In the early 70's I worked in the Oxford Street branch of Harlequin Records, then a big record retail chain. In this particular store the display sleeves actually contained the records, and were a target for shoplifters. One day our senior floorwalker apprehended a man and shook the front of his buttoned-up overcoat, causing an avalanche of Max Bygraves "Singalonga" albums to crash to the ground. Our junior floorwalker was amusingly named Miles Davies (with an e) thanks to his father, a trumpeter of considerably lesser renown than the jazz great.
At close of business on Saturday the owner would visit to cash up. Too impatient to count each coin, he'd stick his forefinger into the change tray, gaze into the middle-distance, then confidently announce "three pounds eighty-two" or some such made up figure.
During my time at Harlequin Records I was a bit taken with the word “progressive” which was just starting to be used in relation to music. I probably thought it made me sound intelligent. I'd drop the word into conversations whenever I could. When we decided it was time to re-shuffle our displays and come up with new browser headings I lobbied for a section entitled “Progressive Solo Artists”. My wish was granted, but not without fierce opposition from one particular colleague who cross-examined me over a number of days about which artists I believed qualified or failed to qualify for that description. He’d collar me on the shop floor and sneeringly ask “what about Ralph McTell then ? Solo artist or progressive solo artist ?” or “Johnny Mathis, he's not progressive is he, Roy ?” Some time later we received a large consignment of "unofficial" live recordings and I was given the job of sorting them. The colleague told me to keep an eye out for a particular recording by the band Spirit, who he knew were favourites of mine. He’d heard from a reliable source that there was one copy in the shipment. I never found it.
Harlequin Records in Oxford Street was a long and narrow store. A cassette counter was located by the entrance where a Liverpudlian lady named Linda worked. The rest of us were stationed at the record counter at the far end of the shop. There we would play the rock music of the day over the store's speaker system. Linda, whose musical tastes inclined towards the sugary and middle-of-the-road, would call on the internal phone to complain about the endless barrage of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin she was being subjected to, and demand Bread or Burt Bacharach. If we ignored her requests, which we sometimes purposely did, the calls would become more frequent and angry, the accent more Scouse, the content more profane: "Play Something F***ing Soft !"
I mainly worked for Harlequin Records in Oxford Street but was occasionally loaned out to other branches. I did a long stint in the Dean Street branch, which specialised in soundtracks from films and shows. The shop was run by Peter and his assistant Derek. Peter wore a badge that read “how dare you assume I am heterosexual”. Derek was moody, easy to offend and very camp. The two of them played Dorothy Squires and Marilyn Monroe records. Completing the staff was a rather volatile "resting" actor named Reese. He’d play Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or Band on the Run at very high volume, switching in a second from muttering gloomily about his doomed efforts to obtain an Equity card, to jumping on the counter and delivering a dramatic monologue from some play he’d performed in. He’d smoke marijuana in the back room and become very unpredictable indeed. Once, some unstoppable dramatic urge drove him to open the till and throw all the bank notes in the air with wild abandon. However out of control he became Peter and Derek looked upon him with absolute adoration.
My career in record shops lasted seven years. It ended in a South African owned shop called Les Disques, located in an arcade in Coventry Street that housed a tourist attraction called The London Experience. It was explained to me that the original name Les Discotheque was shortened to Les Disques by its first owner, a man called Les. The shop was open until eleven at night and we were expected to work extremely long hours. Because of the location I rarely saw daylight. Record shops displayed empty sleeves to the public and filed the vinyl discs behind the counter in what I'd always known as master bags. Les Disques, ironically for a South African firm, called these “whites”. A period of sales dominated by the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever ended when The Sex Pistols burst on the scene. I devoted a window display to their new album, until our boss instructed me by telephone to remove it. There had been complaints, he told me in a voice of suppressed rage, that we were displaying something called “Niver Mund the Bow Locks”.
