Record Store Day Shops Day 41 -81 Renshaw Street -Liverpool
81
Renshaw Street *The
record shop owner who interviewed Paul McCartney*
81 Renshaw Street, Liverpool, L1 2SJ
0151 707 1805
81renshaw.co.uk; info@81renshaw.co.uk;
@81Renshaw
Tuesday-Sunday 12-11pm
Established 2016
Stock: Vinyl, Second-hand, Coffee, Food,
In-stores, Comedy Club and Arts Venue, Licensed.
Located in the basement of the building that
housed the offices of Bill Harry’s legendary and influential Merseybeat
magazine is 81 Renshaw Street, a store named after its famous address. Upstairs
houses a bar and venue, which hosts live music, comedy, improv theatre, musical
open mic evenings and even life drawing classes. It is also home for Neil
Tilly, the shop’s owner, who lives in the flat above.
It is a vibrant and happening place in the heart
of Liverpool's music scene that has made a big impact.
Neil has always been an entrepreneur and landed
himself in hot water when as a schoolboy with the help of his chemistry set, he
manufactured his own fireworks. Amazingly, they worked. Neil sold them at
school and then went one step further. He produced some flyers for Tilly’s
Fireworks. After handing them out at school he pasted them around town,
including on the Liverpool buses. He made one crucial error: he put his contact
details on the flyers. That curtailed his first venture.
Next, he produced Tilly’s Top 30. Each week he
would ask his classmates at school for their current favourite three records.
He would then compile a sheet with the results neatly typed out. He recalled
the excitement of having his favourite record by X-Ray Spex at No.2 in Tilly’s
Top 30 while it was only just in the Top 20 in the national chart, proving to
him that his classmates had better taste than the public.
The young entrepreneur then went on to produce
his own comic, which included music-related articles. It was his success with
this that later led to him starting his own Liverpool music magazine titled Breakout.
Upon leaving school he found work in a shipping
office. It was here that the plans for Breakout
formed. One of his work colleagues was Tim Wildy who played in a local band
called Twisted Nervz. Tim was passionate about Liverpool music and when he was
not playing gigs he was checking out other bands in the Liverpool scene. He
started introducing Neil to bands such as OMD, Echo & The Bunnymen, the
Teardrop Explodes and Wah! Heat. The music that Neil had been enjoying up until
then was by big, inaccessible acts, but in Liverpool he could not only buy the
records but could go out and see these artists playing in the city. He
concluded that Liverpool had many fine bands who were not getting the attention
they deserved.
Neil started to interview local bands and soon
had enough material for the first issue. He had no money for printing but,
luckily, the shipping office was equipped with an industrial-sized printer,
which Neil took advantage of. He printed 1,000 copies of the magazine which he
hand-stapled before delivering to record shops and venues across the city.
The magazine was an instant hit and demand was
such that he felt it was too risky to continue to use his employer’s printing
machine. Instead, he outsourced the printing to a company in Diss, Norfolk. This
arrangement involved a monthly 480-mile round trip in a van to collect the
magazine from the printers. Incredibly, despite the cost of the van hire and
petrol, it worked out far cheaper than having it printed in Liverpool.
He did have one scary moment at work when his
boss enquired about the magazine. His boss’s son was enthusing about the
magazine one evening while reading it at home. His dad noticed that the editor
was one Neil Tilly, the enthusiastic music fan who seemed to have spent a lot
of time near the company printer. Luckily, by this point Neil was no longer
using the work printer as part of his chain of production.
By issue No.6 Neil decided to leave the shipping
office and make Breakout his career.
In 1984 he added a short-lived record label. The only release on the Breakout
label was “Wise Up!” a single by the local band Foundation. The record became a
cult classic and was recently on sale on Discogs for £293. The magazine ran
till 1986, when Neil decided he needed a more stable job as by now he had
married Jan and had young children. Over the years Breakout did a fantastic job of promoting the north-west music
scene. As well as interviewing many Liverpool bands Neil also met Tears For
Fears, the Stranglers, the Damned, Steve Harley, Stuart Copeland, John Foxx,
Bill Nelson and, most famously, Paul McCartney.
The Macca meeting came about after Neil received
a phone call from Bernard Doherty, Paul’s press officer, asking if Neil could
send some back issues of Breakout to
Paul, who wanted to read them. Neil was delighted, cheekily asking “Any chance
of an interview?” Bernard laughed and Neil thought nothing more of it. A few
weeks later Bernard was on the phone again, offering him the chance to
interview Paul at Air Studios in London. Neil could not understand why an
artist of his status would choose to give his first interview in three years to
a small Liverpool magazine.
Now that Neil has had time to reflect on it, he
suspects it was down to the aftermath of John Lennon’s death, when Paul did an
interview and was upset with what was printed, feeling that what he had said
had been taken out of context. For the next three years Paul refused all other
interview requests, but evidently felt he could trust Neil, an enthusiastic,
20-year-old journalist from his home city, to report exactly what he said.
When he entered Air Studios and introduced
himself, Neil was asked to sign a document saying he must not ask any questions
about John Lennon, nor report on anything Paul might say about his fellow Beatle,
a condition he was happy to agree to. Paul walked in and greeted Neil warmly.
The initial conversation was about Liverpool, given that both came from the
same part of the city, Paul from Speke and Neil from Garston. Both had even
been regular visitors to Garston Library. Paul then brought tales of John
Lennon into the conversation. After half an hour Neil was beginning to get
worried that he was not going to have any content for his interview. So far,
the conversation had revolved around John Lennon, which he could not use, while
the story of how they both went to Garston library was hardly a scoop.
Fortunately, the conversation turned to Paul’s new album, Pipes of Peace. Neil’s interview lasted longer than an hour and he
found Paul charming. He even invited Neil and Jan to the premier of Give my Regards to Broad Street.
The next day back in Liverpool, Neil had visits
from three national newspapers, all wishing to do a feature on the young
journalist who had scooped an interview with Paul McCartney. The News of the World, the Sunday People and the Sunday Mirror
all asked him questions, then wanted a photograph. They thought it would be a
great shot for him to be holding a Beatles album. Unfortunately, Neil only
owned cassettes of the band, so the photo did not quite work. They went instead
for a picture of him looking serious while writing. The issue of Breakout featuring the interview with
Paul McCartney quickly sold out of all 20,000 copies. Neil has never used the
part of the interview where Paul spoke about John Lennon. He hopes that one day
he will be able to publish it.
There were two interviews he did that were never
used at all. The first was with one of his heroes, Andy Partridge of XTC. Neil
had decided to do no more issues as he had obtained a job with a wholesale
metals company. Soon after he took the decision he received a call from Andy
(whom he had been chasing for ages), agreeing to an interview. XTC were one of
his favourite bands, so even though he was not going to use it, he travelled down
to Swindon to interview Andy for the feature that never was. Neil recalled he
spent most of the interview answering questions from Andy about his McCartney
interview.
Ever the entrepreneur, Neil left the wholesale
metals company to start his own business, manufacturing and supplying plastic
tubing, which he called Peninsular Plastic. The business did well and in 1995
Neil launched a new magazine called Reverb.
The tag line was Scandal-Music-Theatre-Comedy-Soaps-Filth. He was years ahead
of his time, as this was a free paper, funded by adverts. The first issue, in
October 1995, featured the Charlatans, Cast and TV soap Brookside. It attracted some quality writers including ex-Melody Maker journalist Penny Kiley,
John Robb and Liverpool playwright and author Ian Salmon. Reverb only ran for nine issues but captured the culture of those
times.
Just before he closed Reverb, Neil was asked if he would interview a new five-piece girl
band Virgin Records had signed. That was the Spice Girls, another scoop that
has never seen the light of day.
In 2016 Neil took over 81 Renshaw Street. At the
time it was just a café, but he has turned it into one of the most exciting
places in the north west for fans of culture, art and music. His favourite
customer is Single Man, not a reference to his marital status, but in
recognition of the fact that he has bought three 7-inch singles nearly every
day since the shop opened. The shop has thousands of these, on offer at 40p
each or three for a £1. Single Man has always gone for the bulk deal. One day
he even bought six for £2.
The work Neil has done promoting Merseyside
music through his magazines is not dissimilar to the most famous occupant of 81
Renshaw Street, Bill Harry, a name synonymous with Liverpool music, who helped
launch The Beatles. John Lennon was one of his best friends, when both were
studying at Liverpool Art College along with Stuart Sutcliffe (original bass
player in the Beatles) and Cynthia Powell (later Lennon, John’s wife).
Frustrated by the lack of media coverage of the
Liverpool music scene, Bill started his own Mersey
Beat magazine. Based on the top floor at 81 Renshaw Street, with the help
of his girlfriend Virginia - whom he had met at the Jacaranda club (now another
Liverpool record shop) and who later became his wife - he produced and printed
5,000 copies of the first issue which hit the streets in July 1961.
It was a huge success and soon became the street
music bible for Merseyside youngsters. Thanks to Bill’s contacts with The
Beatles, the band featured heavily in Mersey
Beat. Bill was able to obtain many scoops and featured sketches by John
Lennon in the magazine. Indeed so much Beatles material featured that the
magazine was sometimes jokingly referred to as Mersey Beatles.
The magazine’s circulation grew to 75,000 and
its popularity was instrumental in moving the hub of the music industry from
London to the north west. Instead of bands routinely moving south to London,
the industry A&R men came north to Liverpool to check out and sign many of
the hundreds of bands on the scene.
Neil told me about the only time Bill had
witnessed John Lennon in tears. John kept all his sketches in a drawer on the
top floor. During the move downstairs, his sketches went missing. John was
distraught. They were never found. Nobody knows if they were stolen or thrown
out. Neil is tempted to remove the floorboards in 81 Renshaw Street just in
case they have slipped down the cracks.
In his own way, Neil Tilly has continued the
great work done by Bill Harry.
Top
tip - Find yourself a window seat in the café and
look out for all the Beatles tour groups who stop outside the shop to hear
tales and take photos. Keep an eye out on the Indian restaurant at No.83 called
Indian Legend. You will see many people having their photograph taken outside.
This is because Liverpool City Council have produced a “Walking Guide to the
Beatles”. It has the background and photos of sites around Liverpool connected
with the band. Unfortunately, instead of taking a photograph of Neil’s record
shop at No.81, they took a photo of the restaurant next door. Neil reckons it
has cost him quite a few customers as many people go there for a curry,
thinking they are eating in a building connected with the Beatles.
This piece is taken from the book The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen
Over 220 independent record shops featured in The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen
Available at your local record shop or online at http://smarturl.it/vinylrevival
Look out for the film based on the book. The Vinyl Revival' which is released on Record Store Day April 13th. The film comes free with the album The Vinyl Revival. Only available in independent record shops on RSD
Check out the trailer
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