else is remotely impressed? Julian, maybe, occasionally. And that’s because he seems to have convinced himself I have records that I really don’t. But no one else. Why shouldn’t we collect to impress ourselves, though? Others aren’t impressed. Often they just think you’re a bit of a tosser who got lucky and don’t actually care that you’ve got records they’d like to have.

Why else do vastly expensive works of art, valuable classic motors, original printings of rare books vanish into private collections, never to be seen by the hoi polloi again? So that those with the private collections can not only look down their noses at everyone else, but also so that they can be the only ones able to drive, look at or read a particular desirable object, and listen to the originals of similarly rare records. But to spend years creating a personal treasure trove of items important, if not essential, to the conduct of one’s life is to pour so much of oneself into that process, that to lose it for some totally unexpected reason could result in a potentially life-damaging impact. As some have discovered, to their cost.

There’s a very catchy, rocky track called ‘She Stole It’ on Best of British, the 1999 LP by former Small Face Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan and the Bump Band. And what is ‘it’? Well, McLagan’s lyrics explain that ‘I’ve been collecting records since 1962’, but then reveal that his ‘little girl’ has left him a note, telling him that ‘she stole my record collection’, explaining that ‘I turned my back for a minute, she left and took ’em all’. Then he reveals what was in the collection: in one verse; ‘Hank Williams, & Muddy Waters, Aretha & Otis Blue’ – a great selection. But there’s more – ‘Stones, Beatles, & Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Booker T’ … and more still: ‘Elvis, Gladys, Curtis, Mavis, Sly & The Family Stone’. The song sounds amazingly autobiographical so maybe this tragic tale actually happened to the much-missed keyboard ace Face.

Unless we are extraordinarily well organised, we’ve all surely misplaced records. ‘I know it is here somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on where it is’. Less frequently, but even more frustrating when it happens, we may have completely lost records, never to be found again. There are many ways in which to lose one’s valued vinyl. Like the one which happened to Meno Fernandez, who posted a tragic-sounding yarn to a Facebook group to which I belong in October 2018 that: ‘I kept them in the attic of my shop in a milk crate. When I came across a turntable I thought, what a great excuse to play my old albums. When I climbed up to get them, the milk crate was gone. My wife said something to the effect of “I thought you said they were all junk”. I think they’re all gone. That milk crate had the first album I bought – over 50 years ago.’

If Gordon Green’s experience is anything to go by, though, Meno will eventually recover from the blow: ‘The records I lost were 78s with artists like Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers, Bessie Smith with her amazing voice and early Louis Armstrong records.’ Gordon is the former proprietor of the Neuadd Arms Hotel in Llanwrtyd Wells, Mid Wales, who suffered a personal disaster when he moved from there: ‘When I left the Neuadd I was looking for my traditional jazz collection, when I noticed the children sniggering. They had taken them down to the playing field and played frisbees with them.’

Writer and broadcaster Danny Baker has always been a keen vinyl man and his twitter feed (@prodnose) regularly features photographs of him posing with different LP covers in the background.

In November 2018 he revealed a deep-seated regret: ‘Every now and then I think about all those LPs I saw in the skip at the council tip that time. Beyond reach, they were. It haunts me...’

Novelist Tim Lott weirdly decided of his own free will to lose his collection, revealing in The Guardian in 2004 that: ‘I remember one day staring at my collection of several hundred vinyl LPs – scratched, withered covers, records played half to death, some of them with me for nearly 30 years – and thinking, “Enough”. These things are ghosts, memories, clutter; hardly played, barely loved anymore. The reactions from some of my friends – mostly men – were horrified. How could I do it? It was like withdrawing support from your favourite football team (which I had also done) or leaving your wife.’ Well, I’m with his mates!

1960s DJ and TV personality Simon Dee split up with wife Bunny in the early 1970s, by which time he’d amassed a huge record collection – ‘practically every single and album by a major artist from 1964 to 1970, plus preview discs and acetates. I had an acetate of Sgt Pepper months before it was released,’ he told biographer Richard Wiseman. But having moved out of his home during the domestic split he ‘discovered Bunny had been so hard up… she’d sold the whole damn lot for 50 quid!’ Dee then spent 15 years rebuilding his collection only for burglars to steal ‘thousands’ and, bizarrely, ‘hundreds of others were slashed to pieces’.

Elton John also lost his massive record collection – but in a very worthy cause. It consisted of 70,000 singles, albums, cassettes, CDs and studio tapes which ‘right before I got sober’ he decided to sell to fund the AIDS Foundation he was setting up at the end of the 1980s. Amazingly, it took Stephen MH Braitman, accredited senior appraiser affiliated with the American Society of Appraisers, 20 years to value and prepare it for auction. The collection was sold at auction for £166,600 to someone from St Louis, Missouri. In February 2011, though, Elton showed that he had the heart of a true record collector when he said, of selling the collection: ‘I really regret it now.’

Always remember, your collection could disappear overnight for a variety of reasons…