THE MAGIC TOWER

They say you don't know what you've got til its gone, well we most certainly knew what we had when it was there and I don't believe for one moment we ever took it for granted in all our many, many afternoons spent ensconced in that happy place.

For at the lower end of Regent Street at 1, Piccadilly Circus, otherwise known as the centre of the universe, was the momentous Tower Records which even merited its own special elevator entrance at basement level from the underground tube station below, so integral did it sit in its surrounding environment.

Tower Records, London was the lodestone we'd gravitate to first as an absolute priority once we'd arrive in London from the train at Paddington station, centring ourselves before heading off for further adventures in the city.

Any city groove always began at the Tower. It was like a spiritual retreat from the hustle and bustle and overall chaos awaiting us in 'London town' as the Gershwin Brothers referred to it in their classic song 'A Foggy Day'.

"Here, time becomes space." - Gurnemanz (Parsifal, Act One)

Time slowed down for us in Tower Records as we got lost in endless racks of recordings, our eyes bigger than our ears, becoming truly immersed in the pursuit of looking for our next 'Holy Grail'. Sometimes the grail in question would be a Sinatra album, a rare European film soundtrack, a classic blues album of Robert Johnson or an old jazz album by Fats Waller or Al Bowlly. Other times we'd scour the film section for a rare film on VHS ('The Vanishing' or 'Weekend') we might have seen late at night on BBC2's 'Moviedrome' hosted by Alex Cox.

The point being, Tower Records back then was like the great storehouse of culture where anything and everything could be found. This, of course, was in the pre-internet era where you couldn't just simply click and buy the item you desired delivered to your door within 24 hours.

No matter how average or awful your day was, you could find comfort and peace in the vast record store as it subsumed your apathy or suffering with the balm of music and film and you could feel pacified by all the audio and visual delights on parade.

It was almost a religous experience how each glass filled space inside the temple created such a sense of homeliness and serenity in the midst of the urban circus and where everyone from all walks of life seemed to congregate there with the exact same motivation - the eternal search for the next cultural epiphany. I can remember seeing a young girl ask to listen to Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast' soundtrack as the title song echoed throughout the store with its 'Once Upon A Time' melody and on another occasion an older gentleman requested to listen to some hyper-intense Chick Corea which drew some raised eyebrows from the more traditional jazz lovers (what I call the 'pipe and slippers' brigade) casually browsing amongst us. As different as the music may have been for these two, the pursuit in finding magic in the form of culture was clearly universal.

But it was the first time I saw that distinctive and iconic yellow and red Tower Records bag arriving in our house in Gloucestershire one day when my father returned from some time working in the city on a nightclub project called RIO123 at Westbourne Grove that Tower Records truly entered my consciousness.

"I've found something rather special. You have to listen to this."

Watching as he unveiled the treasure inside the red and yellow bag, all I saw was a modern art cover of green and blue (Rothko-esque if he'd taken his meds) with black type scrawled across it as if it had been finger painted.

It was Keith Jarret and his trio's double album entitled 'Tribute' and it changed my cultural life. I'd never heard of ECM or even Keith Jarrett before this precise moment but it set the course for new heights of rarefied musical appreciation for both myself and my friends and became forever synonymous with the name Tower Records for no other reason than that was where my father had sourced this precious treasure.

I made a mental note that I would have to seek out this magic tower of boundless music for myself like a knight errant consumer.

And if compelled to encapsulate the enchanted atmosphere of those special days in Tower Records back then, I can think of no better track than the one my father played me the day he introduced me to Keith Jarrett - 'Ballad Of The Sad Young Men'.

But since YouTube doesn't provide a link or video to it, I'll have to go with Fred singing Gershwin's 'A Foggy Day' instead where the lyrics could just as easily describe my feelings toward the 'magic tower' as it does to a love affair.

I was a stranger in the city
Out of town were the people I knew
I had that feeling of self-pity
What to do? What to do? What to do?
The outlook was decidedly blue
But as I walked through the foggy streets alone
It turned out to be the luckiest day I've known

A foggy day in London town                                                                                            Had me low and had me down
I viewed the morning with alarm
The British Museum had lost its charm
How long, I wondered, could this thing last?
But the age of miracles hadn't passed,
For, suddenly, I saw you there
And through foggy London Town
The sun was shining everywhere.