Life Without Tower?
Tower Records — founded in 1960 in L.A. and a fixture on the corner of Lafayette Street and East Fourth since 1984 — announced last week that it had been purchased out of bankruptcy by a liquidator and would soon be closing all its stores. Jada Yuan and Sara Cardace asked New York music people for their memories.
“Keith Richards used to live upstairs, directly above Tower Records, so he was always outside there late at night walking his dog. I knew people who would run into him late at night. There’d be nobody around, and you’d see this guy with his dog and you’d go, ‘Isn’t that Keith?’ And you’d walk up and talk to him, and you wouldn’t be able to understand a word he was saying. It was very strange. The store itself, I’m not sure it’s going to be missed. It’s not like CBGB. It wasn’t a cultural phenomenon. It was a store. They sold things.”
— Kurt Loder
