Tower founder puts new spin on record store

[rostasi]

Tower founder puts new spin on record store

By David Watts Barton - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:59 am PDT Saturday, June 9, 2007

The bright-yellow facade and newly painted red trellises around the building

leave no doubt what is happening at the corner of 16th Street and Broadway

in Land Park.

Tower is back.

Well, not "Tower" per se, though its familiar color scheme now dominates the

corner where Tower Records once stood. Instead, it's R5 Records and Video,

which will open sometime this month. But the man behind the store remains

the same.

Russ Solomon is back.

When Solomon's Tower Records declared bankruptcy and finally died in

December after a slow, ugly decline, most figured the 81-year-old Solomon

would take a well-deserved retirement.

So, it comes as a surprise -- to those who don't know him well -- that just

six months after his industry-changing record store chain closed, Solomon is

opening a new record store. He is still receiving product, but the store is

nearly ready, and he's looking at a "soft" opening as soon as next weekend.

Solomon is starting R5 Records and Video halfway through a year in which

compact disc sales are down 20 percent, and the word on everyone's lips is

"digital." The conventional wisdom says downloads and iPods, not CDs, are

the future.

Which prompts a question: With all due respect, has it occurred to Solomon

that he might appear to be a Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, unable to

accept the new realities?

Or, less poetically: Crazy?

"I am crazy, " Solomon says. "I guess it's something in the blood. It comes

from an overdose of shellac years ago."

That Solomon jokes about shellac -- the material records were made of when

he first started selling them, 66 years ago -- tells a truth: from 78s and

LPs to CDs and digital downloads, from mono to 5.1 surround sound, he's seen

it all. And he isn't intimidated. He is, in fact, intrigued.

He's also a proud man. Though time has taken its toll -- he's heavier, moves

a bit slower, and what little hair he has left is completely white -- he

speaks with the enthusiasm of a man with something to prove.

"The real story is that you hate to go down a loser," he says bluntly.

'There's life left' in business

In a series of conversations on the phone, at his art-filled home in Arden

Oaks, and in the Broadway store, Solomon argues that he can reinstate his

"winner" status. More than that, he thinks that the record industry -- and

perhaps a chain of R5 Records -- will be selling CDs long after he's gone.

"I believe that there's life left (in the business)," he says. "There are

things that need to be tried. And since I was preaching against a wall the

last two years that what Tower was doing and what the industry was doing was

misdirected and wrong, I owe it to myself and to the business to do it my

way."

Solomon's way, as he puts it, "is getting back to the fundamentals. Our

focus has to be on people who love music, giving them great variety at great

prices."

The new store's name was cobbled together by Solomon and Patti Drosins, his

longtime companion and partner in the store, and was determined by what few

Web site names were available. "Tower Records" wasn't an option: it is now

owned by Caiman Inc., an online retailer that continues to run the Tower.com

Web site.

But according to Solomon, the new store will give anyone familiar with Tower

Records flashbacks: despite the name change, R5 Records looks a lot like

Tower in its heyday. In fact, the new logo was designed by Sacramentan Mick

Michelson, now 89, who designed the original logo in the early '60s.

Walking into the virtually empty store on Broadway, Solomon is greeted by

other familiar faces: Store manager Paul Brown, who worked for Tower for 25

years, Dale Glover (28 years) and Phil Minas (33 years). Even the younger of

Solomon's nine R5 employees -- some in their mid-20s -- have worked at Tower

for years.

"I give all the credit to the employees," says Solomon. "Local management,

and the enthusiasm and knowledge of the employees -- that makes the

difference and that's what you don't get in the big boxes. They know the

music."

Solomon won't say how much money he's investing, but off-the-cuff,

off-the-record estimates by those who know the business run in the

three-quarter- to 1 million-dollar range.

Room for record stores

There's great interest in R5 Records, in Sacramento and beyond. Rob Fauble

competed against Tower since he started his store, The Beat, 25 years ago.

He says his business at 17th and J streets is up 25 percent since Tower

Broadway closed. Yet, he's thrilled Solomon is opening a new store.

"We're having our best year ever," he says in one breath, and then adds,

"Russ is my hero, so I think it's great he's opening. ... They took his

company away from him, and he's been on the sidelines; now he has the

opportunity to start with a clean slate."

Solomon is a heroic figure to many in the business. Jim Donio is president

of NARM, the National Association of Recording Merchandisers.

"People couldn't see beyond the death knell," he says of Tower's demise.

"But there is a future, and there are very smart people out there who know

that the industry needs to change, and Russ is one of them."

The heart of the "change" Solomon is proposing is less high-tech than

high-touch, though he concedes the importance of digital realities. But he

says the dangers are overblown.

"They've been talking about digital online for 10 years, and it's still just

15 percent of the total of music sold," he says from his Los Angeles office.

"People still want to go into a store and find a record; it's instant

gratification.

"For many products, shopping online is good only if you know what you want,"

he reasons. "It's generally quicker to buy things in the store -- you can

see so much when you're standing in front of a rack, you see hundreds of

titles at once, whereas you only see 15 or 20 when you're online."

Antony Bruno edits the digital entertainment pages for Billboard. He is so

much in the digital realm that he doesn't even recognize Solomon's name when

asked about him. But he knows Tower.

"I'm the digital guy, right?" he asks rhetorically. "I'm the guy who says

the CD is in its sunset years."

But even Bruno admits Solomon may do quite well.

"There's clearly room for good record stores," he says. "There will always

be record stores that survive, because they know the area and the people and

the music. That said, I wouldn't do it -- but that's because I don't know

how."

Stock to rival Tower's

R5 Records will rival the old Tower Broadway in its stock. Inside its 6,000

square feet, Solomon plans to carry nearly 50,000 units, as many as 40,000

discrete titles, including some 5,000 classical titles. And, says Solomon,

the special orders department will give amazon.com a run for your money. The

store will also carry 15,000 movies on DVD.

The stores won't be open until midnight every night, but they will be open

seven days a week, 365 days a year, just as Tower was. The hours are planned

to be 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, possibly until 11 p.m. or

even midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Solomon is convinced that, as he says, "All we need to do is the things that

made Tower successful."

And Tower was successful, he says, and not just in its heyday.

For the fiscal year that ended in June 2006, 76 of their 89 stores were

profitable, not counting interest expense and most other corporate costs,

according to a filing the company made in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last August.

Though the initial investment for R5 is coming out of Solomon's pocket, he

is looking for investors to expand, eventually into a full record chain.

"I can't just stay with one store," he says. "I'm not a one-store operator."

He may be dreaming, but he's dreaming big. And as Ed Christman, retail

columnist at Billboard says, "He's got the whole industry pulling for him."

After all, Christman adds, "Who else, at 81, is going to start a business?

He still wants to make it happen."

Drosins, who's known Solomon for 25 years, and spent most of her

professional life working at record labels in New York, says Solomon's

not-so-secret strength is his passion.

"He's still as passionate as he ever was," she says, adding wryly, "a lot

heavier and a little less hair, but just as much passion. ... He always

looks at the positive, and looks to the future, and that's what keeps him

young."

Move is a challenge

But why? Why not leave well enough alone? After all, Tower may have died,

but while it lived, it changed the music business. These are laurels to be

rested upon.

" 'Cause I don't know any better," Solomon jokes. "But OK, seriously, the

business has really changed, and that presents a very interesting challenge.

And the truth is, I really don't know how it's going to shake out. ...

"And that's exciting," he says. "I can't do a lot of the things that I used

to be able to do: I can't water-ski, I can't climb a mountain. But this one

... this one I might be able to do."

http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/213184.html

Edited June 11, 2007 by rostasi

[paul secor]

Hope he can make it work.

[rostasi]

Magazines were almost the only things I ever bought at Tower.

Generally, I looked at stuff and made mental (and sometimes scribbled)

notes on what to pick up when I got home.

[catesta]

cool-- edc got no beef w/tower; their best stores were excellent, tho' the lesser ones could be a drag & their wage structure (LOW) sometimes caused problems, esp. in bigger cities. the tower concept, at its best, is groovy... borders are fucking hideous in general & even decently stocked b&n are waaaaaaaaay too heavy on major label slop in all categories. also, SOMEONE here might know it but if not--- tower used to have a superb magazine selection & was often the go to distributor for all sorts of fanzine craziness in the early '90s... i know shit done changed w/the internets craze & all but it was cool to know people could be randomly exposed to such a wide range of stuff.

Oh yeah, the magazine selection was great. Something there for everybody, it even had that porno store floor wax smell.

[J Larsen]

I'll never forget the three minute message my roommate got 15 or so years ago from the magazine buyer at Tower cataloging all the things that were wrong with his 'zine... brutal!

[JSngry]

Antony Bruno edits the digital entertainment pages for Billboard. He is so

much in the digital realm that he doesn't even recognize Solomon's name when

asked about him. But he knows Tower.

"I'm the digital guy, right?" he asks rhetorically. "I'm the guy who says

the CD is in its sunset years."

But even Bruno admits Solomon may do quite well.

"There's clearly room for good record stores," he says. "There will always

be record stores that survive, because they know the area and the people and

the music. That said, I wouldn't do it -- but that's because I don't know

how."

This would be funny if it wasn't so damn true.

Hell, it's funny anyway.

I'm all for moving forward into the digital age and all that, but there seems to be a lot of "it's over" before it's over coming from people who think it's over just because they don't know how.

A bunch of freakin' morons on both ends of this rope, it seems to me. Here's hoping that Russ Solomon continues to not be one of them.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Over the years, I bought over 300 albums from Tower, which makes it the fourth most important source of my collection. I hope he makes it - and that he opens one up here!

MG