How I got my break inthe music industry through a colleague's comic failed suicide

What am I doing here? That was what I was pondering as my lungs
filled with another cloud of cheese-and-onion flavoured dust.
I had begun with such high hopes and had been certain that I
would be a professional goalkeeper, starting off with Tranmere Rovers and,
after a couple of seasons there, Liverpool FC would sign me and a career with
England was the obvious next step. As a schoolboy, I had always played at
county level and everybody had told me how good I was.Unfortunately for
me, Tranmere did not see it that way and I was soon sent on my way, after
playing youth-team football for them, with the impression that the dream
was over and that it was time to find a proper job.

That is how I found myself working for Unilever, making the flavours
for cheese-and-onion crisps. It was boring and monotonous and after an
eight-hour shift I would be covered from head to toe in cheese-and-onion
dust. This fine powder managed to make its way into every crevice of my
body. Worst of all, no matter how much I showered and scrubbed and
sprayed cologne, I could never rid myself of that cheesy smell. It did
nothing for my self-confidence. I often found myself in a pub or club,
talking to some girls, and somebody would pipe up with, “Can anybody
smell cheese and onion?” resulting in my having to sneak off, embarrassed,
to the gents to re-wash under my arms and re-apply the deodorant that I
always carried around in my trouser pocket. Several girls actually thought
that I was delighted to see them, only to discover that it was just the rollon
...
I had started to speculate on how I could escape this zombie-like existence
and contemplated what I enjoyed. Sport and music were my two
loves. I had already failed to make the grade in sport, so a career in music
it had to be.

Little was I to know that two opportunities were soon to come my way.
One evening, whilst glancing through my free local paper, The Wirral Globe,
an advertisement caught my eye – ‘For sale – 1,000 ex-jukebox singles –
£200’. I was on the phone immediately – this was my chance to be the next
Richard Branson and to start up my own business. I called the seller and he
informed me that the singles included The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and
The Doors etc. It sounded like a real bargain, so I arranged for him to call
around to my house the following evening.

That day was occupied by dreaming of where I should open my first
store and, more importantly, how I could broach the subject of asking my
Mum for a loan. All new businesses need investment and mine was no
different. My Mum was used to me borrowing the odd £10 and, as I only
had £120 of my own, I hoped she would be equally fine about a loan of £80.
(It did cross my mind that my prospective supplier would be wasting his
time coming over if she refused. I got around that concern by speculating
that maybe he might just take £120 for the lot, or perhaps I could just buy
£120-worth.)

But, as usual, Mum did not let me down, especially as I was so enthusiastic
about my new business opportunity. In fact, she also seemed keen on
the venture, so I suggested that, rather than pay her back the £80, I would
give her the equivalent in shares in my new, as yet un-named company.
However, I quickly realised that she was not as keen as I thought when she
said, “Just give me the cash when you have it.”
That afternoon I must have visited the toilet four or five times, as I was
so nervous. Soon there was a thunderous knocking sound. I opened the
door. “Sorry for knocking so loudly but I’ve been ringing your bell for
ages. I don’t think it’s working.”
“No,” I replied, “The battery has expired.” When you’re starting a new
business every penny counts, and not having a battery in my bell was one of
the sacrifices I was just going to have to make.

My supplier had turned up in a big white van and he asked me if I would
help him to carry the singles in. They were packed in two large tea chests
and were extremely heavy. We laid them down and I could not contain my
excitement as I rummaged through the chests. I was like a child opening his
presents on Christmas morning and, sure enough, there were all the artists
he had mentioned.

“Boy, what a mug he must be to be selling all these singles for £200,” I
thought. At that age I had yet to learn one of the foremost rules of negotiation
in business, which is not to show your hand. He could see I was keen in
fact that I was nearly wetting myself that I was sure to purchase this job lot.
Trying to be shrewd, I offered him £180. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll take £190
and I’ll throw in the tea chests for free,” was his response.
“Done,” I replied, ending my rather feeble first experience of negotiation.
“Not only have I bought all these singles,” I contemplated “but, if I ever
move into the tea wholesale industry I’ve already got a head-start.”

I quickly ushered him out of the door, keen to see what other delights
the tea chests held. As he left I apologised for not even having asked his
name. “Don’t worry,” he replied, looking rather satisfied with himself,
“it’s Con”. Perhaps at this point I should have smelt a rat, as he turned out
to be Con by name and con by nature. As I unloaded the singles I placed
them in neat little piles of fifty. It soon became apparent that I had a lot of
duplications and that, in fact, many of the titles were in bulk.

By the time I had finished I realised that my bargain deal was not going
to be the sale of the century. I surveyed the damage – 37 copies of a
Rubettes single. It was not their number one single, ‘Sugar Baby Love’, but
their dreadful, non-selling, follow-up release, ‘Juke Box Jive’, which probably
got to as high as 99 in the charts. To add to my disappointment there
were 25 copies of an unfamiliar Suzi Quatro record. This was a surprise to
me, as I had presumed that all her singles had been hits. Then I noticed thatmany of the records at the bottom of the chest were scratched.
Well, I had no option other than to make the best of a bad job and on the
following Saturday I set off to Ellesmere Port market in my car, with its
bonnet pointing to the sky due to the weight of 1,200 singles in the boot.
My initial objective was to make enough money just to pay for the repairs
to the suspension on my car that I was surely going to need – and to meet
as many Rubettes fans as possible.

My mate, Phil Burke, had come along to help me with the selling.
He was a Burke in name only, and he had the gift of the gab, so I was
confident that he could smooth-talk the people of Ellesmere Port into
purchasing my stock.

As well as the 1,000 singles purchased from Con, I had also acquired a
further 200 from a failed suicide bid. Let me explain.
Before my time at the food factory I had worked at a company called
Bromborough Paints and Building Supplies. It was a dead-end job,
requiring me to help drivers with deliveries of building materials.

Customers would telephone our office and order bricks, sand, cement and
other building materials, which we would load onto a lorry and deliver to
the customer’s house. Health and safety regulations dictated that if a load
was more than a certain weight, the driver should have an assistant to help
him unload the goods. One day, I went out with a driver called Starkey
who was delivering some cement to a customer in Bebington.

 After dropping off the cement, Starkey told me that he just needed to pop in to see his
girlfriend but would not be long. He was in the house for ages and I was
beginning to wonder what my boss would say on our return, as what
should have been a one-hour job had already taken more than two hours.
I was just about to start honking the horn when, at last, Starkey reappeared,
carrying a huge box, and crying his eyes out. “What’s up?” I asked.
“She’s finished with me,” he sobbed. “Here, these are for you.” He then
passed me a box containing approximately 200 singles. “The memory of
her is too painful, so please take them away. Every record reminds me
of her.”
I glanced through some of the records and looked at the titles – ‘My
Ding-A-Ling’, ‘Two Little Boys’, ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in The
West)’ – and struggled to come to terms with how these songs could
remind anybody of a girlfriend.

Although still in no fit state to drive thelorry, Starkey started the engine and we moved off with him sobbing at the
wheel. The conversation soon turned to suicide, and he told me that his life
was not worth living without her. “Don’t worry,” I said, “there are plenty
of other fish in the sea.” My desperate attempts at compassion fell on deaf
ears, as Starkey told me he did not want any other fish.
I struggled to keep my laughter in until, still sobbing, Starkey took a
turn for the worse. “I am going to crash the lorry into the Rose and
Crown,” he announced, leaving me scarcely believing what I was hearing.
I anxiously asked why. “I can’t take anymore,” was his distressed reply.
This was rather worrying, as the Rose and Crown was less than a mile away
and was situated on a T-junction at the bottom of an extremely steep hill.
As we approached the hill, the lorry began to pick up speed. “What are
you doing?!” I cried in panic. There was no reply. “Starkey!” I shouted, but
there was still no reply – he seemed to be in a trance and, in desperation, I
shouted at him, “What about me?” Self-preservation had suddenly become
top priority: the people relaxing in the Rose and Crown, sipping their
lunchtime pints, with a lorry about to plough through the wall, did not
enter my thoughts.

I opened the door of the lorry, thinking that jumping out was an option
but, by now, the lorry was travelling too fast. “STOP!!” I screamed and,
too late, Starkey suddenly slammed on the brakes. The lorry screeched and
skidded right through the T-junction without, amazingly, hitting any other
vehicles, struck the kerb and came to rest a couple of feet from the pub
entrance.

Whilst it was skidding to a halt I had dropped the box of records and
now my feet were deep in 7” singles. Starkey, meanwhile, had his head in
his hands and was still crying his eyes out whilst slumped over the wheel.
I leapt out of the lorry and realised that it had become a major traffic
obstruction, blocking both lanes of the road.

Drivers had left their cars and began questioning me as to what had
happened. I thought it best to say that the brakes had failed. One driver,
noticing Starkey still slumped at the wheel, asked what was wrong with
him. “He’s still in shock,” was my meek reply. Guessing that the police
would be arriving soon, I jumped back in the cab, shook Starkey and told
him that we had to get out of there pronto. In the movies I would have
slapped his face, but under the circumstances it probably would not have
been appropriate.

Starkey, at last, seemed to get a grasp of our predicament, stopped
crying and started extricating the lorry. As the traffic was so close he was
unable to do a proper three-point-turn but eventually, after what seemed
like a thirty-three-point-turn, we moved off to the sound of one of the
motorists shouting “Hey dickhead, you can’t drive it with no brakes!”
On the way back to the depot Starkey asked me not to mention the day’s
escapade, as he was already on a final warning and feared that he would be
sacked. I agreed to say nothing, because I felt really sorry for him and, in
his current state of mind, I would worry for him if he lost his job as well.
He then suggested that I give him £20 for the collection of singles he had
given me and I was taken aback. For a start, the singles were not worth that
amount and, secondly, you do not ask for money for a gift. Eventually I
agreed to give him a fiver for the motley collection. I never played any of the
records that I bought from him and they stayed in their box for the next two
years. Now, however, I could finally dispose of them for a profit, and every
time I sold one I laughed as I remembered my experiences with Starkey.
Unfortunately, my first day at the market did not go exactly to plan. Phil
Burke and I turned up at the market manager’s office promptly at 7.30am,
asked for a pitch, and he explained to us how things worked. The market
had 60 pitches that were mostly occupied by regulars but, nevertheless,
each week there would be some ‘no-shows’. These would be traders who
were ill, or on holiday or who perhaps could not be bothered to get out of
bed if it was pouring down with rain.

The manager ushered us into a room around the corner in which about
five other traders were already waiting in the hope that they too would be
given a pitch. At 9am he picked two of these traders, seemingly at random,
to replace the no-shows and, as the new kids on the block, we had no
chance. “Sorry lads, try again next week,” he told us. Crikey, all that effort
for nothing and, worse, I was further in debt, having given Phil £5 and with
petrol to pay for – not a great start.

The next few weeks followed a similar pattern. Each week Phil and I
would load the car, drive to the market, and hang around for a while only
to be told “Sorry lads, try again next week”.
One thing which did soon come to my attention was that every week the
market manager would allocate a stall to a buxom blonde lady who sold
homemade cakes. I wondered whether her success was down to her natural
assets, or because she had been coming to the market for longer than us, or
perhaps Ellesmere Port simply had a shortage of cake-sellers. But, for
whatever reason, she was always allocated a stall. Until, one week, I
discovered her secret when I saw there, on the market manager’s desk – a
big cake! She was enticing him with Bakewell tart!

I was a quick learner, and I knew that I had to adapt this technique if my
budding business was to progress. I engaged him in conversation. He was
an old guy called Arnold (are there ever any young people called Arnold? It
seems to be one of those names used solely by the over-60s). He was a
friendly chap who told me that he admired us for turning up week-in,
week-out, despite not obtaining a stall. He also told me not to give in, as
one day we would be given one of his cherished stalls. I secretly felt he
enjoyed the power of his job.

“Do you like music, Arnold?” I enquired. “Oh yes, I am a big fan of all
music,” he replied. “Well, I have got a thousand records in the car. What
do you like? I’ll give you a couple for nothing.”
“That’s very kind. Anything would do. In fact, I am seeing my grand -
children tomorrow so maybe something they would like would be good.” I
went to the car and came back clutching a couple of singles for Arnold. He
thanked me and asked, “Do young people like The Rubettes and Suzi Quatro?”
“Yes, I am sure they’ll be delighted with them, because they have both
had number one singles,” I replied.
Arnold seemed genuinely touched by my gesture, and I had learned
another important rule of business – not that the best way to get on is to
bribe people, but that any idiot can sell products which people want, but to
succeed you need to dispose of your overstocks and, although I had left that
week’s market without a single sale, I had managed to reduce my stock of
Rubettes and Suzi Quatro singles.

This was not the only business lesson I learned that day. My finances
were decreasing rapidly and I had to face facts. I could no longer afford to
employ Phil, and after long deliberation I was forced to take the decision to
let him go.

Each week after being rejected at the market, we would return to my
house where we would review the business and warm up with tea and toast
whilst watching Tiswas. This week, as we watched the programme my
stomach was in knots. I could not concentrate on the Phantom Flan
Flinger, Spit the Dog or even the gorgeous Sally James, who always got
100 per cent of my attention. How was I to tell my best mate that his services
were no longer required?

I decided to soften the blow by presenting him with a parting gift of £10,
but Phil still got the hump when I told him. Maybe I was being a bit insensitive,
but some people just don’t understand how difficult it is to run your
own business. Sacrifices must be made and, sadly for Phil, it was inevitable
that he was that sacrifice. I knew Phil was upset as he just got up and left.
He did not even stay to watch Compost Corner, which was always his
favourite part of Tiswas.

Eventually, on one snowy January morning, I got my big break. Because
of the dreadful weather there were a fair number of ‘no-shows’ and I was
given a pitch at last. Along with my stock I had also brought my homemade
sign, reading ‘BARGAIN RECORDS’, which was the name I traded under.
Needless to say, seconds of thought went into choosing that name. I also
brought my cassette player and a collection of tapes of obscure Liverpool
bands that I blasted out, much to the annoyance of some of my fellow
traders, and resulting in Arnold requesting that I keep the noise down a bit.
Despite the weather the first day was a success. Although the stall cost £6,
I left with more than £12 in my pocket.
Also, throughout the day, several people had brought me LPs and singles
to purchase, as I bought records as well as selling them.
During the coming weeks I noticed that two types of people came to my
stall. The first was the genuine record collector, who was looking to buy
new products and to trade in records they had tired of listening to. The
other type was normally quite dishevelled, and would only trade in records
for cash. It took some time for me to realise that they were probably on
drugs and that their goods were probably stolen. After a while my
conscience would get the better of me and I turned these people away.

One other thing that I found remarkable was the number of people who
came over and asked what I was playing. I realised that none of the tracks
on my cassette were for sale on the stall. There was only one thing for it –
when I went home I put together a cassette of all my overstock singles and
for the next few months Ellesmere Port market rocked to the sound of The
Rubettes’ ‘Juke Box Jive’ and all the other singles with which I had overstock
problems. It was a shrewd move, although there were times when I
felt like smashing up the cassette player.

Eventually, I did manage to sell all my copies of ‘Juke Box Jive’. If I total
up all the CDs and records I have sold over the years, it must amount to
millions of pounds worth of music, but no other sale has ever matched the
feeling of elation I had when the very last copy of ‘Juke Box Jive’ left the
market.
By now I had become a regular at the market. I think it helped that each
week I gave Arnold one of my overstock singles for his grandchildren. This
gesture delighted him but more importantly, it guaranteed me a stall.
Arnold’s grandchildren must have had the worst record collection in the
land!

One night, whilst I was watching Blue Peter, they showed how you could
make a fruit bowl out of an old LP record by moulding the vinyl into shape
(after first getting your parent to help you heat the plastic). “What a great
idea!” I thought. “I could turn all those old albums I can’t sell into fruit
bowls.”

Of course, I needed to get a new sign – ‘BARGAIN RECORDS AND
FRUIT BOWLS’ did not have the required cachet. That night I put a
scratched album under the grill; moulded it into shape; and, sure enough,
when the vinyl cooled I had manufactured my first fruit bowl. There was
no stopping me, and by the end of the night I had a motley collection of
fruit bowls to sell on Saturday.

One thing I picked up on was that the bowl on Blue Peter seemed to hold
a lot more fruit than the ones I was making. It was an illusion – they had
cleverly used grapes, cherries, strawberries and plums to fill their bowl
whilst mine looked considerably less impressive with a banana, an apple
and an orange in it.

The fruit bowls attracted a lot of attention and brought many people
over to the stall. Most of them seemed to laugh their heads off, though one
sale was particularly interesting. I had a particularly badly scratched Queen
album, which I had melted. “Wow, a Queen fruit bowl!” the customer
exclaimed, and gladly handed over his £1. He was genuinely chuffed withhis purchase. I thought that perhaps I was going about this the wrong way –
instead of using fruit bowls as a means of clearing out my overstocks, what
would be the response if I produced limited edition fruit bowls of
famous bands?

That night I took a scratched copy of The Beatles’ Revolver album and
produced what I believe to be the first ever Beatles fruit bowl. It did cross
my mind that perhaps I should contact Apple (the Beatles management
company) in case I was infringing copyright laws, but then I thought to hell
with it, if they want to sue me it would be great publicity.
I made a small sign saying ‘Limited Edition Beatles Fruit Bowl – Only
£2’, and by the end of the day (and after some heavy selling, like informing
a woman that I was sure in years to come it would be a collectors’ item) I
had relieved myself of the Beatles bowl and of a Gary Glitter fruit bowl
made from the unfortunately named Touch Me album. I often wonder if
they still sit on somebody’s sideboard somewhere in Ellesmere Port.

One young girl told me that she would like to surprise her boyfriend by
creating a fruit bowl from one of his Led Zeppelin albums, saying that she
would bring his album down the following week. I charged her £1 for the
job and she happily collected it, but I was never really sure if this was an act
of revenge, or if she genuinely thought her boyfriend would be thrilled to
see his beloved Led Zeppelin album turned into a fruit bowl. Sadly she
never came back to tell me.

The books of Graham Jones are available in record shops or online. The latest book The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen' has been turned in to a film. It is released on 13 April on DVD and is available in record shops. Distributed by Proper Music.

 www.thevinylrevivalfilm.com

@Revival_Vinyl

For film screenings and talks contact Graham at graham@lastshopstanding.co.uk