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IN WHICH… I COUNT MY BLESSINGS

When, aged eleven, I acquired my first single, American string-plucker Duane Eddy’s 1962 Top 10 hit, ‘(Dance With The) Guitar Man’, I had no thoughts whatsoever of creating a record collection.

But it wasn’t that long before the single – which hangs above my desk even as I type these words – was joined by my first long player. Which, it turns out, despite my belief when I began writing this book, was NOT the Rolling Stones’ debut, as I’ve been telling anyone interested for many years, but The Beatles’ Please, Please Me.

Odd how time can turn the truth – or the version of it you have adopted – on its head.

I can now be so sure, because I went through all of my Stones and Beatles’ LPs, and there on the back cover of my mono copy of 1963’s Please, Please Me (seemingly a fourth pressing, according to the Rare Record Price Guide 2020, and thus worth £150 if only it were remotely close to being in mint condition), written in a combination of black felt tip, blue and red biro are the following markings:

G.S. (1) G Sharpe. 20 Borrowdale Avenue, Wealdstone, Middx. HARrow 0257.

The (1) was clearly superfluous. At this point I owned just this LP.

The Beatles’ LP was soon joined by Number (2), the Rolling Stones’ eponymous April 1964 debut. Mine is, I believe, the second pressing with the 4.06 minute ‘Tell Me’ and listing ‘I Need You Baby’. (Which gets it a £200 rating, with the same caveat). It, too, boasts my initials – together with red biro ‘real writing’ signature, address and telephone number.

These two records demonstrate starkly the differences between The Beatles and the Stones in those days, when your street cred could depend on which of the two you were aligned with.

To refresh my memory, I decided to listen to, and look closely at, both albums, one after the other. I wouldn’t have done that since 1964.

Please, Please Me was released on 22 March 1963. I’m not sure when I managed to get a copy but it won’t have been long after release. I was 12 years old. The Stones’ LP, The Rolling Stones, was not released until 16 April 1964.

The first obvious difference between the two is that The Beatles’ album has its title on the front cover, the Stones’ on the back. The Beatles are smiling at their prospective buyers, the Stones gazing stern-faced at their potential audience. The Beatles offered 14 tracks for the money, the Stones a dozen.

I want to mention at this point how vital covers are to LPs. The number of records I’ve bought on spec, purely as a result of deciding the cover photograph or image suggests the musical content will meet with my approval, is astonishing. Occasionally it can mislead you, although, when it does, it is usually because the record company wanted to ‘suggest’ that the contents would be something they actually never were.

A poor cover can ruin any chance the record contained within it ever had of reaching its true potential. Check out Harsh Reality’s sought-after, £500-valued 1969 schlocky, gory, awash with fake blood Heaven & Hell cover. (‘Blighted by one of the most inappropriate sleeve designs of its day’ wrote John Reed in notes to a 2011 reissue.) It was designed by one Phil Duffy, but would have sold more with a better sleeve which didn’t shout ‘trying too hard’, although (ironically) it would now be worth less.

But a great sleeve design can enhance an average record to the point where its impact exceeds its quality – witness Quintessence’s 1970 eponymous £80 album cover’s inspired, innovative, eye-catching central door-style opening. To my ears the music came nowhere near matching the cover’s impact.

The music on The Beatles and Stones’ records highlighted differences between the groups’ images. The Beatles were far more approachable, with eight self-penned tracks, all pretty much love-based, very catchy and almost sing-along, definitely ultra-commercial. The other tracks included middle-of-the-road fare by Goffin-King, and Bacharach-David-Williams. ‘Twist And Shout’ was the grittiest track, which had recently been a hit for the Isley Brothers, while ‘Anna (Go To Him)’ was by bluesy soul singer Arthur Alexander – from whom the Stones would shortly afterwards borrow and improve ‘You Better Move On’.

Paul and John shared lead vocal honours, but The Beatles showed a little group democracy by chucking ‘Boys’ to Ringo, and letting George lead the way on ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’ a question markless song which Billy J Kramer would later take into the Top 10.

There was no question (and never has been) of Mick Jagger letting the rest of his group muscle in on his lead vocals, and he fronted 11 of the 12 tracks on the Stones’ album; the other, ‘Now I’ve Got a Witness (Like Uncle Phil and Uncle Gene)’ was an instrumental on which Gene Pitney played piano. Uncle Phil was a reference to Phil Spector, who co-wrote ‘Little by Little’ with the writer(s) of ‘Now I’ve Got a Witness’ – Nanker Phelge. ‘Nanker Phelge’, with occasional minor variations, was a collective pseudonym used in their early years as a catch-all songwriting name for several group compositions.

Explained bass player, Bill Wyman in his 2002 book, Rolling with the Stones:

‘When the Stones cut “Stoned” – or “Stones”, according to early misprinted pressings – as the B-side to their second single, 1963’s “I Wanna Be Your Man”, Brian (Jones) suggested crediting it to Nanker/Phelge.’

The entire band would share writing royalties. ‘Phelge’ came from Edith Grove flatmate Jimmy Phelge, while a ‘Nanker’ was a revolting face that band members, Brian in particular, would pull. The ‘sixth Stone’, Ian Stewart, who played keyboards on four of the debut album tracks was also included. Only one track was credited to Jagger-Richard – ‘Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)’. At this stage Keith was still Richard, rather than Richards. None of the Stones’ LP tracks was issued as a single.

This is a harder-edged album than Please, Please Me. There is far more R’n’B and blues than pop influence on the tracks. Andrew Loog Oldham’s sleeve notes justly describe it as ‘a raw, exciting basic approach’ while, in his Please, Please Me sleeve notes, Tony Barrow oddly describes the music as ‘wild, pungent, hard-hitting, uninhibited’ – a description not entirely justified by the tracks on offer.

Very different albums, very different groups and images – but both appealed to most of the same audience as a whole, as they were both so vibrant, young, and refreshingly different. Most of those listening had never heard such music before. But even at this stage, the ‘safer’ option to side with was The Beatles. If you wanted ‘edge’ you lined up behind the Stones. Both groups were pinching styles from older soul and blues artistes, adopting, adapting, sometimes blatantly stealing, yet it was all new to the majority of my baby-boomer teenage generation.

Money was tight for me as a young, still-at-school teenager, whose weekly pocket money was about half a crown. My LP Number (3) was, slightly oddly, Out Of Our Heads, from 1965, by the Stones – their third LP – and not, by the look of it, a new copy. I clearly hadn’t been able to afford a copy of their second outing; (4) was also second-hand, Aftermath, from 1966, the Stones again, while (5) was the 1965 Hang On Sloopy LP by US pop group, The McCoys, whose British fan club I would eventually end up co-organising.

Although I was clearly a Stones’ man, I had to wait to acquire 1965’s Rolling Stones No 2 – it was my Number 26 LP. Their Between the Buttons from 1967 was my Number 7, and the same year’s Their Satanic Majesties Request Number 9.

My ‘new’ records were coinciding with birthdays and Christmases, the second-hand ones indicating that I was now seeking out record shops selling such things. It was some while before I began to lose count of how many I had, but during the late 1960s that happened, as I began to store them all over my bedroom, in cupboards, on shelves and under the bed. It would be over 50 years before I could again say with certainty how many LPs were in my collection. I counted them specifically for this chapter.

This wasn’t a straightforward undertaking.

In the front room there were two cupboards-worth, plus one bookcase shelf full of LPs, half a dozen shelves containing runs of between 50 and 100. Oh, along with the two sets of Beatles and Stones records standing on the floor. Then I moved into my study area in the hall to count how many albums there were on the middle shelf to the right of my laptop. After they’d been added up, I moved to the wardrobes in the main bedroom, where there are a couple of hundred. Then there is the ‘library’ room where my horse racing and gambling books live alongside quite a few albums – several hundred here, in fact. Up the steep, alternate step staircase to the top room – which now holds the largest segment of the record collection. These used to live in the room immediately below – number two son’s bedroom which was, though, adversely affected when a leak enabled an ingress of water, responsible for the Great Cover Disaster of 2017.

As a result of this I now own more records with water-damaged covers than, frankly, I would have liked. Some of them very collectable items indeed. Amongst them, Little Free Rock (£175); Audience’s Friend’s Friend (£100); May Blitz (£400); Quintessence (£80); Bowie’s Hunky Dory (£50); and McDonald and Giles (£150).

This should make me feel angry and upset every time I see them. But, just as when I look at the sun-damaged, football-wrecked, alcohol-bloated, overwork-battered bodies of my now ageing friends of many years standing, it only makes me fonder of them to think of what we have gone through together, and despite all of this managed somehow to remain standing, albeit unsteadily.

My insurance company did shell out to enable me to replace the damp discs – well, with reissues. They even sent the covers off to a specialist company who endeavoured to bring them back from their watery grave. A valiant, but largely ineffectual, exercise.

Fortunately, water does not have an adverse effect on vinyl, so the only obvious evidence of their ordeal is in the condition of the covers which have concertinaed up, but remain obviously what they are.

I have no desire to chuck them out and bring in equally ancient copies with different marks of longevity about which I know nothing, or to replace them with prettier, younger yet not quite the same ‘reissues’. They are now uniquely ‘storied’ and I very much doubt that I would ever have parted with them anyway. Well, maybe Quintessence.

After five days of counting – a very frustrating undertaking as slippery plastic covers make it too easy to count three as two or vice versa – which wears down the will to live, and inflicts numerous small, but painful plastic- or paper-cuts, I completed the task.

I can tell you that as of 10.43am on Tuesday 27 June 2018, having earlier reached the 3000 mark by counting the Robert Cray Band’s Too Many Cooks, I was the proud(ish) owner of 3239 LPs – give or take a few. The last one counted was The Herd’s Paradise Lost (£70 if in good nick, which this one definitely isn’t). Technically this belongs to my wife, but on the basis of what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is hers, I’m including it. That’s probably 10 per cent more than I’d reckoned on, and a little down from the peak amount, given that I had recently been selling a few off, albeit also gathering more in, but please don’t tell Sheila that…

Really, who NEEDS over 3200 LPs? No one, if I’m honest.

Probably closer to 3500 by the time you read this. After all, I brought back two dozen from my last trip to the Antipodes in 2019 alone. Then there was the June 2019 San Francisco haul… I can thoroughly recommend Haight Ashbury’s Amoeba Records for its selection, its prices – and its bulldog clip system of enabling you to leave your bags at the counter.

It also contained many examples of my own vinyl catnip which explains why I persist in buying and listening to music from my formative years: records made in the late 1960s/early 1970s, by groups of similar age and thoughts to me, but which made no impact, weren’t played, publicised and popularised at the time, but were written for people like me and sound as fresh and exciting as the day they were recorded. Rediscovered and reissued by specialist labels, they are what I seek out.

I could spend five hours daily playing a completely different set of nine LPs for an entire year. And at the end of that year I’d still have played every record I own just once.

Do I collect to impress people by telling them how many records I own? That is quite possible, but if so, it doesn’t work. A look of uncomprehending pity is the default reaction should I admit this shaming statistic to someone. The next reaction, one word: ‘Why?’

I do it largely to impress myself, for sure, but that’s pretty pointless, isn’t it? Am I going to tell myself I’m NOT impressed?

I do it because I want to do it.

I do it because I CAN do it and because when I first started wanting to accumulate records I couldn’t really afford to do it without sacrificing some other, more essential purpose to which the money could be put.

I was thoughtful enough on my own and, soon, my wife’s account, when I was contemplating buying a dozen LPs at the Sellanby second-hand shop during the 1970s and 1980s, always to choose the cheapest version they had available – that was my idea of compromising and saving money, thus allowing us to pay the mortgage. Which does at least indicate that I wasn’t over-concerned with sell-on values.

I do believe collectors are divided into those who long for pristine, blemish-free, silent-background record reproduction and those who, like me, enjoy (indeed, possibly prefer) hearing the accumulated scratches earned during the long, active life of a second-hand disc bought frugally.

Having totted up the LPs, I was now wondering how many CDs I owned, so started to count them as well. I took a breather on reaching 1000. I counted double albums as one in the vinyl tot-up, likewise with the CDs. Box(ed)-sets I’ll call just one.

The CD count did not take as long as the vinyl, mainly because I wasn’t going to let it, so I may have slightly rushed. I’m confident the final total was, er, getting on for 2500. Ish. Thus, as well as playing nine different LPs every day for a year I could also play six different CDs without, etc…

I’ve also just realised that I left the 60-plus CDs by Free, Paul Rodgers, (Small) Faces, Bad Company, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Humble Pie, The Killers, etc designated as Sheila’s, but which I bought for her, off the list. Because they’re stashed on a shelf in the kitchen – not my territory.

Are these excessive quantities?

A Facebook post from collector, Mark Turner, asked members of the vinyl group to which we belong:

‘How many records are enough?’

Before trying to answer this question, perhaps we should consider Rutherford Chang. The last time I checked, Rutherford Chang owned 2435 numbered copies of ONE RECORD alone – The Beatles’ White Album. Not content with that, he is constantly seeking more. His collection has been displayed at KMAC Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. ‘Each individual album is posted @webuywhitealbums. If you have a copy in any condition please let me know: rutherfordchang@gmail.com’ he pleads.

Mark Turner’s ‘How many?’ query prompted a deluge of responses, including mine: ‘To many of us there is no such number.’

By and large responders agreed:

‘When your wife/husband says “anymore and you sleep in the garden”.’

‘Just one more…’

‘The Limit does not exist.’

‘11,672.’

‘One more than I already have.’

‘The one you buy tomorrow will be enough.’

‘When you can’t remember how many you already have.’

‘I’ll let you know when I get there – 12,000 and counting.’ (Designer Wayne Hemingway MBE recently boasted: ‘I have more than 13,000 vinyl records.’)

I empathise with all of these sentiments, but let me now tell you how and why I came up with the idea for this book…