ANTIQUES

John Minns on the fall and rise of vinyl recordings of popular music

Emile Berliner: German-American inventor (1851-1929 )

Emile Berliner was born into a wealthy family of Jewish merchants from Hanover, Germany. He was expected to join the family business, but his heart was in another place. As a child he was fascinated by mechanical equipment and the new technology that was emerging from the second Industrial Revolution in America. As an adult, he would later be drawn into the production of audio technology to store and reproduce the human voice.

His planned inauguration into a restrained, predictable family business would stifle his creativity, so in 1870, at the age of 19, he set sail for America. To keep his head above water after his arrival in the US he took various jobs, including stable boy, shop worker and bottle washer. In the evenings he would attend the local educational institute to study Physics.

Emile would later go on to invent a number of items: a soundproofing material, a type of rotary engine (helicopter), the microphone diaphragm (the precursor to the modern microphone) and many others. In 1887 he was granted a patent on the first flatbed Gramophone and the first flat disc record. These two items would help to pave the way for what would later be known as the music industry, bringing delight to billions of people throughout the world. The Record Disc was initially made from vulcanising rubber that included a mixture of slate dust and shellac (a secretion from the lac beetle). The discs would eventually morph into records being made of Polyvinyl Chloride, inheriting the colloquial name of ‘Vinyl’.

Percy Phillips and The Quarrymen

On 12th July 1958, five teenage musicians entered the premises of Phillips Sound and Recording Services, a family-run home business trading from 38 Kensington Road, Liverpool. The shop sold a variety of home and electrical goods, including batteries, radios, record players, and

televisions. On occasion, it would also double up a recording studio. The business was run by exarmy veteran Mr. Percy Phillips. The boys, calling themselves The Quarrymen, had arrived that day with the intention to make one single vinyl record at the cost of 17'6d (less than a pound in today’s money). The group consisted of John Lowe (piano), Colin Hanton (drums),with George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had just turned sixteen, on guitars and vocals. Mr Phillips would act as producer and recording engineer. The recording studio was at the back of the shop in Percy’s partially converted living room, with old carpets and curtains draped around the studio to inhibit and dampen the ambient noises from the busy road outside. There was no rehearsal and the boys went straight into the recording of their first song, recorded from a single microphone hung from the ceiling. The A-side was That’ll Be The Day by Buddy Holly and Jerry Alison. Once completed, the boys discussed what to put on the B-side, deliberating between themselves until Percy Phillips shouted, “You’re not going to take up all of my day for 17'6!”

McCartney and Harrison had written a song earlier called In Spite of All the Danger, but Lowe and Hanton had not heard it before, so they had to busk their way through it. At the end of the session, in less than ten minutes in total, the rarest and most valuable vinyl record in history would be made on a fragile 10'' shellac-coated metal disk.

In what could have been a shocking twist of fate, at the end of the session, after the fragile record had been cut, it could easily have been destroyed, thus depriving the world of this gem that would go on to be one of the most valuable records in the world. When the time came to pay for the record, the boys could only find 15' 2'6d, short of the 17'6 required. Mr Phillips, the hardened first world war veteran and noted for his brusqueness, refused to hand over the record until it had been paid for in full. Fortunately for history, three days later he was reimbursed with the deficit and the record was handed over. The record was then circulated between the various members of the group a week at a time, eventually landing in the hands of Lowe and in his custodial safekeeping, where it remained in his sock drawer for more than 20 years.

The record was eventually retrieved and sold to McCartney for an undisclosed amount in the 1980s. He subsequently had the original record remastered (each time it was played it gradually eroded) and fifty copies were made and given to friends and colleagues. Needless to say, these remastered versions are rare and highly collectable in their own right and are literally worth more than their weight in gold, changing hands for upwards of £10,000.

Other Valuable Records

A rare copy of Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles was sold at auction in 2013 for $299.000. An original 1967 pressing signed by all of the Fab Four sold for nearly ten times over the original estimate of $30,000. Records do not necessarily have to be by famous artists, with sales running into millions, to be valuable. Motown and Northern Soul legend Frank Wilson had relatively small amounts of record sales, but a single 45rpm copy of Do I Love You (Indeed I do) will set you back £100,000 today, for only 250 copies were produced. If you are lucky enough to find one, check that it is not warped, as many are and devalued accordingly. Alternatively, if you do happen to have slightly more than a bit of loose change in your pocket, how about splashing out on the only known copy of Wu-Tang Clan’s 2015 Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which was sold in 2021 for a reported $4 million.

The Demise and Resurrection of the Vinyl record

In the early 1960s, another Philips, this time an electrical products company from the Netherlands, introduced its first tape cassette. It was incredibly popular with a new youthful and eager market, leading to a significant reduction in vinyl sales. In 1982 Philips, now working with Sony, unleashed the CD onto the market. A slow starter at first, but by 1988 CDs outsold vinyl for the first time. By 2003, CD sales started to peak, also with the introduction of digital downloads, iPods and streaming, and vinyl got pushed even further back in the popularity stakes.

Vinyl looked set to disappear altogther as a musical commodity. Then a strange anomaly occurred and vinyl record sales started to rise again. By 2020 vinyl records were outselling CDs for the first time since 1986, and by the first half of 2021 there was an increase in sales of 86% from 2020. Most record buyers today are in the 25-35 year age group. So why did this occur?

There is a strong element of process and ritual involved in acquiring vinyl, a need for the individual to find something to facilitate a more tranquil respite from a frantic and fast-paced life in a modern world. The ritualistic process starts with the tactile removal of the disk from its cover, switching on the record player, cleaning the disc, placing it on the record bed. The rejection of an entirely digital age and a return to the more sensory process of absorbing culture. Vinyl records are objects to be revered and placed on show, with their large-format iconic cover art, often by legendary artists. It is not surprising therefore that the vinyl record has made a resounding comeback from potential obscurity.

ACQUISITION & COLLECTION

SUGGESTED READING:

Rare Record Collector 2020 price guide, a must for the budding collector and investor, with previous back issues available on eBay.

Record Collector magazine back issues are also available, to chart price rises and drops over time to help you keep your finger on the pulse.

There are many record fairs throughout the year, dotted all over the UK; a place to meet other aficionados and collectors.

Rare records often turn up at rock and roll memorabilia auctions, as well as the occasional lucky find at a boot sale or antiques fair.

THE FLUMMOXER

Readers are invited to ponder the purpose of this issue’s antiquity conundrum, and one provider of the correct answer wins a superb pair of Fox Cufflinks.

Send your answer to chap@thechap.co.uk

Iain Douglas Lamb correctly identified last issue’s flummoxer as a stick of sealing wax, into which to press one’s signet ring when melted.